Category — critters

It came to me in the night, I guess.  When I opened my eyes, it was there- that heaviness in my heart and my limbs, like moving through oatmeal. The sun was a little too bright. The air was a little too warm.

I fought it all day long. B would have seen it in my eyes and she would have drug it out of me and made me admit it and she would have stroked my hair and held me while I cried. Missing her, missing that unspoken translation of emotional current just made it all that much worse.

The voice starts before I’ve had my coffee, reminding me how lazy I am, how many things have gone undone, how much time and money I waste by simply breathing. My sister brushes past me; my misery is invisible to her, and she doesn’t know that when she goes out into the driveway to talk to my parents that the voice is selling her down the river. Telling me that they’re making fun of you, that they don’t want to talk to you, they don’t love you, they never have.

No one has ever loved you, and no one ever will. You are more trouble than you’re worth.

I argue with the voice, I try to push back. I always do. The fight drowns out everything else, and I’m driving to my hair appointment thinking about all the people in this life that I love so much, who have proven their love for me in nothing short of breathtaking gestures.

My dear friend carefully sections off my hair; drying, straightening and thinning each section in slow, sure movements. I dare to look my reflection in the eye, and the voice whispers:

You’re wasting your money, you ugly fat little girl. You’ll starve for this later because you thought it mattered, but you’re just squandering what little you have left on turning a pig’s ear into a silk purse. You’re making a fool of yourself- an ugly, fat little fool of a girl.

I close my eyes and choke off the bitter laughter rising in my throat.

I know I’m being ridiculous. I know that the voice is wrong, so very wrong, almost comically wrong.

Yet I believe just enough that I cannot bring myself to ask for help, to ask for the love and reassurance that would chase it away and force it into silence. Because the voice has already convinced me that anyone I asked would look at me with pity and not love or compassion. Because the voice has already aroused my suspicion for all living things and the motivation behind their actions.

When I fumble at the front door with my purse and a few groceries, I realize my sister’s dog has locked me out. I curse him as I dig for my keys, and again when he greets me as I open the door. He becomes the verbal target for all of the ugliness I’ve endured all day, and about three quarters of the way through my rant, I see myself. Wild-eyed, angry and snide, yelling at a poor sweet dog whose only crime is being so excited to see me that he jumps up on the door.

I crawl into bed and surrender. Slow, long sobs and huge, hot tears.

The voice slips into this opening.

look at you, a loud-mouthed shrew, an insufferable bitch, screaming at a poor sweet animal. does it make you feel better to dump your pain on someone else? to pass your smallness around and be feared? that’s why no one loves you, why no one ever will. because you are a stupid, fat, ugly shrew. a silly mean cow that thinks she has a place in this world. you have no place in this world. you are nothing.

My cries grow sharper, and my sister’s dog curls up with his head under my chin, nuzzling and licking my jaw.

It makes my heart ache for Adicus. Which is something I’ve refused to admit, that I avoid cuddling with my sister’s dogs because it’s so much salt in that wound.  And so I cry for him too, for having lost him, the cruel end of our story- for not even knowing how he is, for not wanting to endure everything I must to know that he is happy and healthy, and for how fucked up that is. That you love someone so fully, that you create a life together, and the end of that story is that you aren’t even willing to make contact to check on the poor goddamn dog.

As hard as I try, I can’t see hope. I know that tomorrow the voice will just be a whisper, and the next day it will leave me entirely. I understand that the voice is wrong. There is a sense of shame in believing it at all, in succumbing to it.

It’s just that in this moment, all I can do is weep while it screams at me.