So take the photographs and still frames in your mind, hang it on a shelf in good health and good time,
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial – for what it’s worth, it was worth all the while.
-Green Day, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
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Let me preface this post by stating that inebriated writing can turn out either really good or really bad. Hemingway used to toss back a few drinks before getting started, and keep drinking throughout the writing process (as is shown in The Old Man and The Sea). I personally found that alcohol unleashes the want, nay, the need to start typing thoughts onto my keyboard, but the caveat is that to do so it opens a Pandora’s Box of memories. Memories then crowd out the greater story until I’m exhausted, and invariably the dawn rises to waken a newly sobered Narrator to find that, once again, she’s started slamming out a scene, a tale, whatever that she will never finish.The muses behind the characters too important to the author’s very being to marginalize them into the characters I need them to be to make a story work. But then again, I just got back from a night out at a fashionable winery where I downed more or less an entire bottle of their priciest and most potent nectar by myself, so let’s see where the evening remainder of the evening takes us.
Once upon a time, I had the misfortune of being caught in a very bad predicament that I was too young to escape from. I was uprooted from my home and friends, kept isolated from anyone new, not even allowed to go to the local school. Cinderella had it good comparatively speaking – at least she didn’t have to worry about psychotic con men in church-goers clothing forcing their way into her bed at night. The only solace I had was writing, and I had a LOT more time for it than anyone else did. Every cent I had from the meager allowance my mother could afford for us went to stamps and long-distance phone cards – the phone cards a treat, the stamps more practical for sending anything I wanted to say (and say privately). I wrote letters much more than diaries – diaries and journals were certain to be snooped through for anything that could be used to break me down, so after a while I started hyping up things to put in them to build the ruse I wanted to portray. In the journals, my friendships were always strong, any doubts I had were minimized. I wrote myself as a stronger person than I was.
And the system worked well for a while, although over time the isolation and having all social interaction through correspondence took its toll. As I said, I had a lot more time and need to write my friends than they did me. On my best days, I was lonely and depressed. The stories I started writing as a ruse to throw off an abusive tyrant became more real to me – I wanted to be as much a part of things as I wrote about in those journals. I needed to have those connections, those friendships that meant so much more to me than they did to anyone else. I needed boys to flirt with me and girls to share secrets and rivals to snipe at in my journals because I DIDN’T HAVE THEM OTHERWISE.So those few weekend visits home to see my cousins, those occasional precious letters that would show up in my mailbox, created a whole world for me to help me escape the life I was stuck in. Any real-life drama, already amped up in teenage years, was significantly greater for me because I had nothing else to think or talk about. I might spend a week waiting anxiously for a letter, fifteen minutes on the phone, anything for the next part of that story, while in the meantime crafting fantastic and elaborate scenarios over what might come next. Sweet Valley High had nothing on the adventures my friends went through in my own mind.
But then I made a mistake. Three, actually, but they all connected into the bigger mistake.
Throughout a girl’s life, it’s pretty common to go through a series of crushes and loves, sometimes requited but usually not. It’s also pretty common for girls to discuss these quasi-relationships at length with each other – it’s part of how we learn social interactions. So the first mistake was writing profusely about a certain long-time and ultimately unrequited crush I’d had on a friend (because I’m still pretty drunk right now, we’ll call him Crush Guy). Eventually those feelings cooled (he made it clear that he didn’t feel the same way, and by that point there were others who actually did show an interest in me so the let down wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be), but the longevity of this particular hope was enough to give certain evil persons some leverage when it came to Mistake #2: there was also in my close circle a most excellent young gentleman who had the unfortunate task of always being there when I needed him most, whether I realized it (at the time) or not. He was calm, capable, extremely patient, and thought things through, but most importantly he took the time to really listen (we’ll call him Batman). After things with Crush Guy had simmered down, I really started to take notice of Batman’s admirable traits and the fact that these traits coincided exactly with what I wanted and needed in my life. The next visit I got to take back home, I asked to see him. Depression and predators in my house meant I never dressed up or took the time to wear makeup or play with my hair, so it was a pretty big deal that Batman was the first guy I bought a new outfit for. Things really seemed to be going well. Batman not only gave me something to talk about, he seemed to genuinely care. For the first time in my life, when I wrote, I felt as strong – if not stronger – than what I portrayed. It was an amazing feeling.
But the mistake was that I’d let my guard down. Having confidence and support were not things that would break my will, and the evil one needed to nip those feelings before something drastic happened (or, to be more precise, continued to happen). And so he started to plant the seeds of doubt, using Mistake #1 as a starting point (“Whatever happened to Crush Guy?”). And he’d use more subversive tactics to isolate me – draining my phone cards, pulling my letters out of the mailbox (until I caught on and started posting them at the post office), reading my incoming mail and then hiding it, listening in on phone conversations when I could have then, etc. So communication with Batman wasn’t as strong or as open as it should have been.
And then, we had a fight.
It shouldn’t have turned out the way it did. It started as most teenage dramas do, with a “did you hear what so-and-so said?” that for whatever reason I believed at the time, even though it flatly contradicted something Batman had told me and I was pissed at him for it. But remember, I didn’t have the normal interactions with my friends to have an argument and then get over it. So after staying up half the night in tears fuming about it I did what I was wont to do and unleashed my fury in a letter. I never meant to send it – it was one of the tricks I’d learned about how to deal with anger instead of lashing out at someone directly. By the time I finished it was very late, I could hear the evil one coming upstairs, and I shoved the paper on my desk before diving back under the covers to pretend to sleep. This was Mistake #3.
A few days later Batman called me. As soon as he said the words “I got your letter today,” I started to cry. He wasn’t supposed to have seen that. No one was ever supposed to have seen that. And I was sure I hadn’t mailed it, yet there he was on the other end of the line sounding absolutely crushed. All I can remember of that conversation was feeling so sick and dizzy, him saying “I would never…” and my voice whispering “I know, I know. I’m so sorry.” When we finally hung up I stumbled up to my room and tore my desk apart, praying I’d find that damned paper so the whole ordeal could be chalked up as a bad dream. But it wasn’t there. Instead there was a jackal in my doorway, a mocking gleam in his eye as he cooed, “what’s wrong, sweetie?”
What’s wrong? You miserable son of a bitch.
But I didn’t hear from Batman much after that, and soon I barely heard from him at all. I was sure his silence meant he hated me after that letter, and the evil one was more than happy to reinforce that belief. Such a fine young man right there, he cackled, and I was too much of a shrew to realize it until it was too late. The damsel in distress didn’t get her knight in shining armor. Fairy tales were just that.
But the tale wasn’t over. Batman left me something amazing. He’d planted the seed in my mind that in spite of my faults, there were people out there who loved me for being me. That I was lovable. That I was talented. That I was more amazing than I ever gave myself credit for. That I worried too much about what other people thought and that he liked me just the way I was. I wish I could say it banished my depression (it didn’t), but I carried those seeds with me until they eventually took root and started to bloom. Those seeds made me stronger than I knew I could be, helped me walk away from bad relationships and nurture good ones, showed me the importance of letting people know how much you appreciate all the little things they do. That love isn’t about the grand gestures, but the countless little ones that make up our lives. His patience taught me the perseverance I needed to make my life better.
Years later, Batman and I did eventually resume our friendship, so if he’s reading, thank you. And thank you, husband/procurer of the $40 bottle of ice wine that kept me just juiced enough to get this all out.
Tomorrow is another day.
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