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.