Anonymous - Phillip

Phillip,

Yesterday was your day and I didn't even think about you. I didn't whisper "Happy You-know-what", or wonder what it would be like if things were different. I only think about how you are in me when you come out because I'm angry, even though you are there every time I take a step. It's a testament to genetics, because I have never seen you walk, but I will always have your gait. I have your ghost in my feet and I hate it, and when people ask, I explain it away; how I have a weird little step in my walk “just like my biological father", and then I hope that they don't ask me anything else about you, because it is a very long story, and I grow tired of retelling it.

I do have your temper sometimes. I never experienced your fury firsthand, but when I was a teenager and I would get so angry, mom would always point it out to me. "You're just like him when you act like this." She didn’t even have to use your name; I knew. I hated to hear her compare me to you. I don’t think I’ve ever told her that. How much it hurt to resemble someone that hurt her, even while I hurt her myself.

When I remember you, it’s only to hate having any of you in me. How can you still hide inside of me when I know nothing about you? I’ve never seen your face, and I don’t dare to look for photos of you. I don’t want to see you in my face when it was hard enough to accept that you are somewhere in my heart, living through little quirks, despite how you never cared to be around when you were alive.

I lie; I do know of your token visits; I just don’t know if you meant them. Mom told me you stopped by grandmother’s to see me a few times when I was growing up, and you would bring your new wife’s son. He and I would play together, and you would watch me but not say much to me at all. I know it was too long ago for me to be able to remember it, but if I try hard enough, I can see this scene like it’s from an old movie; it looks like faded film on a summer day. You stand by mom and watch me and your boy from the orchard fence, and you and her barely say anything, besides her bragging on me, and you just stand solemn and stare. I wonder what you really thought when you would watch me. I don’t know enough about you to guess, and when I try, I know I’m just putting my thoughts in your head and my words in your mouth, but I can’t help it, and do it anyways. When I think in your head I am so proud to have a healthy, beautiful, kind, and intelligent young boy, and excited to think of the man you would one day be. I would see myself in the little things you do. I would see myself in the way you walk, and in your face. I wouldn't know how to express it, but I would know that things would be better for you without me around, and I would hope to talk to you one day and explain why I did the things I did, and why I made the choices I made. I wouldn’t know what was growing inside of me. I wouldn’t know I would never be able to tell you any of these things. It would grow inside of me until I was not the same man, and one day I would leave you in the span of a gasping breath, and without a second thought.

A man doesn't always want to be a father, and I understand that, but a real man will be one anyways. I know you never had a chance, and I know I need to forgive you, and maybe I will some day when I am a father, and when things like having a son and a wife to be there for aren’t so black and white, I'll be able to put it to rest, but for now, besides this one time, I do my very best to forget you.

Yesterday was your day, Phillip. "Happy You-know-what" to you.

Anonymous - Untitled

I hate when people use Untitled for a title. I also hate titles, no more so labels. I'm also a hypocrite. Nearly three years ago something so catastrophic sat on my chest like a gremlin and tinkered around with my ticker. It was over, but there was a difference this time. It was over but I was not over. It was the first break-up that had hurt so badly but I persevered into a better person. I did some of the usual things. I built up walls around myself and just threw myself into tons of projects. For six months straight nothing outside of a grieving exchange of a kiss in the postmortem of a dearly departed broke down these walls. No contact. No dates. Just me. I was falling in love with me and swearing away all relationships. Screw labels. Screw relationship statuses. Screw Looking for. Screw a/s/l! (I applaud you if you can recall that reference) None of that was happening until this quiet fellow love-lorn companion came into my life and gave me an amazing, rewarding and positively challenging two and a half years.

Chapter 2
Breaking Up

I hate chapters with titles.
So now we're trying out this whole still living together and slowly breaking up into a friendship thing. What? I know, right? Who does this and mutually? I hoped we could. What's yours is becoming yours and what's mine is becoming mine. Why is this happening now? It's like trying to remove paint out of a sink. How do you separate this? I claim the cool glass stained wine glasses we got as a going away gift. Wine glasses are already in the soon to be non-counterpart's possession. Now I have some, too. What do you still hold onto to maintain that friendship. What do you let go of? This is how I've been dealing. I found out tonight how the other one has been dealing. The dangers of social dating apps. The danger of still living with your respectively ex-boyfriend. The danger of tapping into my pre-Christmas gift searching adolescent years. I tapped into that portion of the brain. The danger of leaving your iTouch behind when going out. Ignorance is bliss and I'm the dead cat. No bliss here. I hate titles. But I loved ours. Now it's gone. Well, at least I can say I still have what is mine.

Anonymous - Teen Angst

This week on Writing, Writer, Writest we were supposed to talk about new beginnings. But, before I dive right into the subject, I think we should look at what comes BEFORE the new beginning - the downfall.

Everybody has a time in their lives where they think they’re doing what’s best for them, but they’re really doing quite the opposite. Your decisions are making you happy and ecstatic - you couldn’t see your life going in another direction if you tried with all of your might! But, then? CRASH. A circumstance comes around and ruins your so-called utopia. Your first instinct is to immediately blame somebody else - it’s human nature. You don’t want to believe that you yourself are the cause of the pain you’re feeling. But... really? It’s kinda on you.

That is probably a harsh statement, but hear me out. I’m not trying to be hypocritical by any means. I’m just writing from personal experience and observation. I, recently, have had my utopia crumble in front of my eyes. I blamed it on somebody else. I cried myself to sleep night after night. But I realize now it’s not worth all of that. Sure, it had to happen for me to heal, but come on now! If we, as people, weren’t so far into our own heads, maybe this wouldn’t happen!

The problem with being young is that people thing that you're unqualified to feel things. “Who are you to say these things?”, “You’re a kid.”, “You haven’t experienced life.”, “You haven’t felt love.”, “You haven’t-“ blah blah blah. We may feel our emotions in a different way, sure, but we still feel them. They are real to us, whether they appear to be real to you or not.

Okay. Anyway. Now that I have spent a good part of the essay whining about angsty, negative part of this topic (that I really think is necessary to really get to the point), here we go with the positive part. “Press Start to Continue.” Now that I have made it through “the downfall,” I am well on my way to my new start. I was just sitting around, playing my guitar, wallowing in self-pity, and DMing a friend when it hit me. “What the hell am I doing?” Why should one person have the power to alter my life? They shouldn’t.

So, this is where my new start began. I looked at life a different way. I have been happier and an all-around better person. It is definitely apparent in my everyday life and my music. I see now that I was so far into all of this “stuff” that I was basically neglecting the outside world.

If you don’t take anything else away from this long, teenage-angst essay, I hope you see that no matter what your situation is or was, you can always find a way to start over again. The downfall period may feel like it goes forever, but it really doesn’t! You have people who truly care about you, even if you think there’s no other way. You have the ability to make a new start for yourself - just open your eyes! You really can’t start fresh unless you are wiling to let yourself start fresh.

Let go of all the trash that’s polluting your mind. “Press Start to Continue” into your new beginning.

Anonymous: Thirty-Six Laps in a Mile

A few words about shame...

So, it’s deep, this shame I’ve been swimming in for years now. It got so deep there for a while I stopped noticing it, like when you dive into freezing water and at first you can’t fathom how you can stay in one second longer, but you do and you do and then the merest of moments later, you hear yourself calling out to anyone who will listen, “Come in! The water’s fine! It’s fine in here! I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine!” And what’s more, you believe it. And then eventually, it becomes the truth.

I was fine for a really long time in that water. I stopped noticing the shivers and tingles and numb. Things are changing now.

I thought for a really long time that the shame was, in fact, actual shame. But as it turns out, the shame is really more fear than anything else.

I wonder if you already knew this. Perhaps you are nodding.

I have been told, and more than once, that what I classify as “coping skills” are not coping skills at all, but instead “avoiding skills.” The people who tell me this sometimes do it with a measure of disgust and impatience and fury. Like this was something I was willfully and childishly refusing to hear, like I wasn’t listening, like they couldn’t stand me for not hearing them.

But, the fact is, I already know. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that (well, two things – I can also give you pi to 14 places). Of course my coping skills are avoiding skills. Of course they are. It’s so much easier to be ashamed than to be afraid. So much easier. You can function with shame; you can breathe right through it. Shame is mostly about failure, and failure is fixable. It can be controlled. Failure can mostly be done over, gotten right next time, tried again. But fear – fear stops everything. Suddenly, you’re back to that first second in the cold water, lungs constricting, brain telling you, “Out! Cold! Death!,” limbs pulled in tight, everything sucking in closer and closer, braced and fragile.

If it was all my fault, then it wasn’t terrifying. Not really. If it was all my fault, then it was just mistakes. Just a series of miscalculations and stupidity and error. But now I’m being told this is wrong. Worse yet, that it is destructive. Let that go now, I’m being told. Recognize I didn’t have even the tiniest fraction of choice I want to believe I had. Recognize now that he had a plan – A PLAN – that started long, long before that day and that my only mistake, my only miscalculation, was playing right into it. Without knowing, of course. And how could I have known? Outwardly, he was the gentlest of men. He laughed easily, eyes authentically lit. He leaned in to listen when I spoke. He opened doors. He wrote notes about my many graces and left them for me to find. He charmed me. He was safe. There was no one safer.

But it was all grooming, really. All part of the plan. This is what I’m being told now. It feels true, I suppose. Pick the young one. The one who blushes when you say something kind. The one who clearly lacks in self-esteem, roots, connections. And hook her. Once thusly hooked, there was no getting away, regardless of struggle. Not until I was released. Not until he released me. I had some choices, and the few I made were wrong. But they were, in fact, very few, and also, they were not really choices. Choice implies the weighing of options and decision-making. I never decided anything.

I know this. If I stop and think about this rationally, I know it immediately, sharply. It was not my fault. But as soon as those words wrangle together into coherent, reasoned form, my brain rebels. It is rebelling right now. Because after logic comes emotion and no, no, I cannot go there. Not all the way there. Not all that way. The moment I start to feel that I had no power is the moment I realize I was not safe then, I am not safe now, I will never be safe. There is no such thing as safety. It was not my fault? But then there’s nothing I could have done differently, do you see? And nothing I could do now to keep it from happening again in a million different vulnerabilities-wide-open kinds of ways.

How do you wrap your heart around that? Your brain, sure, but your heart? How are you supposed to carry on in a world where all it takes to destroy you is a PLAN.

I want to accept this. I am trying very hard. This is where I am right now, perched here on this fence. I am dying to accept it. Leap, leap. I am drowning in my pool. Jump, jump. But crossing that line from shame to fear – how? How? I don’t know how. I can spell it all out, everything not my fault, but I can’t embrace the list when I’m done. Immediately, the logic reconverts to shame. Shame is warm. Shame is home. Shame is safe. Shame is easy.

(Come back, Shame!)

(What, someone had to make that joke.)

I didn’t tell the room service man I needed help – I didn’t know I needed help then; how could I have known? (I was stupid; if only I’d been smarter, I could’ve gotten out.)

I didn’t fight back harder – I knew I would lose any fight I started and I didn’t want to die. (I was a coward; if only I’d been braver, I could’ve gotten out.)

I didn’t tell when I got home – I didn’t know what had happened, not really; I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have the tools I needed. (I was weak; if only I’d been stronger, I could’ve gotten out.)

I lied to people about it later, people I loved, people I wanted to trust, people I wanted to trust me – I couldn’t process the truth; it felt safer to lie; it’s understandable, it’s okay. (I was gutless; if only I’d been more confident, I could’ve gotten out.)

When he called me a “tease,” that’s when I stopped resisting. I thought, “Oh. Oh, of course. Of course that’s what’s happening here. Of course I did this. I did this. Of course this is what happens when you are like me. Of course this is deserved. Yes, yes, naturally, of course.” Did you know – I have been learning this – that they almost all do that? They almost all say that? The thing about being a tease? Rapists, I mean. That’s why they do it. That right there.

That is the first time I have ever called him a “rapist.”

(This would boggle anyone who heard the story, I think. But try it sometime. Try that word out. Say it out loud. It isn’t easy to say -- that word. It shouldn’t be easy. I already want to take it back. I will not be taking it back.)

Peace is coming. I can feel a buzzing tremulousness from it, a ringing, a flutter, usually in the mornings when I first open my eyes. It’s coming in the shape of a boat, a shore, a blanket, something warm. A transition. An allowing. A recognition, realization, acceptance. I can’t see it, that peace -- it’s still... it’s still over there somewhere [waves hand vaguely, in some direction or another]. It’s over there somewhere in the distance. I think maybe just over that bobbing blue horizon. Or just past that one hill. A corner turn away. No further.

I think I can feel it. I think that is what I feel. I think what I’m starting to feel might, in fact, be peace. And all I have to do, all that really needs to be done at this point – I think, I think, I hope – is to start swimming and not stop.

Only kick a leg now, thrust an arm forward. Start swimming, little girl. The water may be cold, it may be deep, but it is not wide. There are shores in sight, and several to choose from. Pick a shore. Take aim. Don’t look back. Look back.

-----------
This piece is being published anonymously for now. Perhaps just for now. Just until a shore is reached. Maybe just until then.