Lines

My best friend does not know I'm dating someone. 

Granted, she lives in London, but this is still unusual for us. I try not to think about what it means, why I haven't said anything to her. I also try not to think about what means that my roommates don't know I'm seeing someone, that I won't introduce him to any of my friends, that we only see one another after long nights out when my house is empty. That every time we do see one another I feel awful when he leaves. That sometimes when he's angry and yelling it frightens me. And how often he's angry and yelling.

I try not to think about it.

I need some comfort but he's screening my calls. I never expected to be this person. The woman who keeps calling back. Who leaves angry and sad voicemails. The type of woman who hears Ain't Too Proud to Beg in her head on a regular basis. The kind of woman who regularly recognizes the pleading note in her voice, and who sometimes thinks I don't love you and who recognizes this is not how we're supposed to treat one another, but who just can't stop calling back.

It is one of what feels like a thousand fights. One of the late Friday nights after an angry voicemail has sparked off angry texts from him and apologies from me until suddenly he's there and screaming on a street corner and I'm trying to walk away.

It feels like we have done this a thousand times. It feels like we will always do this.

It ends the way it always ends. I'm crying in public, something I hate, and he conjures up a cab and just wants to make sure I get home safely. And in the cab it's his turn. He starts to plead with me. You're crazy. It's not like that. I promise. You're crazy. That's stupid. Why would you think that? And when we get to my house, softly, I'm sorry. 

That's all it takes, I guess, because I don't know whose hands are whose and which of us is pulling the other up the staircase. And in a few minutes in the dark I hear I told you that you were crazy and I wonder how we ended up here, again.  

After he's gone (he never stays), I will say These are the shitty things we do to one another. It helps, a little, to draw lines around what just happened, to make it both of our fault. Saying these are the shitty things we do to one another splits the fault. Some of it belongs to him, but I'm sure most of it is mine.

These are the shitty things we do to one another. 

 I will say it again and again and again until the sun comes up.

***

My Mother is Concerned.

We're on vacation as a family for the first time in years, and I'm in a particularly bad mood. Something on television the night before set me off, and I can't seem to pull it back together. I'm driving her to the grocery store and she's listening to the lyrics to a song I've restarted twice since we've been in the car together. She asks, tentatively, "What is this song about?"

I don't mean my voice to have a hard, bitter edge to it.

"The shitty things men do to women."

She's quiet, I'm quiet, and the album plays to the next track. When she speaks her voice is softer than I'm used to hearing. 

"You know not all men to shitty things to women, right Kelly Marie?" 

I want to be able to tell her yes.

***

I put lines around the relationship. I mark its beginning and where it went wrong and after the fight on the corner or the one at my house or the one I leave a party to have over the phone I say This is the end. I'm putting a line here. This is enough. 

Even after I've said enough, enough hurting one another, enough of doing shitty things to one another, enough tearing one another to shreds, I still leave voicemails. We still text and fight. I still cry, frequently, and he still comes over and whispers in the dark You're crazy. You're crazy. You're crazy. And I feel crazy. For the first time in my life, I feel like there is something deeply wrong with me.

I draw lines around it. I try not to think about it.

When he leaves (because he never stays) I wonder what will need to happen for it to finally be enough.

***

Even with years of retrospection, I take blame for things that weren't my fault. I say here are the shitty things we did to one another. Because saying here are the shitty things you did to me is too hard, too painful. It is too true to say you hurt me. Intentionally. Deliberately. And with great satisfaction. You hurt me and you loved it.

So I draw lines around it. Because it is too big to process.  And I think that I've drawn the lines successfully until I wake up screaming nonononononononono from a nightmare. I think those lines are keeping things in place until I try to ask someone out and am relieved when he says no so that I won't have to worry about drawing the lines in the right spot this time.

I realize this isn't staying behind the lines. And that I am so tired of redrawing those lines.

You hurt me. 

Lists

My life is governed by  lists.

I make a to-do list every single day, whether I'm at work or hanging out around the house. I make them on the weekends. I make them when I go on vacations. I write them down on legal pads, on scrap paper, on checklists on my phone. I get an incredible feeling of satisfaction from crossing things off the lists. I am uneasy when that to-do list still has all of its items listed on it at the end of the day.

I make immense lists of the books I want to read, the historical sites I want to visit, the films I need to watch, the pieces of writing I'd like to do. I keep these lists on my desk at work, with a photo of them on my phone so that if, say, I'm at the library and I can't decide on a book to check out, I can whip the list out of my purse and think Oh yeah, I never did read The Glass Key. Or, Oh God, what was I thinking? I'm never going to read Moby Dick and I have to come to terms with it.

I love lists.

***

This week I crossed something off my bucket list.

I haven't been great about what's on my bucket list. There are the big things I want to achieve: write a book about the Scopes Trial, go to Gettysburg, see The Royal Shakespeare Company perform Hamlet. But as far as the smaller things, things like "Seeing the Dred Scott Courthouse Site" don't occur to me until afterward. I've always wanted to see General Sherman's graveside, but it was never on the bucket list. More than that, I put a ton of things on the list that don't actually matter to me, but are reflections of . . . the people I'm dating? The friends I've made? I don't know, but they don't belong there. So usually when I "cross something off my bucket list" it's because I've decided that it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

This was not one of those. This was an actual ohmygodIcan'tbelievethatactuallyhappened moments. I'm pleased there's photographic evidence of it happening because I'd be tempted to think that I dreamed it otherwise.

I met my favorite author.

I've met a number of authors that I admire throughout the course of my life. It's the gift of going to a college that takes bringing in writers to talk about writing very seriously. I remember all of the questions I asked them, what they said to me as they signed my books. Sarah Vowell and I talked about the Kennedy assassination. I told Billy Collins my mother hated my poetry but loved his. I laughed so loudly from the second row of a David Sedaris reading that he shot me a look. 

This was different. It was, simply, too intense to describe. I can't even remember what this man said to me when I said hello and told him what I had to tell him. I can say that he was very, very kind to a sweaty, shaky, stuttery, earnest young woman. And that when I made it back out to my car I cried. And I walked away deeply grateful for this man and his work. 

When I got back to my bucket list on Tuesday afternoon I looked at it for a long moment before reaching out to scratch the item off. 

***

I feel like a failure. 

This week has been a messy, emotional one for me. In the space of seven days, I flew to St. Louis, attended one of my good friend's wedding, spent the 4th of July at the site where Dred Scott was tried, visited a ton of Civil War graves, flew back to Minnesota, met this author, came back up to the North Country and packed the rest of my house. I'm not complaining. It was a really good week.

But now that my entire life is in boxes, now that the internet has been disconnected, and my clothes have been sorted into vacation, second vacation, need after first move, can be stored until after second move suitcases, now that I've read literally all the books left in my house I find myself with a little too much time on my hands. 

Of course I would use that time for unproductive self-reflection. 

I feel like a failure. 

I confide this to exactly one person during the course of the week in a moment of profound vulnerability that I hate myself for later. 

***

I'm slinking out of the North Country.

I'll admit it. This place whupped me. The winters were too dark, too cold, too snowy. The summers (ha!) were brief and cool. The people were (with a few notable exceptions) distant. The goddamn roads have potholes that could take off your front wheel. 

When I moved here two years ago, I didn't know if it was permanent, but I anticipated leaving with some indications of success. A boyfriend (or at least, a relationship that lasted longer than my normal six months), a hugely successful professional tenure, I was going to write my book, figure out how to be a spiritually fulfilled adult without being Catholic, finally learn to play my harmonica . . .

I did not succeed here.

More than that, I suspect I could have succeeded here. I could have made this city work, these people open up to me. I could have adapted to snow and darkness and cold. I could have done it. I could have done it if I had gone to see a therapist earlier. I could have done it if I had started taking anti-depressants. I could have done it if I just learned how to be happy. 

But I didn't. I didn't accomplish any of those things on my North Country list. And now instead of leaving amid tearful going away parties, poetic break-ups, and enormously lucrative counter-offers, I am sneaking out of town with as little fanfare as possible. 

***

I feel like a failure. 

I feel like even more of a failure for opening up the way I did this week. For getting shaky and struggling not to cry while I said "This book saved my life." For admitting that this part of the country pushed me right up to the brink and left me mess that I've been slowly sorting out. For saying out loud "I couldn't make this work."

***

Somehow, despite never having added "Surround yourself with kind people" to a list, that is exactly what I've managed to do. When I stutter out what I want to say to the author he pauses and reaches out for my hand and lets me give him a hug. While I'm mentally slapping myself for admitting to failing here in the North, I receive a thoughtful, insightful response that burns me with its compassion.

I'm never going to be able to shake the habit of writing out lists for myself, like I'll never be able to stop measuring success by what I've managed to cross off. But I hope that I've finally managed to learn to put the right things on the list. 

Alone Awake

And still I know that love is never free.

It bows your head and bends your knees. 

-Dessa 

I'm never more grateful to be with someone than on Sundays.

Sunday is my favorite day of the week, the day that I guard fiercely. The week is for work and errands. Friday is for opening the pressure valve in whatever way. Saturday is for crossing things off the to-do list. Sunday is for doing nothing. It's for long, relaxing bike rides. It's for lazy Sunday brunches, coffee with the paper on the porch, lounging in your pajamas.

And being with someone on a Sunday? Well, it's a bit like that old song, isn't it?

This Sunday is both different and not different. This past week was emotionally vampiric and the weekend was wonderful and exhausting. I traveled over the weekend, as I've done most weekends lately. I saw a movie that was deeply satisfying on a level I didn't realize until much later. There was a live concert that has left my voice scratchy. There were irritations too, the inability to find an apartment, the lack of sleep for three nights running, but those were mild. And now they're being quietly soothed away.

It's a bit after 9:00 and we've just gone to bed. I'm wiped out from the weekend. He recognizes that while I came home happy today, my feathers were a little ruffled from too little sleep and too much socializing. I'm also just a touch nervous about what's coming down the pike for us. Whatever we're doing, we both know that it has an expiration date. We knew it when we met for that first game of Scrabble.

 Neither of us could possibly care less.

So we've set the alarms and have crawled into bed. It's hothothot, that sticky, damp, late summer heat that makes me glad I've recently cut off all my hair and anxious to move back north. It's too warm to sleep curled together, but he's reading to me from a historical fiction novel and slowly twining my curls around his fingers.  I make a tiny, quiet noise that's somewhere between longing and contentment and somewhere in my drowsy mind I think Iamtooyoungtoappreciatethismoment. And I am right. But for now, his voice reading quietly and his fingers in my hair are the last thing I know until the alarm beeps at 8:00 am.

'Cause I didn't come to play it safe.

I came to win or lose with you.

-Dessa 

What do you give up?

I can't stop asking myself that question lately. I ask it when deciding between a ten mile road race and a duathalon in September. I ask it when packing my suitcase, thinking about the lovely cool weather I'm leaving here in North Country.

I ask t it while I'm standing in the middle of a crowd at First Avenue, watching as one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite musicians takes the stage and brings the house down.

I wanted part of this essay to be about that show. And what it was like to see an artist I admire in a venue and a city I love, with people I treasure. And I think I could have written it, if I had not trusted the intervening 48 hours to help me solidify my thoughts on it. But the more I try to write about it, the more I am frustrated by the slipperiness of words and experience. 

I am a different person after the show.

It's sounds rather grandiose. Like you should automatically dismiss everything that comes before and after because the person writing is obviously the hysterical type, and cannot be trusted to give an accurate account of what happened. She's the worst kind of unreliable narrator.

Fuck off.

It is the purpose of good art, good writing, is it not? To squirm its way subtly into our heads and hearts. To hit us across the face with a two-by-four and change how we look at something. To quietly devastate us and leave us trembling and moved and profoundly, deeply different.

But there's no sword without an edge

And I sleep uneasily when you're not in my bed. 

-Dessa

What do you give up?

I ask it while watching my friends fall in love, thinking to myself what dreams, ambition, ideals are you giving up to be with this person? Are they worth it?

And do you ever really know?

I only live alone awake,

'Cause every night, yeah, you pass through. 

-Dessa

How can it be 8 am already?

It's the first thing that pops into my mind as I reach blindly for the alarm, quietly cursing and brushing my long hair our of my eyes. It's just there, under the fictionalized account of Thomas Cromwell's life that I fell asleep reading, which is just beyond the pillow I fell asleep wrapped around. I'm a little groggy, the result of an OTC sleeping pill and nearly twelve hours of deep sleep. But when I stumble out of bed, I'm smiling. As I'm getting ready for work I try to decide what possible significance July 1st can have that dropped me out of bed in such a good mood. It's the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg? No, that's not it. One week until I meet Neil Gaiman? Possibly,  but there's a lot going on between now and then. My impending trip to St. Louis? No, I've still got to pack and travel, that seems impossibly far off.

Fully dressed and humming an Etta James song to myself, I grab my keys and my work bag and head out the door. Whatever pleasant dream or memory was there in the moments before I woke up this morning, I'm in a good mood on a Monday. I'm not about to give that up.