Little Earthquakes

"Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again"
--Tori Amos

Here I am, just me. It seems so strange. No one left to read, but me, the way it was before. The way it should be. The way it will be, once I am me again.

Once I am me again I will write one long love letter to myself (instead of the secret words of naked honesty that I hide from everyone) I will remind myself of all the good things I am, instead of the bad. I will sit down and in my most alluring cursive loops I will pour out my heart in ways that I have never directed at myself. I will count on nothing, I will keep my eyes open for possibility. I will smile more than the day before. I was hugged by a stranger today, waiting to pay my rent, standing in line so that the university's billing department would lift its mistaken embargo on my registration. This might seem strange, but in fact, I often find myself basking in the warmth of unknown people, I can always smile through the pain. It starts to make sense, like this was always the way things had to go, and that each step was the right one at the right time to be here, where I am, now.

I don't want to depend on anyone but me. I won't even if it hurts like hell to wean oneself. I need to learn to give to myself, to sustain myself and be kind. I am starting a garden in my front patio, I have begun with seats in the sun and a table for my tea, and I have inherited a number of plants and acquired a few more my mom bought for me. She is the one with the green thumb, I have always killed every living plant in my custody. I will be a better gardener. I will be better to myself. I see the plants as metaphors for myself, they need care, love, water, sunshine, but they are also unable to ask for help and if they are the objects of overbearing scrutiny, overzealous attention they wither, just as if they were utterly abandoned. If I can care for the plants, perhaps then they will care for me in their own silent way. It isn't unreasonable to have something exclusively for its beauty. To posess it for nothing more than the aesthetic harmony it casts on our soul?

This was a story of external histories, not interior morphologies, but it seems that the encounter is always paramount. I held my breath through the gasping little death on the screen. I cried and shuddered at the human destitution. In the mind of a killer, it doesn't know why it does what it does. There is a code. A code of ethics. A code of reasonable expectations. I need to remember it. It is good to be back in class, back in front of a class. Every trimester I feel a little better, there is a gliding, smooth-motioned skating swirl, and things fall into place as they should. There are smiles, they feel safe and cared for, and I feel good giving them that safety. I will let that be the only thing. The rest is beyond my control, and I have relinquished it to the voracious nothing, like ripping petals from a fresh flowerhead and letting them rest on the wind.

I will not be perfect. I will not be better. I will simply be me, which will have to be good enough, even if I always say and do the wrong thing. I will not apologize for having needs, or for being free.