I've Walked with You Once Upon a Dream

A woman I barely know told me, as I sat topless in a warm, quiet warm, that I am destroying my body; I am allowing stress to devour the structure of my physical being. I have allowed trauma to anchor itself along the fibers of my muscles -- I can't shake it and because of it, I'm breaking down.

I don't know how to exercise the chaos from my body. Where do I start? I suppose the better question is: when do I start, what time frame?

Life is, mostly, a hungry pandemonium. I want to starve it. There has to be a way -- so, I'm reaching around in the dark.

I'll let this healer heal me; knead my muscles and help me put my emotional injury in a box. I'll never be rid of that box, but I'll just pack it away in my attic and not in my tender back.

One day. One day.

I Got the Month of May

Let me tell you about what I did yesterday: I got out of bed, made my husband coffee, packed him a lunch, did chore related items, showered, marched up to my office and polished off a 20 page paper (31 pages with Works Cited and an Appendix).

Today: I got out of bed, made my husband coffee, packed him a lunch, did chore related items, went out to breakfast, and saved a nest of baby sparrows. It's true.

I watched a Blue Jay fly up to where I assumed a nest was - all the while 7 sparrows are screaming at him - so, I saved the day by hopping out of my car, clapping my hands together and screaming, "GET OUT OF HERE, BLUE JAY". He and 5 sparrows flew away and immediately, the petite female jumped right in the hole. I save birds in public. 

I've been taking walks when anxiety dips his toe in. I made hummingbird food. Bought pink roses. Wore my husbands dirty shirt. I'm doing important work, you guys. Every single thing I've done today and yesterday I register on the Extremely Valuable scale.

Three years ago, I was in the Painted Desert. Last year, in an emotional one.

And this year, I'm a better human than I've ever been.   

Hard Way Home

I have divided you up into camps. Three of them. I have discovered your camps more than created them. True, it may be unfair to clump you all together, but I have exactly no emotional energy to waste anymore -- so you are where you are. Most of you surprised me, ending up in sections of my heart that I never thought I'd put you. Keeping me on my toes.

I want to thank you all. Even the ones in the "doesn't give a fuck" camp - you've helped me along, liberated me. Down to bare bones vulnerability, in my darkest closet of self-loathing, you set me free. I don't have to worry about you anymore. Now, don't get me wrong, ok? This isn't to say that I don't *care* about you. Because I do. I just know that in times of need or reciprocation, I can't count on you - so I won't expect it. You know what I mean?

There was a moment, crying in my hallway, I didn't think I could stand up - nor did I want to - ever again. Decomposing in my hallway in July was exactly what I wanted to do. Sobbing paralleled to a grief untouched by daylight. A few of you came in with your flashlights -- everyone else walked around, barely glancing my way.

Those of you with flashlights: holy shit, I am the luckiest. And you know who you are.

You're a Human Thing

"I am, thank god, a writer and editor, not a father confessor. But I do believe that our culture is set up to maximize individual guilt, and that one needs to resist it. Whatever happened may or may not have been wise (you have to make that decision), but it is not unusual, or damnable, or changeable. Whenever we mess up--if that in fact is what you've done (I'm not so sure)--the only thing one can do is vow to change; nothing else is useful or doable. I've been married to the same person now for approx. 125 years. We don't think marriage is something ordained by god; it's something that two people decide on because they're happy with one another (despite of course ups and downs).

I've been writing a poem...and in it I quote David Ignatow, who says to himself after a stretch of self-loathing: 'so finally I wave myself back in.' Good advice."

***********
One day I will die. Right? And hopefully my shortcomings are overshadowed by the good things - I'm not sure they will be, but I have no control over that. I just know that until I can come to peace with my fuck ups and failures, I will try and try and try to surround myself with people who still see me as a human, and a deserving one at that.

The two paragraphs opening this post are two paragraphs from my current professor/mentor. I've read them a million times.  If there was a way to steep my body in these words, I'd do it. And I have a list forever scrolling in my heart of the handful of people who surrounded their wagons around me when I was shivering in the darkness -- one day, when this thing isn't defining me, I'm going to write each of you a love letter. (I've started composing them already)

And here's what I want to say and I mean it: Right now I don't have enough bones in my body to carry what's on my back, but little by little (some days not) I'm learning to.

I'm learning a girl can keep it together.

Everyday is Like Survival

Decomposing is the easy part.

Watching things decompose, though, that's the challenge.
I don't really know why - surely we've gotten used to it, right?

Everything changes and all of that -
everything is temporary.

Sometimes I'll call my Nena and I'll sob and sob and sob into my little phone and she'll listen. She always does. Afterwards, she says: "I didn't understand a thing you said" or: "Life's about change, nothing never stays the same". (It's usually a toss up between the two.) Now, I know that's not original to her -- but every time I hear her say it, it resonates.

Everything is temporary.

Anyway - right?

Now, I Crave You

My neighborhood is quiet. And white. People are sleeping. I just put my last Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale to bed. My kittens finished grooming hours ago. The TV is still on, but muted.

This whole city is yawning. Almost like it's too bored to keep it's eyes open: Biology during 6th period. Training for the new job you don't really want. Early character development in that one movie you've seen 46.5 times.

It's okay to be tired.

I'm tired, too. But a different kind.

Share My Bread and Wine

I am not surprised. I'm the kind of girl who gets rabies. And who breaks her foot before the race. I'm magnetic in all the wrong ways. I feel things too much in my bones. I fall in love with all vibrations. I feel that blue collar catastrophe, personally. I want a sharp hair line and the kind of collar bone that perfectly spills into shoulders. Maybe beer on the couch is best. Or red wine in the morning, in a coffee mug. And stars beaming through electronics. I'm that kind. The ruiner kind.

Things end.


That's how my book would start.

'Cause I'm Moving Out

Probably this is going to alarm you. Don't let it. Know that it's coming from a spot where sincerity and honesty fester together. So, don't call my mom or anything. This is what I want to say:

If I haven't already told you, I care about you. And if anything should happen to me between now and the next time we talk, I want you to know it. I want you to know that thing we said to each other that one time was special. I'm serious. And you've probably been a person to save me, at least once. And a lot of the time, I write for you. I do.

As a follow up - when I was a teenager, I didn't think I'd ever be a grown up. I am one, though. Kind of. But now, I don't know what I'm doing. Is it weird to say I think I missed my chance to die? It is weird to say, but whatever. I'm throwing off the balance. And I'm paying retribution to whatever force I tricked into living.

Anyway, if I do not see you: Thank you.

Only The Good Die Young

I want to tell you about poetry school. I want to be able to say, shyly, "Who woulda' thought, you know?" and you say, in sweetness, "I thought. I always thought" in the kind of way a dad would say. Except we would both know that you've been worried about my trajectory.

Teach me to change my oil, would ya? And while we're at it, can we conquer the country roads with a manual shift?

Let's sit on the porch and gossip about your neighbor lady, but the good gossip. The "can you believe how earnest she is about keeping strangers out of our yard?" gossip. And the "She's honestly still kicking" and "She never NOT talks about her surgery" gossip. We'd start every sentence with: "I mean, I'm not talking bad, but.." We'd finish (probably) a 12 pack of beer and feel fulled up with the meat of a good-goddamned autumn night.

Tell me the importance of measuring twice, cutting once. Tell me the mistakes you've made, that seemed big, but now are small.

Is everything permanent? If not, why does it seem like concrete has filled the little sacs in my lungs?

We should be crazy one night and buy expensive tickets to a rock and roll show. We can sit and eat up the night; poison it with sentiment. If you wanted, I'd let you tell me about when you fell in love with mom, what it was like in the 80s, the first time you heard Guns'N'Roses, why you stayed with mom, what it was like when your children were born... If you wanted, I'd listen all night, after the music died with the moon. Maybe we'd drink a little bourbon and I'd promise my first born would have your name. Girl or boy.

Maybe one day I'd call you and cry, but I'd call you because I just needed your voice to calm me, like it did when I was a tiny with an upturned nose. You'd say, "Did I ever tell you about that time we were in the abortion clinic - and I looked at your mom and your mom looked at me? Did I tell you what I said?" [Silence] "I said, 'I think we can do this,' and so we left." And that would appease me. That would reaffirm me that at least two people in the whole world, so big/so small, loved me before I even existed. And I'd stop crying. We'd probably make dinner plans. Afterwards, I'd help you weed the garden.

Anyway, I want to tell you about poetry school. But you're dead.

i've grown weary on my own.

I blame myself for not listening to my psychic.

She was probably spot on, but shame on me, I didn't take notes and I didn't take heed. I do remember it being something like, "now is the time to DO", but WHO doesn't she say that to, you know? Anyway, I was in my Saturn Return and I swear to god, I wish my Saturn Return would last forever, but it doesn't. The threshold isn't very wide. And I'll be goddamned if I took advantage of Saturn and her orbit. I didn't.

I stayed stagnant, and as a result, here I am.

What no one tells you is, being a grown up is hard and it takes courage. I don't have that.

let's talk over mai-tais. waitress, top it off

Life shifts often. My skin comes off everyday and my hair falls out and my finger nails grow, get dirty and I bite them off, but here I am, the same human. Kind of.

The shifting. The death. The life. It's all too much at times. The standing up tall and watching everything change, that's something else, too. I barely can stand it.

All of this to say: I'm getting old. I can see it around my eyes and in my blood. And with the friendships I've cultivated for so long. The shifting. The slow transfer and melting away and putting our hands into the cold river that never stops - these things tell me, you know, nothing fucking stays the same.

And I mean it: nothing.

you have been gone too long.

I heard the very last words my dad ever said. And just a few short hours after he said those words, I heard the last sounds my dad ever made.

Five houses down, banging bruises on my fleshy palms, trying to wake my grandparents in the still of the morning, I watched my childhood home burn down. I noticed the flag tear itself away from the pole and float with flames to the summer grass. I watched electrical lines bounce in front of the house with an ironic pep. And, probably 35 seconds before my beautiful papa opened the door to a world of grief, to his shock stricken granddaughter and his dead son, I heard a window break and my dad scream.

My dad's last breath was panicked and rushed and probably full of excruciating pain. I heard it all.

Remembering is funny. Some nights, like right now, everything is at my fingertips. When it plays through my mind, some parts are in fast forward, other things are caught in a silky breeze, slowed and luxuriously articulate. And, my brain will grab random memories and toss them in haphazardly - and I mean, random shit.

Once my dad had a friend over, I think his name was Gary, who tried his hardest to impress me. It almost worked until he broke an egg over our kitchen table trying to do an experiment I'm sure he saw in high school. It doesn't matter, what matters is: he broke the egg over the table in front of my dad who died in that kitchen near that table.

That memory means nothing. And everything.

If you're wondering, I was in the house. I crawled out the back door and ran five houses down.

The last words he said (the ones before the scream):

"I don't know what I'd do without you and your brother."

I'll be goddamned if he'll ever have to find out.

pull me out from inside

I can't get Jeffrey Dahmer out of my head.

There. I said it.

I'm not in love with him. I don't like him, I don't forgive him, but I just can't stop thinking about him. How lonely, you know? In addition to the devastatingly sick desires he couldn't smother, he was lonely. But fuck him.

In this mess of being surrounded in my thoughts about this killer, I wonder, if he knew, like he claimed he knew that these longings were straight from hell, why didn't he just kill himself. And is that fair to even say? And it's not like this is a gray area, but he was a person, so where does that leave me as a person? But where does that leave the families of his innocent victims as people?

And that poor baby, the one who almost got away: Konerak Sinthasomphone. You know, he'd be 35 years old if those assholes in Milwaukee did their jobs. But, should I blame them? And the women, the mary and martha, who comforted the poor baby who was bleeding from his rectum, nude in the street, do they weep and drink wine in the mornings because they almost saved his life?

And then he cut off his head. And his arms. His 14 year old arms.

There's one thing I keep coming back to: What if the baby I have and love and raise and cry over and discipline and teach and cuddle and nurse.. what if my baby grows up and becomes a murdering lunatic who eats organs in his spare time?

It's scary shit.

run until we're out of time

Recently, I had a person tell me that I was "quite attractive". Isn't that funny? It's like something I could put on my resume. "Erica Anderson-Senter: finished college with a good GPA, can diffuse difficult social situations and is quite attractive." I thanked the person and quietly noted the formal feel of being not cute, and not hot, but "quite attractive." Fuck it, you guys, I'll take it.

This morning it was cold outside and I overburdened myself with too many things to carry. The most difficult thought I could entertain was how the hell I was going to open the door. As luck would have it, a man was standing near the entrance, so I asked him to help me out. He obliged, but he said he was only doing so because I looked like a nice young woman who voted for Romney. If I had voted for Obama, he beamed with confidence, there's no way he would have opened the door for me. That shit's funny, huh?

Once, when I was six, I got a new baby brother. As the earth would spin, this baby grew up. Tucked in there, between then and now, we had this one shining moment when we jumped hard on my bed in the cold room and sang Farmer in the Dell as loudly as two blonde Andersons could. We sang and jumped and jumped and sang until our feet and throats were bloody with so much love. The moment stayed in time. But, goddamn, how far away.

Once, I overheard my cousin getting beat in her bedroom for not sweeping the floor.

Another time, Monica told me in the gym that daddies pee inside mommies every night. I couldn't handle this, so I ran away crying.

Early, one morning, I watched my childhood home burn to the ground.

Each life composed of tiny, pin-head moments that craft something beautiful. And something awful.

i hope we hold on til the last exit

The swing on my grandparent's porch is moving with the wind. Their dishwasher just gave up on dinner plates and me? I'm up past midnight writing and drinking. There are a handful of things I want to describe in detail, I have nearly 7 poems started (fragments and broken sentences floating around, dying to escape and live and breathe) but alas, words fail the occasion.

Today, I woke up $800 poorer. Someone somewhere landed my identity and paid lots of money for make up and pajamas and shoes. If that bitch only knew what it was like in my identity, she'd apologize. She'd probably say, "oh, you poor, sad girl. Your grandma is broken? And you're deathly alone? And you feel panic everywhere? I'm sorry," she'd say. She might hug me and say that she's had a rough year, too.

But, it's just another thing in this world.

This world.

Nothing Matters When We're Dancing

When I was seventeen, I was fighting for my life. And I was scrappy in typical 17-year-old ways. Making out with boys in the back of my car, in barns, at stop signs on desolate country roads, on couches, on beds, standing up, on their door steps, in clothes, out of clothes, at parties in fields and so on and so forth. I had about 4 or 5 guys in my rolodex and a boyfriend. I know - despicable. And mostly, I'm not proud.

Haven't you noticed that life is hard? I was learning that shit on the front lines, and quickly. I had one dad to die, one mom to move away, brothers who had to follow and the entire life my little brain knew vanished - fell in between the railroad tracks on it's way out of town. I was (mostly) alone in the world. So, I filled up on fake comfort, tongues and sweaty encounters. And who's to say I didn't enjoy it? Things were fucked up; I was pretty and without a curfew and had a badass Buick. I don't hate it that I learned life like this. Because I had a chance to.

Two 17 year old kids got killed in my hometown on Saturday. They tried to out-run a train.

They tried to out-run a mother fucking train. Kids, you guys, just kids who will never have a chance to find out that life (kind of) evens out as you get older. Grief is coiled in my stomach for their families and for their friends and for the train conductor and for the first responders and for the void my small town will suffer and for the mercilessness of this world. I'm sick. And I'm so sorry.

Sorry.. but also thankful.

I know you've been hurting

The kitchen was quiet tonight - it was me (soggy hands) and tomato stained bowls. My breathing was steady; no explanation - just steady.

Some days that's a little miracle.

And outside, tiny little specks of water hit the window. Quietly.

her eyes were clear and bright

Can I just let you in on my life for a moment? These past few weeks have been absolutely bat shit crazy. I'm not even kidding in the slightest. In a nutshell: rabid bat, quarantined cats, rabies shots, panic attacks, insomnia and dissolving friendships. That's enough to fill a year, huh? I won't go into extreme detail, but just let me tell you it's bad when the only option you can muster is: beg the love of you life to leave you. He needs to divorce me, I told him, because I'm nuts. I'm crazy and I'll only drag his life down the tubes and he deserves better.

Sounds like a goddamn party at my house, huh?

It hasn't been. 
But, I'm going to tell you about a few good things. I'm going to bottle up my exhaustion for a few minutes and harness the good. You know, block the jive, baby.

1. Don't you just love it when birds run across the road? I do. I know I've mentioned this somewhere on the internets before, but seriously. It's one of my favorite things.
2. Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. Gimme that americana all day long - I'll sip it through a straw in the afternoons and take shots of it after dark. I can never tire of these dudes. I love them. I think, somehow, they know I've devoted my life, in a small way, to them.
3. I got lots of new (free) amazing makeup, two pairs of sweet earrings and two new dresses. This is fabulous, you know, for vain people like me. I like how I look mostly, except for that 3 pounds that just won't budge. (Hey, I told you I was vain).
4. Even though my job sucks all my life force through my nose, I'm still pretty damn good at it. I was spotted at a local farmer's market by a little girl who just stopped, dead in her tracks, and said smugly, "I know you. You are the librarian who did the Star Wars program." Yes, girl. Yes, I am.
5. I have this person in my life who will do things for me without questioning..like check the house 6 or 7 times a night for bats. He will let me sob on his chest at 330am. He puts his hand, spread wide, over my sternum with just the right amount of pressure and reminds me, "breathe in. breathe out. breathe in. breathe out" when every single thing in the whole wide world is exploding my body apart. When all I want to do is die, he reminds me that it's okay to be alive, mostly. He doesn't mind how badly I sweat when I cry. He doesn't care that I have all the building blocks in place to be absolutely insane. He doesn't even mind that stubborn 3 pounds.

He likes me enough to not abandon me, even when I beg him to. And even after ten years, being together is a joy. And despite the uneasy few weeks, I have a constant.

I'm lucky.

i walk upon the river like it's easier than land

it's raining. it's been raining all day. and that's okay. I did a lot of driving and sometimes driving in the rain is good for the soul, today it was good.
i went to La Porte, Indiana.  i have history there. and family there. and a dead dad there. i also have a cousin who does hair there. that's basically why i went - to get my highlights and a trim. but i visited the graveyard.
it's weird how walking through the gate felt like a homecoming. i didn't have big revelations, i didn't actually *say* words to the grave stone like they do in the movies, i wasn't sad and weepy - i just was. i was comfortable and hiding underneath an umbrella.
i did take off my shoes. i wanted the soles of my feet to touch the ground that covered my kin - it was probably the best part of the day. i stood there. for a while. it's been eleven fucking years. can you believe that?
i stood on the ground that covered the remains of a dad i used to have. life is chaos and pretty fucking cruel. i feel better when i think about breathing in particles of all my ancestors. i feel better when i think about that time my dad suggested to my mom that maybe they should keep the baby instead. i feel better when i think of his ruddy complexion and barrel chest and how, if i have a baby boy i will petition all mighty powers within the universe to have him resemble an Anderson man. i feel better knowing that my dad didn't choose to disappear from my life. these things make the 11 years easier, but then i think of the apparent disorder and all the bull shit people tell themselves to get by.
so, i wasn't sad until i started driving away.
and it was the kind of sad that tastes stale.