The crux

My grandmother passed away, finally*, at age 94 back in October. She died in her sleep. More importantly, she died dreaming of my grandfather (or rather in a haze of dementia) and repeatedly mentioned that he had asked her to marry him.

"What should I say?" she asked my father.

"For godssake, say yes, otherwise I won't exist," said my father. She laughed as though she got the joke, and she may have, because she was a sharp lady.

I love to think of her suspended in that giddy moment of young love, the moment just before her life settled into its track and took off barreling toward pregnancies and houses and addictions and celebrations. I see it as a conductor raising her arm for the downbeat, the gesture before the music, the instruction to draw bows and breath.

Yet, when my grandmother died, I had a sudden and explosive thought; I had been waiting for her to die before allowing myself to consider suicide. It was a simple rule, and it worked for years. While she was alive I could spare her needless pain and confusion. How would this woman, who only knew the kindest, most patient side of me, ever reconcile that image with the desperation of my truer self? Why force sobs from her? I assumed, too, that my father would very likely lie to her, and how could I make him do that. How cruel would I have to be to force him to make that decision?

And so she fell asleep, and so she never woke, and when that word popped into my head I had nothing handy to bat it away.

Suicide.

At first, the thought itself was so upsetting that the anxiety swept me into fits. Every moment of solitude or quiet brought on hyperventilation and tears.

Then I started really thinking about it; how I had drawn away from friends and I could recede even more, how I could sell my things, throw away papers. We already had a temp at work, which just proved (in my mind) that everyone is replaceable. I had already stopped enjoying the usual pastimes; reading, writing, singing, hanging out with friends, even eating. The world had become two dimensional, blank cardboard cut-outs of the actions of living. And so it was time.

Of course, I'm an asshole, and this is why.

My father hinted to it on the phone but I didn't believe him at the time. He was drunk. But then again, he had just lost his mother. I cut him a little slack, at least. He mumbled something about Grandma's will, and I decided to dismiss it. Then my mother mentioned something and credibility came into the picture. And then I went home to see my aching family and touch them to make sure they were solid and okay.

Mom and Dad were puttering downstairs, clearly waiting for me to get ready. I came downstairs to the two of them on either side of the kitchen counter, suddenly hushing themselves. My father had something in his hand, barely hidden.

"Johanna Mary... your grandmother loved you very much." He then went on to describe the many ways I was good to her; sending cards and letters, insisting on seeing her on my trips home, making sure my brothers remembered her at Christmas time and her birthday. And then he talked about his mother meeting his father, how dear they were to each other.

And then he showed me the ring, and told me Grandma wanted me to have it. She only mentioned four people in her will, and I was the only grandchild. She left her wedding band to Aunt Depresso, her pearls to Aunt Klondike (I think), and her engagement ring, a cushion-cut diamond flanked by the tiniest chips of diamond in an art deco setting, to me.

I cried. A lot. My parents hugged me. They couldn't know that every part of me wanted to reject the gift. If I had really been a good granddaughter, I felt, I would have called. I would have sent the card I bought for her last week and she would have loved it. I would have gotten my license and seen her on my own, and often. But then again, here was proof that she knew I loved her.

Four months later, my brother said the thing I needed to hear, and maybe couldn't absorb until this moment.

"Grandma didn't want you to be buried with that ring."

He also soliloquized about how special I am and how important I am and blah blah blah - nothing I could believe besides that one thing. I was given a ring in hope that I would have a piece of her, know she loved me, maybe someday find my own love. She could never have thought that I would kill myself mere months afterward and scramble to think of someone more worthy of the ring. She was clear in her gesture: I am worthy. Whether or not I believe it, I am worthy of her love and love from any direction.

I still don't believe it, but I do accept that she believed it. In her honor, I live.

*"Finally" sounds harsh, however, Grandma was fed up with birthdays and suffering daily shame from merely existing in a facility where she did not leave her room or cultivate friendships. Some of that is her own fault. I also find myself saying "finally" to continue convincing myself that death is quite final. It's a one-way street. Unless you're Wesley from The Princess Bride and you wind up "mostly dead," but I digress.

What do you do with a broken JoBiv, what do you do with a broken JoBiv

What do you do with a broken JoBiv ear-lye in the mornin'...

To be honest, I don't care to hear your answers. I don't want to think or grow or challenge anything at the moment. I want to shrivel up and blow away. Alas, that only happens in Indiana Jones movies.

Let's talk about ol' Indy, then. Here I am at a facility where the VCR still works and there are such choices as Karate Kid I and II alongside White Chicks and Somersby. We chose Indiana Jones, which brought up the line (internally) from The Last Crusade, "You have chosen... wisely."

Of course I forget how unspecial the effects can be, how over-orchestrated the score can be, how completely bizarre the plot can be. For whatever reason, the lead actress wound up dressed in long silky white gowns - the better to be torn and frayed and reveal more skin? Clearly the production team looked at the story boards, loved the look of the shroud on the woman's body, and thought, "Hmm... but how can we get her in a gown? Officer's ball in Cairo? ... That's ridiculous. She's a... seamstress! And carries samples with her everywhere! ... No... How about we get a pervy Frenchman to dress her up like a doll in a random drinking scene! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

And then how much more ridiculous is it that I wound up incorporating this idea in my unavoidable nightmares? I have sets of them, to make it easier on myself. There are Exposure nightmares, Responsibility nightmares, Victim nightmares and Oh My God I Have the Sickest Mind nightmares. And then there are night terrors, but I digress.

So the Exposure nightmare goes like this: They (y'know, Them) ask me to put on the same dress this woman wears in the film. Of course it's a size 4 and I'm a size 40 and there's no spandex (was there spandex in 1981? I'll have to research. Or perhaps they were going for historical accuracy.) At any rate, the dress doesn't go on over my head or up my legs. I can't get in it sideways or backwards or upside down. But they're knocking on my door and asking to come in to complete the "fitting." I also have a large wound on my back that's bleeding and it's staining the dress and I know I will be in trouble on top of being too fat to fit in the dress. And then it rips. Ffrrrreep. Fuck.

Now the costume crew come in and they yell at me, and then I'm sort of stuck in this dress but I have to pee, and no one will let me leave the room, and I start crying and they yell at me some more, and there's no more material to make a new dress and it was spun from Chinese silk from the ancient Wang Chun dynasty or some shit...

In case you were idly wondering whether or not I'm able to see the humor in these dreams, the answer is... not while I'm dreaming them. I feel the red hot shame and misery and fear, and any comic elements elude me until at least the next day, sometimes two days later.

Did you know there's a med for nightmares? Or I should say there's a med for high blood pressure that has an off-label use as a nightmare cure. I'm on it now and it mostly works - that is, I've had fewer flashbacks and night terrors. But I still have these Exposure dreams and Responsibility dreams (where I'm juggling nine babies with brittle bone syndrome and the oven is on but empty and my grandmother is slowly but steadily rolling away in her wheelchair toward a massive cliff). Of course, this miracle drug makes me dizzy and - go fig - messes with my blood pressure, but I like to think these are just the adorable quirks of a new friend I'm gettin' to know. As long as it doesn't chew with its mouth open, I think I can take the quirks.

I suppose, then, we have our answer: What do we do with a broken JoBiv?

Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy! Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy... etc.  Or perhaps,

Send her to McLean and watch her closely?

Oh, gosh, these are fun... Verse three: Throw out all her shit and plan her funeral!

All right, that's not funny. Outside of McLean, anyway.

Send her off to sleep and never wake her
Make her eat her food and take her showers
Call her on the phone and make her blubber...

Tell her to go back to work already...

Honestly, I could go on. Laugh at all her jokes as if they're funny!

And now, for your further amusement...

 Let me say, in all honesty, that I would feel a twinge of regret if my dear friend Spen ever knew that I wrote about her asking me to tell about my dating failures for the amusement of others in anything less than a jaunty tone. But, as with most of my tales, there is a darker side, a chiaroscuro that makes the light points that much more noticeable and visceral.

...right?

And actually, there's some therapy in the telling of my own sad tales. I truly hope someone laughs at them more than I am able to.

I will allow Spen's words from last night introduce tonight's account. We were circled around ice cream cones (topical, you will come to find) by a bench in Coolidge Corner, visiting with Wellesley girls I don't know so well but whose company I enjoy. I tell Spen that I had another mediocre date just across the street at the Regal Beagle. She begs for details, gets them, then opens the field a bit wider:

"Tell them about the stinky guy!"

'Twas the dog days of summer, when a girl hesitates to make a date on a school night because it's a wee bit hot on the subway and she doesn't want to look as disheveled and not-so-fresh as she feels. She makes the date anyway. Besides, the soon-to-be-christened Revere Beach date has been kind and patient and very persistent. Might as well meet the guy.

So off I go to Revere Beach, wondering where in hell we're supposed to meet. This is a recurring nightmare in online dating. Do you meet in the station? On the platform? Outside the turnstyles? Near a landmark? At the destination for coffee/drinks/etc? Leaning against a grecian urn with the last, rosy rays of waning sunlight glinting in your hair?

For lack of grecian urns, and for the sake of being as close to the beach for as long as possible, I chose the boardwalk; in particular, a sweet little bench by some rose bushes. I waited.

Text from dude: I'm almost there! (Bizarre posed picture of self in subway attached)
Text from JoBiv: Cool. I'm by the beach.

Silence...

The phone rings. I hate the phone. I answer it because normal people answer phones and one should protect one's image of normalcy for as long as possible when one is meeting new people.

He's at Wonderland. He thought Wonderland and Revere Beach were the same thing. An odd thought, given that there's a T stop called Revere Beach, which... I don't even have to go into this, do I?

He gets on a train, travels one stop. Meanwhile, I look over the water and watch the full moon, wonder why I can never take a decent picture of it, how it never looks as big as it feels in my eye.

The man arrives, suddenly, from around the bandstand. The man looks mostly as pictured, and smiles as he evaluates me in a similar manner with a dissimilar conclusion. The man wants to exchange hugs. The breeze whips up and delivers a scent to my nose which results in a quick handshake and How-do-you-do.

The scent, I decide while in the ice cream shop, enclosed with it and forced to order ice cream as though having an appetite, is that of a hobo who not only urinates on himself, but over time comes to dry out his pants just to soak them a second, third and perhaps a fourth time. I find some distraction in the man's breath, which reminds me of a grease trap I once met at the bottom of the sanitizer at Starbucks. (Let us simply say, things could not possibly emerge sanitized with whatever was living in that trap.) I stop myself from warning the girl at the cash register. I stop myself from paying to curtail the horrible search for crumpled dollar bills from his various pockets and crevices. I stop myself, again, from interfering on behalf of the poor teenager who must handle the money. (I scold myself in silent anguish for weeks afterward, regretting my lack of action.)

I am enthusiastic about ice cream if only to distract myself from the scent of this man. I also think, maybe his slushie will wash out the sewage in his mouth. I think, perhaps this guy has some medical issue that affects his nostrils and he simply doesn't know that he smells. Maybe he did the Smell Test, and having been smacked on the head by an anvil at a tender age, did not register the foulness that emanate from his clothes. How sad. For me.

There was some air of martyrdom about me, I believe, as I sat and made small talk with this sweating, heaving, reeking man. I thought, "he's probably a good guy who doesn't get out much. He's intelligent enough, just socially awkward."

Then he said, "I think this is going really well. How do you think it's going? Do you like me?"

Hint to all mankind, for free from me to you: never ask these questions on a date, unless... nope. NEVER ASK THESE QUESTIONS ON A DATE.

And if you get this answer, "Oh, I kind of take my time to decide these things..." do not attempt to parse out the exact meaning of the response. MOVE ON. Or, wiser still, end the date.

All of the above admitted for evidence, you should know that Stinky Dude was sort of loveable in an orphaned kind of way. If I had met him with a plate of glass between us, I would have entertained his comments a while longer.

Wait, I had done that. The plate of glass was my monitor. Hmm.

So, no more making of excuses, I realized as another powerful waft of peepee made it's way into my lungs. I had to end the date.

JoBiv: Yeeeeeaawwwn. I'm so tired... Time to get myself back to my home.
Stinky Dude: I must be boring you to death.
JoBiv: ...
Stinky Dude: Okay, well let's get ourselves to the train. Do you know how to get there?
JoBiv: You... came from there... didn't you?
Stinky Dude: Yeah, kinda.
JoBiv: Whuh?? Okay, whatever, it's this way.
Stinky Dude: Oh, I guess we're both going Inbound.
JoBiv: (Internally: MOTHEREFFER) We are?
Stinky Dude: Looks like you'll have to put up with me for a little while longer...
JoBiv: (Nervous laughter) Looks like it.

We board the train, which comes a little late just to taunt me, but then again there's more free air movement on the platform and I'm not relishing the idea of being stuck inside a closed space with this man. Once we do board the train, it does, in fact, remind me of working as a camp counselor and having to help a kid who lost his watch in the port-o-potty during the sleepover night. Less of the earthy scent of nature, though, and there was far better lighting on the train. I would have taken the flashlight and the latrine over the subway car, all things considered.

Stinky Dude: (Patting the seat beside him) Why dontcha take a seat?
JoBiv: (Looking for Ashton Kusher and his army of cameramen) Um... I'd rather stand.
Stinky Dude: Naw, you're wearing a leg brace, for christ's sake.
JoBiv: I'm much more stable with the brace on, actually.
Stinky Dude: C'mon, sit next to me.
JoBiv: Not gonna do it.
Stinky Dude: Why not?
JoBiv: Because... I'm stubborn... and don't like being told what to do.

Let it be said that I did not lie to this man, but did I do him a disservice by protecting him from the truth? How do you tell a guy, "You're only marginally attractive, and the aroma of an adult diaper isn't helping your game." A leaky diaper. A leaky diaper that someone else peed in before the current wearer pulled it on. A leaky diaper cured in a brine of... Okay, I'll stop.

The end of this story is swift and neat. I got off the train. I never had the guts to tell the dude he smelled. There were simply too many things to point out besides the smell, I told myself, that listing them would be cruel. Let his close friends (assuming he had some) give him the straight talk. I am not in the business of making over divorcees in leaky diapers, and there's only so far that whole Pygmalion thing will take you, really.

I told a shorter version of this tale, along with snippets of others. There are others, of course, and many of them are nearly as pathetic. I think Stinky Dude takes the effing cake, however. But, after the general murmur and laughter died down, one of the Wellesley girls looked at me thoughtfully.

Blonde R: Oh, it just occurred to me that since you're going on dates, you're not dating Sir Knight anymore...
JoBiv: (On the spot in front of strangers, hooray) Yeah, I gave him a list of the ways he didn't love me and he kinda agreed and that was that.
Blonde R: Oh. I'm sorry JoBiv.
JoBiv: Thanks, Blonde R. I think it's mostly a good thing. And after all, he was kind of a whiny bitch.
Blonde R: I thought maybe he just wasn't comfortable around your friends.
JoBiv: Maybe that too, but really... he was a whiny-ass bitch.
Blonde R: Well good riddance, then? You're better off without him, right?
Spen: You're more JoBivvy without him, that's for sure.
JoBiv: Thanks...?
Spen: It's a compliment.
JoBiv: I had hoped so.

Perhaps I am more JoBivvy this way, on my own and making people laugh at the daily incidents that churn my stomach and bring tears of frustration. It's far more JoBivvy to switch trains and find a corner seat where I can hide and hold myself and try not to cry, missing some life I keep trying to have. It's very JoBivvy to walk the few blocks home... I'm sorry, limp the few blocks home... full of self-pity and bubbling with tears and gazing at a huge moon that I can never capture in a photograph. This is the shading around all things that brings the glint of light into greater focus.

Self-imposed grounding and other meaningless gestures

I could easily force a causality between my mental health and the bedraggled state of my bedroom. There is some truth to that, realistically, but the topic exhausts itself rather quickly.

It should be simple enough to say that my bedroom is a mess, but why not indulge in detail? There are more books and sheet music than there are shelves to store them. I have three different laundry hampers (for three kinds of laundry: bedding, towels and clothes) and they are all full, and I have a collection of boxes full of mail I'm afraid to open alongside wedding gifts and baby gifts and Just-thinking-of-you gifts that I may never send. Filling in the cracks, there are sewing boxes, CD's, an old laptop that holds an archive of writing that may or may not be inaccessible, and somewhere in the morass a broken thumb drive that acted as the back-up for that archive.  As long as we're in the catalog of things I cannot throw away but should, there is also one Pooh Bear, one stuffed monkey, a small, red, generic stuffed monster, a collection of single earrings, various failed hairstyling products, and a very beat up 10 CD boom box that usually functions, but does not read burned discs. It's that old.

If my building were to catch on fire and I were forced to choose what to save, I would probably grab my bras (hey, they're expensive), my wallet, and not much else.

Knowing this, I thought it would be simple to clean my room. I told myself, "you were too busy before, spending all your time with Sir Knight, and couldn't keep up with the normal flow of things." And then it went something like, "You were too heartbroken over Sir Knight to move, so clearly the effort of cleaning was beyond you." And then, "It's beautiful outside. How could you waste this day in your bedroom?" And also, "You keep the shared spaces very clean, so it's okay if you live in a pool of your own cess."

Mostly I look around the room and think, "none of this is important. Or maybe all of it is important. In this state of mind, I should not be allowed to make decisions."

Then the first relief of a fall breeze whipped through the room. I was reminded of the ol' back to school hustle, when I would clean my room after the summer vacation, or unpack my dorm room, or move to yet another apartment. I've been here for at least six years, although I'm honestly fuzzy about the dates. That's six Augusts of not packing, not gleaning, not moving. True, my mother cleaned and rearranged my room when I had back surgery, but that hardly counts.

So this weekend I had enough of my brattiness and grounded myself to my room until I cleaned it, young lady!

I report that any visitor who might happen by my room would at least feel there was a floor to walk on, and that I could access my bed without hurting myself or others. The space is filled with clean laundry and thus the scent has improved. Art stuff has been stowed in the closet shelves and there are whole square inches of uncluttered territory on the top of my dresser.

I'm a little bit pleased. Another part of me wants to haul everything out and burn it, leave nothing but a mattress and a lamp and a suitcase of clothes. What is the point of things? Why have fancy dresses and high heels and make-up? For what party? Why save books I enjoyed but will never read again? Why keep books I will never read in the first place? Why have three black sweaters of varying shape and warmth? Why have winter socks? Why save the photo album of friends who are either dead or estranged? Why have nail polish? Why can I not throw away old calendars, paychecks, christmas cards, birthday gifts that never suited me? Why why why surround myself in battlements of mediocrity and past lives. Why force myself to feel heartbreak over and over as I come across another letter, a snip of ribbon, a half-empty journal, a mix tape, a broken watch...

Forget it. Put in some Sam Cooke and fold laundry and don't you dare think. Don't think.

At least ten years and many moons ago...

We were coming in from Waltham, which I tried to pronounce with savvy and Britishness as “Wallthum” and was immediately corrected. There is a Ham in Waltham.*

Why was I in Walth Ham?  My best friend from Victor Senior High School was getting her business degree (and hangin’ with pote smockers and joining a performing arts frat) at Bentley College. They had a bus that ran into Harvard Square so the young’ns could get a taste of city life. We were on that bus and I was feeling intrepid.

Now, to be told you’re going to a big city and to be left on a curb outside an Applebee's would be disorienting to most explorers. Luckily, my anticipation was not at all dampened since I come from a town small and safe enough that I never had to learn how to use a house key until I moved to college. Did you even know there’s a learning curve for turning a house key? I was on the embarrassing end of it. I hope this helps you imagine the utter culture shock of spending time in places that had a dense enough population to necessitate mass transportation. In my narrow world, only really seedy people or kids going to community college who refused to live with their parents rented apartments. It may be true, and I hope it isn't, that you can own a trailer park in Victor for the price of renting a studio in Cambridge, Mass. Renting was horribly shameful in my town, as far as I knew. It wasn't done. Likewise, every family I knew had 1:1 car to licensed-driver ratio. Sometimes the youngest licensed driver got the '84 Hatchback from Hell, of course, because who could trust a 16 year old with a sweet ride like a '97 Ford Taurus?

Remember the High School parking lot? All that unbridled horsepower...

Back to the big, bad city... Having vaulted ourselves off the Bentley Bus and into Harvard Square, I felt I had reached out with shaky hands to part the fronds which would reveal the very heart of the urban jungle. And what did I see?

Well.. a copy shop called Copy Cop. (No, I have no self-restraint and I will not apologize.)

Also, trees, red brick sidewalks, windy streets that seemed to start and end and turn into one-ways as they pleased, steeples, gables, trolley lines, hotels, falafel stands, cafes, and people, lovely  self-involved people everywhere. I took a deep breath and said to myself (and perhaps others), “Ah, it even smells like Harvard,” which, I suppose, means Harvard smells like a Greek restaurant, an oily subway air vent, autumn leaves and cigarette butts, and if you’re really lucky, a whiff of that homeless dude who has peed himself so often in each one of the four pairs of pants he now wears simultaneously that you need not have him in your sight to know he is standing in an intersection four blocks upwind of you. Well, that’s how it smelled in the fall of 1999, anyway.

And newsprint. I almost forgot how the newspapers fluttered around corners as the buses whipped past, how they accumulated in sticky sheaves between the slats of park benches, how they skated over the cobbled sidewalks like untidy ghosts with pressing agendas.

All of this is to say that these sense memories comprise the core of what I believe fall should be in New England, even now. Even as I’ve seen the bookstores close, the cafes give way to froyo bars, the face of each passerby private and closed with mundane intentions, now staring into his or her own tiny computer, plugged in and shut out.

This is my tenth anniversary of my move to Massachusetts. For the first time I cannot answer automatically when people ask whether I’ll ever move back home to Victor. It has been so easy to say, “HELL no, NEVER (and don’t tell my mom I said that, she’ll cry.)" But these days I can't remember why I came, besides this nagging thought that I was running from something that seemed gargantuan and has shrunk considerably over the not-unfriendly damage of passing years.

Why be here? Because my entire adult life has been invested here, yes. Because I love the ability to jump on a train to get to the ocean. Because all** of my books are here and it would be a bitch to move them. Because... although my original dreams and resolutions of becoming Something Important never quite blossomed into reality, something else has stuck with me. I made a major and brave decision to be myself outside of the tiny fishbowl that raised me, knowing I could drown in the crowds and never be missed. I live here, and the dude at the Post Office knows I send presents to my nieces and nephew for their birthdays. My neighbor with the motorized wheelchair and aging terrier nods to me when I say hello. The T driver says "Have a good day," after I say, "thank you." I have fallen in love here, been trampled and forgiven and slandered and resurrected here. I have broken here, and grown up around the pieces. Why be here?


*This is potentially silly if you happen to know that Brandeis University is also situated in Waltham and you know that Brandeis is primarily populated by Jewish students and faculty and offers Glatt Kosher items in its main dining room. That is to say, there’s at least one place where ham is made to feel unwelcome.

**Okay, most

The cheese stands alone. Again.

Still? Here's what getting dumped means:

I know I didn't invent loneliness, but this feels quite private and permanent.

How am I different from that girl who first came to Boston to expand herself and stuff lovely things into her brain? Well, no one could have guessed... that's not true, my mother guessed and guessed correctly... that I'd succumb over and over again to sadness. I am, at my very core, diseased with a sadness. My bones are steeped in it and they ache with the extra weight, they hide with the shame of the tint of it.

So I leave this room... I see people... I try to keep my ears open. I try to keep my eyes open. I try to notice birds and leaves and all the tiny living things that want to be on this planet that spins so fiercely without us feeling it.

It was only a matter of time before he figured it out, how doggedly I haunt myself with my own ghosts. How at first it seems like I come from a different planet, I'm a brain you've never encountered and full of strange and quirky beauties, and then eventually he sees that each of my gestures are limited by a kind of lack of vocabulary. I repeat and repeat and fold in and knead and good lord it all ends again.

I imagine how light he must feel, although I know there's sorrow, too. I think of it as the feeling of finally allowing yourself to throw away that broken pot that someone gave you. You should keep it; it was a gift. But you never really loved it especially. The guilt of having to explain why it couldn't sit in its usual spot anymore... it seemed like nothing could reverse that... until one day, you simply decide, and the pot is a pile of shards in the dumpster. Relief, to not have to look at it and feel guilty for hating it. Not even hating! To feel guilty for having no feelings for it, and yet not being able to give it up.  And now, to not think of it again, to even think, "I should have done that a long time ago."

Joie de Jo?

English Jo is having a baby, a little nerdy baby with surely extraordinary musical abilities and terrible eyesight and a penchant for Americanisms with a London accent. This is such a good thing.

And yet with other friends of mine, the moment they become parents I tend to clam up and disappear. We all know I like kiddos; in fact, I usually prefer them to the bitter, non-curious, shut-off adults I run into much more frequently. I like watching a baby see things and hear things and touch things for the first time, because I want to remember that the world is always new to someone and there are good things in it.

When L. Bloom was new

But, there's also a part of me that feels I will never be a mother, never create a stable little nuclear family with a steady life mate and a mortgage and milk money on the table. I will sustain myself, not out of self-preservation so much as a keen sense of how much I would hurt others if I let myself fade. I will not be so irresponsible as to let someone love me, or create life with that person, or raise a child in such close vicinity to this omnipresent aura of poison that either follows me or is me. And so watching my friends creating their families, my brothers even, feels a little like a sick voyeurism and only makes me long for something I must not allow myself to have.

Turns out, however, that I still haven't learned one of the simplest and most repetitive lessons in life; I cannot control the feelings and thoughts of others. Influence, yes. Control... not even a little. Hell, most of my battles stem from my need and failures to control myself!

So a man grows attached to me. He doesn't know the depths of the shitstorm I carry around in my head, but he also doesn't mind that I'm dealing with one. He laughs with me and at me and worries when I have some small thing he can carry. He talks about "what we'll do for the holidays" in July... "When we move in together..." Not if. When. "We will have to figure that out," he says, like a man buying a slanting, leaky house with every penny he has in the world, simply determined to make it shine. And he has me thinking...

fragile stuff

Faded Roses, Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Elizabeth was the kind of girl who would silently hold a grudge for a good long while if you, say, didn't say "please," when asking her to pass the potatoes. It wouldn't be the kind of grudge that turns into a vendetta, just a strong demerit in her overall tally of your trustworthiness and respectability. So, yes, she would take it personally if you forgot her birthday. She would find a way to mention it in passing to send a shock of shame through you on the sly.

I've been trained, therefore, to start feeling guilty right around the beginning of September. I start thinking of sending her a card or a little gift - maybe a cookbook - and then I think of how she doesn't accumulate crap, really. She has maybe a dozen shirts and washes and wears them carefully. She purges her kitchen, her library and her office regularly, gleaning only the necessary pieces. Every space she rules is elegantly composed and purposeful. How do you give a gift to a woman who has chosen every small detail of her life?

Well, almost. She did not choose to get pregnant while she was here in Boston and had several credits to finish up on her Master's degree. She didn't exactly choose to move in with her in-laws in Santa Barbara. She didn't choose to have her sweet cat served up as lunch to the local coyote. She most definitely did not choose cervical cancer.

I suppose that by now we know that I have the fairly human need to distance myself from things that hurt. I practically shunned my friends from St. Bonaventure after Shane died. I can't bear to speak about my mother's mother, or even go into the part of my parents' basement where I cried myself nauseous after returning from the ER. And here I am again, in full ability to communicate with people I respect and love, who supported me in my intellectual growth and personal flounderings, but I do not want to talk about jLiz. I won't forget her; no, I will curl myself around my guilt for every birthday I missed, for the times I didn't call, for not knowing how bad it all was. I'll cultivate and feed that guilt and make very sure it continues to sink its teeth deeper into my flesh.

I asked the Current Man in My Life if he noticed that I know a lot of dead people. Then I immediately said, "well of course you have. I keep inviting them over." How can I know what I'm doing and not stop it?

A few weeks ago, Labor Day actually, I snuck home on an overpriced flight to see family. Remember when this was a terrible idea for my sanity? Well, clearly, I'm old. And things have changed. Possibly it's this sense of entropy... that if I don't take every moment I can to see my nieces and nephew and brothers and parents, they will wither away and fade from me. The human body, it appears, is made of nothing terribly permanent. We are composed of fragile stuff.

And so I got on that flight on a whim, asking my roommate to throw a few things in my backpack and meet me at work so I could make the trip. My Uncle Maui was home on what he called his "Aloha Means Goodbye Tour." My grandmother Biv is 93 years old and pretty much takes it personally that we allowed her to get so old and worn out. She doesn't want to make it to 94. Uncle Maui spent days with her, just letting her bitch and watching her nod off while reading, sitting by her while she slept. He got infuriated and bored and fell in love with her - all the truest familial feelings a person can have. And he said goodbye.

I didn't see her at all because his time with her seemed too precious. I didn't want to interfere with this capsuled moment that I wish I'd had with Shane or Elizabeth or... well let's not list. But on the flight back I found myself thinking of her hands, my mother rubbing lotion into the soft, lax skin. She likes rose scents and rosy hues, and the backs of her hands are so much like rose petals after they droop on the stem. Soft, too soft, and fragile. The coils of your fingerprint seem to bite into that thin and tender petal and it wants to rip or fall.

I am so painfully aware of the ephemeral. I am aching for the strong people who, ultimately, fade and rip and fall limp in scattered petals.

Clearly, shoving this awareness into a tiny Box of Awful To Hide Away... well, it's not working. Not only that, it's created a sort of mottled lens through which I obliquely see the world, one that I know is beautiful and captivating but have not felt I could bear to see at full strength. I'm vowing, again, to be alive, in full knowledge of the complicated contract we sign when we decide to be hurt, overjoyed, ignored and thrilled and disappointed. I'm vowing to allow all things, again; to be a cog in the machine in faith that it will produce incredible joy alongside the suffering.

I will try, anyway, and I will tell you about it. Maybe you will hear me.

Groundhog Day - do not repeat

5:38 am: Nightmare about my parents’ toilet being set across from the front door of the house without walls or doors. I’m stuck there in the middle of being very sick and the doorbell is ringing. Alarm wakes me and I run to the bathroom.

6:20 am: Showered, teeth brushed, puffy eye noted, hot compress deliberated. I decide I don’t have time. We just got a buttload of snow and I already know my commute will be slow. Throw on undies, bra, dress, take ibuprofen, sit on my bed to put on tights. Everything hurts. I get the bad foot in one leg of the tights and the pain is exhausting. I lay back in my bed and set the alarm for eight minutes, thinking maybe the drugs will have started working. Note that my stomach is iffy and blame it on the meds. Ignore everything, close my eyes…

6:30 am: C’mon, Jo, keep moving keep moving keep moving… Mrs. Not My Boss has been watching every little move, every minute I’m late, every put-off phone call. Get up and go, dammit. Tights are on… knee-high socks over them. Holy hell the pain… Eight more minutes.

10:20 am: Panic.

10:30 am: No longer snowing, not really raining… My coat isn’t quite waterproof and through the foot and a half of snow there are about two inches of slush against the sidewalk. I didn’t bring a purse, knowing it would throw my balance off. I can’t go down St. Paul Street because I know I’ll slip down the hill. Catching myself from slipping every three feet. My back hates me.

10:40 am: Call my manager from the T stop, tell her voicemail I’m on my way. Don’t have any story to tell, other than my body continually telling me I shouldn’t be awake today, which doesn’t seem valid.

11:10 am: Train finally arrives. My phone has been in my pocket but it’s wet when I take it out to tap my T pass. Ugh.

The train is blissfully empty. I sit across from a dad in a kind of Indiana Jones-esque hat and a curly-haired blond kid, about seven, in full snow gear. The father has just said, “record store.”

Kid: What’s that?

Dad: What’s what?

Kid: A record store?

Dad: It’s a place to buy records.

Kid: Yeah, but what’s a record?

Dad: It’s like CD’s, but before CD’s. For decades it was records.

Kid: Are there CD stores?

Dad: Umm.. I guess not really. I mean, a few.

Kid: Why are there CD stores?

Dad: For people who still have stereos, I guess.

Kid: Oh.

Dad: I’ll show you a music store, okay? There’s one in Cambridge.

Kid: Okay.

11:20 am: Arrive at Park Street station. The acrid scent of oily smoke rises from the Red Line stairways. Several stairways are blocked off by big yellow expandable gates. I head down the stairs to yet more smoke, crowds of bewildered passengers, and an Ashmont train that’s been stopped several yards back from its usual position. In front of it, a blazing light and the source of the smoke: the third rail is somehow exposed in three blindingly bright places, flickering and sparking against the water continually dripping from the masses of snow above.

Three men in T uniform stand with hands on their hips and clearly have no idea how to handle the situation. One man, the brightest, I believe, turns around to tell passengers that this train won’t open its doors here, and he doubts they’ll let the Alewife train stop either. Find alternative routes.

I head up the stairs and call my co-worker, tell her the train is en fuego and I’ll slide down the hill from Government Center, knowing… God, knowing how much that’ll hurt and how likely I am to fall and kill myself.

11:44 am: I arrive at work, near tears, stomach wobbling, sharp pains shooting through my back and leg. My feet are soaked as the waterproof function of my boots has apparently given up. My co-worker is on the phone but gives me a thumbs-up to acknowledge my arrival. I sit and contemplate coffee. Stomach won’t allow it. Headache seems to be begging for it. Should eat something… get up to grab saltines and ginger ale from the stash we keep for chemo patients. I’m likely going to hell.

12:00 pm: Answer several emails, get responses letting me know that all has been sorted before I got to work today. I’m on the edge of tears and put on the internet radio just in time to cover a slight sob.

12:04 pm: Mrs. Not My Boss takes a look in our cubicle and says, “Anyone in here in the mood for Viva Burrito? They’re delivering…” She takes one look at my face and has her answer, strides down the corridor to more likely punters.

12:30 pm: Still haven’t spotted my boss to tell her I’m at work. Trying to get my brain to function against rising nausea. Co-worker also not healthy, and she hasn’t been for at least a week. I fear I’ll have to withstand nausea as long as she has and wonder at her fortitude. In the meantime I open up my timesheet to make sure I record that I got here at 11 effing forty. Don’t allow myself to check my paycheck to see how much Earned Time I have because I know it’s depressing.

At some point I get up from my chair and return to notice that the edge of the seat is soaked. Looking at my dress there is an equator of soaking material, about a foot and a half of skirt that ought to be wrung out. Yet another opinionated co-worker says I should find an air dryer. We don’t have them on our floor and we all contemplate that absurdity.

1:13 pm: Mexican food arrives. I take two tums, one green and one pink, hoping it will settle my stomach but truly doubting it. Answer some phone calls and make a few more, covering my nose to keep the scent of seasoned beef at bay.

1:15 pm: Run out of the clinic past desks with open dishes on them on all sides, hand over my mouth and nose. I use the outside bathroom, hoping for something vile to come out of me the usual way and praying not to puke. Spend an extra minute washing at the sink, letting the scent of the soap fill my nostrils. I come out and sit in the hallway, looking out the glass wall at Beacon Hill and the continual snow and sleet. I breathe deeply. A man with a hospital pass sits next to me. Really, dude? This hallway is empty and you sit here? Well, at least he doesn’t smell like refried beans.

I think I’ve gotten control over my stomach. I head back in. Head to my desk. Co-worker is trudging along with OR calls and doctors invading our space. I mention something about Mexican food sucking ass when you’re nauseous, and then suddenly I’m running for the bathroom.

Pink and green spots. The ginger ale isn’t as vile coming up as I thought it might be. Maybe it’s the Tums. I’m crying and puking, yet detached somewhere, thinking these things.

1:26 pm: Shaking and crying and trying to get a grip, chills rolling through my body… Co-worker has quietly ordered me to go home, bless her. I write an email.

To: Manager

From: Jo

Subject: Puked. Going home

1:28 pm: Mrs. Not My Boss strolls by.

Mrs. NMB: Oh no, Jo, are you not feeling well?

Jo: (still can’t stop crying) I’m sick.

Mrs. NMB: You should go home.

Jo: I’m trying.

Mrs. NMB: You really shouldn’t be here if you’re sick.

Jo: (closing computer programs and putting away patient files) I don’t know how I’m getting home… (thinking of hellish train ride, envisioning puking on the exposed third rail. Then envisioning cabbie on the horrendous roads, sliding into a triple-car pile up.

Mrs. NMB: Just take a cab, why don’t you?

Jo: (bites tongue, wanting to say, “I’d love to, but since I won’t get paid for today I have to watch my wallet a bit, don’t I?” Still gulping back tears, because puking makes me think of my grandmother who died after I watched her puke for eight hours straight.)

I’m so embarrassed… I don’t want to be crying.

Mrs. NMB: Just go. Take a cab. Go down to the cab stand.

She wanders away. I zip up and head out.

Co-worker: (sees me through the glass and looks alarmed) Your purse??

Jo: (shaking head.)

Co-worker: Oh yeah, you fall over.

Jo: (Nodding head.)

Co-worker: Go!

1:35 pm: The cabs are hidden behind an eight-foot mound of plowed snow. There’s no access except to walk into the middle of the busiest intersection of the hospital straight at traffic. I slip. I catch myself. A little self-pitying sob escapes me as a lance of pain shoots through my back. The cab at the front of the queue is a small SUV type with snow tires, at least. Clean, no smoky smells. Bless this cab. After what feels like hours he drops me across from my apartment at a driveway that’s been cleared so I don’t have to step through five feet of snow. The meter reads $12 something. I give him a twenty and thank him for driving on the shittiest day Boston ever made.

1:58 pm: Changed into pj’s, tell roommate I’m sick and quarantining myself, gingerly put myself to bed. I want my mommy and Pirates of Penzance. She always made us watch it when we were sick in case we were faking. She thought it was punishment but we all secretly loved it. I’m falling asleep while trying to remember things you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. Jell-o? Fluids? Should I check for fever? Pull the trash can closer to the bedside and pray I don’t need it…

10:40 pm: Awoken by roommate making toast. Analyze stomach ickiness to be low, but definitely not hungry. Get up, pee, take pain pills for back, face down on the pillow and I’m out.

If you write...

...eventually you tend to go back and read yourself. And perhaps you realize how small and claustrophobic your skull has become. And perhaps you want out.

So you don't write for a while.

Then words come and come, racing and leapfrogging to the front of things until they insist to be set in type. It no longer matters if writing is worthwhile, if you have an audience, if you're improving a craft or spilling your ugly guts. Writing is better, you hope, than trapping the words in the ever-shrinking real estate of your brain. Anything, when trapped, displays its most primal side. Something trapped will hide in a shell or lash out, hopelessly but nevertheless driven by animal instinct to flail against its cage.

Don't mind my flailing words. Once I start letting them out in the light here and there they will settle down. Their wings will flutter then fold, and they will know they have all the time in the world to pass on their tiny messages.

and also red.

I was up in my parents' room, Baby Bean in her christmas outfit finally, after days of wearing nothing but her pajamas. She's six now, getting longer but still so small next to kids her age. Her face has changed shape, gone from cute to astonishingly pretty.

I brushed her hair back from her face as she sat primly on my mother's vanity stool. She was busy messing with the three mirrors my mother keeps there now that she has trifocals.

"Whoa, I'm upside down," she said, leaning into the first and going silly on me.

"Get up closer until you're right side up," I said. She approached the mirror slowly, expecting a trick of some kind.

"There!" she said, her nose nearly touching the surface.

"Why does Gramma have three mirrors?" she asked.

"Because each one shows her a different distance. She sees in three distances."

She sat up again and told me she wanted her hair way up, "like this," she said, with a fist on the top of her head, "like a rock star."

I brushed and brushed her soft hair. It's brown with a red tint to it and lighter streaks. It would be impossible to replicate that color in a salon. As I brushed she moved her head a bit, leaning into the caress of the brush like a cat. I caught her eye in the mirror.

"Actually, I think," she said, "that with his outfit, maybe not the rock star hair."

"What do you want, peanut?"

"Umm... I dunno."

"Braids?"

"Yeah, braids is good!"

"Okay, but you have to sit still for a while."

She sat up straight again and put her hands in her lap. I chattered to her about christmas, her brother, grandma's amazing tri-focal eyes. At some point I noticed she was staring at me again. I thought suddenly of this role reversal, the many times I sat here while my mother wrestled with my tangles and attempted french braids, later on when she helped me blow it dry and straighten it. I used to watch her face, the furrow in her forehead and the hairpins in her lips. She would talk around them as I asked her questions, a ponytail holder tight around her strong wrist.

"Aunt Jo, why is your hair brown and also red?" asked the Bean.

I smiled at her in the mirror as I completed the first braid. "Because I am cheap and also lazy," I said. This joke was not funny to her, so I gave her the real answer.

"Because I went to the salon and had it colored, like your mommy does." She nodded. "But it's been a while since I had it dyed. Now you can see my real color." She squinched up her nose. "Can you tell which one is my real color?" I asked.

"Ummmmmmm... the brown!" she said, hopping a little in her seat.

"Smart girl."

There was another answer I could have given her. I could have told her I don't see the point in spending money on myself these days. I could tell her I barely notice what I look like from day to day, only keeping to my strict patterns and rules about cleanliness and order. How do you ever tell a six year old girl that her Aunt Jo is so depressed that she can't imagine investing even that little bit in herself? It was insufferable to tell this child, the one my mother calls Jo accidentally, the one sitting just where I sat so many years ago, that I have curdled somehow and I don't know how to fix it, that I'm usually in the middle of a gesture to give up entirely.

I finished the second braid and wrapped a tiny clear ponytail holder around it.

"Okay, shake to see if it stays," I said. She shook her head fiercely from side to side, laughing. "Good. All done. Go show Grandma."

She skipped, actually skipped out of the room. I sat in front of the mirror and pulled my hair until my fingers hurt and the fierce need to cry melted away.

Death in the children's store

The bells on the door jingle. I look up to see Mr. H (for Harmless) and his new pal. Both 60-ish, a little scruffy, and markedly slow. Mr. New (his buddy) wears a cap that’s been washed a few times and won’t ever look nice again. His baseline expression is one of slight amusement, near-smiling. They both slouch. Mr. H has big lips that chew up his words as he gets them out. He looks at me only from the periphery, but he always comes in. I wonder what he’ll take out with him today. It’s usually a free brochure on businesses in Cambridge. Sometimes it’s a flyer for a babysitter or cloth diaper service.

Mr. H: Hellah-o. You’ve seen us before, right?

Jo: Yes I have.
Mr. H: Because we come in here sometimes.
Jo: Every weekend.

Mr. New: Everyone has to pass away eventually
Jo: busies herself looking in cabinets.
Mr. H: We come in here. Me and my buddy here. What’s your name again?

Jo: It’s Jo.
Mr. H: Jooaa… Jo?
Jo: Yes. Jo.
Mr. New: Do we all have to pass away? Why should we all have to pass away?

Mr. H: Yoomans do pass away. We have to.
Mr. New: looking to me, although seemingly addressing Mr. H
I don’t see why we should have to.
Mr. H: plucking a business card, because he only takes things that are free.
The animals, they don’t live as long as yoomans.
Mr. New: We should live forever.
Jo: as though there’s something essential inside cabinets that must be found. looking busier...
Mr. H: If you think of a dog they only get to be about twenty before they die.

Jo: eyebrow spike...
Mr. H: Or a small dog they only make it to about twelve.
Jo: Yep.
Mr. New: But why should anything die?
Mr. H: rocking from foot to foot.What do you think about little people? I bet little people pass away earlier. I bet they don’t last as long as we do.
Jo: shrug.
Mr. H: I’m 58. That’s me, I’m 58 years old now. This year.
Mr. New: How is it we’re going to pass away?
Jo: I don’t have an answer.
Mr. New: It seems like we should have been made better to not pass away. Why do you think it is we pass away?
Jo: Um… well, we’re made out of stuff that rots.
Mr. H: Because if you think of it little people are like little dogs. They probably don’t last as long.
Mr. New: I think maybe we won’t pass away.
Mr. H: heading for the doorWe will though.
Mr. New: following
I’m not so sure about that.

The door jingles as they exit, still jabbering, talking to themselves as though they were never speaking to me. Out into the world.

Ahh, memories.

I found myself saying this today and I'm still chortling:

"I thought we were dating, but it turns out he was merely French."

I guess this is proof that those "you'll look back on this and laugh" moments truly exist...

the boulevard of broken strings

There are few events that can come up that will make me cancel plans with other people I like, but Jake Armerding playing at Club Passim is one of those events.

Apologies, person with whom I canceled plans, but the show was flippin' amazing!

I forget, over and over again, how much I love live music, only to be smacked in the face with the power of it when I'm in its presence again. Watching these men expertly, lovingly drawing music out of mandolins, saxophones, guitars, guitar cases! There's an alchemy there that I miss and feel throbbing like a phantom limb. I used to be capable of that.

More than that I miss Arahsae, who introduced me to Jake Armerding. I miss listening to my brother play his guitar/bass/whatever through the bedroom wall, even being annoyed with him for it. I miss the feeling of slipping my voice between the notes of guitar, trumpet, keyboard in that basement jazz club in Galway.

Last night Cap'n Armerding broke a string during the first song, which he solved prettily enough by switching for his mandolin. Then he asked the crowd if anyone could change a guitar string. I wanted to raise my little hand, but honestly, I'm clumsy. There was a moment when I would have done anything to hold the guitar, warm from the performers hands, be somehow a part of the machine of that music.

I hope the neighbors didn't mind me belting in the shower this morning.

Seventh grade. I carried six notebooks most days for each subject, six binders, the occasional steno pad and calculator, all in a tired backpack populated by whole villages of broken pock-marked pencils and non-functional pens. The school year waxed and waned and my notebooks became predictably tattooed with notes, doodles, stains and other batterings.

I carried one folder. Inside this folder I kept the loose leaf collection of the awkward stories I wrote and let no one see. They were halting, haunting and very likely unfleshed. At the time I thought writing could only be an organic process – an unplanned and unsupervised ride powered by some punch-drunk muse.

The stories were universally dark… about suicide pacts, deadly car accidents, people wasting away with horrible diseases. If I had known what Goth or Emo meant, I might have found a niche. Perhaps not… I was horrified by the nightmare highway my muse continually chose. I was afraid and fascinated by my own propensity for darkness. It was manageable, however, because no one else knew.

It was eighth grade. That was the year terrible things began to happen. A classmate, already socially shunned and ridiculed, found out that his mother died during the school day. He disintegrated before our eyes into a mass of howls. That same year another classmate’s obese sister was found dead. There were rumors; she’d overdosed on diet pills, she’d had a heart attack, she’d choked on a sandwich, her brother killed her with emotional abuse. I felt I knew the truth then. These horrible things happened because I wrote them.

I remember so well the feeling that the events around me were like a camera’s iris, closing into tighter focus. I was choking inside that aperture like it was a 360 degree guillotine. Now I see that my brain was ready for all of it. I was an open soul, begging to be trod on and tried. I didn’t create the events; they blazed inward, highlighting pre-existing sensitivities. It was as though I had an acute sunburn in the winter time and was utterly surprised when dishwater scalded me.

I think of this today because my vocabulary of this life has expanded once more and opened me to new sensitivities. Where before I thought of cancer as a general, unfathomable disease, I can now hear the word cancer across a crowded subway train and it sets my brain reeling. I think of the women who call me at work begging for an earlier surgery. I think of the wheelchair-bound patients in the elevator with their wigs askew and their fragile, bare ankles. I think of how a nurse talked of one of her patients, how he already smelled like death.

So at my brother’s wedding my ears twitched open to the family friend, the woman we call “Aunt” and whose husband we call “Uncle.” Her cancer, I hadn’t known, was one I deal with daily. She asked me if I could pull strings to have her seen at Mass General. I told her, honestly, that I’m new there, and I have no idea. I didn’t want to discuss it further. I hated the immediacy of knowing the possibilities.

And now, a month later, another family friend was claimed by cancer. I saw the New York area code on my work phone but it didn’t click until halfway through my, “This is Jo, how can I help you.” My dad told me to call my mother tonight. Our old neighbor died after a long and strenuous fight. I asked about the kind of cancer, how long it’s been going on (and no one told me). She had a gynecologic cancer, the kind I deal with. She had metastases in her lungs.

Is it possible I was so self-involved before that I never noticed that the women I love on this earth are dying? Is there some energy in the world that draws these coincidences together? I want to believe that it has to do with this sensitivity, like the honing of a musical skill. I can hear the pitch and color of the word cancer in its full spectrum now. It existed before I could hear it and won’t stop its cacophonous echo now that I can.

the incredible shrinking jobiv

I truly am disappearing. There's a positive aspect, at last: I'm losing weight.

I can't figure out how I'm doing it, either. At first it was pure poverty, and maybe the stress of running between four different jobs, never quite remembering my stomach needed feeding. There were several nights when I'd get home at 10 and realize that it was far too late for dinner.

And now, I think, it has something to do with financial security. I can't completely connect the dots, but perhaps it's that I grab and gulp less. I used to devour food whenever I could get my hands on it because it seemed like a precious commodity - one I couldn't afford most days. Now I'm at leisure to choose what I consume. Very new.

On the dark side of all this is my increasing need to become invisible. I am full to bursting with a distressing dichotomy: I'm ever so happy in my work life and find the rest of the world outside of it deeply embarrassing and troubling. More and more I find myself sending brainwave imperatives to those around me: "Don't look at me. Don't look too closely. I'm not here. Don't notice me."

This is apropos of the need for new clothes, by the way... I've been shopping because my clothes look funny on me - too big - but find myself shying away from colors I used to love. My wardrobe is a limited and muted spectrum of gray, beige, black and brown.

I am a cloud passing through. Don't notice me. I am a mud puddle. Avoid me. I am blending with the pavement, shiftitng my chameleonic skin to the steel of subway stations. I'm invisible.

Why, though... I push my thoughts out to grab at answers and they come back empty handed.

in which our heroine hates doctors but takes a job in a hospital

Working among health professionals strikes me as perilous for a person as unhealthy as I am. I knew this, going in. I knew I'd be walking directly into the lion's den every morning and sitting among them, reeking of delicious eland or ibex or whatever lions particularly love to eat.

It's difficult to guard my health issues, most of which I keep extremely private because I usually think my body came along for the ride with my soul just to embarrass me. At a hospital, however, there is no thing they have not seen before. Practically.

One of my least favorite nurses, with whom I do not work directly, thank god, loudly pointed out my limp one day. "Do you have foot drop?" she exclaimed, like she'd discovered proof of my deep dark past and was displaying it to the jury. Yes, I told her... yes I do. I limp. I had a back thing. It's much better now. MOST people don't notice, or at least never mention it.

The woman who sits in my glass cage with me has noticed many a symptom by now. At first I was good at controlling my little issues, but soon enough the hair began to fall. I don't even notice when I'm pulling at it. She's never said anything, but she watches out of the corner of her eye with a creased forehead. I do it when I'm speaking to someone on the phone, begging for OR time, or convincing a woman with cancer that she can wait six weeks for surgery because the doctor said it's okay.

And of course the panic attacks haven't truly abated. The more I try to suppress them, the more likely they are to spread and fester. So I try to use every coping strategy I've ever learned. I try to pull from my secret stores of strength. There was one morning, though, when I couldn't control it and I hadn't even left for work yet. There was no mistaking that I'd been crying and distressed since the wee hours of the morning. I called my doctor's office for some other little thing, got an appointment, called in to work to say I had to see the doctor and would be in later... told people some vague thing about allergies - not a lie, but imprecise.

These disguises are so thin among women who work with distressed women. They notice everything, down to the nurse who points as she walks past and says, "squinting!" to remind me to visit the optometrist. In my more paranoid moments I'm sure she'll walk by, pointing and shouting out my darkest secrets, like the old crone in The Princess Bride who boos Princess Buttercup in her nightmare. "Bow down to the queen of putrescence," etc. I don't even know what this nurse could notice that could be so bad and why I think I'm not obvious as it is. Is it so horrible if people know I'm anxious or tend towards depression?

It is if it's incapacitating. If it interferes with my job... if I'm not able to help people get the care they need because my personal resources are so depleted...

In the immortal words of D. Bowie, "Turn and face the strain."

Wednesday morning and I woke up in an immaculately clean room. I stretched for an hour, got up and assessed the milk situation (completely out), made a cup of jasmine green tea and a serving of corn mush. Everything is different from the last time I was out of milk; that’s what I thought to myself. Just a few months ago I was getting creative with all I could afford – cheap, chewy bread, eggs, and heads of lettuce. I made myself eat the greenest parts. I hate the really green parts. They offer no resistance for the teeth, but that’s where the vitamins hide.

A few months ago I would check my bank account daily to make sure no weird little fees were going to incapacitate my rent check. A few months ago I would wake up before God for my daily corporate coffee catechism: “Good morning, how are you today? Would you like room for milk? Soy milk is on the counter now. Have a nice day!”

Here it is, June of 2009. My brother Cripps got laid off and just lost his work-from-home job, too. My dad is always reading on the back deck when I call him, “Waiting for a business call.” My friends are scrambling to keep jobs they hate. And I got hired at the hospital.

This feeling is something like survivor’s guilt, I think. I’m thrilled, on one hand, to have lucked out so completely; I temped in two places, loved the second one and they loved me back. It was a mutual fit with some time to luxuriate and research if it made sense for me. I’m still adjusting, of course. I went from working 6 hour shifts at a coffee shop, running to old lady sitting, running to the kids’ clothing store… Now I have one job to dress for. One place to establish friendships. One set of people to surprise or disappoint. I can faithfully say I’ve never had just one thing on my plate until now. It’s jarring and strange, but I tell myself it’s a good thing.

Here’s the extraordinary part: I write the rent check without looking now. I can do it with one hand tied behind my back. I’d have to hold down the checkbook with my nose, but still…

All of this puts me in a better position for the week to come. I’m still scared shitless, but, y’know, when people ask what I do I have an answer that doesn’t make me cringe.

My brother Smacks gets married this weekend. I’m headed home.

I actually took off Monday and Tuesday (and clearly Wednesday) to prepare myself. I couldn’t explain it to anyone at work so I told them I had to catch up with doctors’ appointments. The truth is I need this time to breathe and be sure of myself. I cleaned the crap out of my room, I went through old journals, I fed myself kindly… I want to think of Boston while I’m there and remember how well I’ve done. I won’t be able to say it much so I have to know it.

The truth is that these are still lonely, scary days. I know the day will come when I’ll have a panic attack at the hospital and they’ll have to know a few things I don’t want to share. And I still have to face the part of me that was so sure I’d grow up to be something different – someone completely in my own skin, creative and growing and bursting with extra love to give out freely.

I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. I can almost see that person behind my reflection, kinda waving me forward, encouraging my steps.

speak

The small birds are chattering in rained-on outrage. I wish I could say what kind they are, but they’re puny and hide in bushes. I only hear their tiny voices, raised together to form a brave cacophony.

I only have one voice, and it’s surely puny right now.

My panic attacks are leading to another job ending abruptly. This will be the third time. It’s very hard to speak up for oneself when one's throat is collapsing.

The path near the intersection of St. Paul and Beacon is a narrow one, hedges on one side bullying pedestrians toward the curb. The concrete slabs of sidewalk pitch and lean whichever way. Huge roots push them around in the summer time and ice splits them in the winter. It's not unsafe to walk there; merely difficult. Being a bit tilted, I feel like a wide, ponderous load for those who exit the trolley at that same stop. Most of the crowd heads the same way - up that narrow path.

I've made an art of unreadiness and it seems to help. I hold my book until the last minute, bury my gloves in the bottom of my bag and leave my coat unbuttoned. I stand there under the shelter for a moment, fixing and digging and putting-away. These little natural movements make me appear merely disorganized, I hope, although they are carefully choreographed. To a girl with a limp, a pair of gloves are a saving grace. A finicky bag is a godsend. Every button on a coat makes the walk more endurable. People rush past and I let them, along with the terror of becoming a hindrance to humanity in general. Pass me by pass me by... please oh please pass me by.