Musings of an Emotional Woman-child
Last night I cried. I cried so hard my eyes still sting and my cheeks sit stiffly upon my bones. And the strange part is I don’t know why. The last time I cried unprovoked, like this It was Sunday night, 2:00 am., 9/10/2001.
I woke up moaning a guttural moan as if I had lost something, something sacred, I tried to stuff the wails into my pillow, they were wet and guttural. I lived in a studio, so I tried to stifle my moans and heavy snotty whimpers. I had no idea why I had cried in such a way.
But last night I cried. I mean it could have been lingering sorrow from an ex’s confession; that he had his eyes on another, the lingering feeling that he might have for some time now, that he might have been innocently courting her through out our relationship. I feel doubt about my move and how I’ll survive. I fear getting sliced open for a second time, I fear catherders and bed pans, failing bowels and tumors the size of ripe grapefruit. I fear the smell of heavy narcotics being pushed through a long tube, I fear late night TV Bingo and Hospital food. I fear Brooklyn and the beauty it inhabits, I fear real sisters, the ones with the natural hair that look bodacious in a $200.00 pair of jeans and could read me for not being down enough. They’d be full of grace and possess a knowledge I could never tap in to. I fear large empty parks at dusk and the dank odor of urine that you can’t seem to escape. I fear the change that is about to happen, I fear being alone. Not alone in the conventional sense but more so with myself and my thoughts and my character, I am afraid to find that I lack—character. I’m afraid of loosely jumping to conclusions and making, albeit logical yet paranoid assumptions about everyone around me, my past relationships, my future existence alone in a big fucking city or even the friendships I hold dear. I’m afraid that my loneliness may make me obsessive compulsive and have me suffer under the delusions of hyperbole and reflection. I may misinterpret everything that I have thus far experienced as thoughtful and customary as actually accidental and malevolent. Lingering sorrow—I cried over this type of distress before…memories of my grandmothers were once again stirred up. The thought of anyone in my family getting hurt or coming down with some debilitating disease would devastate me to catatonia. I’m not shitting you, I would be LOST.
I am painted by mistakes I have made. That I can’t apologize for, blue black red and brown. Mistakes I cannot change or keep forgotten. I am agonizing over past relationships, the simple, easy ones that left me satisfied and the fiery fervent painful ones—that kept me crazy and spent. Those hot, lurid ones you hoped would just last one moment more after it had ended so quickly. The ones you hold onto with both hands …because if you let go you’d lose a part of your own soul. I don’t know how many times I lost my head over potential lovers. But I fear losing that fire. But I’ve lost my head over worse.
I fear loneliness and hardship, and eating toast and 5 day old rice and never being able to sleep cause “I just had to live alone” and the jobs will be keeping my black ass running in unyielding concentric circles around the city. I fear shitty mattresses that are tossed on the floor for lack of better spatial aptitude–the dwelling that is. I fear old pillows and odd milk carton crates, hand me down sheets and a tv with no picture. I fear illness. Blowing up another 50 lbs, series of drugs that keep me cold from the waist down, another boyfriend who leaves me and the feeling of emptiness you get when you walk down a familiar street, yet nothing ever looks the same. I fear death. I fear this change that is creeping up like a cold storm, about to throw everything into chaos, keep me hid for a while…I fear this change will never leave me, it will stay stuck somewhere on me caught on my skin tearing at its elastic hold on my bones…I cried last night…something fierce. I cried for my life…
And here I go again
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