Installment Four (Novella)

I hate the evenings where I lay awake, trying desperately to fall asleep and find peace in my dreams. Instead I feel the energy of the past wrapping its arms around me like a comforting lover that might be a little too controlling. So I wake up in the presence of something I had long since told myself to forget, and I hate that space there. I hate the feeling of knowing that I am still, somehow, holding onto something that is no longer holding on to me. So I drag my ass out of bed two and a half hours early, brew a cup of tea, and realize that I woke up with an apology on my lips. Then I get to thinking why I would apologize and to whom, because last I knew I paid the penance by getting through the hand I was dealt for the crimes I had committed. Then I realize, while squeezing the lemon into my tea and showing a little too much interest in the water that is slowly turning green, that we are never even. I wish we were, but there will always be a balance - either owed to us or owed to the Universe for our silly human fuck ups. Shit. Yeah, I think I will just go watch the sunrise.

The sky is still gray from the memory of the night, and in the distance - far off behind the silhouette of at least a hundred trees, I see a faint line of pink. That is where I would live if I could - in that sweet hue that speaks to me of flowers in the Spring after the last of the snow has finally fallen and the smell of lasting sunshine starts to infect the air and my spirit. That is when I start to smile more.
But now I am stuck in that gray just watching and waiting for the day to begin and thinking about the treacherous holidays that are waiting not even a month away. That season where the snow falls perfectly on a dying or dead world. There is nothing on fire during the winter, except the passions that exist in our fragile little hearts. I was always a creature that liked the heat. So I slug through the season and through the holidays where people, for some reason unbeknownst to me, are ruder than they really should be. I watch the snow fall and I think it is beautiful when I don’t have to be standing in it and I think how nice it would be to have a cup of hot cocoa on the couch with someone I love. Then I curse myself for being vulnerable enough to want something so simple and so inevitably sweet. Fuck it. I will just get lost in the pink.

I stand there, outside in a gray wool sweater and my fabulously fuzzy slippers just waiting for the day to start. Waiting for the right time to throw on my clothes and get off to work where people will be waiting for their coffee and breakfast walnut cake. I will talk to these people and paint the charming little smile on my face and they will, for some reason or another, open up to me about their day or the ways that they miss their youth and I will think about the ways that I am rushing head first into this thing called being an adult. I will think about how, after work, I have nothing but a to do list to hammer through. The next day will be the same and I am just wishing for something to come and wake me up - to shake me and say - LIVE HERENOW. Here and now where sometimes faith falls short and your heart breaks with the memory of everything that once was and your soul screams at the myriad of possibilities of what could be. Instead I pour the coffee, think about the test ahead, and secretly shake with a fear I refuse to let show. Warrior, mom, I am a warrior. At least that is what I say to get through the day.

I am a 26 year old woman chasing down an 18 year old’s dreams - hell, if you count my dreams at 11 you would say it took me 15 years to get where I am and every day, well not every but damn close, I think about packing it up and running away into that soothing pink. I know those dreams may not turn out to be as glorious as they might have seemed. I think that is why I want to run. Some say it is a fear of failure or a fear of success but in the end the result is the same - I am filled with a fear I try to avoid or deny. I am struggling to put together the pieces of this shotgun shack I call life, and I might have lost a valuable cornerstone. Only I don’t know exactly what it is.

What do I know? I know there is a perfectly sweet, delectable man sleeping on the other side of my bed. I know I like the way he looks when he dances in his leather jacket, and I dig the way he pulls my legs against him when we are wrapped up on the couch. I also know that there is not an ounce of affection inside of me for him. Once a week I call him up, we cuddle and he does something unbearably sweet like make me a fucking cheesecake. I don’t even like cheesecake, but I like the attention. I watch him sleep a bit, silently cursing myself for the ice running through my veins and rush out of the room with my clothes in hand. I should shower and wash away the filth of my vanity. I should scour my skin and hopefully, in the process, purge my soul (or what remains there) of the selfishness running through me. I justify my actions by stating that I never asked for a damn phone call and I certainly don’t demand flowers of morning affections. I move through the days like a ghost in a trance and once in awhile I am able to touch something solid and I toy with it for a bit before that, too, falls through my hands. Right now this boy is solid and it makes sense to get a little return on my investment. It isn’t like I treat him bad - I kiss him well and make his drinks strong. I make him laugh. I never said I wanted more and I quite clearly remember my declaration that relationships are far beyond me - so why should I be feeling so guilty?

The answer comes while I stand exposed in front of the medicine cabinet mirror. My body is soft - some would call it large - I am not a pretty girl. I am not an ugly girl, either. I fall somewhere in the middle - I guess you could call me cute on a good day. My eyes are your typical hazel hue, my hair long, stringy and brown. It isn’t quite curly and it isn’t quite straight - you can’t call it wavy because usually half crimps, one quarter cramps, and the last quarter is pin straight. I usually just throw it up and pin my bangs to one side. Plain jane except for the ink that scratches up one half of my right arm.

Now let me explain why my image is important, because really you should always just focus on the soul (which I do believe I just illustrated was rather worthless as well), but here it is and listen well. This is a lesson they don’t teach you in school because the administration is too busy patting themselves on the backs for preaching about the “golden rule.” -- Good luck in this life if you aren’t beautiful. I had a coach in high school say that to me once. He marched right up, the creepy bastard that he was, and said “Bella, I respect you. Do you want to know why?”

I didn’t answer because I really just thought he was going to try and touch my breasts - he was that kind of a man. He was also a pompous ass, so my lack of response did anything but shut him up.

“Because you are going to have to work for everything you get in this life. Only the beautiful people get by easy, and you aren’t beautiful but you have something they don’t…”

Then he paused, thinking he had baited me in to wanting to listen to him when really all I wanted to do was kick him so hard in the crotch that his face turned blue. So, refusing to feed into his counterproductive psychobabble confidence boost bullshit I just looked up in his chubby, pink face and stared. Thinking the whole while how I would like to take that ridiculous ginger toupee right off his fat head and run it up the crack of his pervy ass. And, as it always is with bastards like that…he kept going.

“Will. You have will. No matter what comes your way you will meet it come hell or high water, and do you know why you have that will?”

I thought, after the last time, he would have realized that I wasn’t going to feed into this shit, but again I got that 15 second dead stare that only opened the door for more of my sadistic visualizations regarding ten different ways I could dismember him and where I could hide the pieces. Then he finally realized that I wouldn’t get interested, which worked against me because then he wouldn’t shut up.

“You have will because you aren’t beautiful. You have power because you have had to fight for everything you have. You have strength because you never belonged anywhere. You were and will always be the girl that no one understands because you are a bit different than the rest. You look, talk, and act different. You know what people say about you behind your back and you continue to stand out instead of stepping back to fit in. You know people snicker about your weight, which could use a little attention, but you still stand up straight. Your hair is wild, and you intentionally make it more so with the colors you dye it. You even make your own clothes! I swear I haven’t seen skirts as bright as the ones you wear since the seventies,” he snickered.

I thought he was done after making his ridiculous joke that only made me more resolute that the first think I cut off should be his manhood, but no - the ignorant never run out of things to say, especially when they have convinced themselves that they are right. (Which is all the damn time).

“So what I am trying to say is that I am going to push you harder than the other kids. I am going to be tougher on you, because you can take it and you need to learn that as cruel as this school is and as much as I will frustrate you with my demands - the world outside will be worse. You were born to be an outsider, Bella, and you keep yourself in that place. You pride yourself on how different you are - I see that in how you walk. But different isn’t beautiful, it is dangerous. So when you hate me because I am the way I am to you - just remember that I do it for you. I do it so when you get out of this place and see that the world doesn’t open its arms to overweight girls with crazy hair and patchwork skirts it won’t be as hard to take. I do it so maybe you might change your tune just enough to make this life a little easier on you.”

Of course at this point I was absolutely beside myself with rage. I could see his chubby little legs sticking out of a furnace I pushed him into - his feet kicking as the last of his screams sound and the smell of fake burning hair filled the room. I would never do that, for the record, but hell - I could dream. I mean, he did tell me in so many words that I was an ugly misfit. I did not need to be reminded of that, especially at that tenderly over-emotional age of 16.

But standing in front of that medicine cabinet mirror I somehow came to thank him. I came to understand that while he was and probably still is a pompous windbag far too in love with himself to realize that he, too, was an ugly little misfit - he was right. I tell people I care about who, for some reason or another, find it in themselves to care about me this story and I tell them that I know he was on to something.

They shake their heads and say “Bella, I really wish you wouldn’t think that way about yourself - you are a beautiful girl,” or some other sweet nothing that turns out to amount to nothing. The truth is - when someone loves or cares for you they are blind to the perceptions of the rest of the world. It is the same when someone loathes your ass. The opinions, even that of the mast majority, are worth less than a penny on a blackjack table.

I was not so blind to the majority opinion of me, and as I got older I really did stop giving a shit what they thought. I won’t pull one over and make myself sound like a machine by saying it didn’t or doesn’t still hurt to know that when you hit the town with a group of babes you are the one standing to the side and labeled the toad - but hey, there is something to be said for strength, right? Being the toad gave me strength - it gave me personality, buckets of it. Of course right here I want to say that I would rather have soul than a size 4 waist and tits that could stop a fast moving bus, but that wouldn’t be entirely honest, either. Oh the sweet vanities we keep. Like the one in the next room over sleeping in my bed while I burn a hole into the mirror. He isn’t around because I want him there and he sure isn’t around because I need him - he is around because it makes me feel good to be adored.

Stepping into the shower with these cinderblock thoughts I discover that I have finally found an answer to Dan’s relentless question about my belief in love.

Yes, today - like all other days, I believe in love. And today, like all other days, I believe it should stay the hell away from me, because I know it wears a pretty face. Love looks like a china doll until you get its clothes off and see the razorblade scars and monstrosities underneath.