7/7 - sense memory

Tuesday Newsletter: an essay sparked by the summer heat

There’s something about reflections of the same, the foil on the window, the fear of losing it all.

Juxtaposed to the brave new choices.

The power gained from facing new fears.

The hard work and a fresh life.

The freedom of knowing most of their opinions are obsolete, crass, nothing more than a nerf gun’s stray dart.

I am a mosaic of reflections and new things.

I used to think of it all as linear, as a narrative.

Here’s the plot and here’s the twist.

I was born in what was once a small town in Texas. The dirt roads have long since been paved over, cul de sacs pulled tight over fields of hay. I had parents that did their best but left wounds. Counting beer cans and watching Arthur were afterschool activities. I excelled at the school activities too, throwing myself into a world of rules and schedules and uniforms that made us all look the same. This was where the first split happened. Then I grew up and built a runway off of generous donations thinking I was going to save all the people I’d never met. But all of the “out there” splintered into something else.

I had to choose.

What was more real?

I chose both.

I chose safety.

I died a little at the choices.

I made secret fractures in the mosaic. I moved to New York. We’s became I’s. I grew out of the backstory, I became alive.

And it did happen that way.

But it wasn’t neat and the patchwork is still there. All of the realities, all of the memories broke into smaller pieces, mixing with the present, informing it. They don’t always make sense. I’m confused when the wind off the East River feels like driving with the windows down on the long way back from dropping off the water bill.

Or when I call my dad and he asks about my job. He says the things a dad should say. I feel like his daughter.

Or when I hear “God is good” and words from my mother slip from my lips: “all the time.”

They tumble out, a sense memory. The vocal cords slapping together, a ricochet from the past.

The hot July night with an orange hue and oppressive heat brings the folds close. Like holding two mirrors at a 90 degree angle, light bouncing back and forth, images looking back at each other. It makes me remember everything that once was has a heartbeat in the now.

As a child, I feared summer nights.

Not all of them.

I liked the fireflies and sheet lightning. I liked letting the Blue Bell rocky road soften on the counter. I liked the sound of the frogs and cicadas when I ran to grab something from the car, galloping off the porch and landing in the lush grass, before the August sun grew too loud and scorched its roots. Chin tilted skyward, I’d locate Orion’s Belt, the Little Dipper, squinting to see if the man in the moon changed his expression. Alone with the stars and night sounds, I wasn’t afraid.

But there were times when a dull ache crept in with the elongated shadows, slicing through the blinds, eeking through the gap between the frame and the door. It was an energetic cramping, the days were long-spent, tired of running.

“It feels weird, do you feel that too?”

I’d ask my mother. She didn’t know what I was talking about.

She couldn’t feel the time slippage like ink blots, spilling over my cheeks.

I was afraid I was trapped. I was afraid it would always feel like laying on the dirty beige carpet waiting for Golden Girls to come on at 11. I didn’t care for the programming, white hair, laugh track, I kinda loathed it, but everyone’s eyes shut when their theme song played. And it would just be me.

The loneliness felt easier when I was the only one awake.

During the summers, when my parents let me stay home by myself, I found ways to lengthen the time I could be lonely and alone. I’d wake up at 2 pm and go to sleep at 5 am. I didn’t speak much. I lived through the romcoms I’d stream on Netflix while I rationed Nature Valley bars in my room. I was depressed but I didn’t have words for it. I was anorexic but my body was the one thing I could control.

I got taller, got a job, got a license, and the dull ache loosened its grip. I changed clothes, eyebrows, friends, surroundings.

Hiding from the thing that scares you doesn’t make it go away. I was afraid of my father and his temper. I was afraid the things he said were true. I was afraid of wanting more. I was afraid I would never get out.

Fear, more than anything else, is the home I hate the most.

That’s one of the fragmented mirrors in the mosaic, shining outward. It turns normal shadows into a rorschach test. My second nature is temperature testing.

Last week, I heard the eerie strings begin to play. I was alone. It was hot. It was all right there. Brittle. Suffocating.

But I’ve added to the mosaic, the portrait, landscape, abstraction, whatever you want to call it. I’ve chipped away, painted over the borders, hot glued new visions onto the base.

I know enough now.

It will pass. Its grip will lessen.

Security is no longer a blanket but a mandate and there is power in dictating how much time fear gets to sit at the table.

She’s still with me, the girl laying on the dirty carpet, memorizing infomercials, but she’s no longer counting beer cans or hiding behind the blinds. She did a good job keeping me safe back then.

Now, I get to show her a life overrun with courage and wild curiosity that touches the tender corners.

I may feel fear.

I may want to run to a dark room and pray for it to stop.

And sometimes I do.

But now I use this sense memory as information - what do I care for with such fierce abandon that my instincts are coming to the rescue?

What old reflections are transposing themselves on new shadows?

I thought love was an obligation of blood and security

of sacrifice and wounds

a hydraulic press

turns out it’s a doorway.