who the hell knows where this came from?
does that mean that you finally have to recognize when the rot set in?
because i'm sorry, i can't pinpoint a certain date, no mean time, no season or timber line.
there was waiting for the glue to dry: we were learning to count by tens. ten twenty thirty forty ... the general idea of counting was not foreign to us at six years old, but grouping was a bit difficult. we glued dried kidney beans to popsicle sticks, ten to a stick. when you pushed the bean down onto the dab of glue, a bit of the white goo swelled out from underneath it. i could never wait. i used the edge of my fingernail and poked the soft skin of the drying glue ... just to watch it pop, if only just a little bit.
there was the time that i got to the tv first, and so i got the remote. i, the youngest, finally had control over which cartoons my brother and i watched after school. you have to understand, i never got there first. the one day that i did, i got cocky and stuck my tongue out at my brother who was much older than me. i admit, a bold move considering my size (or lack thereof, i was a tiny kid). of course, he wallopped me good and proper. one fierce swift blow on top of the head, and over 15 years later, i can still feel my teeth chattering. but then, i told on him. we had always played rough, but he had never hit me. the next day, he kicked me in the shin while we were passive on the couch. i didn't tell because i deserved it.
when i was sixteen, i cheated on my boyfriend while i was out of town. i don't know why i did it. attention. mistreatment. peer pressure. lust. confusion. i felt so guilty about it that i told him the next day. then i felt worthless because he didn't seem to care. he continued to flirt and dance along the line of cheating ('define cheating, i didn't cheat.') for over a year. it doesn't take much to ruin you when you're already half way there.
i started to wonder if this was a cycle when my next serious boyfriend cheated on me, and i gave him another chance. i slipped nasty looks in his coffee and left my trust in the trunk of his car. i cracked my knuckles ominously when we met her on the street, and he stopped to talk to her. i threatened to leave, knowing full well that i never would. i never gave him the satisfaction of payback; i never cheated or lied. i took the other approach, and i was brutally honest. two years later, he apologized ... and that was all i had ever wanted.
when he died, i felt abandoned. angry. diseased mentally. and more than anything, i blamed medical science, his stubborness, the failings of spirituality ... more so ... myself.
that took way too much therapy to admit, and it just made me more vicious.
and now, i've run away. turned and set the atlantic ocean on you all. but strangely, contrary to every fucking therapist i've ever had, i feel more alive than i have in years.
so when did the rot set in? and have i been forgiven for my sins? it's my own. i'm a witness to it, and no one else has been.
the rot in my head and my gut and my heart. it's my private crucifix, made from guilt and sway, that no one else can see.
