It must have been spring. When things started cracking; while the world burst forth with birth I stayed busy slowly dying. Losing my mind. The one thing I feared leaving me the most. I could feel it slipping out from under me, the last thick rug in the house.

Yes, March. R. stood with me at the bus stop even though she didn’t have to wait—she could have headed her direction home but I think she knew. I felt horrible and on fire, my eyes into sirens, and I couldn’t look at her.

I give up, I said. I shook my head.

I tried to hide two hands that shook as I clarified: everything. These drugs are making me crazy. I think too much or I can’t think at all. I’m lost. I’ve never been this lost, R. I can’t do it anymore.

I kept shaking my head, staring at the evening winking out above us, around the buildings. I found myself in an argument with two men standing next to us—over nothing. Over something but the importance of it, my need to give them hell rose over me. I could not find control. I could not stop telling R. about feeling lost, about giving up. Something had my heart, tore the sucker from its socket and held it just far enough away to make me beg for it back. My own arms outstretched. I felt like a fool for wanting to feel so normal.

R. stayed with me and listened. I was afraid to scare her away, but I couldn’t stop. I gave her winds of it, waves that were running into one another. She stayed, she listened. She gave me words in return, carefully. In that instant she tethered me.

I can’t imagine it: if I had been alone. I might have found a way to leave, to run. Or tear my hair out follicle by follicle. Or curled into some wet comma on the ground. She tethered me.

1.5 years + some change later, here I am saying thank you to her. I’m not sure if she knows what her presence did for me, for I never mentioned it because it was embarrassing and things changed and it’s hard to remember, to feel again, how lost I felt then. Off the medication, a galaxy away. But there isn’t a forget. I will strand a dotted line to it for the rest of my life, to know where not to go, no matter how tough the going gets. R. means the world to me. I’ve never met such a heart, such a soul. She is a light, a mermaid, chakra all her own. She is an understanding, a patience. Her friendship colors in my world.

When someone is strong for me, I want to be strong for them. I wish R. didn’t have to see me in such a state, but you cannot just extinct your witnesses. Truth—I trust no one else with that moment, being there.

My lady on the mountain seemingly so far away sometimes, thank you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.