Pulse

I used to stare, with a kind of hunger, at the place in my wrist where the vein is close to the surface, a slight trace of blue, just raised enough to provide a texture to the topography of the anatomy there.


I remember when I was a little girl, I would trace the veins on my mother's hands, push them down only to see them spring right back up again. I saw lettering in their lines, would turn her hand over, and over again, to trace them with my small finger. I wanted to know why they were blue, why they were placed as they were, what they were for.


And then, when I was older, darker, I would stare at the veins in my wrist. I knew exactly what they were for. I would place my fingers just so, like nurses do, and feel my own heart, steady, certain, unfaltering.

Sometimes, I wished I felt as steady as my heart, as sure of each beat, of each step. I wondered, if I ran that cold, fine steel along their length, could I be certain of what followed?

Can one be a vampire of one's own self? Curious, seeking sustenance from one's own veins? The stories tell of an ecstasy that is coupled with the act of exsanguination - they make it sound so sexy, so sensual.

I think they have no idea what the sting, the sharp bite, the slow drain, the lassitude, the burn and numbness, the eventual fade into darkness is like. I think the hunger that one may feel for one's own blood isn't the same as that storybook hunger - it's deeper, more urgent, more visceral and less quantifiable. It's old, older than the tales of creatures creeping in the shadows, feeding on their fellow humans, bathing in their blood, committing horrific acts of starvation and survival.

I used to place two fingers gently on my neck, feel the blood rushing just below the surface, primal, powerful, the very essence of life. I'd count, one, two, three, four, constant, a living metronome, steadier than my spiritual self, internal self, felt. I was shaky, clinging to the semblance of normalcy, desperate for someone, something, to reach out, gather me up, place me back on firm, more realistic ground that the fantastic landscape my own mind had painted over reality, but my heart...my heart had it's own agenda and kept beating, steady, reassuring, even in my wildest moments.

My son traces the veins in my hands. He turns them over, and over again, finding patterns, touch light as a butterfly's kiss. He knows what they are for, why they are there, why they are blue, and what it means when we press our fingers just so and feel that concurrent rhythm, his and mine.

Confession Before the Fact

I think I may be trying to kill my husband...or at the very least, I may have stopped caring if he drops dead.

I used to take such care with his meals, trying to balance the foods he loves (fried, fatty, buttery, and greasy are his four food groups, with bonus groups of meat, sugary and/ cheesy to round off the list) with healthy things, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, and the like. I made sure every morning that he took a multi-vitamin and tried to stem the tide of Coca-Cola products flowing through our home. I begged, wheedled, cajoled, and nagged him to change his diet, and joined the gym with him, promising to go whenever he did to help cheer him on while I worked out, too.

When he said he wanted to diet, I portioned out foods and reminded him of his resolution when he wanted seconds, thirds, to finish off the leftovers, didn't want to eat vegetables or salads, didn't want to walk with me or go work out. I packed his lunches for work...and he'd bring them home uneaten because "...the guys all wanted to go out for lunch..." and he went to some burger joint where he had a double with cheese, bacon, and mushrooms...but there was lettuce on the plate, so it was healthy. Not that he ate the lettuce, mind, but it was there... I busted my ass (That's why it's so big - it's not fat, it's still swollen. Yeah.) to help him, where "help" meant "do everything but actually chew the food".

That was then.

Now?

Now I don't even tell him when I'm going to the gym, because he will ask me to let him sleep a little more, a little more, a little more, until he's slept the day away or has to go to work. Also, he turned it into a competition - everything I did, he had to top, even though by doing less I benefited more.

Now, I put extra mayonnaise on his sandwiches...even when he doesn't ask for it.

I fry his eggs in bacon fat, don't blink when he asks for four or five strips of bacon, put cheese on his eggs and extra butter on his toast.

I put cheese on everything, and when I make vegetables or salad with a meal, I don't offer him any.

I quit buying vitamins.

When he orders garlic cheese bread, a Philly Cheese Steak pizza without the only ingredient that could pass for healthy (green peppers) and two two-litre bottles of coke on pizza night (the one night a week I am not home to cook dinner), I don't even blink, nor do I say anything when he eats the whole order of cheese bread and almost the entire pizza and drinks at least one two-litre by himself.

I don't buy healthy-ish frozen meals or plan meals for when I am out of town, because I know I will come back and find the food uneaten - he went to the drive-through instead, because gods forbid he should cook for himself. He will barely cut up an apple for our son, and that's one reason I don't like to go out of town, even when I really need a day or two to decompress...I am afraid of what he'll feed the kid!

He looks ninety months pregnant.

His back hurts, his feet hurt, he can't breath properly, and none of his clothing fits, and he can barely walk. He can't bend over and touch his toes, and he can't tie his shoes without a huge effort. His heart should have exploded by now. What am I doing wrong? <---that's a joke. Laugh, dammit! Please?

I actually got a mite peeved when he said he wanted to go to the gym again...I thought all my plans were being foiled. And then I realized what I had just thought. Oh, dear.

Homicide by food. Uh-oh.

I know, I know...if something should happen, I'll feel just awful. Maybe. No, no, probably I will... I'm pretty sure...and with my luck, a heart attack or stroke won't kill him, it'll just make him all gimpy and even more needy...or scare him healthy and he'll lose a hundred pounds in a month and live to be ninety, which will just piss me off so I'll have to be more proactive and smother him with a pillow. Dang.

Oh, uh...kidding!

He's insured, right? Maybe I should check on that...

Cameras in the Closet*

I see you, seeing me. You think I don't, but I am wise to your ways, and I know where the lenses hide, behind mirrors that do not quite reflect as they should, in light fixtures, and other places you think so clever, but my paranoia is more than a match for your intelligence.

I hear you hearing me. You think I don't, but I am wise to your ways, and I know where the microphones hide, in electric outlets, behind the large paintings on the wall, and in other places you think so clever, but my paranoia is more than a match for your trifling toys.

I am wise to you, and yet I continue as though you are not there, because I do not want you to know I am wise. If I keep on as you think I should, you won't come seek me out, perhaps take me away, sequester me.

I hear the clicking, the whirring, the static crackle on the phone, and I know what you're doing, but I don't care, because as long as you don't know I know - I am safe.

*It's not all real...sometimes it's just imagination. Or is it??

Fantasies I Could Do Without

Warning - mature content, graphic and sensitive words, stories, thoughts, and/or issues ahead. Continue at your own risk.

When I was a child, I was sexually molested, first by a trusted friend and neighbor, then in later years by a family member. I never spoke of these events with anyone until I was an adult, talking to the first shrink I'd found who I trusted implicitly. As an aside, he ruined me for other shrinks - I haven't even bothered looking for one since I moved some twelve years ago, because no on else will be him. It sucks losing a really good doctor!

Anyway.

In addition to the molestation, I was raped when I was in my teens.

These things had a fair bit of impact on how I viewed myself, the world, and people in general. I believe, and research backs me in this, that my weight ballooned as it did as a defense mechanism - after all, everyone knows that fat girls are ugly and no one wants to have The Sex with them.

The above is history for the following. Hopefully you'll see the connection.

I think it's perfectly healthy to have a fantasy life, to mentally act out scenarios while having sex or masturbating (you have no idea how hard...er...difficult it was for me to type that!). I mean, what are you going to think about, the laundry? Hmm...come to think of it...I have thought about laundry, dishes, chores, or scheduling while doing the nasty before. Sad.

One of my recurring fantasies is a rape fantasy. Yes, you read that right - and if it weren't for the utter anonymity of this blog, I wouldn't admit it. Hell, I don't even like thinking about it. It's true, though - I have several scenarios that run through my mind when I'm....well, you know.

Sometimes it's a priest, on an altar or in the confessional, or as I kneel and pray (from behind). I would like to note that I'm not even Catholic, and never have been.

Sometimes it's a cop, against the back of his cruiser.

Sometimes it's a whole gang, taking turns.

There are others...but honestly, I can't bring myself to type them all. Always it's violent, messy, dehumanizing, and I'm an unwilling participant...in the fantasy, anyway.

I don't know why I have them. You'd think I wouldn't, considering my history. You'd think I would shy away from such thoughts, be disgusted by them. You'd think.

I don't know...maybe I'm trying to take back control...to turn those moments of pain and powerlessness into triumphs - a way to thumb my nose at what was, change what is, empower what will be.

Maybe I'm just sick in the head.

I don't feel proud of these thoughts...I don't feel good about them, after. I wish I could cleanse them from my mind, erase them from my slate. They are dark thoughts, feeding other dark thoughts, and I am shamed by them.

Why write about them? Because I need to put them somewhere...somewhere they can fade, turn to dust, or maybe be explained by someone who gets it. Gods know, I sure don't.

The Vexatious Voice

There is a vexatious voice that natters, natters, natters at me all day long. It sounds, sometimes, like the woman (not my mother) who raised me, is woven into most of my childhood memories. Her voice is sharp, her tone aggrieved or angered or irritated or judging or anything but the loving voice I craved, the acceptance I strove for, always reaching, reaching, for some untouchable goal of her desiring, always falling short.

Sometimes, though, it is her cadence, her speech patterns, but my own voice I hear, nattering, nattering, nattering away at me all day long. Nothing I do is done well enough, nothing I do is right. I am too fat, too stupid, too ugly and undesirable, and no matter how hard I try or what anyone else may think, I will never, ever, be good enough. I married my husband in part because the voice told me no one else would ever want me, and I am with him still in part because she tells me I'm all used up and no one else will want me now.

It's toxic, the vexatious voice, nattering, nattering, nattering away at me all day long. It wears me down. Sometimes I want to scream, just scream, something primal from the gut, from the bottoms of my feet, let the rage rise up and obliterate the voice, or at least drown it out for a short time, a small respite.

Nattering, nattering, nattering, all day long...

Love, Hate

How can you love someone but hate them at the same time? How can it be?

I hate the way he sneezes. He's loud, obnoxious, overemphasizes the sudden egress of breath through his sinuses. His sneezes end with a shout, loud enough to wake the dead - and often me, from a sound sleep. I hate how, when he's sick with the sniffles it's the flu and he's dying and he needs me to do everything while he rests, and if I ask him to do anything at all he staggers around like he's dizzy, faint, fevered, and so very weak...but when I am (rarely) truly sick and need rest, he is going out with friends to help them out, tired himself, or something hurts and he needs to rest it, or he's sick too and it's even worse than what I have, so he can't help with the boy or the housework or even bring me a damn glass of water and he still expects me to fix meals and do laundry, run errands, play with the boy, clean the kitchen, laud him for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or buying a Happy Meal for the kid.

I love the way he works hard to provide for his family, tireless, dogged, determined to give us everything he thinks we deserve in our lives.

I hate the way he can't be in a room without a television, computer, or game console running, full blast, can't be in the car without talk radio or loud music blaring. The way he uses these devices to distance himself from us, from his family, uses them to buffer him from our words, our play, our life, uses them as an excuse not to hear when his son asks, plaintive and sweet, "Daddy, will you play with me?", doesn't answer because he didn't hear, wouldn't hear. I cannot speak to him, with him, about anything of import, because of the noise, the color, the movement, the distraction.

I love the way he plays, when he remembers we have a son, and that son wants to play with his Daddy, the way he wrestles with the boy, rolls around on the floor or the bed, tickles, throws the child up and pins him down, the way he teases until the boy goes from joyful abandon to rage and back again.

I hate the way he touches me, pawing, grotesque, no finesse, no sensuality. I hate the way he speaks to me, as if I am stupid, dense, incapable of thought, as if his wife who studies religions, physics, and languages every day can't understand politics simply because she chooses not to discuss them regularly, or dwell upon wins or losses, or grouse about the iniquity of it all. I hate that I feel like I can't voice my thoughts, that I have to keep myself bound up in my own head.

I love how silly he can be with the boy, how they make up words and word play, how they create and play elaborate games until the boy falls asleep all limp, warm, and sweet, worn out and peaceful, happy.

I hate how ignorant he is, how he never reads anything that isn't a cartoon or politically inflammatory, how he can't pronounce the simplest words, doesn't even try, misuses them with abandon. I hate that he has no spiritual life, but feels free to judge others by their religion, or makes religion out to be the pastime of idiots, and how he equates my spiritual differences with naivete rather than reasoned choice. I hate that I cannot share my spiritual life with him, and how isolated that makes me feel.

I love how hard he tries, when it suits him, to give me space and time to write, to sing, to be alone with my thoughts or engage in creative endeavors.

I hate the way he always demands to know where I'm going, what I plan to do, who I'll be with, how he asks so congenial but there's distrust behind it. I hate the way he's jealous, the way he assumes that I seek time to myself because I plan to break my vows and cheat on him when I have done nothing, will do nothing, to engender that thought, I just want to be alone a little. I hate that he pretends he wants to put a satellite tracking device on my vehicle just for the fun of it, when I know he wants to monitor me, to spy. I hate that he reads my blog, hunts me down relentlessly on the web so he can read my comments to others and how they speak to me, how he can't give me even the tiniest bit of privacy.

I hate how he lies, easy as breathing, without blinking or thought, just lies because the truth is awkward or shows him in a bad light. I hate the way the words roll right off his tongue, oily and slick, wriggling through my grasp, stupid little lies about taking out the trash, cleaning the cat box, brushing our son's teeth. I hate the way we began with lies, right from the start, lies to inflate his value, to make him shine in my eyes, lies that I would have to be dead or a dunce not to figure out sooner or later.

I hate the way he breaks promises easy as lying, breaks his word to me, to our son, breaks our little boy's heart when he isn't where he swore he'd be, doesn't do what he swore he'd do.

I hate the way he looks hurt when I am so full of anger, how he looks like a kicked puppy when I finally can't hold it in any more, the disappointment, the suffocation, the irritation, when I finally have to speak or go mad, how he turns it around and makes me feel like a pile of steaming shit because he works so hard to support his family and why don't I see what he's given up for us?

I hate the way I feel...obligated, an obligation, not loved or cherished. I hate that I don't want him to touch me, that I resent his presence in the same room, that I rejoice when he leaves town for work. I hate that sometimes I pretend he's dead, that I'm a widow, or a single parent, because it's preferable to the truth...that I am married to a man with whom I am no longer in love, and hard as I try, I can't seem to find the love again, can't seem to nurture it, force it, beg and plead it back into place, back into the empty place in my heart.

I am 37 years old, and I feel as though I will never love or be loved in equal measure, that I am trapped in this misery because you can't just end a marriage over the way he sneezes or never picks up his own dishes or takes out the trash or follows through or any number of other tiny, tiny fissures that make up the chasm.

I love, I hate, that he is really a good man. He deserves a better life, a better wife.

Sometimes I see them, the things prowling just beyond ken, back and forth, back and forth, walking in the darkness that has teeth. Here in my cube of light, I am blinded to the shadows, but I know they're there, waiting for some poor unwary fool to stumble, fall, falter - and they'll pounce, the things with claws, low growls that I feel in my bones, a hunger so deep it seeps over the edges and into me.

Sometimes, I see them, tricks of light and shadow, but mostly shadow, flitting across the moon, blotting the stars, soaring through the darkness that has teeth. They howl so high and piercing, my bones tremble, and small creatures huddle in their dens, wrapped in fear, hope, and the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow, until one day it does not.

Sometimes I see them, faint glowing eyes staring in at me as I stare out at them, at an impasse, respecting the boundaries, the chiaroscuro that divides me from the darkness that has teeth. I wonder what it would be like to let them in, to offer myself up to their dark feast, to feel their fangs sink deep into my flesh, let them drink deep, slake their thirst, tear body from soul, and I shudder, pant, feel my heart race - from fear or delight, I cannot say.

Sometimes I yearn for the darkness that has teeth.

I Am the Knight Angel

I am the Knight Angel, and this? This is where I will stow my murk, the shadows that blot the sun, the secrets that I cannot allow escape into the mundane world I call home, life, family.

Join me and drink deep the bitter draught - here we will give voice to our darkest desires, our bleakest, bitterest hurt, our anger, disillusionment...and perhaps, in doing so, find the light.