Just musing over this is making me maudlin and I flashback to all those years ago, taking one simple English class with a man named Joe and a bunch of outcasts and misfits staring in fear the first day....I think the prompt given was something to the effect of 'apologize to someone for something you have done'.....I must have sat there for a full beat before I looked down and my pencil was flowing across the paper at a furious speed....anyway-with that first story I opened a flood gate into myself that allowed me to tame all the things i wanted to say, all the fears, desires, and monstrous punishments for those in my path who had wronged me...well, here I found a HEALTHY way to let it out...
The story itself is something I cannot read aloud without crying...and not the rageful kind I am prone to, but the quiet, mournful and joyous kind I try to do only in private....perhaps its because her birthday is coming up and with half her childhood over, I am so deathly afraid she will slip away...
so before she does, a little visit down memory lane to my first assignment for Mr. Aimone...
*****************************************************
For Her
You were the size of a pea. A mere idea of an idea. Scared and driven by the
need to feel something, anything outside myself, beside myself, I seduced him.
Ridiculous now, the way our heads smacked against the headboard, the embers of
a roach in an ashtray by the bed. Black outlines, desperate silhouettes. This escape, this
feeling of euphoria, as short lived as it may be, brought me some sort of warped idea of
peace. Some sick relief and comfort in my own skin. The continuation of these
couplings, in the backseat of cars, the bathroom at work, any spare moment and place
became my one and constant thought. I became reckless, seeking out moments of selfish
indulgent behavior whether it was buying a pair of boots three times my paycheck or
drinking a bottle of Jack straight until I stumbled home only to fall back into bed,
smacking my head at 3 am. Somehow I sensed something was coming, an end to this
self-destructive madness even though I didn’t know what. An end, which I feared
because it meant an end to ME. The fiber of my being, the essence of me was rooted in
the ability to do, say, snort, and fuck anything and everything I wanted with no
consequences, no one to think of but me.
The End. The end came as a pale blue strip glaring back at me
from the toilet of a CVS restroom. Glaring at me, accusing me of unspoken sins,
accusing me of neglecting my grandmother, smoking too much, swearing like a
motherfucker, and not believing in Santa or God.
Fuck.
the one word I could mutter at the moment I realized you would exist was Fuck. I am
sorry. Sorry for not coming up with something better. Sorry for not giving you some
sweet grandiose tale of tears, joy, and goddamn lobster dinner to celebrate your
impending arrival. Celebration. a celebration which consisted of a Marlboro Light and a
can of Coke, staring at the rubber sole of a shoe, wondering how long I could sit in the
parking lot to stop the spinning of my heart and head.
I apologize for being 20 years old, pregnant, unwed, broke, and freshly sober with
no inkling whether I even loved the father to be. Loved enough to have coffee or dinner
without the inevitable dessert of sex and drugs.
Sorry for the fact that I never doubted, not once, having you. Because I was so
selfish I saw this as a way to reinvent myself, a way to escape a bruised head, a mundane
dead end job, to escape a girl who stayed up till 6 am watching QVC to avoid the
thoughts in her head or the stranger in her bed.
I could not believe the ramifications this would have on the future. Our
future. Your future.
The fact that 4 years later you would be watching you mother, hair wild and
scraggly, standing in a her pj’s unscrewing the hinges off the kitchen cabinet doors all
because Daddy won’t close the doors after getting down dishes. All because Mommy is
driven crazy and cannot believe she married a non-door closer, wild with disbelief that
their union is doomed by things as trivial as this. But these things were so much more
than trivial. They were so much more than I can begin to explain, and yet not once did I
regret my choice. Not even when a U-Haul at 7 am containing all our clothes, your toys
and books drove away, you waving goodbye to your father and life. 4 years of a life
crammed in a 12-foot truck.
Choice.
Such a strange word. Somehow it makes what I did sound so noble. As if my act was
not self-serving. I chose you. You chose me. I chose this road ahead of us, again seeing
a way to reinvent myself, now to reinvent you, to make a better choice this time. That
somehow this time around it will be better. No cigarettes or cokes. Santa and God
beside us, and those boots are replaced with soccer shoes, and dance lessons.
I am guilty. I am sorry. Sorry because I am never going to be sorry, never sorry
that I do not feel guilty or even remotely upset for wrecking your life, for making this
choice for you. Sorry that you may never understand. That my love for you is
immeasurable and yet the reason for the love began as an act of desperation. And that is
my confession, my secret, my seven Hail Mary’s.
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