I was leaving for the rest of the summer. Telling my boss about our road trip. For some reason he assumed we were going to Toronto first, that was not even a stop on our trip. The ten hour drive there is a long one, he laughed, especially when your whole family is in one small car. I smiled, it’s actually 12, and yeah it’ll be a doozy.
Lies, lies, lies. Lies are so interesting. The pathology of lying. Can candor be pathological? I used to think I was relatively stable, I used to see it. Really see it. I could see myself in a put-together outfit, slacks and a cashmere sweater. A wool trench-coat and a silky scarf tossed carelessly, yet flawlessly, around my neck. Boots with small heels that click when I walk, and red circular glasses which men find decidedly “un-sexy” and women fawn over. I could close my eyes and see gently soft blonde ringlets framing my face, I could see the slope of my shoulders and the lines of my legs and when I put all of these respective images together it brought to mind a put-together woman. Until last night.
Last night I was walking and the rain was coming down hard. I believe it is important to note here that this particular rain was forecasted to be snow. That means it was a specific sort of rain. Not simply polluted water falling from the sky and splattering on cobblestones. No, this rain was infused with dead hope, tortured anticipation, intense disappointment. Anyway, there I was, gritting my teeth and bearing down, my inverted umbrella fighting my grip and threatening to fly away entirely. And suddenly I put my right foot in front of my left, as one does when taking a step, and my face began to contort and a sob rose in my throat. Only I did not want to scare my boyfriend, who was walking only a few steps ahead, engaged in a duel with his own umbrella, so I swallowed it down and it tasted like bile and week-old pasta boiled in bong water and microwaved with expired red sauce. It tasted like pure, undiluted fear.
I’ve been experiencing a lot of that recently. Plagued by constant nightmares, waking up from sleepwalking episodes to my own dark reflection staring back at me from the mirror in my bathroom. The walk back to my bed, to the sleeping form of my boyfriend, is most peculiar. Terrifying, in a very comforting way. I am comforted, that he did not wake up, that he did not see that side of me that I do not get to see. I do not think it would be fair at all for him to interact with my somnambulist self, when I can not.
In that moment, on the street, a sob crawling up my throat with razor nails, scratching my vocal cords to shreds, not going quietly into the good night, I saw a different version of myself. The antithesis of the polished, established self I thought myself to be. I saw a very small girl. Here, I do not use small to mean young, or literally petite. I mean small. I mean insignificant, negligible, weak, scared, trembling, trivial, inconsiderable, small. She was kneeling at the edge of a cliff, the unforgiving sea storming far beneath her. She was looking down at it, but her gaze was unseeing, her form unfeeling. I got the sense that this girl was hanging on by a thread. A minuscule thread, borne of a string unraveling into its smaller counterparts, until the remaining strand is thinner than a split end. I was on the street still, fighting with an umbrella which did not care if I lived, died, or melted in this rain stewed with disappointment and despair, yet I was not. I was on the cliff with this girl, she looked just like me but I think I realized then that I did not know what I looked like. Or I did not want to see myself in her. And so she looked like me, yet nothing like anyone I’d ever seen before. Perhaps she is who I look for every night when I sleepwalk to my bathroom and stare at my reflection in the mirror, and every time I turn on the lights I wake up. And she disappears again.
Regardless, I was on the street but not. I was looking at her, this girl, thinking my god when did your hair get so long. I knew her, intimately, biblically, though biblically not in a sexual sense, but rather in the way that the Bible has been around for ages and is purposefully misinterpreted by unsavory folk to justify their wrongdoings and misdeeds and general evil. So yes I knew her Biblically. Her white nightgown plastered to her body, the wind whipping her hair around, her dead eyes. I said her name, as though I was reminding myself. I told her we did have fun did we not? So much fun. Though I could not remember the specifics of this fun, only that it was had. I remembered what I told my sister earlier that day, that there is no cure. There are stable routines, and healthy foods, vitamins and supplements and love and fulfilling enriching activities and time spent with family and friends, affirmations to say to yourself and gym routines to follow and so many things to help. But there is no cure.
My left foot moves in front of my right. Another shaky step. A gust of wind sends the shaft of my umbrella into another fit, the ribs of the outer canopy rattle and creak in a chiming symphony. My boyfriend turns around, as though to make sure I am still walking behind him and not Mary Poppins-ing away on the rooftops somewhere, but something in my gaze makes him stop. Are you ok babe? He asks me, concern softening the corners of his eyes. I blink once. Twice. A girl kneels at the edge of a cliff and stares into the raging sea below and I wonder what she sees. Yup, I smile up at him, just a bit tired.
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