Back to basics

After too many hours, I've discovered that it is much easier to give a check plus to a rushwrite than it is to give a grade out of 5 for a poem. And so I'm doing what I always do when things get rough--running away. But since it's late and I have no desire to get dressed to go out (I was going to say I have no desire to put a bra on and then realized that was way too much information), I'm running through my head. It's exhausting. Not much in the way of scenery. But it's an interesting trip.

Scene one: His office. Not "his" as in a romantic-y "his," but "his" in a respectful-therapist-I-want-him-to-solve-all-my-problems-even-though-I-know-it-doesn't-and-won't-work-that-way. Usually I sit on the ugly and uncomfortable couch, somehow ignoring the large, deep, cushy, leather recliner to my right, but now I'm sitting in the armchair so that I can "relax" (this is why I don't sit there in the first place). Deep breaths, eyes closed, that type of thing. My legs are crossed and my arms are folded. I wonder if the notes he takes down are about what I've said or about my posture. I really just want the answers, but instead I'm given myself.

Scene two: This summer. I choose the day of my uncle's funeral, although he's my great-uncle and I once asked him in front of my friends if he was my Uncle Don or my Uncle Dan. He was Don. I always felt a little guilty for that moment. It's also the day that my brother is going into the MTC. I'm sitting with my immediate family--somehow we wound up very close to the front--and everyone is watching us cry. My dad is speaking, even though it's my mother's uncle, and asking Uncle Don to help Sven on his mission. I want that, I do, but everyone is watching me cry and I feel guilty because it's not for Uncle Don or Sven. It's for Trent, who I still don't feel I've had a chance to mourn. I'm imagining his funeral, wishing I had been there, instead of this funeral for a man I liked but never really knew.

Scene three: Teenager. As soon as he says the word, I know where I'm about to go. Sitting at my desk in my basement room, no windows. Doing homework with the radio on loud enough to ignore my mother but quiet enough to hear the doorbell ring. It's dance-asking time and I know that I'm going to be asked this time around as I do my homework. I can see the lined notebook paper, see the pencil (I must be doing math), see the end of my ponytail hanging down over my shoulder. The doorbell doesn't ring.

Scene four: I'm told to find an image of me in my childhood. I look and find a few, but they are inconsistent, rather blurry. Blonde hair, glasses. Books. Always books. And as I write this, I remember an argument on the playground about the pronunciation of my favorite characters in my favorite series, which shall remain nameless.

All these girls are connected. They are all me. And somehow this idea of me is connected to the images they know and are resurrected by, not the depression or the anxiety or the fear. I can't let it best me. I can't and I won't, even though some days I want to.