Dr. X smiles, but I don’t smile back. Not just because I think she has it too easy, which I do, but because there is a steel hook digging into my chest and it’s making me want to cry. I won’t cry, though, because crying makes me even uglier. My face squishes up, my lips get twisted, and my tiny brown eyes disappear. I don’t like to cry, but when I do, I want to be alone, where there’s no one around to ask questions, and I can bury my face into a pillow.

It’s stupid, anyway, the things that make the hook appear. Today it’s yellow skin. I hate my yellow skin. I hate that I am the color of jaundice, and dry leaves, and bile and piss. I hate that I don’t know the man who screwed my mother and left. I hate that my mother won’t tell me who he is – I want someone to blame. I want someone whose eyes look like mine to stare back at me and tell me that I am loved. I want someone to say that they are sorry and really mean it. I want to scream at someone and then be forgiven.

Dr. X leans forward, her sterling silver Cross pen suspended over a manila folder. One day, I want a pen like that, something heavy and opulent, maybe as a gift from someone who thinks my words are that important.

“Here’s what I think we should do,” Dr. X says. I look up from staring at my rough hands and yellow arms and see that she is still smiling. There’s a hint of white lace visible over the buttons of her freshly ironed blouse. Her breasts rise and fall like a metronome. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. When she blinks, her lashes almost meet the arch of her brow. The hook digs and digs.

“Since you’re not that comfortable talking, I think you should journal your history for me. You’re a writer, so that should be easy for you, shouldn’t it?” All the sudden, I get a sensation like lead in my veins. I feel heavy and stuck and halfway dead. Writing is the only thing I have left. It’s MINE – please don’t take it – it is mine, and it is untouched, and sometimes it is even beautiful. And when it’s not beautiful, it’s terrible in the way I need it to be, like a madness that keeps itself contained.

Dr. X’s silver pen taps the folder. My last name and first and middle initials are typed in crisp black letters on a white label with a blue stripe. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want pieces of my life split off and typed up in forms, or scribbled in shorthand.

My breaths feel ragged and there’s a sour taste in my throat. Still, she called me a writer, and I don’t know why her recognition stirs me in a way that feels hopeful, but it does, even if she didn’t mean it in the real, adult sense of the word. She only meant that she knew I wrote, not that I was any good at it, or that I might stand a chance in hell of actually ever becoming a real writer someday.

I feel stupid for realizing how much even Dr. X’s faint praise means to me, but under the lead and behind the hook, my nerves are tingling, and words begin to fly in my head, colliding and embracing and looking for a story. Beautiful words, like wild and oeillade, amethyst and bell. Burning words like love and anguish, hunger and fear.

Dr. X interrupts my thoughts. “Listen,” she says, “I don’t want you to worry about things like grammar or spelling, this is just between you and me – no grades, no judgments.”

Everything inside me freezes. Dr. X thinks I’m a moron. A dropout punk with dirty sneakers, a GED, and no future. I didn’t drop out of school because I was an idiot, but because I needed to live. I needed to be safe, I needed work, a roof over my head, and something healthy to eat. She should know that – I told her that already – but apparently she didn’t listen. Or she thought I was lying. The cold hook digs deeper, and in an instant I find myself hating Dr. X, and despising myself for liking her.

* * *

At home in my studio apartment with its dirty, threadbare carpet and faded sleeper bed, I sit at a Formica table and pound wire sharp letters down the throat of my Royal typewriter. At 3:00 a.m., I am sweating and the ashtray is overflowing, but the hook is still and the anger is gone. I open my windows and let the salty, chilled air of Santa Cruz wash over me. The 40 pages I have partially tucked under the typewriter rustle. I have no desire to re-read them. They already feel foreign to me, like some abstract theory or punishing science, but mostly I am afraid that I broke every rule and proved myself to be inept and unpolished. A common trait of the amateur, I once read, is the overuse of bruised adjectives and bloody metaphors, and I used both, too many times.

After a few hours of sleep, I spend two of my last three dollars on a black calligraphy pen from the drugstore, and I draw Dr. X’s full name, Lyndal Xavier, in Roman script across a white linen envelope. My history is not a gift, at least not one that’s worth much, but it feels like I’m giving something away, and I want it to look nice even if the inside is ugly. I drop the envelope off with Dr. X’s receptionist before I head to the plant where I work swing shift, counting out diodes and capacitors for the assembly line. It’s a mind-numbing job, but I’ve learned how to split my focus. While one side of me counts in sets of ten, the other imagines that the phone will ring and Dr. X won’t want to wait another four days to see me – she’ll want to see me in the morning – she’ll want to help me plan my future. She’ll tell me how to get out of this paper hair net and blue cotton smock and into college.

* * *

Dr. X doesn’t call, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from imagining all sorts of things, from an unopened envelope to a derisive laugh to a shrugged shoulder. By the time our appointment comes, I am high-strung and anxious, overflowing with hope and resentment although neither of these things make any sense. Dr. X isn’t a savior, she can’t rescue me, but I can’t help but think she knows the secret to things I don’t know. Like how to get out of a hole, not be nervous, and how to be the kind of person other people want to get to know.

Sandi, one of the ladies at work, called me book smart and life stupid, and I know she’s right. I had more books than I ever had family, and I loved my books. They never screamed, or punched, or called me names. Still, they didn’t teach me anything practical, like how to hem a pair of pants, balance a checkbook, or make a dinner that didn’t come out of a box. I taught myself all those things when I left home, but there are other things I just haven’t grasped, and it makes me feel stupid and inferior and set-apart.

I don’t think Dr. X – I don’t think a lot of people – know what that’s like, and it makes me feel resentful, even though it’s not their fault. That’s just the way it is, and sometimes I rub that feeling in on purpose for no good reason. I’ll go to a park or a mall and I’ll watch the mothers with the babies on their hips, or I’ll watch the giggling teenagers shopping at stores I could never afford. I’ll watch and let the hook dig into my heart until my eyes water. And then I’ll hate myself even more for never being the kind of child someone wanted to hold, or the kind of carefree, laughing girl with lots of friends.

Sometimes I walk through the suburbs in the evening just to see the bicycles abandoned in driveways, the lacy curtains pulled back from windows, and the girls in ponytails sitting on the sidewalks with buckets of chalk. I do it even though I know it will hurt. Some kids cut themselves, some do drugs, or drink. I just watch, and it’s a pain I give myself, except that I know that one day I want to be in one of those pictures, and not outside. I want to be in one of those yards with the green grass and yellow roses — in the house with the real beds and the fingerpaintings on the refrigerator. I think Dr. X must know how I can get there, and more than anything this is what I want from her. The secret about how to go from the outside in.

Dr. X holds my pages in her hand, and there’s a big silver clip that leaves them open to the middle. The middle is where most of the Big Ugly is, and I can see that she’s underlined sentences and written notes in the margin.

The questions come at me in rapid fire succession. Tell me when, Dr. X says, tell me how, how did you feel about it? (I told you, can’t you read?).

Were you angry, were you sad, you know it’s not your fault, don’t you? (Yesyesyes).

Your time is almost up, we’ve got a lot of issues to deal with, but first I think we have to deal with your depression.

I’m not depressed, I tell her. I’ve just become too aware of the world, and everything hurts. I thought I’d find peace out here but people hurt, and loss hurts, and not being liked hurts, and being alone every day and not knowing what to do or how to do it hurts. You can’t fix that with a pill.

Dr. X stands her ground, and hands me the slip. “It will take a couple of weeks to feel a difference, but take these twice a day, and Mila,” (she pauses, looks me deep in the eyes, as if speaking to an imbecile), “be-careful-not- to-skip-a-dose.” I watch her Laurel Birch earrings dangle as she waits for me to answer. Cloisonné and silver, a glittering bird amidst cheerless blue flowers. Dr. X’s eyebrows are arched like question marks as she waits for me to answer.

I feel pale and lost and angry and frustrated and broken and beaten and the hook digs and digs and digs and digs. I take the slip, but I already know I’ll be a no-call, no-show for my next appointment with Dr. X.

It’s a humble revenge, but I think – I really believe – necessary.

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The do-not-care was, at one time, intriguing. The shock of worldly disengagement, the thrill of social laziness, the nothing matters except me, us, and this moment of it, left me feeling displaced but somehow lucky –- as if I’d accidentally stumbled upon the cure for a lifetime of raw nerves and anxiety. Do not care. Nothing matters. Have a cigarette.

The Winston Woman loved her cigarettes. I remember how she’d tap the box swiftly several times against the palm of her hand, deftly remove the cellophane, and then tenderly slide one of the tender white bodies out of its shiny red dress. With a one-handed flick of an antique silver lighter, she’d set her nicotine love on fire, caressing it between curled fingertips as she slowly inhaled a smoky kiss. Sometimes there would be rings in the exhale, perfect o’s that dispersed, one right after another, into stratus-like clouds.

The smoke seemed to bring about an air of confession, but being guiltless left the Winston Woman with little of importance to confess. Instead, she’d speak of inconsequential things with a sweeping, heady charm. The meeting she forgot, the ninety shades of white she found at the paint store, the employee who made a show out of cleaning her desk and phone every afternoon.  The most hollow trivialities were fattened with dramatic gestures and laughter.  There was something tough-but-vulnerable about the Winston Woman that left me wanting to take her side in any argument.  Of course she missed the meeting – it was scheduled too early. Ninety shades of white were 88 too many. Her employee was an obsessive, anal-retentive prig.

And nothing really mattered during these storied times except her, us, our sequestered moments, and our silent partner — the ever-present, collusive cigarette.

There came a night, though, when the last of the nicotine lovers lay used and finished, tamped out in the dirt in front of a remote Montana cabin, where we had gone to escape from asphalt and traffic. A check of coat pockets, luggage, and the car came up empty. Unfortunately, it was after 11 p.m. and the nearest store, 35 miles away, was three hours past closed.

“We have to go,” she said.
“There’s no place to go. Nothing will be open until the morning.”
“Something is open somewhere, we’ll just keep driving.”
“Just go to sleep. We’ll leave as soon as we wake up.”

Her voice started rising and within minutes the carefully constructed Winston Woman began falling apart at the seams. She began to panic, her  voice edged with fear and anger.  She’d never be able to fall asleep. Who chose this place? It was hell. How could there not be one 24-hour market anywhere around?  Her brown eyes narrowed at me as if I’d somehow conspired to make her miserable.

We drove a choppy 22 miles on dirt roads in the black of night until we reached the highway, and then 53 miles until we spied the yellow lights of a sleepy all-night truck stop with an ancient cigarette vending machine in its lobby. I scavenged my car for change, finding just enough for a pack. On the drive back, after smoking one cigarette, the Winston Woman slept with her face pressed peacefully against the glass. Her do-not-care look was back, her features smooth and relaxed, her mouth slightly open as if anticipating her next fiery kiss.

The Winston Woman paid the cashier and my eyes followed her outside, where she slid into the passenger side of a waiting car. I saw her shoulder move in a familiar way as she tapped her cigarettes against her hand, and I realized that I did not miss her or her daily rituals. I picked up a bag of tangerines, a loaf of bread, and a pack of Marlboro Lights, and then fed my change to some worthier cause on the way out.

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The laughter in my throat was stilled by the heavy clomp of her boots in the mud. She was angry at her truck for running out of gas, angry at the rain, and angry at the whole world it seemed. She muttered and cussed, and insisted that I thought she must be a real fuck-up. What I was really wondering was how an empty gas tank could trigger what amounted to a self-flagellating tantrum.

“What a great start to your trip, huh? You must think I’m a real idiot.
“That fucking gauge was above E. You saw that right? That it wasn’t below E?
“I bet you’re regretting being here.
“I’m tired of shit like this always happening to me.”

After the third or fourth reassurance, I realized it didn’t matter what I said. Eloise was determined to be miserable. Her hostility was easily tapped, and there was a black hole to her being that she catered to as if it contained the only precious truth left in the world.

A mile-long walk left us standing on her porch, rain soaked and muddy, and I couldn’t help but think that with someone else, this might be a fun occasion. Leah would run for the wine glasses, Sheila would challenge me to wrestle in the mud, Jen would tell jokes, and then laugh so hard she’d have to stop walking. None of them would have done what Eloise did next –- which was to take off her boots and throw them against the garage wall.

“Never mind that those were my favorite boots,” she seethed to the mud-streaked plaster.

Later, I sat on a couch in her living room, listening to a litany of trivial, wine-soaked complaints. Her parents loved her, but not well enough. She had a stellar education, but not Ivy League. She had many friends, but no one who really understood her deep complexity. She had a trust fund, but it wasn’t enough to quit working. There were lovers that used, and lovers that left, and a sense of never being appreciated.

“It would be nice if even just once I got back 10% of what I gave to others, but I guess I’m screwed on that. Everybody I ever meet is so selfish.”

For four nights, I sat like a cypher in Eloise’s smoky living room, willing myself into stillness as I watched the stars through the skylights. She was an unlikely Scheherazade, a steely, bitter-eyed woman who seemed to have spent her life creating conflict so she would have an outlet for her combativeness. With every story, she seemed to grow fresh scars, counting and recounting the wrongs committed against her until there was no good will, and no right thing left in the world.

Instead of bolting, I found my curiosity turning morbid. There was a sour aftertaste to our one-sided conversations that was all at once revolting and intriguing. My incredulousness was stretched but not yet sated, not even when she told me the story about driving drunk, and the massive damages done to her lover’s face when she drove into a ditch going 80 mph. Even in that story, Eloise reigned as the ultimate victim. The lover sued, Eloise received a suspended jail sentence, and when the story hit the local newspaper it was humiliating.

“So her face – did they manage to fix it?”

“What? Oh. She lost most of her lower jaw and lower lip, but had lots of reconstructive surgery. Between the insurance company and me, she made out pretty well. I ended up having to go to treatment, though, which was stupid because I wasn’t an alcoholic — but who cares, right? I paid through the nose for that night. There are still people in this town who hate me…”.

On the morning I left, I woke up early and walked through the house, and for the first time noticed how beautiful it really was. Stained glass French doors led to a wrap-around patio. The floors were a dark walnut wood, and there was an exquisitely patterned red Persian rug in the living room. Abstract art hung neatly from clean white walls, lit from below with key lights. In four nights, I hadn’t noticed the antique chairs, covered in cobalt blue velvet, that framed the fireplace, or the soft white chenille of the couches. Either Eloise’s misery had sucked all the color and light out of the room, or I was so enchanted by it that I turned blind to everything else. In the pale yellow light of morning, I was reminded of a song by Sara McLachlan – “you live in a church where you sleep with voodoo dolls, and you won’t give up the search for the ghosts in the halls”. Eloise’s home was like a tainted church, a sanctuary lost to the cause of both old and ongoing wars.

In front of the airport terminal, Eloise handed me a folded up piece of paper and told me to read it on the plane. It’s just a poem I wrote, she said, something I wanted you to have.

Nobody heard her, the dead woman,
but still she lay in the abyss moaning.
I was much further out than you thought, she said,
and not waving, but drowning.

As if there were not enough reams of torment in her own life, Eloise resorted to stealing the tragic words of others. The poem was written by British poet Stevie Smith, and only slightly changed by Eloise’s interpretation.

I might have never known, but I discovered Not Waving, But Drowning in the county library when I was nine years old, and ran home to read it to my mother –- a woman who was drowning in an unhappiness I was powerless to change. I was always looking for words she would recognize –- that would move her in some way, or that let her know that while I didn’t understand everything, I did understand that she felt I was to blame in some way, and that I was sorry, sorry, sorry. For three decades, I waited for the day my mother’s secrets would spill, and we could forgive each other for the darkness. The right combination of words were never found. There was no grand rescue, no heroic act of forgiveness, no chance of saving either one of us from wanting what we could never have.

Yet, years after her death, I found myself drawn to sitting silently in the darkest shadows of other women, waiting for a hint, a revelation, or some epiphany. When I wasn’t actively seeking out the most brooding people I could find, they seemed to find me.

And the only thing I ever really learned from all those years of shadow sitting is that misery can travel beyond time and circumstance, and become a black hole that voids all light and swallows any possibility of good. There really is no mystery to the the forever-lost, the fucked-up, the hateful, or the chronically bitter. We move in this universe on differing parallels –- some paths are rife with danger and difficulty, and some are so easy that they seem supernaturally preordained, but most are a mix of challenges, habits, and celebrations. Sometimes there are choices, and sometimes there are unmitigable circumstances. We fall as often as we get pushed. We embrace each other, or we stand apart. We scar, berate, and rail against each other, or extend our compassion and love. We kick each other, or help each other up.

We are the secret, the key, the magical, elusive meaning of things that we search for in the clouds, ancient books, and new-age gurus. There is really no major mystery to who we are. We are what helps creates the other. In the largest picture, we are the source of each other’s love, misery, happiness, anger, regret, support, hope, longing, and despair.

Eloise and my mother were partially created by others on their path, as surely as Beethoven, Curie, and Van Gogh were.  But instead of gathering love, they nurtured grudges. Instead of striving for happiness, they chose to lash out in anger and bitterness.

The worst monsters and tyrants in the world only exist by collective permission, as do the greatest thinkers, pianists, artists, and inventors. We don’t always agree with the collective, and often lack the power to enforce our differing will, but many of us accede our personal ethics as if our singular thoughts, ideals, or dollars had little value at all. We sit in the shadows of corruption, perverse politics, bad will, unjust laws, and miserable people until we are numb and feel them as inevitable.

And perhaps they are, at least until the collective masses experience a new call to enlightenment, but we don’t have to sit in the shadows and wait. We don’t have to sleep with voodoo dolls, or taint our sanctuaries with totems of death and misery. We can, instead, consciously choose to live in a way that honors our highest ideals.

We can stand and speak clearly instead of moaning. We can wave, and refuse to let ourselves be drowned.

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I left off wanting to be the girl under the tree, with wild hair and apricots falling around my feet, the one who scrawls words dangerously, with no consideration of time or consequence.   I also shared my fear of being forever, instead, the draftsgirl.  Carefully engineered, a single life drafted, one side, straight lines, four squares per inch. . .

Lately, something has been changing in this landscape, Vincent.  I can feel it.  Something is twisting in or out,  tectonic plates are shifting, and things are being arranged and rearranged in subtle, precarious ways.  The tycoons, politicians, and bankers are everywhere, moving like specters through the fog.

I am scared, Vincent.  The ground beneath my feet has become shaky.  Things are falling and colliding and sliding away. Fires are being extinguished, leaving a chilling void.  All around me are eyes, bereft and empty, accusing and congratulatory, desperate and frightening.  There are hands in pockets, hands engaged in work, and so many fingers pointing. . . there’s a deficit of warmth and a surfeit of greed.

In this new landscape, draftsgirls like me count their pennies and desperately cling to faith.  Our voices lilt upwards in apologies, begging forgiveness for the slightest mis-mark; the most inconsequential step out of line.  We no longer see Arles or fields of flowers in our dreams, but debtor’s prisons, and ourselves as the potato eaters who must survive yet another harsh season.

Once, Vincent, I lost myself in your novel reader.  I saw her, wrapped in a warm shawl, surrounded by amber light, left wide-eyed by some adventure, or captivated by some turn of phrase that her mind might repeat over and over again to spark her imagination or salve her heart.  I imagine she might have followed Thoreau as he left  the ship’s cabin to stand “before the mast and deck of the world” where he could “best see the moonlight amid the mountains”.   Or Dante –  “Consider your origins; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

In a warm room, with other appetites sated, transcendence comes easily.  Ragged men in ragged clothes become poetic symbols; weathered faces lined in pain become lyrical epithets.  In a virtuous existence, where there is no desperate struggle to make what is essential matter less – where there is no forceful tamping down of hunger, or violent scramble for the last piece of this or bit of that – where there is warmth, and light, and plenty – it is easy to transcend the faraway, brute reality of cold bones and empty bellies.

I used to close my eyes against the grimness of your Potato Eaters. The hope-filled and dreamy child in me found it a particularly ugly piece.  I hated that it was there, amidst the achingly beautiful starry nights, and the gardens of Arles.  I shuddered against the humble faces in gray surroundings, with their slumped shoulders and distant eyes, and I believe I might have even said aloud, not me, not me, never.  What arrogance I had then, Vincent, in my cast-off clothes, with my sun-burned face and impertinent temper.  I believed that boldness, above all else would see me through – that courage was the great equalizer that would bring me out of the muddy fields and into the sunlit gardens.  And at night, under bright yellow stars and the bluest of  skies, I would sit under the awning of the café terrace, my heart filled with the grace of distance, writing the stories I promised to never forget.

I can’t say exactly when it was that I looked at the Potato Eaters and found myself there, or when the Café Terrace at Night became the more painful vision, but it was recent.  One day, I simply emptied my pockets of impossible dreams, and found myself face to face with the woman pouring coffee.  And she was no longer entirely un-beautiful to me, but worthy.  I wanted to wrap her in a warm shawl and give her a feather bed in which to rest her weary head.  I wanted to wake her with roses and music and fill her long, bent days in the fields with hope.  I felt the languishing pain, too, of having none of these gifts to give.

Poverty and politics are maliciously entwined, Vincent.  Those closest to the earth feel it first – the swelling winds and jagged cracks – the subtle, perilous changes in landscape.  We feel it, and we fear the long drought ahead.

I hear them calling out to us, Vincent, like barkers in some nightmarish carnival –  Get your hope here!  Don’t panic!   All is well, or will be well! – and I think of something else Dante said, about the darkest places in hell being reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of crisis.  Certainly, there’s hell enough right here on earth to hold the corrupt, yet they are rarely the ones who suffer the darkest of days.  It’s wealth and power, Vincent, and not courage that takes one deep into the sanctified gardens.  There, behind the guarded gates, beyond the reach of justice,  the violators transcend the broken bodies, empty wallets, and torn spirits they’ve left behind, writing their own histories or forgetting them altogether.

I have a sudden urge to go home, my friend, but where?  There is no place I can truly call my own.  I am living on borrowed time, in rented spaces.   I cast a glance upward and see only the reflections of a bitterly divided earth.   A silver thorn on a bloody rose, and an earth that’s trembling.

What I wouldn’t give now to be a shepherdess instead of a draftsgirl, on another landscape altogether.

I wish you were here to paint me something beautiful.

Love, Always,

Jane

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Now, though, you’ve developed small fractures in both feet. Your knees are unsteady. Your legs shake in waking hours, as overly strained muscles begin to separate from bone. Still you jump, only more slowly, and more aware of the damage being done. You begin to question your methods, and momentarily consider other alternatives, but nothing feels as perfect or reliable as the thing you are most familiar with. Ultimately, you jump so that you can get there – to the place you love – the place that makes you feel wholly alive and beautifully human.

One evening, your trampoline disappears. It is gone, and you cannot afford to replace it. Your body, despite its accumulation of damages, aches for nothing more than the nightly ritual of jump-bounce-twist-turn. Your legs feel as if they’ve taken on a restless, unhappy life of their own. They moan and twitch and rebel beneath you. Your heart, used to taking a nightly pounding, feels eerily still.

You do not sleep.
You begin to dream of horrible things while you are painfully awake.
Your body, you feel, has betrayed you.
You fear you will never sleep again.

You pace the floors, and so much comes to the surface in the dark of night. Bitterness, sadness, fear, anger, apathy. Your mind, overly-full and anxious, turns dark and despairing. In losing the trampoline, everything else you once loved also feels lost to you. You begin to associate your jumping with all the wonderful things you fear are lost forever, creating a black and white list of reasons you must, absolutely must, have your trampoline back. Without it;

you will never sleep again.
You will never again feel right, or whole, or rested.
Unrested, you will never be happy.
Unhappy, there is no reason to live.

The thought of getting back on your trampoline begins to consume you. It’s only the thought of jumping again that brings you close to feeling any sort of happiness. Small fractures and torn ligaments become, in your mind, a smaller and smaller price to pay, and even somewhat meaningless in your list of self-justified consequences.

You need the trampoline.
Your body demands it.
You, or some very important, alive, or sacred part of you, will die without it.
You’re are in more pain when you don’t jump than when you do.

The trampoline becomes everything, and until you have it again, little else seems to matter. You need to tie off the vein, light the pipe, snort the coke, take another pill, binge until you puke, starve yourself into a silhouette, gamble until it’s all gone, sleep with another stranger, drink yourself into oblivion — because nothing else, you are convinced — will ever make you feel as good or as much like your truest self.

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March on, soldier girl, march on. There are some mercies you will never know, and others you are probably better off not knowing. Carry your arsenal of words proudly, and spray paint the obstacles and alleyways in your path. Write your name boldly, and let your vivid colors splash against the graying admonishments and swells of whitewash.

Once, I wrote you a story by hand, in plum colored ink, in a beautiful leather notebook sent to me by some cigarette company. I did not hover over lines or pause between paragraphs, and I did not sleep for three days. It seemed urgent then, but somehow all those flowing words got lost. Stolen or lost – or maybe never found – does it really make a difference? There was no one there to protect anything, and it was easy, so easy, to pretend I didn’t care. I bought three piece suits from the secondhand store, read books that taught me how to aspire and conform, and forged my way into some musty tapestry held together by false needs and even falser promises.

I faltered then, I know. I was young, and bumbling, and out-and-outside of everything, scrambling desperately just to understand the essential facts, such as the chasm between how people acted, and how they really were in their own private and natural worlds, where no acting is required. I struggled to slow down the alternative other-scripts in my head, where I could create and arrange, rewrite and edit, until every new imprint and revelation made sense. It was not easy to evict myself from that sanctuary, but I did. I took a deep breath, and plowed my whole self into dangerous, unknown territory, as determined as any pioneer looking for a title and forty acres.

I did not have the means then to promise you what I am promising you now.

I want you to do whatever it is you really want to do, love, with any sort of abandon. Stay out and outside, if that is your wish, and I will protect whatever messages you leave in your path. I will let no one pour a whitewash over your words, and in this, I will not fail you. I will be the Theo to your Vincent – the unflagging patience to your spitfire impulsiveness, the protector of your interior art, and the keeper of your secrets. I will secure the essentials, keep the destroyers at bay, shore you up, and pick you up in ways that will be unintrusive and unnoticeable.

I will do it for your art, because it’s not always beautiful. Because it’s often curious, gritty, unrefined, full of question marks, and unmistakably yours.

I will do it for your hands. The ones that still plead when you talk, like a last vestige of childhood, a desire for your soul to be understood, even when your words are wrapped in the esoterica of language.

I will do it for your mind. The one that has been spent in fractions and unjustly divided in a world where half or less of a human being is thought to make a whole.

I have loved you from the day you recognized your separateness. When you gazed at your hands and feet and happily realized they belonged to you alone. When you lolled on the shag carpet of your pink bedroom, dreaming of horses, oceans, and Amazons. When you rebelled against the teachings of a monotonous life punctuated by fistfuls of anger.

I loved you when you were a hero, experimenting with the world, filled with unbridled energy and a desire to do and gather all that was good. I loved you when you were on your knees in the river, begging for your life, praying to whatever god watches over the set-apart and abandoned, and when you felt vindictive, angry, and bitter, knowing that no such god existed, and that you were truly on your own. When you numbered your scars, 1-17, and gave them names. Snake in the Grass. Saint Albert’s Fence. Five Minutes Late. Two Against One.

I know how love begins. It begins alone, in the sacred flesh of a new soul, as an intuitive desire or a biological imperative. It rises up to fill in the barren spaces, smooth the jagged edges of scar tissue, and nurture the mind, body, and spirit. It becomes intrinsic, outreaching, sacred – birthed over and over again in neophyte stages until it becomes agape and all-encompassing.

I do not know, and have never known, how love really ever ends.

All those years when passion was kept in tight coils and stored away for some future days of freedom, had this effect; my love is a renewing thing that knows no end. It is not fickle, or conditional, or wary. Once given, it is given forever, no matter how great the distance, how few the words, or how lost the original reason. For this love, and out of love for you, I will stand my ground, as close or as far away as desired, and guard the gates.

The world that made it impossible for us to be one, to be both artist and worker, dreamer and survivor, existing in the same physical being and outward expression, is no stronger than the shoulders that carry it as a necessary burden. I have grown strong enough to carry that burden for the both of us, and brave enough to face the consequences. So be, my love, that girl under the tree who paints poetry and writes abstracts. Be wild, and unrelenting, and undaunted. Burst your spindly roots out of the ragtag world, and leave the broken branches and dry leaves behind. Abandon the dogtag chains, the crumbling mortar, and the numbers that would subtract art from your every equation.

I will be here, holding steady the balance pole, guarding the gate, and gathering all the good that falls.

From me to you, for us, this is my promise.

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