the folded down corner

I am not sleeping, so something must be wrong. (I am nothing if not a champion sleeper. Planes, cars, libraries, couches, the ground. I love sleeping and am very protective of at least 8 hours every night.)

It is maybe, about a boy. (You can call him a man, a voice says. Calling him a boy does nothing to diminish the man-sized hurt that you are feeling.) I have maybe cried over this boy. But maybe not. His name is not the one that falls out of my mouth when I least expect it. This other name, I exhale it when I am by myself. Is my body shedding itself of him? Or is it trying to remind me of him. and Why is this name, and not that one.

There is power, maybe. That this boy does not occupy my silences. That I do not feel the need to address him directly. There is only one you, and he is not that.

You. You have left a bookmark in my heart. You are the folded page of a library book. When I come across you I smooth you out and wonder how you came to be and then I turn the page and you are gone.

But your name slips out of my mouth, still. A phenomenon that I have never experienced and I have loved and lost and loved again. (To break the reverie, it happens in the car, when I am driving. It happens at my desk while I am working. It happens while I am doing the dishes. Sometimes there are people around and I look up after it happens, and I wait for someone to ask, what did you say? and I will have to answer, nothing. In these moments my breath has a life of its own and forms itself as your name in my exhalations.) I have been heartbroken and I have broken hearts and this is the only time a name has appeared again and again and again.

It must be that:

You are trapped in my chest and are trying to get out.

Or, you have made a home in my body and I am trying to be rid of you.

Or, you are gone, and I want to remember you.

Or, I am alone and I am thankful, it is still only you. You are the only one to have left me, no one else.

(Or, am I telling myself this, to diminish the pain.)

But even in your absence, you leave me with words, and thank you, thank you, for that.

a few words

I'm cleaning out my computer, and now everything in my life will be categorized as Before Rachael had a File Naming System and After Rachael had a File Naming System (BRhaFNS & ARhaFNS, respectively.)

I also found a pdf of my livejournal from 2003-2007.

There are a few things of note here:

1) I was SO PROLIFIC. Maybe not the most prolific but this is a 559 page document, and there's not a lot of white space. Did I peak too soon?

2) There are some gems. Almost every entry I have a snippet of an AIM conversation, and there are some wonderful memories from you people. scottishfiction, lunchdetention, cheshirequeen, heelhearted, ogbanje child...you guys AIM NAMES...I couldn't love you any more.

3) Why, why, WHY did no one tell me that I was unreasonably obsessed with Alex Nagy. Because good lord, 16 year old me, you had a real problem.

4) I couldn't go through all 559 pages, because I have actual things to do, but from the brief things I read I was very obsessed with Hitler for a bit. and then POETRY oh my dear lord poetry.

5) I keep closing this pdf and reopening it because I'll get so painfully embarrassed for myself and then want to go back and keep reading.

What's striking is that the last entry is my recounting of a ridiculous day where I had just acquired Sufjan Stevens tickets, had a really dumb, jealousy-fueled encounter with Alex Nagy, and then ran off into the arms of my then boyfriend, who was categorically an asshole. And it ends there. It's strange, fitting, relevant, that I stopped writing when I started going down the path of being in an abusive relationship. It is perhaps the most fitting example of losing your identity completely to another person. And it has taken me years of trying to get that person back. She's here, she's a sporadic blogger, obviously, but she will never be the same as she once was.

I used to attribute that (the lack of 559 more pages) to life as it stands now, I have a kid, I'm in graduate school. But I, really, always managed to fill a journal, before, no matter what was going on. I loved writing. It's how I processed the world.

I fell for someone so hard last year, so hard, and I wrote a poem about it, like a ridiculously happy celebratory read aloud poem about it.

here is someone that doesn't put words in my mouth
he holds me close and when he leaves instead of alone,
words, the alight in the space he has made in my bed
he leaves, he leaves every time, but the words they stay with me and he asks for nothing in return. 

so these words, i smooth them into my sheets.
i let them play across my hands and i twirl them into my hair
i have invited them in and thankfully they have chosen to stay. 

so this, this is a love poem for poems
this is a poem that has been gestating for 8 years
and lemme tell you, that's a long time to go without a poem, right? 

and i don't ____ you
but I, you-gave-me-words-back, you
and thank you for that

the thing is,

i feel them slipping away again. and i know that means i'm not being myself. and i want to find the villains, the assholes, the reasons for this. but when i find them, why do i invite them to stay? they are here on my back porch, taking up the room of these words that I fought so hard to find again.

go away assholes. demons of apathy and emptiness. now that I know your names I have armed myself with poems and love and light and 559 pages of livejournal entries where 10 years ago me, while quite ridiculous in some respects (guh the alex nagy stuff is just EMBARASSING) had a few things right, she loved words, she was unafraid of them, and she never, ever questioned that they would leave her.

words, i won't ever let you go again.

out of context

In a college creative nonfiction class I wrote about the banalities of being pregnant. I wrote at lengths about the bathrooms in all of the buildings. I remarked on which ones always seemed to be out of soap, which were the most crowded, which ones had the green, water-saving flush handles.

In a writing workshop the professor leads the discussion. "What is meant by this detail," he asks. "What is the author saying about the green, waters-saving flush handles?"

I remember the class staying silent. Me thinking, nothing. I meant nothing about the green, water-saving flush handles.

The silence is broken because it will not be broken until someone breaks it, and someone, I don't remember who, says "It's because she had to go to the bathroom a lot?"

I don't remember the ensuing conversation on my bathroom habits, instead I thought of the intention of words, writing, speaking, sharing. How great it is, how terrifying to let go a part of you, let it float around. What it is like to have your words in someone else's mouth. To hear them with a different accent, different emphasis.

(A word is dead//when it is said//some say//I say//it just begins to live that day.)

But to be misunderstood, to be taken out of context, is this not the worst thing you can do to a person? To judge someone, unfairly, to take a piece of them and construct a picture based only on that? The greatest injustice! To take someone's skin color or religious affiliation or political party (or words said in the dark, words in response to a gaze) and to judge them based solely on that?

Oddly enough I find myself echoing the sentiments of this New Yorker piece, about the lawyer Judy Clarke, who has most recently defended the Boston Marathon bomber, and generally defends, to borrow from the title "the worst of the worst." What she does is to ask the jury not to judge the defendant on their worst moment, but to consider them as a whole.

Consider not, only, the green, water-saving flush handles, but the whole toilet, if you will.

It turns out I meant a lot about the green, water-saving flush handles. I was trying to say, look at the small ridiculous details of life. Look how much we miss, going through the motions. Look how many things are right in front of us.

Y'all. I have so many goddamn stories about bathrooms. Because when you're pregnant you have to pee all the time and literally someone asked me what I missed most about not being pregnant and I said being able to expel everything from your bladder at one time. LITERALLY. Also this is still the most satisfying feeling in the world, it's up there with an orgasm. Be pregnant, and you will never take peeing for granted ever again.

And also the green, water-saving, goddamn motherfucking flush handles. (In Greenlaw and Peabody but not yet in Saunders.)

In my preliminary examination I was told to be more precise in my language, and I get that now. And again. Be intentional with your words, I learned in writing, because they are they one thing you give to the reader. (Or the audience. Or the boy, in the dark.) And those words, those are all you can give, and it is all you can do to hope that they live on without you.

It is unfair it is unfair it is UNFAIR, I used to scream at the world. For my decisions, for my life, it is unfair. And then something flipped in me, a switch, a green, water-saving flush handle if you will, and I started to live my life with intention. With precision.

Now I am taken less out of context. Less is taken from me without my consent. But some things still are. And to them I whisper, this is unfair. And I gather my words in my mouth, and turn and walk away.