Blue Daisies

My boyfriend bought me a bouquet of blue daisies after we got into a fight the other night. Right now they're sitting next to the window in our living room... in an empty, pale green champagne bottle.

It's been a rough last couple of weeks.

However, Valentine's Day was marvelous. I've never had a better Valentine's Day. Really... Ever.

But lately, in general, it's been hell and high water and thankfully we're still alive and swimming... Misery and melting snow.

We've been toying back and forth with the idea of moving because I utterly loathe where we currently live. Our neighborhood and apartment are fine, but I have many too many horrid memories from growing up around here. When we go outside they overwhelm me and fill me with sadness, grief or shock.

I am still in shock from events that happened years and years ago. Still in shock... How odd is that really, I wonder? I mean it seems like the shock should have worn off by now right? But it hasn't. And at times it occurs to me that I'm not alone in that feeling... I read a story here and there or hear an account of someone who says that they have never quite "gotten over" what happened to them.

Perhaps it has something do to with what I lost... Whatever that was. I had a rather tumultuous childhood but it still bore at least some sort of suburban, monotonous but safe order. Then slowly but painfully it started to fall apart, until it just kind of died.

I might as well tell you, my mother's husband was abusive. It got worse until we left one crazy day when I was a freshman in college home on summer break. I lived the next six months of my life hiding in a battered women's shelter in a ghetto with my mom. As I may have shared before, I grew up in a wealthy, sheltered neighborhood in the late 1990's, although we were decidely not among the elite or near elite of our community. In any case, my old neighborhood took all inhabitants captive and permanently affected them or altered the tilt of a person's soul if one was young enough. Money, perversely, was a powerful, fickle, cruel god. A ghetto was quite the contrast. I felt like I was in a strange, perversely exciting exile...

Back in the suburbs of my childhood the kids at school would waste excessively and brag even more so... They learned it from their parents. Nothing seemed out of reach and it felt like the world had decided let us take it all at our leisure. And we would, with our infinite wisdom and advancements, do our best to handle the situation with humane, sophisticated American know-how. We meant well I believe...

But, who am I to make such judgments about the world... And I suppose my personal story might sound melodramtic to some. There's probably some person reading this somewhere who thinks I sound pretentious and ignorant in my historical pronouncements... But I am just making a sad observation from my childhood...

When I lost the small amount of security possessed in my childhood I also experienced the sensation that time was speeding up and would never slow down again. But, oddly, at the same time the air became more vivid and real and the rain became sort of soothing balm- a friend even. It always smells the same, feels the same... It never really changes and everyone can feel it, not just me... The rain, especially in the spring time, expressed for me what I couldn't find the words for- feelings that seemed to be permanently lodged in some spot of my heart. In those days it all got wet. Drenched, in fact.

In any case, I get stuck in my memories when I walk out of the front door in the morning. And I want to run away to a far place where nothing can steal more from me... That's why I wanted to run away to Wales. But for better or worse I am here in the thick of it. It may be an opportunity to grow and recover or I may be right in my insinct to get as far away from this as possible...

As far away in one, whole, safe piece.