T.J. Who - And her memories...

I’ve been watching Samantha Who? on Netflix and it has led my mind right into marathon mode. Racing around and around about what life would be like to lose memories. It’s horrible to think of it, really. To lose all of our memories. Every moment that made you laugh until your face hurt and landed you with the hiccups. Every moment that you felt so loved and so overjoyed because of how something or someone made you feel. To lose each moment your chest fluttered after someone special looked through your eyes and into your soul. To lose every thought of how someone touched your skin and your spine danced like fireworks down to the very bottom of your back. To never remember how it felt to be held by someone who loves you while you cried. These are life. Memories are everything we are. Everywhere we’ve been. Everything that helps us remember where we want to return, and everywhere we want to hide away from for every day.

They are what make me smile when I smell the purple teen spirit deodorant that I used when trying out for (and not making, boo hoo hoo) cheerleader in the 6^th grade.

It’s what makes my heart flutter, still after all these years, when I smell this specific cologne (that I don’t even know the name of) that reminds me of one of my first boyfriends, Matt McClusky.

It’s these moments in mental stone that make me giggle when thinking about the nervousness that once choked me about having to hold a boys hand at the movies and not knowing if my hand was going to feel right or if it was going to be all wrong.

It’s what makes me feel energized and special when I hear the song “I Drove All Night” by Celine Dion, because it was the first song she sang at her concert and it was oh so good! It makes me feel energized because I was so excited and it makes me feel special because the ticket was really expensive and as I sat there, all alone, (among thousands of others but no one I knew anyway) I realized how special I was to my Mom for her to have been that happy just to get to send me to her concert even though she couldn’t go and isn’t really even a huge fan of Celine’s like I am.

Memories are what make my heart smile when I hear the song “Lean Like a Cholo” because it reminds me of a flood of memories, all connected to my best friend, Crystal.

These special past thoughts are what make me feel so elated when I see a Pit Bull because I am immediately overcome by Bryant’s licks and whimpers and sad and happy faces and pounds of food and water demolished and kindness right by my side when he knew something was wrong.

It’s the memory of songs from Junior High, that were THE songs to dance to at each party, that always made me feel like anything could happen and that everyone was born to fall in love.

It’s the color scheme of Black/White/Pink or Turquoise/Brown that takes me to times that I was honored to stand at the front and be witness to three of my very closest friends, my family, committing their hearts and their lives to someone among flowers and table cloths and ribbons of these colors.

Memories are what make me remember all the times I watched, heart in throat, breath at a whisper, while my brother played basketball so beautifully nothing else mattered in the whole world in those moments. These memories are everything that was important in my childhood. These memories are all things beautiful in Ben. The memories are what make me cry as my mind barely brushes across the half court, game winning shots, and his suave smiles when I know somewhere inside he must have been terrified, and the just misses and the unfair calls and free throws that rolled just in and then come out that made for heart breaking ends to such enthusiastic beginnings. They are what remind me, after everything that came between us in the following years, that for those moments our desires were completely intertwined and he will never know how much his basketball meant to me. He’ll never know how his games were the one thing that I could lose myself in completely and forget the torture and torment of being the misfit that I didn’t know how to love being. He’ll never know how I stood behind that post at the Nome Gym and cried when that shot went in, making him everyone else’s hero at that moment too. He’ll never know, but my memories are what remind me of this and I can’t breathe when I think of losing them.

It’s my Mom’s memories that are the only thing that keep my Dad alive for me. It’s the moments when she smiles, tears in eyes, and tells me that something I said or did or looked like or reacted to was just like me Dad’s. Those memories are things that are only mine because they are hers. Her stories are what make me know someone she loved and who helped make me. I was 5 when he died and because of her memories I still get to know that he called movies “flicks” and that we have a favorite song in common in, “I Can’t Help Myself” by The Temptations. Her past moments are why when I ask “do you want to read Walt Whitman to help you sleep” she is able to tell me “Your Dad loved poetry. He wrote beautiful poetry” and all of a sudden I knew where that huge part of me came from when I hadn’t ever known before. Her memories helped make me a little more whole than I was before knowing how much like my Dad it turns out I am.

Most importantly it’s the memories of decorated trees and homemade cheesecake and the smell of wassail and all things Christmas that take me right back to the giddy child, who will forever reside in me, that will always be my Mother and will always be home. It’s these memories that overwhelm me with feelings that words would do no justice that no matter how poor and how hard times were, I always awoke to a Christmas morning that was made for a princess. It wasn’t tiaras and robes and feasts for hundreds but it was my castle for a whole day, every year, and no one ever took it away. It was always my Mom who left the tree lights on all Christmas Eve night and placed presents so strategically wrapped and so beautifully arranged under the tree and filled our home with the smells that will always be known as Christmas. The moments of squeezing shut me eyes and holding my breath and knowing that I only had this many seconds longer until I was to be inaugurated into the seat of Princess for a WHOLE DAY! The attention to desires paid through the leading months and the surprises that were never expected but always adored were always my Mother. The tenderness in the suggested reason for purchase and the questioning brow of the boxes contents acceptance. The mornings spent in PJ’s tearing gingerly through memories to be made. These moments, the ones of love and kindness and thought and sincerity and care… These moments, these memories, are my Mother.

And while these things are the reasons that we all exist, other’s memories so different than mine of course, there are things I’d like to wake up having forgotten. Not just to lose the thoughts but to lose everything those memories make me.

I’d like for a little amnesia to swoop in and knock some things right the hell out.

I’d love to forget the memory of what it felt like when I tried to boil water in the pot in the microwave, because I wasn’t allowed to use the stove when Mom wasn’t home, and the flames that came instead of hot water. I’d probably add days to my life in I could forget that fear.

I’d love to skip right over the moment Katie Brammer called me in 5^th grade and told me that Michael Lowe, my boyfriend at the time, was breaking up with me. And then telling my Mom and her acting as if I had said nothing. Acting as if I hadn’t just told her that the world was obviously ending and that I was dying at this very moment from a feeling in my chest that she was supposed to make go away and just…ignored instead.

I’d love to trot right on past the feeling of terror that I lived when I got caught, with the same Katie Brammer, driving my Mom’s car up and down the street in 5^th grade because I knew at that very moment, which of course lasted for 1.6 decades, that my Mom was sending me to Military Boarding School and that I was never going to see said Katie Brammer or anyone else EVER AGAIN. Another dozen years added on to my life expectancy.

I’d like very much to cross out the moment that I was running through the gym, in Junior High, and my purse (Old Navy back pack purse, denim stunner that it was) broke and my things went flying across the floor in front of EVERYONE. Things including – GASP -  tampons and the loved turned loathed Josh Fore literally screaming, pointing and laughing about “T.J.’s tampons ha ha ha”. Yep, just cross that one right on out.

I’d love to know what my heart may be like if I could forget the moment I was forced to swallow the look in Tyler’s eyes when I asked him who it was that he cheated on me with. What my heart may be like if I could just skip over that life altering, earth shattering, dream stealing look that will always be inside of me. I’d like to not know what it’s like to know that when you swallow something like that, that you’ll carry it forever.

I’d like to eliminate completely the memory of the moments I spent writing, reading, talking, breathing, living Earl William Walker Junior. If I could skip over these memories I wouldn’t call him Earl William Walker Junior because I wouldn’t know that’s how he signed everything he ever wrote. I wouldn’t have the beautiful memories of the things he said and the way he made me feel special even though he was who everyone wanted. I wouldn’t have the moments spent in agonizing suspense in the times between letters from class to class. I wouldn’t have the laughter he instilled in me when everything was gray. I wouldn’t have the moments spent in comfortable silence next to him, feeling his arm move up and down mine as he breathed. I wouldn’t have the moment he walked in after football practice, without a shirt on and knowing I had never seen anything that beautiful and feeling ashamed of that for some reason and not knowing why. I’d lose the memory of the moment he leaned in to kiss me and the sheer panic that turned my head and the connected memory of the nights spent thinking about how my life could have been changed forever if the panic had stayed at bay and kept my face right in his. I’d lose the memory of all the superbly hastened moments that I spent next to him in the hallways and all the hours it took to walk from my classroom to the place in the hall way I knew he would be standing, beautiful, waiting on little ole’ me. But if I lost all these memories, I’d lose every moment, of every day, that have filled every year of the last 13, that I have spent knowing that he will always be the one that got away. My one that just…got away. Not someone’s someone who maybe could have been something. Earl William Walker Junior was my someone and he got away. The age, the immaturity, the person I was then verses the person I am now, none of that matters when it comes to him. The person he helped me become by loving me exactly like I was is something he will never know and I have to live with that memory. While I don’t believe in regrets and I would never truly want to lose memories of the ones I loved and who loved me, the thought of seeing who I could maybe be without that hurt, without that deceit, minus the lies and the memories of pain is ever tempting because I’d like to know the whole me. I’d like to know who I could be if I weren’t in so many pieces. And I don’t think I’ll ever get over part of me wanting to know part of her.

Phone calls of engagements vs. phone calls of betrayal.

Hugs of despair vs. hugs of exhilaration.

Hands touching in desire vs. hands parting in goodbye.

Eyes meeting in anguish vs. eyes meeting in love.

Words exchanged in a fine frenzy vs. weaponed words fighting blindly in rage.

Passion made visible vs. falsely visual passion.

Love vs. hate.

Anger vs. joy.

Fleeting embarrassment vs. motionless shame.

Pain vs. pleasure.

Kindness vs. selfish.

Lie vs. truth.

All of these things, among so many others that can’t be reduced to words, are memories. Some bad. Some good. Some beautiful. Some wretched. Some loving. Some horrendous. Some exhilarating. Some strenuous. So much anger and so much love. These memories are what and who and how and where we are. As individuals. As friends. As family. As significant others. As employees and bosses. As beings in every way. Memories are who we are.

While writing of betrayal and hurt though, I walk away with settled thoughts of those who loved me right, even when I was wrong. Those who hated me even when I was right. Those who talked and those who listened. Those who helped and those who hurt. Those who carried and those who leaned. Those who made me who I am. While I’d like to know the heart that I could hold and the girl I could be unbruised and unscathed I’ll think of her fondly and instead dress the girl I am each day with memories to spare.

Our words in the dark...

Last night, you laid next to me and rocked my foundation, as your presence always does. With all the breaths that happened, with all the heartfelt words exchanged, you made me believe you over and over again. That you did used to love me and that you always will. That it wasn't just me in it alone. You said to me "I wish you could have known me at a different time" and I don't think anything you've ever said to me healed me quite like that did. In those simple words you said that you loved me, love me, and enjoy who I am now.

You'll never have any way of knowing how those words made my heart splinter and ache and leak something out that was filled with all of our memories. You'll never know that my breath still catches when you smile. You'll probably never know that when I told you, last night in the darkness of the room, that "No matter how much time goes by that I'll always love you" how true it is and how much I wish it wasn't. I don't think you'll ever know how I watch your body move when you walk and think how all that you are makes me feel lost and complete. I'll never tell you that last night, in our darkness, that I would have kissed your lips had you leaned in just enough. I'll also never tell you how grateful I am that you didn't. I'm grateful because you'll never know how your kisses stir me and make me desire things that I don't have the strength to want. I'll never tell you that last night, in the words of our darkness, you made me feel beautiful. I'll never tell you that in the few hours leading up to the moments we spent next to one other in the dark how happy you made me feel to know you and how nervous you always make me. It's an odd feeling... being completely at ease while nervous and worried. I don't think you will ever comprehend that those dark moments are something I've thought of for years and that, as of late, haven't been able to get out of my mind. You didn't know that. You didn' know how much I wanted to lie next to you in the dark close enough to touch but much too far away to make your skin feel mine. You didn't know how I wanted you to tell me that "you remember so much more than I think you do"...but you did - you did tell me that. Your eyes meant it and your eyes never lie. Your eyes are always what give you away and they are the reason those moments in our darkness will heal me and haunt me for too many days to come. You're everything. You always will be. You'll never know this because I would never tell you because you don't deserve it and because no matter how much I will always love you... I will never give you that much power again. You've changed. You've grown up. You're beautiful. You make my hands shake in this steady kind of way that I almost find humor in. You make me want to be something that I can't. You make me proud of who I am without meaning to. Your words spoken in our darkness resonate louder than any of the ever falling pieces you left in my chest. Our darkness is the light that I was missing before last night. The minutes that I listened to you breathe. The hours that you laid there next to me. The evening you spent by my side. These things can't happen to anyone else in the same way as they do with us. It's different when it's us. It's something stronger. Something deeper. Something...beautiful and scarred and something that I fear will never happen again. Those moments, side by side, matching breaths, full of memories searching for air... that was it. Just those last night.

When we were talking about my tattoos and he called me a work of art and you cringed, I wanted you.
When you laughed and your hand naturally found my leg, I missed  you so desperately it steals my breath even now - after you've gone.
When you told me "I have nothing to be ashamed of", I felt invincible.
When you spoke of yourself and said "I could be better", I worshiped you.
When you thanked me for telling you that "you're great and that everyone could always be better" I pitied you.
And when your breath caught in your chest when I told you that you would never know the full extent of how you shattered me. That you would never know about the doctors and the pills and the wreckage you left behind... I loved you.

I'll always love you.

I'll always be the pieces that you made and you'll always make me feel whole when you're around. But last night, in our darkness, when your heart ached for hurting me, you changed my life again. Our darkness will always be a picture I wish I had so I know to never forget those moments in which I wanted the whole world to stop so I could feel your words forever.
I'll never hear your breath catch like that again. It's a one time thing and now it's gone and so are you. You weren't supposed to stay. I didn't even know what was left to be said when it wasn't dark anymore. Not because it was light but because there was too much and not enough hanging in the air. There were too many things that were brought to life and laid to rest to have much to say when our darkness was over.

Thank you. For lying in the dark, by my side, and telling me that it wasn't my fault. I always knew it and I'll still never know. Oddly enough, you'll always be my darkest hour and my greatest joy because you touched all of me. Every smile, every tear, every cell, my whole soul, were all touched and moved and manipulated into a form that carries you with it always.
Thank you for always knowing how to make me laugh and never ignoring the beauty of our comfort. Thank you for knowing that I need to make jokes to keep from crying. Thank you for our darkness and thank you for never knowing that from the very first time we ever laid side by side in the dark I made my breath match yours. Thank you for never knowing how lovely and twisted it was to force my inhales and exhales to match yours exactly because it always brought me sleep. Thank you for having not the slightest of clues that there hasn't been a moment in all of our hours in all of our nights that my breath wasn't constructed to match yours. Thank you for lying next to me in the dark last night and allowing me, for the very first time, to breathe next to you, off beat.

Crash into me...

I just finished reading a book. It’s not award winning but I feel as though it is much more inspired than the simplicity of the words may let on.

It’s…powerful.

It’s…dark.

It’s… real.

It’s about suicide.

And off all the things that can sneak into a warped, suicide loving, mind it leads to 10 of the simplest reason to live.

10. Stars in a really dark sky

  9. Driving across the country

  8. Nirvana

  7, My Mom

  6. Our dog pack

  5. Gay Bingo

  4. Mud fights

  3. Kissing

  2. Magic marker tattoos

  1. Pink socks

These reasons won’t resonate with someone who hasn’t read this story because it sounds like a tired band, colored laundry, and all the things we forget to find the beauty in while taking them ever for granted.

The story though… makes it undeniably lovely to think of what stars may look like on a velvet sky that you wouldn’t have noticed before your life was changed. Changed by people, by circumstance, by accident, by love, by fate…

Stars you were covered by each day for all of you life and were never warmed by their light from the inside out until something came along and changed you.

I of course immediately typed up the “My top 10 reasons to live” list from the book, “Crash into Me”, to hang on my wall. I read the book over the course of two days and somehow I feel like I will never forget how these 10 things are simplistic in every way and can actually change a heart that leads to changing a life. It’s splendid even when fiction. It’s the same as commercialized romance… what you see may not be real but the idea… the idea behind these gestures came from someone’s mind at some point in time on this earth that we roam. Maybe it’s not happening to you but to know that it happened, even just to dance, for a moment, across someone’s subconscious, makes it every bit as real and that is something I take great comfort in. The beauty of these “10 things” exist.

Of all the things happening in life right now that I have no control over it’s on the verge of spinning me out of control before I have anything to say about it. I’m impatient and often unkind. I am often unkind because of my impatience. I want to remind myself, even if only by reading what I wrote while on this literary high, to make the bests attempts to stay calm through the things I can not change. Short of going all “serenity prayer” into the “forever” that writing things creates, I want to find a way to remind myself of how things can become something more astounding than I could have ever designed with nothing but my imagination. Imagination is made more beautiful by it’s surroundings and I want to remind myself to take life for what it gives me, Chicago or “pink socks”, I can’t choose what will change my life… I just have to let it.

Forgot it in people...

I walked out of my house one morning and the sky was pink. I don’t mean that there was a glimpse of a lightened red I mean the entire atmosphere surrounding me was PINK. It was beautiful. Really, really beautiful. It reminded me of my Emily and then quickly reminded me that she is gone, as most thoughts of her do…

I was looking for new music yesterday and I came across an album called “You Forgot It In People”. This title moved me in a way that I can’t explain. Something about the way the words read made me have one of those moments when too many things rush in to your mind at once to even have the slightest hope of deciphering what’s what. It all rushed in before I knew what was coming and my mind filled with images of broken hearts and bruised dreams and moments of laughter and singing and it just…locked down. I never started locking down until I lost Emily. She was beautiful and wondrous and held every thing descent in me right in the palm of her precious hand and held everything broken in me inside of her heart. She was completely accepting of me and all of my tarnished misgivings and that is…something. Something beautiful. Something wondrous. She was…… my god, she was Something. When I got the casual text from her explaining that she had been diagnosed with cancer, but not to worry and asked how I was (because this was her nature), I cried until I couldn’t breathe and then I kept crying.......................................................

Not her. Of all the people in this rotten world for her to be struck this way… This had to be a mistake. Check again and keep checking until you find something that shows you how beautiful she is and that you must have made a mistake…

There wasn’t a mistake and then a mere 8 months later this beautiful creature was gone. She has this voice… it was angelic. She had this smile… it too was angelic. She had this way of holding her hands just so that was…angelic. She had this heart…it was far beyond anything angelic had ever seen. I guess I should have seen it coming all along… Of all her angelic ways she was far too beautiful to be here, in this world, with all of us who are merely… people. Even the beautiful ones are not my Emily’s kind of angelic…

I thought of how many things I had “forgotten in people”. I forgot my ability to rely on others in two people – one died and one, while holding me up, still let’s me down. I forgot my heart in a boy who broke it. I forgot my devotion in a brother who ignores it. I forgot my differences in a family that scoffed them weak. I forgot my mind in a world that soiled it. I forgot my faith in God and he ruined it.

Of all the things that I have forgotten in people I still lose sight of things that move too far in. I forgot love in Emily and she never betrayed it. I don’t know how to remember after forgetting it in her. There isn’t another love like that for me and I don’t know how to remember. I don't even know how to want to remember. I think it will always be forgotten in my devastation of missing her.

She never did forget her faith in God and never wanted it back, even after she was sick. Even after she was sicker. She never forgot her ability to care because she cared about my silly life while she was sick like that. She never forgot her devotions to her family and her God. She never forgot anything in anyone and some how… She’s gone. I wish I could say I have the ability to carry her best parts on through the world, inside of me, but who am I kidding… I’m not angelic – I’m just human, if even that, and I forgot the best parts of me in her. I forgot my heart in her heart and my faith was broken in her illness.

There will never be something so beautiful to be forgotten so easily that can hurt this much… It never ends. This kind of pain never ends.

How did I become that person? That girl who forgot who she was in people? When did I become so weak that others were able to make me forget?

It’s a new year. In just a few short days it will have been a year since Emily…well…since she got to stop being sick. I miss her so much but I'm happier for her lack of illness than I am sad for my own selfishness.

This year is supposed to be full of change and excitement and challenge in my life. It’s supposed to be full of Chicago and new people and places. It’s supposed to be full of new things to inspire my eyes and soul. It’s supposed to be filled with new memories and letting go of old things. I didn’t make a New Years resolution. I never keep them anyway, what’s the point. I do, however, hope that this beginning is filled with all the beauty I need for it to be to make my soul mend. I hope all the “supposed tos” are things that I can look back on at midnight at the start of 2012 and know that my life did find it’s way back to beautiful…