“angry”
this year, i have been angry. mostly at everything.
from the way someone walks in front of me to something at work not going the right way, everything that can remotely be controlled that goes wrong is off the infuriating scale.
mainly, honestly, i’m pissed off that some people are alive, & those people are not you. that some people get to live — like that scum from norway, like glenn beck or sarah palin, like people who really do absolutely nothing to make this world better & are just mean — & you didn’t.
i’m angry every time someone refers to a brother or a sister. if it’s a disparaging comment, it’s worse. if it’s a comment on how close they are, triple it. on the flipside, i’m still sad. i’m sad in my new flat that you’ll never see in a neighbourhood you’ve never been to. i’m sad holding babies who don’t expect presents from me on holidays or birthdays. i really don’t want to go to any more weddings without you.
—
i recently went swimming in a huge pool. i pushed myself underwater & held my breath for as long as i could. we’d do that during swim drills to see who could do a 50 without breathing. we’d count down on the side of daventry pool to see who could hold their breath the longest. we spent a lot of summers underwater. i watched kids in my urban pool cannonball into the water in front of me, while other swimmers pushed & kicked water away. it seemed so clear underwater, the bubbles, the flailing hands. upon surfacing, i had to blink a lot to see the world again.
i like triathlons now, but sometimes, when i’m in the water, i get scared that something’s going to come up from the bottom & bite me. it’s because i can’t see the bottom. there are no black, T-lines to follow, no rope to hang on to, no edge. i don’t know what’s down there. open water swimming becomes this strange combination of that thing we loved to do as kids & fear fear fear.
—
i took a long trip home. it was another strange combination of enjoying being with mom & dad while wondering whether we were just playing happy family. maybe this is what it’s like: last year was unreal, this year was/is angry, & nothing will ever feel normal.
i love you. i miss you differently than i did before, but you not being here makes me so angry.
framed
the first picture i put up in my new flat — a studio, just mine — was of you and me at a swim meet. i don’t know how old are are, but we are cheering, smiling, hugging.
‘the unreal’
jess —
it has been two years since you died.
on friday, i was walking to the bus stop, passing people drinking & laughing & having a good time after work, before the weekend. i was thinking how easy it is for normal people to do normal things, how some things & some days will not ever be normal for mom, dad & me.
i was on the bus home from a night out with friends, thinking how much you would like them & would like what we did. but it wasn’t right in my head, the thought. you would have liked them, you would have liked what we did: an edit of a tense to remove the potential that these things could occur.
in creole dialects, they use the irrealis mood to refer to unreal time: the would haves, might dos, could bes. i understand little of both creole & linguistics & often english, but if they have a tense to describe the unreal, then i’d like to be able to communicate that way too because i feel like i’m running out of ways to describe things.
what was; what happened; who we were. what we would have done; who we might have been; things we could have seen.
this is what’s left in the unreal.
it creeps up on you, the unreal does, telling your story with a ‘we’ instead of an ‘i’, referring to a number that it increases by one. or it flips it completely, giving you space & freedom & blankness to be just one stare of a person who has nothing & everything behind the eyes, the ability to respond politely, laugh out loud but not from the gut & to dodge & duck questions that require math or timekeeping.
sometimes i wonder if we’ll sit down & talk about what happened, go through it all with each other: the where we weres, the how did we get homes, the flights & days & decisions. sometimes i want to tell someone these things that are mine, tell them the bits i remember from the shower, the airport, the kitchen, the road. this unreal is a protection from the pain that smashes your temples together, puts a hand on your throat & bricks on your chest.
these days, i sit in meetings or at long pub tables or lie in bed & a little light will go off. all the sound is sucked out of the room & it’s quiet, even though mouths are moving or music is still playing. i think, this is my life now, & the light blinks off again, sound returns.
i’m happy; i’m angry. i’m satisfied; i’m sad. i’m running out of ways to describe things; i am finding ways to remember.
it is impossible to describe to anyone the power of the unreal, the broken promise of a life you always thought you’d know. i think dad & mom & i are growing into being okay, growing into a version of happiness, which means accepting the unreal as part of our lives instead of fearing it or not accepting it. i remember sitting in the car with ashley once, deciding together that no one was ever going to understand our unreals, our pain of living without you. i think that’s true whether we have words to describe it or not.
i love you so much. i miss you so much. i wish you were here. to me, it doesn’t matter if it’s two years or two hours. i think about you all the time, both you as you were & you being gone.
“run”
dear jess —
today, i did something that i never thought i wanted to or even could dream of doing (not that it would have been a dream, per se). let’s start back a bit.
when i moved back to london in march, i was unemployed for a while. from march to june, i did bits of freelancing, but i mostly sat on the couch looking at job postings & moaning about money. when i finally got even an interview, i was really eager to earn some money & get out of the house. unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly the dream job i’d wanted, & i came home from work to sit on the couch, look at job posting & moan about my boss.
this seemed to be counterproductive to healing & thinking about you. in august, when i had money to pay for groceries & rent & beer (of course), i joined the gym across the street from my office. down a little side street (& conveniently located near a pub), it was dingy, rundown & perfect. i’d spend my lunch hour on the cross-trainer, working out my frustrations & putuponnesses about my job. sometimes i’d do it unable to see, leaving my glasses in my locker when i had itchy eyes, all the while hoping none of the muscle men lifting copious weights would think i was staring at them in the mirror.
i did this every week day until i got bored.
the treadmills were in front of the ellipticals. you know i hate running. even though i loved swimming, i wouldn’t join lee swim team for a while because they had to run (this doesn’t explain the stint of basketball my freshman year, i realise). but what else was i meant to do? sit at my desk & eat lunch & hope that i wouldn’t one day explode at someone’s incompetence & get fired, only to be back on the couch? i downloaded a program on my iphone, downloaded the harry potter books, took off my glasses & put the fan on high.
it wasn’t easy. there was a lot of grimacing. there was a lot of hurt knees & a very red face. but it cleared my head. at christmas, dad took me to metro run walk & bought me running shoes (he bought himself some too & left the store in them). i think mom thought i was a little nuts.
in february, i found out about the BUPA London 10,000, a 10-kilometre run through central London. i’d recently contacted the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in the UK to get some details about another charity event. i signed up that week.
in march, i did the sport relief mile, which was a 5K run. it hurt. i had a long way to go before i could do 10K. i ran outside, i ran to work & from work. i did more in the gym. i stopped drinking as much beer. i bought running shorts. i wore dresses outside.
yesterday afternoon, i was putting my stuff in my bag for the next day & it occurred to me that i did not want to be doing this. not because i thought it was worthless, not because it hurt, not because i still hate running. i just didn’t want to have this reason to be doing something like this. i didn’t want to be running to support a charity that could help other kids find a cure or at least more relief to type-1 diabetes. i didn’t want to be running with your name on my back. i wanted to be my fatter, unhealthier self a million times over if it meant you were still here.
it occurred to me that you got lost in this too. when i started out, i wanted to do something to remember you, to make something good, to help people with diabetes & maybe to, in some small way, save someone from the shit you had to deal with, the way things ended. but while i was doing that, i ended up thinking more about me. i didn’t mean to. my feeling thinner, my feeling better, my feeling stronger — it kind of got in the way.
running through the city, i nearly passed st paul’s cathedral. we went there. this was one of the purest moments of your trip to visit me. we just stood there. no one said anything about what he’d done on his last trip to london. we just looked. i was down the street, wishing my friend well on her move back to new york, on the night you died. on the run, i pulled the brim of dad’s navy hat down a bit further, realising only as we turned that the course diverted away from those places.
the day was grey & still. the wind was calmer than the previous day. all of my muscles — save my knees, always the knees in our family! — were in gear & in motion. i felt good. this last month has felt good, like i’ve allowed myself to commit to not just running, but to moving away from & standing up against negativity, to enjoying my strengths & to giving myself permission to be strong & okay. i crossed the finish line & walked for a bit & then jumped up & down like we’d do before the start of a swimming race, shaking it out.
i hope you don’t mind that i did this for both of us. i hope you wouldn’t think that i was running away from you, but maybe running towards something else.
i love you,
your big sis
“wave”
walking past the old folks’ home today & they had the curtains open & they were looking out on the traffic & the people on the pavement & a man waved in front of me & i turned to look & one woman was turned around & wide eyed & holding her cane with one hand against the arm of the chair & holding another woman’s hand & i thought that’s won’t be us.
“come back”
i simply cannot believe that you won’t, that you can’t come back.
“latysha”
note from a schoolmate for the girl who died in a crosswalk near my house: ‘have a good time. rest in peace.’
‘return’
tomorrow, it’ll be a year to the day that i moved back to london after being home after jess died, and i start a job at the company i loved and left to be home. it’s weird how this has happened.
i have been thinking about myself last year. i was so nervous & so happy, anxious & full of anticipation. kate and nick picked me up at the airport & the sun was shining. we had breakfast in the front room, & i was happy & knew i made the right decision. i was thinking the other day that i missed my last year self, but i have changed so much in the last year. it’s been so hard, & i’ve done so many hard things & made so many tough choices & stuck to some of them, but not all. i’ve missed my mom and dad, ashley, alex, everyone.
i’ve met so many after people, despite feeling i could never be close to anyone who didn’t know her.
i’ve started doing more things to make myself better in myself, as my self. sometimes i think i relied on jess to show me my better self. even though i’m still so unsure & anxious about my decisions, i am trying so hard to figure out who i am as me, as the after me. i wear makeup & heels & dresses without wanting to be sick. i run almost every day & am doing a 10K to raise money for a diabetes foundation at the end of may. i am friends with more girls than boys. i don’t have a boyfriend so i can learn to take care of myself.
i get scared sometimes, wondering if she would still recognise me, if she would think i looked ridiculous, but i’m sure she would just tell me i missed the back of my hair with the straighteners, sit me down & show me how to do it myself.
“mirror”
november 2009:
I have circles in under my eyes, darkest in the corners near my nose. My cheeks are flushed and while there are still marks or scars on either side below my mouth, my chin is looking clearer and smoother. My hair is curled like when I get out of the shower and don’t dry it properly, but it’s not out of control. Most of my hair is wavy going on straight. My eyebrows are somewhat bushy and my birthmark could use some plucking. There’s freckle/small mole on my lower right cheek, aligned between my nose and my mouth. I’m trying.
march 2010:
the circles under my eyes dip from dark skin into darker purple. i have splotchy cheeks, but i don’t touch them. my chin is dotted with angry spots. there is a space in my right eyebrow that i overplucked once & it never grew back. my eyelids are drooping so the tops of my lids sometimes touch my lashes. i put make up on almost every day. i am still trying, but in different ways, & sometimes it’s just as hard.
