My mom still has a dozen roses that my dad gave her over 20 years ago. She keeps the wilted, brittle petals in a glass jar. They look like they would crunch like dead leaves under a shoe. But I guess they are just dead leaves.
The divorce was nearly a decade ago. In a few years she will have had the roses for an equal amount of time while together and while separated. She says she doesn’t know why she can’t get rid of the roses. She asks me if she should. I shrug, then say no.
These days I find myself being more earnest and uselessly sincere than I have ever been. And still I lie when asked how I am doing. This – for once – is not an issue of vulnerability, but rather one of politeness, and convenience. Sympathies take time. And I do not find myself interested in them anyway.
I was left about two years ago now. I’ve filled my time – but I still feel the phantom weight of stagnation. Maybe because I haven’t felt distinct since then. In the time before I remember that it was cool in the early morning. I remember that the boundary of my body felt discrete from the boundary of the world. I remember that I felt less like an open wound.
There’s a town in Alaska that sticks out into the water on a spit. It’s a tourist trap in the summer, but the winter leaves no more than a handful of people. Seals and bald eagles fill up empty space. I’d throw half-frozen chunks of fish into the air and watch as the birds swooped down and snapped their beaks closed.
There are a lot of things that I should’ve done differently. I used to fantasize about starting my life over knowing everything I know now. It was an engaging way to experience regret.
My mouth tastes wrong. My dog is barking in her sleep. She does it with her mouth closed, and they come out like little yelps. Sometimes she startles herself awake with her own closed-mouth barks.
My hair is soft when I run my hand through it – I linger at the nape of my own neck, where the hair is thin and the skin is also. My neck cracks when I turn my head a fraction of a degree. I do not see anything when I close my eyes other than crisscrossing strips of light.
It’s cold – I know that much. My fingers feel it, my nose feels it. Despite the cold, I feel myself beginning to sweat.
I feel spring-loaded, like my insides have been twisted into a coil. I want someone’s fingers at the point where the hair and the skin is thin. And more than most things, I miss feeling solid.
Back then I wanted everyone to know, for some reason, that I had a right to be hurting as much as I was hurting. Like, look at what she did! She did things that would reasonably hurt someone! So it’s okay that I am so upset by this. It wasn’t enough for me to feel the hurt; I had to be justified in feeling it, too.
And then last night my mom caught me in the middle of tears. She didn’t scold me. She rubbed my back and ran her fingers through my hair and tried to convince me that I have the capacity to make a difference in my line of work, however obscure the difference may be.
Too much time. My hands are sticky with it, and all my words do is meander. I have nothing to say, have never had anything to say, and for that there is nothing to notice. Not even the sound of car tires as they coast over wet pavement; not even the humming of the heating system. A dying plant. A loose wire hanging from the ceiling. I can’t even look out a window unless I crane my neck – and even then, all I see is a sliver of dark, leafless trees against a gray sky. In two days it will be a new year, and I have very little to say for it.
That sinking feeling that I hate so much. The one that comes when you make a mistake. The anxiety, the shame. But have I made a mistake? Is there something that I’m meant to regret about all this? The only answer I can find is the notion of wasted time.
Too much time, but I need more of it. Time for myself. Time to get over the shame.
My mom tells me in idle conversation that she doesn’t hate my father. I think of the roses.