Chapter 34

You see, something more happened that day.

It was in artashat, a dusty town in souther Armenia, in the shadow of Mount Ararat. That purple, looming figure, defining a history. Ararat is the exact shape of Armenian pride.

I was only there for a few days. I went there on a tuesday morning.

I had been in Gyumri, the crumbled Monarch of the North. And that monday, we had to go down to Yerevan, to get our visas renewed. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, when all 5 of us that had gone through the Missionary Training Center together would reunite for the first time. We would take photos, and recount memories, and have our share our new experiences. Get a new sticker in our passport in the squiggly language of the forgotten land we were in. I had dreamt of that moment, when we all saw each other. We would forget past hurt, and be genuinely happy to see each other. I would still be the best speaker of the bunch. Thoughts of that reunion had kept me awake at night, distracted me from the silent insanity of living with Sister Smith.

Instead, I woke up that morning, sick. Double over in pain. By that point, we had switched apartments with the elders. We went to our old home, with 2 bedrooms and a bonus room bigger than the homes most families owned. I could barely stand. I layed on my old bed. The one furthest from the window – when you opened the door to the wardrobe, you could almost forget there was another bed in the room. I tried to every night, when I was companions with Sister Smith.

The bed used to be Annas. She couldn't sleep by the window. She told me why, after a few weeks.

They had told us that the transfer van would come at 8. So we spent the last few moments we had together, her stuffing every last memory into her suitcases, me sitting on my bed, crying. Before she moved her things into the hall, I had claimed the bed. “Looks like you're really going to miss me,” she said bitterly. If only she knew.

Those bastards showed up at 7:15. Knocked on the door. Anna panicked. They're not supposed to come yet! I'm not letting them come yet! She opened the door, let them in, and then, my favorite words that have ever left her lips came.

You said 8. Im not leaving till 8.

And she didn't. We sang our songs, and laughed, and took our time. You can't hurry eternity. I think Sister Smith recognized that she had to let this one be. They already had so much history. Something I wouldn't realize until later.

Finally, we sang the last song.

There can be miracles,when you believe

when hope is frail, it's hard to kill

who knows what miracles you can achieve

when you believe, somehow you will

now you will

you will when you believe.

After 2 months, I couldn't stand it anymore. Couldn't stand her anymore. When I finally felt useful, she'd cry. Tell me she felt like she wasn't doing good missionary work. I remember one morning, after a particularly brutal fight the night before, she sobbed in the shower. She felt alone. I hated her then.

She didn't care that I was sick. And so that morning, even though I shouldn't have gone, we went. And we stopped along the way, twice. Once to refuel. Once so I could be sick in a 3 walled outhouse on the side of the road.

And when we got to Yerevan? I was crying. Barely able to breathe. The reunion that had illuminated the growing darkness of my sickness was ruined, as I raced from the taxi, into the mission office, and into the bathroom.

I was in there for 30 minutes. And after that? I was convulsing in pain for another hour. No one was talking, or laughing, or reminiscing. They were all silent. At least they felt reverence for my pain.

In president's office, we faught. I told her that I hated her. That she didn't care.

That day, I didn't go home with her.

I found myself the unwitting companion of one of the calmest women I have ever met. My insides rushed with anger, and shame, and revulsion and pain, as she picked out fruit juices and bread at the local market. That day was one of the slowest of my life. Maybe her calmness should have calmed me. Helped me settle down. Instead, it incited a new wave of frustration.

The next morning, I found myself in Artashat. In one of the worst – smelling, dirties apartments in the mission. Where spiders hid in your suitcases, and cockroaches huddled under furniture. Where the ancient icebox was so encrusted with freezer burn that you could barely fit your hand it. It was greasy and dark and wooden. We lived like real armenians there.

In artashat, I saw a drunk man passed out in a thorn bush. I wanted to take a picture. Get a few close ups of where the thorns had caught and ripped his skin. He had drunk so much, he had slept through the pain.

She showed me where the old women sold spices. Where she had seen someone die. She showed me the playground. We walked streets cloudy with saffron dust. I laughed when I got to walk next to a cow. She's from the city, she explained. The man was confused why the animal that fed and provided for his family was funny. We walked those streets, talking to people, looking for anyone to teach. We found no one.

In armenian, there is a verb. Man Gal. It means to wander aimlessly. That's all we did in Artashat.

There was one woman. She only had a few teeth left. We met with her twice that short week. After I left she still prayed for me.

A man on the street told me I looked like the Mona Lisa. He made me pose for him.

And one morning, I woke up. And I knew it had to be different.

I had spent the night before as I spent so many in armenia, back and forth between the sorry excuse for a toilet and the sorry excuse for a bed. Moaning, praying for it to end. For Him to end me.

Just a little while longer, He told me that night.

I wrote down what happened that morning a long time ago.

March 21, 2008

We woke up, Sister Pew and I, and she took a shower first. She got out, and I had no towel because I had gone on a head scarf cleaning rampage for a few hours the day before, and our lack of dish towels had necessitated my using an actual towel – my actual towel – as a cleaning agent. I'm pretty sure Pew thought I was insane… I just raged back and forth, back and forth, carrying assorted random containers of hot or cold water. My favorite was the fact that I was wearing: 1) Gray sweatpants, 2) a slip, and 3) and undershirt over the slip. And then there was the green headscarf. Tied like a 50's housewife, all gathered on both sides. But anyway, long tangent for why I had no towel. So I got out of our shower, which has creepy dolphins on the shower curtain, and I put on my sweatpants and sweatshirt. And I was still sopping wet. But we got ready, I think we were listening to some bizarre banjo hymns. Sister Pew straightened her hair. Then we started studying. I was wearing my black crinkly skirt and my Geography T-shirt. I read in 3 nephi. Nothing sunk in. Then I read for our investigators. Nothing seemed to be entering my brain. I think it was already full. So I wrote the following:

"Do you think it would be poignant to note the end of the fight?

After years and years of open rebellion- sticking it to the man over and over again, the fight is gone.

Jump, Leah.

How high.

Sit, Leah.

Where.

Study, Leah.

Okay.

Are missions supposed to break your spirit? If so, then I've already learned my lesson.

So can I go home now?

Like the disobedient schoolgirl, who, after the extra hour of doing lines, goes home with a mind still set on mischief, I went out everyday, determined to do missionary work with my name attached to it.

But now I don't really even feel like my name belongs to me any more. Leah was a fiery, flirty teenager.

Sister Pettit doesn't even seem to fit anymore.

So if those don't fit, then who am I?

I've learned my lesson.

So do I continue for another year, like a horse whipped into submission? Carrying the burden of the very whip?

I suppose that this is what one would call a gradual emotional breakdown. And I'm pretty sure it's not over. But "no one should have to deal with this", right, mom?

You're right.

No one should have to deal with this.

So I won't make them.

After all, I am ridiculous, right?

Let's count the lashes.

President Bird – ever word out of that man's mouth stung.

The wounds never closed.

Sister Pettit, you are ridiculous.

I suppose alcohol cleans them, right?

My companionship with sister smith.

That was like burdens placed over the still- open sores.

Ilness. That's when the other horses, bridled though they may be, saw how much more my master hates me.

"Did you just come here so other missionaries would think you're special?"

So what if I did?

No one ever thought I was before. It'd be nice, for once.

I have no dignity.

I'm a joke.

People who don't even know me, think they do."

After I wrote that, I prayed. Prayed so hard. And I felt nothing. And I know God didn't leave me. I just also know that he needed me to make the choice of what to do next.

But what's funny is, I don't really feel like I did.

We talked about it in companionship study. Pew was lonely. Because I wasn't there. But when I was there, people made fun of me. I suppose I just didn't think it was worth it, anymore. I don't know. She got real quiet. Started getting pensive and such. She cried a little bit. And Pew doesn't cry. But then she wrote something. And I just felt like I was killing her. Like there was nothing I could do, but that my mere existence was making the pain I was feeling hers too.

And I couldn't handle that.

I just remember laying on the bed, and my hands went numb. Next my feet. I knew exactly what was happening; it's happened before. It's called a panic attack. Pulse rate at this point? 104. I checked. And Pew called president. I couldn't get myself to say anything to him. Then I got up and put on my jeans. Why?

Because I am ridiculous to everyone I meet. Because after only 3 months, I felt like it wasn't worth the comments anymore. Because I had taken the only person that I loved and trusted in the mission, and I had made her hurt. Hurt bad enough to cry. Why would I want to continue when all I do is make other people miserable?

At this point, I just know I tried to hug her. And she wouldn't. She had locked the door. I tried the balcony. Nothing was going to stop me from putting distance between me and her. NOTHING. Because I had hurt her enough. She got scared. Called the elders. Elders Schultz and Robinson. They came and waited outside the door. They heard her call President. They heard me beg. On my knees. With no dignity left. I begged for the keys. Every moment was torture. Because I know every moment I was there was just torture for her. They heard me try the balcony again. They heard me in my most pitiful, desperate state.

I wonder if God was crying with me. Or if he was looking at me in anger. Sick of me. Sick of having me do exactly what Satan wanted.

She said we were going. Called a taxi. 5 minutes. And then I lost control. I was shaking. I was not angry. I think I was shaking because I was in fight or flight. And for once- for once I picked flight. And I needed to flee. Because the desperation was killing me.

Pew was scared. I think she thought I was going to hurt her. I never would have. You couldn't force me to. Then I became more disgusted with myself. Because she was afraid. She was crying so desperately on the phone to President. He told her to let me out. Her eyes get brighter when she cries. She said "Oh my God."

I left. But then I realized I was leaving her alone. And I didn't want her to break the rules. So she let me call president. We made arrangements. We walked out together. I got in the taxi. I said I'm sorry so many times. She said she thought it was her fault. And then I couldn't forgive myself. I really couldn't. I don't think I ever will. Because I made Pew feel so awful.

She told me in a letter that she wrote the day she left Gyumri, that she knew I needed to keep trying. Keep fighting. That she didn't know why.

I remember looking out the back window of the taxi at her. I started crying. She looked so small. Little did she know that at that point, she was the only reason in the world.

I'm going home. Shameless and blameless, in the eyes of most.

And then there are those that know.

President Dunn.

Sister Dunn.

Elder Schultz.

Elder Robinson.

Sister Pew.

Me.

We know what really happened.

That I'm "sick".

And I am. I crap all the time, and my stomach feels like burning.

But that's not "sick". I'm sick, but them I'm "sick".

The kind of sick that they used to sterilize people for. I don't know. So they wouldn't pass it on.

So did I void my priesthood blessing from Elder Harrison? Can I not finish here now because of what I did yesterday morning? Did I give in? Did Satan win? Is it over? And if it is, then why does it still hurt so much?

I'm not what God wanted me to be. And on top of that, I'm going to have to pay for how much pain I caused Sister Pew.

It just seemed so much more poignant, the last time around. We cried, she left, but we were still decent people.

Now Sister Pew has a story to tell. And if she was like everyone else I know, she would. And that would be the end of me. But she's not. And it's our secret. And someday, maybe, I can call her on the phone, and say that I know I hurt her. But that it's okay then. But as for right now, I can't even be alone with myself for two minutes. Because I made someone hurt. I can't handle it.

As for right now, my bags are packed. My last outfit picked out. Never would have thought I would wear that my last day in Armenia.

And I'm just dramatic. Maybe I'll be back in a few weeks. A few months. But it will never be the same. Because even though Pew is still on my side, I doubt she'll ever want to serve with me again.

Or live with me.

Or see me.

Except at Disneyland. Because that's the happiest place on earth.

So maybe the whole "thinking we were meant to be friends" thing was just wishful thinking on my part. Because if I was her I would get myself as far away from her as possible.

Or maybe, just maybe, she feels the same way about me as I feel about Stooph.

And if that's the case, then I know what she feels. I would die for stooph. I thank God for every second we were together. I want nothing more than to spend my life finding reasons to serve her. And I don't know, maybe the fact that Pew suffered so much for me means she feels a little of what Christ feels.

Maybe it was a good thing.

Half the time I'm fine with it.

And then there are the times that my blood feels like pulsing acid. That I just hurt so bad because I know I hurt her so bad.

I suppose I'm trying to be all poignant and stuff. But I'm just a spaz. Take it or leave it.”

Chapter 33

Let's call things what they are.

Because while it may not seem like much, saying it's real name brings so much more meaning.

I was lounging on the almost new loveseat across from him; he kept changing positions. As if he couldn't get comfortable. To be honest, it was probably the conversation more than the couch. On my end, I was tearing off the layers of emotional baggage, exposing the average nudity underneath. Once all the baggage is gone, people are pretty much the same. His end was more of philosophical meanderings with a destination somewhere close to my soul. He didn't expose much.

But me?

I was letting it all out. I was finally telling someone of my percieved shame. I would call it an emotional striptease, but there was nothing tantalizing about it. I was stark naked. Twirling, arms in the air, pointing out my flaws. There are so many truths that came out that night.

I wonder if he knows what he witnessed. If he even cares. If it stopped being appealing because it was that primitive. The documentaries of half-naked natives, whose exposed flesh ceases to attract the carnal and sensual simply because it is so haphazard. Attraction has nothing to do with baring it all, but how temptingly you cover it up.

Call it what it is: an emotional breakdown, followed by a mental breakdown.

It's like I can't actually emotionally connect to experiences before that day. I picture my synapses as threads of hardened sugar candy, that snapped. You can't repair those. So all the emotional pathways I had created before my mission were gone – I physically could not come to the same conclusions. And so there I was, as empty a slate as a newborn, in the body of a 21 year old.

If I had known that, I would have been more careful. Expected less of myself. But I couldn't understand why everything was so empty, and the only emotions I could feel were taught to me by the few days that followed.

Desperation. So hungry or tired that you would scratch and claw at your own face for a morsel of food, a quiet place to rest your head. I was starved at that point. Physically, spiritually, emotionally starved. I was in my last moments fighting for life.

Shame. I learned that one from President Pace. As he told me all the reasons I had to be ashamed of myself. That I had “improved”. That my lack of resistance was the most admirable quality he had seen in me. He kept me in his office for 2 hours. Forced me to reveal things I barely remembered. Interpreted my statements in the way he chose. Chopping me up, adding my bloodied remains to the tens of others he destroyed.

Confusion. God told me that all was well. He kept telling me, over and over again. I was so confused why he would tell me that when His representative was claiming the opposite. Confused why I couldn't find the door to my room, that night I woke up in agony. I was in the downstairs bedroom, surrounded by bookcases full of children's books. I sat up, running for the bathroom as the disease tore my stomach apart. But the door wasn't where it should be. All I could find were the broken spines resting on the shelves Well worn companions from a childhood forgotten and meaningless. I called out for her, over and over again, betrayed when she didn't answer. I thought her patience had finally expired.

Eventually I remembered. I remembered that I had left that place, where she would come running when I called. I found the doorknob and hurried into the bathroom. I would have given anything to be back in that tiny apartment, where I could find her next to me. I wouldn't even mind the cockroaches. They would be welcome companions, if only I weren't so lost in what used to be my home.

My dad and I drove to Utah together, supposedly for a weekend, and I ended up staying. I slept on couches, floors, under trees. I lived as a homeless vagabond for a week. I was so used to walking, I would just spend my days wandering the streets of Provo, mumbling to myself. There was no one else to talk to. And when there was, I didn't have anything to say. Eventually I moved into a tiny house on 600 East. The old house where Maureen used to live.

I remember the late nights in Armenia; I would picture what it would be like when I was finally done with my mission. When I had finally fulfilled my commitment. In those sunny dreams, those glittery fantasies, there was one thing that was always consistent.

I was never alone.

But reality never is as you project it to be. The future never glitters as much when it becomes the present.

I've spent almost 3 years cowering behind my percieved inferiority. Filling only the most trusting silences with my story. I convinced myself that my breakdown makes me less worthwhile, weaker, and unworthy. That everything I have and am is a miracle after that kind of shame.

I stand tall now. I don't hide. I unabashely and unashamedly declare what I should have known for so long.

My descent into mental illness is one of my most proud posessions.

So lets call it what it is. Mental illness. A mental breakdown. Post traumatic stress.

Because there is no shame in letting the world break you. There is only shame if you don't let the people who love you put you back together.

Chapter 32

Becca and I had an immediate connection. The kind of connection that didn't require us telling our long stories.

Those come later, she says.

Honestly, Becca is just one of those people who does everything backwards and upside down. And then you realize that the world is more beautiful from that angle. Softer. Glowing. Maybe it's that wrong and backwards is actually right and frontwards. Or maybe it's just because all the blood is rushing to your head and you can't see straight anymore.

With Becca, you are who you are. No apologies, no exceptions. She brings out the most genuine in all that surrounds her. Human truth serum. I think I could create a thriving perfume business if I could just bottle her. Retire at the ripe old age of 30 with millions of dollars to spare. You see, there is something unassuming, warm, and malleable about her. She makes you more of you. Because she is all of herself.

They're best friends. And its creepy, he says. The man with either the best or worst timing in the world. He seems to find me only in my specific moments of weakness. Specific because those are my only emotional moments. And he has witnessed them all.

That first meeting, she wore green. Man, can that girl rock green. Not the kind of green that I can rock – the springtime-olive that redheads can pull off and blondes can try, but the bright green that only looks good on black girls. And Brazilians. For me, when there is a new woman admitted to a group I already know, my instincts take over. I have to sniff her out. I'm usually suspicious, consistently stereotyping, and constantly unforgiving. This is my group, I have already placed the people in it into mental pens; animals in a zoo. The dangerous stay near my forehead; if they do anything reckless, they can be easily disposed of. Pulled out from between my eyes and cast aside. The gentler towards the spine; they can be trusted to be nearer to my cerebral cortex. They would never intentionally cause harm. The few to which I am indifferent. They just exist. They come, they leave, and I barely notice. Is that bad?

Anyway, back to the story at hand. I walked in, and I saw a new face. Correction: I saw a new back of the head. All I knew is that it was female, it was attractive, and I was having none of it. I walked in determined to place her in either the first or last categories – hopefully the last. I was hoping she would be able to be overlooked. I don't know if it was that day or the next, but it wasn't too long after that she nestled herself not anywhere in my brain, but in the random and select few that actually take up a space in my heart.

You see, scientists have done studies. Well, that's a given. But they've done studies specifically on the size of our brains and the amount of people about whom we care. According to said “scientists”, humans are capable of having significant interaction with around 150 people. We have, on average, about 12 close associates about whom we actually care. This is why we can read about genocide and feel a slight twinge of sadness, and yet, when someone we have personally met undergoes a tragedy that pales by comparison, we feel it deeply. I like to think of the former group, the 150, as the brain- friends. The ones that hold a place somewhere within my skull, sunken into grey matter, interrupting my synapses and re-routing them so that I actually care. The 12? Those are my heart friends. The ones that either find themselves unwittingly burrowed into a ventricle or atrium. Snuggled into the lining somewhere, sometimes totally isolated from the others that have found their way in, sometimes nearer to the others. My life blood flows around them, rapidly warming and comforting them in the truth and simplicity which only those 12 can see. There is nothing really unique or special, I have a heart just like anyone elses.

After everything with Stooph and the MTC, there was a gaping hole. Anna just kind of tripped and fell in. My heart was the whale shark, she was the collateral plankton. No, because she wasn't the usual or expected. She was the humuhumunukunukuapua'a. The surprise color, the color and taste and feel of substance, after so many microscopic usuals passed by.

Cami? She somehow punched and kicked and found her way in. When I picture what that looked like, it looks like this; its as if she found a hold that she could fit all the way through, until she got to her sizable chest. And then she just got stuck. And so I had to choose to let her the rest of the way in. It took some time.

Men rotate in and out. It's quite painful when they pass. It blocks the life – blood from flowing. It stops me from processing anything for a while. But then it passes. It never really changes anything. They come. They go. They float. Sometimes they almost become heart people; almost, but not quite.

Becca just kind of found her way in through my ears, and from there into my brain. Soon, she entered my bloodstream. Bit by bit. And when each little bit got to my heart, it held on. Attached itself to the soft, fleecy lining. Wrapping itself up, before I even realized what was going on. By the time I did realize? There was too much of her there to prevent it. Not that I would have. She is all too rare to push away. How is it that men are so stupid? That she isn't being swarmed by eligible, wealthy bachelors at all times? The point is, she came slowly. She came in fragments. She came as willingly and unpretentiously as I received her. Parts of her still remain in my brain, the long stories I guess. Those things we don't actually need to know about each other. She is a wonder and a gem no matter what she has done and who she has been.

You are a beautiful writer, and a beautiful person, she tells me. Sometimes I feel like I need to apologize. For being what I am. I tried with her. She disregarded it, my apology, but not because she doesn't care. Because she sees it as superfluous and unnecessary. She understands. Quickly.

Chapter 31

Too many people, with too many connections, with too many signs. Life is what you make it,. And I choose to let this pass.

Every day, I leave my condo. Early, when it's still dark. I look across the street, and see the well-lit stairs. The over- watered lawn. The door, crouching in the shadows. The dormant memories. You see, they are not dead. They had far too much life to ever die. My immortal heartache.

Leaning on his car, in that parking space, behind that lawn, at the top of those stairs, he told me he loved me. We spent night after night on my blanket, looking at the stars and talking. Kissing. Basically it was a 3-week long oxytocin fest. We came so close to what we were looking for. Well, to be honest, I found it. He didn't. He must not have.

I wish I could say that I have stopped thinking about him. That I've counted his flaws and seen the light. I wish I could say that I don't secretly wish that he'd drop her and come back to me. People say love is worth fighting for. I say I don't want to have to fight for it. He has made his decision. He chose her. Who am I to tell him he chose wrong?

My name is Victoria Hart, I served my mission in Armenia and Chicago, and there's nothing interesting about me, what you see is what you get.

I thought that would suffice. That way I could avoid any questions. People seem to think that I have no feelings. That I can take it. Trevor decided to throw his two cents in.

She dated my roommated and he broke her heart.

My honest gut reaction was to chuck my purse at him. He has a heart problem that prevents him from using his hands very often. So guess who immediately became the villain? Nevermind the fact that he had just aired my 2-year old emotional baggage to the world, tossing the tiny fragments of my heart into the wind – shattered crystal. Dried breadcrumbs. As I sat there, I felt my face get hot. I felt my eyes fill up. I felt all eyes awkwardly shift from me. The first hot tear trickled down my face, and I tried not to notice. It burned as it slipped from one freckle to the next, playing a bitter game of pinball. I got up to leave.

Do you know what it's like to realize you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? That the decisions you made, thinking it would make you happy because it made others happy, is what brought you to the pitiful realization that your life has ended up too far down a road it never should have gone? Do you know what it feels like to trace all your uncertainties, mistakes, and unhappiness to one decision, one moment?

I do.

Do you know what it's like to regret something that was supposed to be the best decision of your life? To loathe a tradition that makes most proud and reminiscent. To constantly roll that most cursed and bitter of phrases around in your brain – what if? Like butterscotch candy in your mouth. It creates a film on the mind. A sticky coating of doubt, self-loathing, increasingly weak conviction. What if I hadn't have gone back? Is he worth losing all the people I met?

I've tried to move on. But it always takes me by surprise.

In a sushi restaurant, a birthday dinner for an old mission companion. Someone raves about how fun he is.

In a mexican restaurant with total strangers from Carlsbad. Do that many people REALLY serve in Thailand?

How about when he is perpetually there, posting about how wonderful his girlfriend is?

It's been a year and a half for them. Seriously, shit or get off the pot. If you're not moving to the next step, then something is broken. Or maybe I just want it to be.

I wonder if I will ever feel as strongly about anyone as I did with Mike. Maybe that was my once in a lifetime.

And I know I should be playing Aretha Franklin songs, dating plenty of attractive men, talking about he just doesn't know what he's missing. But the problem is.... he does. And so do I.

I woke up on that morning in Bloomingdale, Illinois and I knew it was coming. It was one of those fateful days. The ones that change your life without warning and without permission. And they always start out the same way – quiet, calm and normal. The quiet before the storm. I say I knew it was coming, and I did.

That day, I got a letter. It had the familiar scribble in the upper left hand corner; letters over the past 6 months had made the hurried finishing touch almost endearing. And even though I knew what this letter was, the emotional time-bomb it contained, and even the reaction it would catalyze, I left in on the table. I went about my business, getting ready to go back to work after the 9 hours of rest you're allowed as a missionary. It sat on the table, taunting me. Glaring at me. Daring me to unleash it.

When I read the letter, I was numb. That is the honest truth. I felt nothing. Not regret, not heartache, nothing. Just a tingling throb in my chest that helped me realize that I was still alive. It was as if I had fallen asleep on my heart, and the feeling was slowly coming back to it. And the pain, when it came? It wasn't sharp. It was a throbbing, hot pain. Searing even. Each beat of my heart would cause a new wave of pain – reverberating through the core of me, exiting at my extremities.

This is one of my long stories.

Chapter 30

Unless you're Stooph.

Red leggings, black and white checkered t-shirt, green cardigan. She's the only person I know that can wear whatever she wants and get away with it. No one even sees it as odd. Only asians can do that. Asians and Stooph.

When she talks about that summer, or more specifically how it ended, she calls it “when I got my liver transplant”, or “when I was in the hospital”. I guess I would too. Suicide is such a loaded word. When you say it, the room polarizes immediately. A macro-molecule. Like water. Two thirds positive, one third negative. Two hydrogen molecules, as the majority of the room thinks you're kidding. The other third know better. The word brings back those images they've tried so long to suppress – more often of friends in despair, unconcious and dying in secret corners, familiar places, sterile hospital rooms. Sometimes their memories are of waking up, connected to machines and tubes, barely remembering the desperation that got them there. Just like a molecule of water, the negative minority and the positive majority somehow balance out. There is no positive ignorance in the world that could counterbalance, one for one, the accidental knowledge of true pain. It's not that we're better. Or smarter. Or wiser. It's just that circumstances have forced us to face a part of reality that no one should ever have to face.

It affects you more than you like to admit. It lasts years. She's the only exception to that rule.

That sunday morning, we went out to breakfast at a little cafe in St. George. She compartmentalized 3 years of wondering, pain, and excuses in less than a minute. A powerful encapsulation of experience.

If I hadn't moved into the white house, I would never have gotten my liver transplant, and I would never have known that I wanted to be a nurse.

The simplicity of that statement made me realize how much time I had wasted telling and retelling her story, centering it around me and not around her. How I suffered. How I helped. How it scarred me. What of her? What of the pain she felt – enough to take such drastic measures. And as I looked over my muffin at her, I stopped seeing what I had forced her to become, and saw her as what she really is.

I wonder what she sees when she looks at me.

In St. george, the rocks bleed.

When I visited, I bled too. If you know where to look, you could find my emotional DNA everywhere in that small town.

The seafood buffet. Since I can remember, I've been afraid of crab and lobster. They look like giant sea spiders. That night, I learned to rip their legs from their bodies, crack their legs, and pull out the meat. And I learned that fighting your fears, and just doing it, is delicious.

The fountain. It was just like the summer of 2007. Me and stooph, throwing care to the wind, tearing down expectations and presuppositions, and just playing in the fountain. Like children. Or dogs.

The pool. Where I stripped off all the false pretenses I carry around, and I just let the sun burn it all away. I placed it out, exposing my lies, and let it deteriorate naturally, not corrupting anything, like a Zoroastrian grave. When one of their loved ones die, they place their body on a tower and let the sun eat it away. They believe that the decomposing body of their once beloved companion will corrupt the ground it buried, the fire if burned, the water if sent out to sea. Only the sun can properly purify their bones. All that is left is the basic structure, lying peacefully, alone, atop a sacred pillar. That day, as my skin glowed under the desert sun, I understood why they believe the sun has such cleansing powers. Why so many ancient societies worshipped it. Him.

I wish I could photosynthesize, I told her. I was lying in the shallow riverbed, allowing the fresh snowmelt to pass quickly over me, smoothing me like one of the rocks. These memories come back fuzzy – as if someone has poured melted butter all over them. Rich and fragrant. Every day after school, she and I would go on an adventure. We would race down the kiddie slides at seven peaks. We would drive up Spanish Fork canyon, finding river snakes and smooth stones. Finding ourselves; separate and together. We never really talked about anything important, but we shared so many important things. Quality time.

One time, we got pulled over just as I was changing into my bathing suit top. I frantically tied the strings as the officer came strutting up on her side of the car. Do they take you to jail for indecent exposure?

Those memories are like percaset. Lortab. They make my joints feel fuzzy. They make my head swim. On the outside, it was summer carelessness, partial nudity and sunburn. On the inside, I wonder what it was. If it was anything.

One time, I hurt my knee. On crutches, it was hard to get from place to place – my once carefree morning stroll to work became a chapped, chaffing, dangerous commute. Every morning, she would pack my backpack for me. She would take me to work, and then pick me up and take me to school.

There are places here that reek of my rotting naivety. That ooze raw emotion from festering, unhealed wounds. The leprosy of the soul, contracted from too many mistakes. Too much regret. Trying to convince yourself that those purple and black, flesh eating wounds are just a passing terror. That there is too much left for them to consume it all.

I''m so tired of being here

suppressed by all my childish fears

and if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave

cause your presence still lingers here

and it won't leave me alone

these wounds won't seem to heal

this pain is just to real

there's just too much that time cannot erase

My car rumbled beneath me, a detached muffler. My speakers came alive, speaking the words of the prayer for which I'd been searching. It found the words.

I held your hands for all of these years

but you still have all of me...

I tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone

but though you're still with me

I've been alone all along

Ashamed of my own emotions. Ashamed that I'd finally found the words to describe how I feel about God. I have been sitting in my own putrid nest, waiting for someone to come and feed me the phrases, already chewed and partially swallowed. And it was a wednesday. At first I thought that it spoke to me of her – of the damage that time had left on me. And then I realized it was speaking of Him.

Chapter 29

And then there was Cameron. If you say his name with just the right accent, it sound like the word for shrimp in spanish. I always felt weird eating the seafood soup people would make for us; I was consuming my zone leader. His last name is Dyal. So I felt even weirder using his soap-namesake. Let's not talk about that.

Cameron is calm. Calm in a way that I would normally find frustrating, but with him, it's different. He is the king of the understatement, the Tsar of self-sufficiency. He is who he is, and he makes no excuses for it. With Cameron, you don't have to know the long stories to understand why he acts the way he does. The rest of us live our lives, excusing ourselves based on what we consider negative and positive experiences. Letting situations act upon us, and not actually taking responsibility for the way we act. Not Cameron.

“How did you do it?”

“I decided before I even came here, that for 2 years, I wasn't going to let anything bother me. And it hasn't.”

With him, it happened innocent. As if it were new to both of us. With my family in San Francisco, he talked to me. He payed attention to me. We laughed, we touched, we played. When he came to utah? It was like a summer film. We drove up the road I had driven up with so many other men, laughing and joking. Four of us – Alfredo and his sister were there too. We swam in the lake, fighting the currents and waves as they tried to thrust us painfully on the rocks. To be honest, if I had resisted Cameron, or not allowed it to happen, I would have been resisting the current.

That day was magical. And I don't mean that in a cheesy romantic comedy kind of way. I mean the combination of light refracting through the water, and my pink hair, and watching as he admired me – it just reacted. The combination any career chemist is looking for – not explosive, but warm. Pulsing. That day he called me a mermaid. He made me a crown of seaweed and a bowstaff of driftwood. It was then I knew; at least for now, he's hooked. He sees me as regal, strong, and beautiful. The viking mermaid, he said.

I beat him at leg wrestling, That seems insignificant, but I promise that its not. I beat him at the stick wrestling as well. So that sunday, when I drove up to lehi, I knew that something was up. How can I pay you for that? He asked. We concluded that he would scratch my back. As the night progressed, I taught him my feelings on reciprocity. And it was during this vocabulary lesson that I discovered something. When I would run my fingernails down his arm, the closer I would get to his hand, the more his hand would reach in the direction of my own. Like magnets. Polarized nuggets that can't actually help the attraction to one another. When he held my hand, I got butterflies. The kind that I hadn't gotten.... well, since mike. Those americans – I'll tell you. They get you fast.

When we walked me to my car, there was something neverending, yet something final about it all. He opened my door. He was kind. In a way that I am not used to. Now let me tell you something about Cameron. He is INCREDIBLE. I've never experienced anything like it. I can't really even explain it. It's as if he had spent years studying my particular anatomy and desires, and had catered his own technique entirely to it. He knew what he wanted, like Pablo. HE went for it. He was gentle but firm. He could have forced me to stay, but he never would. He took charge, but let me have my way. Best of all? He BIT me. Not in a creepy vampire-fetish kind of way, but gently – extremely sensually. The chemistry was silent but present – heat.

It's gone slowly downhill sine then. If he really wanted it to happen, it would happen. But he is not pursuing anything. At least not in a way that I understand or respond to. Senescence. That is what it is. IT bloomed, it's changing, it will die. Just like everything else.

The world has a life cycle. I have a life cycle. My sexual exploits have a life cycle. There are the times when I am catnip to their feline senses of smell. Then there are the times when my catnip is as effective as if those felines suddenly transformed into canines.

I feel like I'm boring you, I say.

I'm just really tired, he mutters from over 3000 miles away. He's tired. I almost want to tell him I know what he means. Sometimes what you don't say become more significant than the things you do say.

Let's just put it this way; if he wanted to be, Cameron could be my perfect man. He is calm and happy. He makes me calm and happy. But I am not what he wants.

If you want me to stop feeling like this, I can, I told him. From 3,000 miles away. Emotion doesn't experience distance decay. When he was next to me, kissing me, smiling, I felt the same butterflies as when he would play his guitar for me from florida. He kissed me while she waited for him there. I became that girl.

I've just had a hard time with girls recently.

“I'm not girls!”, my heart screams. I'm girl.

I have a tendency to think I'm different. Special. Everyone's special, he says.

Which is a way to say that no one is.