by l. menefee
The cranes are leaving. You can see them heading west–I think they follow the Mississippi south–and you can hear them gathering in the marshes in the mornings and at sundown.
I saw two turkey vultures mating on the roof of my dilapidated granary. Why on earth would they be doing that? In September? I know some birds have the ability to keep sperm viable until a suitable nesting period. I wonder if they are one of them.
The days are becoming confusing to me. I have to look at my phone to know the date, even the day of the week. Winter is coming. Winter’s always coming.
Like a recovering alcoholic, I have–had–a sponsor. I was standing in the kitchen with the pills in my hand, crying, on the phone. But she didn’t call me back. It was late. I didn’t want to bother my therapist. But my sponsor–an RN with a life of her own in a different time zone on a different planet, didn’t call me back. Several days later, she texted me that I scared her, that she didn’t know what to do. I told her she couldn’t be my sponsor if she wasn’t going to call me back, on a break, after her shift. She said she heard me.
I called my therapist. I sat there in the kitchen and decided to count the pills, a mental exercise, forced, focused rationality. You see, what I want, when I grab them is to go to sleep. I don’t want to hurt my children. I don’t want to leave them. I don’t want to do that to them. How do you go through life after your mother kills herself? That’s not what I want. I want only to sleep. He tells me things, they hurt me so much that all I want is to go to sleep. Now. For a long time.
I sat down at the kitchen table and counted them. Would 4 mg lorazapam kill you? I doubt it. But I also have codeine, muscle relaxants and librium. What would they do together? I counted them and decided I should put the “extra” ones back in the bottle, take only what I was prescribed, and go to bed. All this took was time and a little focus. Some breathing. Some stepping back and observing what I was about to do without thinking. The space for breathing took about 20 minutes. 20 minutes between life and death.
How do I let what someone says to me about how they feel or don’t feel about me take away my life? How much time have I lost? An entire winter. Most of this summer. Months. Years. How does one remain in the world after the love of one’s life–isn’t? Never will be? It sounds melodramatic just writing it down. Obviously, he wasn’t, was he? Isn’t? Or he wouldn’t be doing this. This wouldn’t be happening. I have only to survive the time.
I used to scuba dive in Hawaii. I’d routinely get a nosebleed at 35 ft. Shark attractant. My diving buddy would motion for me to clear my mask and I did and there’d be a 5 ft black-tip reef shark or two. They don’t get intimidating until they’re 7 ft or more. Anyway, reef sharks generally aren’t aggressive. But it was entertaining. But the point is that when I got to 60 ft–there aren’t any more colors at 60 ft because not enough light penetrates to refract color, so everything’s a bluish green, but not too dark. But at 60 ft this amazing thing happens–I feel painless. The atmospheric pressure at 60 ft equalizes the inflammation in my body and I feel absolutely painless.
The same thing happens during a seizure. Yes, I have a seizure condition, too. But when I’m “out” I’m in this parallel universe–I’m living a life, there are people–but it’s not in “real” time. I may be “out” only a minute or two, but days can go by in my parallel universe. And in that place there is no pain. None. No pressure in or on my body. I feel nothing.
Hearing is the first sense to return. Usually someone is talking to me, if it’s in public, somebody’s having a fit and I want them to shut the hell up. My hearing is very acute, both before and after an “attack.” Then I feel the buzzing of my nervous system, the bounce of electrons against my skin, and it’s back. Pain.
How much of life is learning to live with pain? Would we never fall in love if we knew how it would end? I learned to scuba dive particularly because I was afraid of sharks. I wanted to face them, see where they were, what they looked like, what they did. I didn’t like the feeling of them lurking beneath me. And, it turns out, more sharks attack humans on boards on the surface than they do divers. Of course, the law of averages says there are always going to be more people on the surface on boards than there are divers, but I don’t think that’s the point.
He’s left me here, alone, for a year. I don’t want to go back to Hawaii. Why? Because there’s more to living here than him. Had he not brought me here, I never would have heard a coyote in the middle of the night. Or seen the sky black with endless skeins of geese. Or a chickadee in the snow. I never would have seen the Northern Lights outside my bedroom window or the leaves change colors, each tree different colors, different years, at different times. I never would have seen the sparkles in the air created by the water molecules freezing into crystals and refracting light, like faery dust.
My therapist did call me back, a couple of hours later. I had put the pills back in their jars, except for what I was “supposed” to take, and I went to bed. Now she’s my sponsor and we have a contract. And I’m good about keeping promises.
