Someone else

I took a long hard appraising look in the mirror. It’s not The Persistence of Memory I tell myself, but it’s different in a hundred tiny ways. Stray strands of white or god-help-me-grey snake through my hair. Fine lines and dark circles surround my eyes in an outline much less flattering than kohl. I am sure it’s me, but if I look away quickly enough it could be someone else.

A woman whose pinched expression cannot hide the dimples in her smile or the annoyance written across her brow.

If I squint I can almost see the person she set out to become. Satisfied. Impactful. Happy. I wonder what would make her laugh hard enough throw her head back and shed a joyful tear. I guess at what could give her pause, make her sit with a moment and let it grow. I theorize what might be her biggest regret. Wondering if she carries it on her sleeve or locked away in her heart.

I hope for that woman, the one who cannot be me.

I want her to know contentment and comfort… but she only smiles when someone is looking.

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the ability to smile

My name is not important, and honestly neither is my education. I was hired for my people skills. That’s right, all that wonderful student loan debt bought me is a framed piece of paper that doesn’t mean shit according to my job description.

But what I do have is thick skin and the ability to smile even while dealing with angry unreasonable people. A skill I picked up while in the grad school trenches, and it serves me well. That and my innate ability to keep moving forward through sheer willpower and determination.

I work hard. I keep long hours, and I never shy away from responsibilities. Which translates to a never ending “to-do” list. Still I do my part and more, when I can.

All day long I absorb the negativity that leaks into conversations. It sticks to me. It makes me crave dark chocolates, hot showers, and large wine glasses at the end of each day. All in the attempt to soften the edge I am inching towards.

I reach across great divides to chart the path of compromise. The strain tears at my resolve and makes me question each word or turn of phrase I use. It calls into doubt true north on my internal compass. Still I keep moving forward unable to sound the retreat.

I even phrase my suggestions in ways that will make you wonder which of us thought of it first. Drawing a heavy line under the fact that I do not matter in this equation. I am the instrument used to fine tune and recalibrate. I am the means to an end. A solution as essential as breathing, and just as easily taken for granted.

I’m in customer success… You hiring?

As seen on https://www.retently.com/blog/next-employee-customer-success-manager/

December mornings

The trees stretched bony hands towards a sun that never quite delivered. While all around her was the death rattle of winter. It was a cold stark beauty she thought, almost like a slab of marble, hard but still compelling. It brought a slight glint to her eyes in the early morning hour.

Looking up through the branches to the sky she felt a closeness with the off putting weather. It made people turn up their collars and hurry away. She had that effect sometimes too. People often found themselves with other places to be when she was around. It was just as well. Bren liked the solitude that could be found outside. It seemed more honest to her.

Outside there was little distraction, if one could look past the societal fingerprints that seemed to stand out against every surface. However, Bren liked to think that she could shut out that nonsense. She would sit in a moment watching a bird or tracking a cloud and never once flush with embarrassment.

It was time to blink reality back into focus though. Time to zoom out so the interesting shape in front of her could become a thing with solid lines again. She tensed against the thoughts that came racing in. They streamed by in watercolor sadness and angry heavy modem art lines.

It was always easier to not think. To just exist and worry about the minutes as they came, but there was something about the stillness of December mornings. It seemed to demand introspection and deep thoughts. A shiver rain down her spine that was less to do with the wind than the thoughts whistling through her mind. Bren pushed her hands deeper into her pockets wishing for a way to not look as anxious as she felt.

She turned back to the window glowing softly with warm white twinkle lights. Her eyes closed as she took a steadying breath. Okay she told herself, and she hoped she was right.

Reality is never kind

Egg on my face again, and I would have guessed that by now I wouldn’t mind.

But when you believe in the lie you live reality is never kind.

Cut it clean or it’ll never mend, this isn’t a wound time can bind.

Swallow your tears then… happiness isn’t yours to find.

Junior’s Clan

We gathered last night, by firelight in a huddle of sorts, to steel our nerves. Three generations deep we sat and talked and laughed to hold back the dark. If only to remember that the whole remains even if it feels diminished. It was as if we wanted to cement the fact that standing together could represent standing for one another. In that moment there were no tears only strength.

My grandfather might be gone but these are my people.

He was a man. He had Alzheimer’s. He would not have remembered me, but I remember him. To me he was the most imposing man in my childhood, stern but with eyes that could smile when he laughed, and COVID took him.

My you find your way to the tree of knowledge on your way to what comes next.

Nothing changes

His heart was racing and his face was flushed. He couldn’t remember everything he had said, just how close he had been to hitting her. She had walked away so awkwardly, an unnecessary stiffness in her posture that he didn’t understand. He hadn’t even touched her.

She stood under the deluge of hot water shedding silent ugly tears. Stupid cunt bitch. His words stuck to her in ways the soap couldn’t help. She squeezed her eyes shut remembering the moment his eyes had gone wide and his hand hovered an inch away. He hadn’t touched her though.

They pick up their conversation as if the last 30 minutes hasn’t happened. She asks if he needs anything and he mostly ignores her. Her voice is empty when she speaks, no emotion or opinion. His voice is steady, no guilty lit or sheepish remorse. No one apologizes or forgives. The I love yous before bed will not be punctuated with gentle kisses.

Everyone’s changed, but nothing changes.

It was already over

Fall rolled in like a thunder storm, dark and ominous. In New England the changing season was more than a damp heaviness in the air, it was an assault to the senses, and it sent the many inhabitants of Concord into frenzy. It seemed to Abigail that the riot of color came with a warning call only the busybody could hear. In her limited experience, it seemed, people’s minds got smaller when the nights grew longer. As if the dark could shrink a person’s world view.

She had seen the hold fear could have during the last smallpox outbreak, which had taken her mother and Daniel two winters back. It still woke Abigail in the night, the way hatred had filled eyes and soured words when she had begged for help that never came. Her Father had preached forgiveness and fortitude of spirit, and she had done as she was bade, but now he too was gone. His last breaths rolling out as the fall thunder rolled in.

It was hard for her to define the venom in every word cast in her direction, but after he was buried Abigail could sense it. While the ire of the town chafed at Abigail it did not stop her. She tended the geese and family plot earning coin with her own hands.

Abigail might have felt put out if not for the pleasure of providing for herself. All the while thinking that the dreadful future Reverend Burroughs had spelled out for her after the funeral was disappearing. With each successful endeavor Abigail became more certain that independence suited her and that she did not need to take a husband. She was not just surviving hand to mouth she was thriving, with no time for mournful thoughts.

Abigail had dismissed the town’s importance.

And the town was infuriated.

It happened in an instant. One second, she was harvesting the last of her wheat by the light of a full moon. The next, she was in the commons surrounded by the light glinting off their unyielding stares. It was in their bright eyes that Abigail finally discovered the emotion’s name. Paranoia. But it was too late.

If she was honest she would have admitted it was over long before the end. When they force-fed her the tooth they plucked from her jaw, it was already over. When her joints snapped as she tried so hard to avoid the touch of their hot irons, she was beyond salvation. It wasn’t until they tied her to the sugar maple, and piled the branches filled with flame red leaves around her that finally, wordlessly, she called to me.

But I offered something other than salvation.

Blood, tears, and gasoline

The tears tasted clean after the blood. So she resisted the urge the wipe her face or control her sobs. Maybe this was nature’s way. Maybe we cried to heal ourselves, like so much sap running to seal over the gaping wound of a lost branch. She only realized the tears had stoped when she heard her own hiccuped breath breaking the silence. Cringing internally and struggling externally she tried to quiet herself.

“Take your medicine,” he’d said before it started. Maybe he’d known. Maybe he could sense the brokenness inside, and wanted to shore up the weakness one broken bone at a time.

The chill of the concrete floor was all encompassing. Tiny shuddering trimmers ran though her like lightning strikes. She was so cold without the warmth of her tears. Till his prone shape shifted upon the couch, breaking her internal focus. Smallness hadn’t been the answer an hour ago still she felt herself trying to draw inward. All of her went silent. The trembling stoped. Her breathing slowed. Time unwound itself in lazy circles.

His footsteps filled her ears till his hot breath on the curve of her shoulder drove out any other sensation.

“Ready for more?”

The question hit her harder than his hand had, and for a second despair leaked into her soul. Maybe when he pulled her upright something snapped. Maybe he either hadn’t heard or didn’t care, but the residue of his rough hand on her arm had left fire not ice. It surged through her veins causing her to flush and made her breathing ragged.

“That seems like a yes,” he jeered.

She met his eyes for a second before reacting. “It’s a no actually!” She punctuated her words with a sharp knee thrust before running for the door. Her bare feet slapped against the asphalt shredding more with each step. She only slowed down enough to throw herself into the first open door she could find.

She could feel everyone’s eyes on her judging and predatory. Maybe she’d run from the pan to the fire. Maybe it hadn’t been steal that clicked into place when he’d pulled her up to him. She walked as quickly as she could towards the bartender pulling at her clothes wishing she was better protected. His eyes moved in an up then down appraisal before they went dull and cold, the smile gone from his unshaven face.

“I…”

The small bells over the door rang, announcing the newest patron. She didn’t have to look to know what she’d find. Not a single pair of eyes would meet hers, and those looking her way held themselves in postures of disdain not concern. She froze like a deer in headlights as he cracked jokes at her expense while the bartender, an obvious acquaintance, laughed along.

The sound followed her into the night and haunted her every step. Each block she put between herself and the known danger seemed to put her a block closer to the unknown dangers lurking just out of sight. By the time she made it to the police office her feet throbbed in time with each side stabbing breath. Her progress was watched by the unblinking eyes of surveillance cameras and measured in dirty footprints by the age-worn police officer at the front desk. He waited for her to approach his counter never once offering assistance.

“I need to report a crime.”

He scoffed, lifted a phone, and requested assistance. Ignoring her completely he started to fill out paperwork. Each second he refused to acknowledge her and every line he scratched on to the form tore at her resolve. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe tears make you invisible, the salt slowly eroding anything of value till nothing remains.

“Jerry from The Stoop called awhile back,” he said while filling out page two of the form. “How’d you think this would play out? Drinking alone. Dressed like that. People shouldn’t be surprised when they get what they ask for.”

Frustration blazed down her spine. Shame flamed in her heart. Conviction seared through her veins. This time the tears wouldn’t sooth. These tears were gasoline, and she wasn’t going to stop till she burned the whole institution down.

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Damn.

Painting by Kimber Mallett

I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream. I. Will. Not. Scream.

It was so quiet I could hear a shuddering breath being drawn. A hundred eyes stared, filled with a multitude of variations on worried surprise and gleeful disgust.

Damn. It hadn’t worked.

Non-adult

I don’t feel 35.

I don’t live in my own house. I’m not married. I don’t have any kids. I’m none of the things my mother was at 35.

I still wear my nerdy T-shirts, and I like dying my hair vivid colors. I hold down a full time job with benefits. I pay taxes. I have bought and sold a house. I’m currently paying down my last credit card and a mountain of student loans… which feels adult as fuck.

I don’t think anyone could question my adult status, but some how I still feel like an imposter. Could I be called out for not succeeding at life because I haven’t met my mother’s milestones… but what if my mom hadn’t felt obligated to start a family at 22? Would she have gone to school? Would she have worn concert tees instead of sensible shoes, or splurged on decadent brunch?

Perhaps it’s not that I am in suspended animation, as is often said of millennials. Instead, maybe this deliberate stroll into adulthood makes sense. It could be that stretching the milestone out rather than compressing them into the first 5 years after high school is a good thing. I’m not ashamed to say I have learned from the journeys of my mother and grandmothers, which I will not call mistakes.

I’m not sure if it’s the lines around my eyes or the exhaustion in my bones that make me an adult now. I am, however, pretty sure it’s not the years. Experience and maturity seem better markers than the calendar. This is my life, I am making my choices without kowtowing to the conventions of past generations, and I’m perfectly happy to be a 35-year old non-adult.