There is a part of me that has taken the reins for right now. We’ll call her Addie for Adrenaline. It amazes me how much I want her to go away and yet she is hanging around as self-preservation. She’s a life jacket tossed on a me when I sometimes feel like I’m drowning on dry land. If a homeless person makes furtive movements close by, I begin twitching and want to tear off for the nearest sealable bubble. Asian men make me cross the street. I, who am so prone to all things urban am clawing against finding myself in large throngs of people, away from epi-centers of activity. I want Napa or the seemingly safe suburbs, the couch.
The oral surgeon today told me surgery is not necessary but is not ruling out a fracture from the trauma my jaw sustained from the assault. And these words, trauma and assault feel foreign and yet so inexplicably mine that I almost begin crying at the thought that someone punched me for no reason at all. That a crowd of people sat in silence. That seven weeks later my life still consists of soft foods, a bite that is uneven and only being able to insert 2 fingers in my mouth or the absolute avoidance of yawning.
I know, I know, it could be worse. And this is the problem. In my head it happens again and again. Worse than before. I try to shake it off, change the tape that’s rolling but he comes back again when I see a homeless man, an Asian man, an aggressive man. And I feel less like a human and more like a walking wound. One who doesn’t want to “bring up the jaw” because it’s going to bum her friends out.
I wrote an email to a friend tonight who’s having thoughts that something bad might happen to her child and thought perhaps there might be some truth to be gleaned for you, dear reader. Also included is an early draft of a poem begun the other night after my therapist and I realized I haven’t written anything since the jaw seemed to worsen a few weeks back. We decided there might be a correlation and I continued in the decision to write the worst. Sometimes, this helps. How are you not okay? What fear do you need to write out so it no longer eats you foot to head?
———————————————-
Dear X,
One thing that may help is writing your fears into the light so that they don’t have time to fester in darkness and grow like mold. i think fear is such a toxic substance that we are stymied from living those abundant lives God is calling us into…
Here’s a very early draft of a poem that began because I wanted to follow “the rabbit” of one fear that cropped up the other night and see where it would lead. The good thing about that is: a.) it’s no longer inside me b.) never has as much power over me as my sometimes forgotten positive nature and I think c.) belief that it cannot topple the notion that “he who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion.” We are assured of that.
I’m glad you shared this struggle. That kind of transparency allows for that redemption life which we’ve bought into, friend.
With much love,
annelies
this time a knife
this time he had a knife, its exclamation
pointing like a cry toward my face.
instead of sweat ringing underarm athletic
grey, he wore black faded from wearing out his soles
but the word in his mouth was still fight and animal
eyes still furtively peered out from sallow skin, fixed.
this time, the night exploded in flames, barrels pointed
at gestures, figures camouflaged in language, crumpling.
instead of san francisco fog, suicide spilled out into the air
in smoke puffs, women lifting charred steel off plastic seats, wailing
a siren of not my brother as retort against the blue lights spinning,
car doors closing and men in uniform getting statements, men
staring through steel and plastic with eyes that smolder, women
fixing head scarves, wrapping themselves into invisible tubes of black
and what of the shovel of a knife carving an unborn baby from belly
of a mother still, unmoving, cut into sections, pared like an orange
the enemy hungry to devour future kindling, burn present bloodlines
but this somehow is not enough for the shrine of madness that feeds
off of fear. a glass to the women of Sarajevo, and another to ruth
and her women gleaning their own futures, making their own plans
for survival in a land used to parched summers, a life lived with fear
neighbor and witness to the cup of atrocity lifted up by human hands
i do not understand the madness of hate, its appetite that never wanes
instead of growing tired, it propels forward, a bulldozer crunching steel
bones, crushing building, spirit flickering from rubble, barren landscape
life put on life support, feathers catching the whisper of wind, alighting from ash.
