Seventh Sister Siren Song

There are days where I feel the past close in on me like a vice. I feel all the mistakes I made crowd around me and my mind warps them into a sort of horrid little nightmare of my own making. 

Through my hardships, though…. I’ve learned a lot. Like how to not let it get to me quite as badly as it otherwise could. This is where I practice the change I preach. I’ve also had a crash course from a certain someone straight up nudging (shoving, really) me toward self-reliability.

The dreaded GED explanation–I’m probably going to have to give it to the university I am applying for.

The questions… they come to mind and are pretty heavy.

Why would a girl who was supposed to graduate in 2004 end up with a GED years later? Surely any girl like that isn’t the kind of girl we want at our institution. Why would she leave the school so abruptly and so close to her graduation date?

What the hell am I supposed to say that could make this less awkward? My father, the lone stabilizing authoritarian ringmaster of my family’s 3 ring freak show died of cancer right before I would have graduated. The only thing that kept me going past his death was a musical performance, and once that was over– I was out of commission. Well, not exactly out of commission. The years fighting his illness–our own illnesses–each other, the suicide attempts by multiple family members, all of it crashed and made a mess of everything everywhere. Mom was such a mess after daddy died that I ended up taking care of things more than I could have. There was a point when Steven started calling me mom because the nurturing figure he needed was MIA in her own grief, and Grandpa, who had been living with us since my grandmother died, was so concerned and kind but also incredibly socially awkward. By the time the dust cleared from that, I was out.  I would stay away and out of the lives of my family as much as I could… Steven was regressing hardcore and would torment me by blaring music 24/7, ignoring personal space, and even engaged in physical violence. Even my body wasn’t left unscathed, I cut, pierced myself, and even had my nose broken by my brother in one of his aforementioned fits.

By the time the second dust storm settled, I spiraled so far out that going back to school didn’t really have a place in my life because I was trying to work. Then, there was the whole childhood home foreclosure thing, and the way we scrambled to save what little we could.  Jesus, What the hell am I supposed to say? That by the time I had my self together after the emotional shit storm that was that already turbulent period of my life, I was expected to be a good little housewife and mother? That I was told systematically that the time for education had passed in my life and I should make do with what I had at that point? I am not some innocent little victim; I could have fought anyone. God knows my father insisted I become a lawyer because I could talk circles around anyone, and for anyone i couldn’t talk circles around I was stubborn as a mule. That fire left when dad died. Where my father was charismatic, persuasive, and in-charge… Mom is a wet nap. Not that wet naps are bad–they have a place in the world. Typically a supportive, nurturing role that requires a guiding hand, but she was a wet nap woman who lost her life long guiding force. Who the hell am I to say anything bad about her. I fucked my life up good and plenty without any of her assistance.  

I really want to get into this school. In fact, I need to in order to stay in Japan as I would like to…I will fight this if I have to. I tested in the top 1% of the country on my GED. I worked my ass off for years at a community college to build myself a name and a reputation for being a trustworthy student and employee. I had something big to prove–at the time I thought to others, but I realize mostly, it was to prove to myself that I could belong.

When I decided to leave Michigan, I was scared that I might one day have to look at an admissions panel and say: “This is my life–all the bloody, sordid details of it.” And I am scared. Scared of laying myself bare to a group of strangers who might decide that all of the hardship that had defined me and the hardwork that redefined me isn’t good enough and cast me aside. I don’t want to lose the beginning of the life I have established here–the family I have gained and friends I have made. The progress I made to walk in a city alone with my head held high, and the joy of having the one person I can show all of me to who doesn’t flinch also walk beside me. I want to grow more in Tokyo and let those roots dig deep. 

Responsibility and accountability are important lessons to learn. I just wish I could have understood the gravity back then that I fully understand now. Wish me luck.

Well, a return to blogging. A return to giving myself that particular spaciousness that can be found in the realm of creative writing and journaling.

I’m in Japan and have been so since Sunday. My sense of time is ridiculously a blur. Despite it being ass-o’clock in the morning, sleep eludes me and my thoughts begin to zing through my fingertips onto parched keys seeking elaborate prose to fill the void of the strange new world I inhabit. Deep breath; this might pinch a little. 

First Impressions

That restrained efficiency

Mingling flash-bang gadgetry futurisms with subdued ancient wisdoms thrumming alive with tradition

Surroundings part concrete jungle, part anthropology study

All fascination gone mute aside from simplistic phrases and gratitude laden bows

Proves and provides in sesame pudding-ed chu-hi cups running over

While the ching ching of train crossings and subdued enthusiasm of polite populations

Etch paths across familiar silhouettes and old shadows

Casting light on ghosts turning transparent with a dawn of chapters just begun

The skyline tattoos maps across my heart, and my world shades a bit more lucid dream

Than the inky deterministic foggy purgatory known

Like I’ve been bitten by some x-ray powered gamma infused spider

I feel that precious poisoned lingering tingling

Indicating a mutated neural shift about to upstart miracle grow my way into an overhauled self

Bring it.

People love to see what they want to see

hear what they want to hear

believe what the want to believe

That was my delusion.

My heart wanted so badly to believe that it was willing to be deceived

that I was different

And

that my own capacity to see the world was unclouded

by sheer will alone.

I am no different.

The photo on my desk

The space in my bed

and the sorrowful song lingering in the corner

of self-conscious eye contact

proof of my own hubris.

It was as though my only certainty in uncertain times became my own fear.

“Pretty is as pretty does”

and I’m feeling haggard and undignified.

An exhaustion so deeply settled in a simple question:

When will my tireless mourning end?

No amount of enjambment can make that appealing.

But there is a sweetness to be found here.

Honesty is a balm, and sometimes it is better to be respected than to be liked.

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You