Days of the Last Straw

Found this in some journals I had written a few years ago.


I.

I am tired of being sad. Tired of being mad. Tired of being fearful, afraid of the phone, afraid of conflict, afraid to talk to anyone because they might recriminate me—is that the right word? Tired. Tired of being offensive, defensive, unacknowledged, overly noticed, of coming out with my hands up, with my dukes up, with my fists in front of my face ready to strike, protect. I just want to be in love with two people, the 2 out of 9 billion – is it 9 billion yet, or still only a puny little 8 billion? We’re not special anymore, being 1 out of 9 billion, and anyone who you can love out of 8 billion – or nine – that makes two less lonely billionaires. But I’m too sad to love anyone right now, to show affection or love and I really just want to be alone among 8 or 9 billion people, but I am also afraid. I am afraid to leave and afraid to go, like so many other people, maybe most people, maybe at least 6 billion other people are afraid of this right now, or maybe only 5. I am . . . I am. Period. I am. Tired. And I want. To be happy. It is all I have ever wanted. I don’t want to fight with my landlord my student loan officers bill collectors my father my friends my lovers. I want no argument no last straws no ultimatums no broken dishes no hurt looks no pride injured.

II.

The Days of the Last Straw are both followed and preceded by a seemingly endless but imperceptibly elliptical cycle known as the Days of the (Temporary) Peace, also known to many, women in particular, as the Days of Danger. These are the days when things appear to be normal. When you joke and laugh without incident, without argument, and you lull yourself into believing that everything can be alright, that it can be normal, that you can go on like this and that this time it will be different, the way you have always wanted it to be. It will take many many repetitions to remove yourself from this vortex.

III.


These are the Days of the Last Straw, when the weight of the world, our destinies, rest upon every single repetition of every fight over the years Every bottle, every wrapper left open, every toilet seat left up, one wrong move could set the whole thing off, trigger the end of the world. An exaggeration, but definitely the end of worlds that we know, the end of a way of life, sending each of us off in a different direction, paths potentially parallel for a while, only to wildly diverge, to wildly wander, to deviate at some future unnamed point in time.

IV.

I lack
time
distance
the will

to walk away. I don’t want to walk away. I can’t make it better and I can’t walk away. I will say something that I cannot take back

V.

The Days of the Last Straw are both followed and preceded by a seemingly endless but imperceptibly elliptical cycle known as the Days of the (Temporary) Peace, also known to many, women in particular, as the Days of Danger. These are the days when things appear to be normal. When you joke and laugh without incident, without argument, and you lull yourself into believing that everything can be alright, that it can be normal, that you can go on like this and that this time it will be different, the way you have always wanted it to be. It will take many many repetitions to remove yourself from this vortex.

Is there a mechanism to have this break and not repeat every break that every one else has ever had through time? Is it possible to have a break that is not the same as every other break that I have had? Is it possible to do it all originally, without the use of a thesaurus to try to avoid the break up clichés? Can one stay with someone long enough to discover the originality in breakups, or are we doomed to repeat them, performatively, performing the exact same phrases that came before us, as in a ritual, as in an un-marriage.

And so in our grief, even then, we are modern, worried about how to have an original thought, an original feeling. Perhaps this is what gets us through the process, distracts us from what matters or makes us see that in our clichés, this is what happens to everyone and it isn’t as tragic as we had originally thought.

VI.

After a fight, the need to connect with someone else, the desperate need to prove that someone can still love you. That you are still worthy., The fear of losing others, of losing everyone. I want to break up with the whole world at once.

VII.

Don't read anything into this. Just read it.

Nowhere to go

Ok, this is a short story I wrote using a prompt from The Writer magazine. I actually took 5 verbs (they only recommended 3) to weave into my story:

Button
Delay
Quiver
Muster
Quit

I very quickly realized that I had written myself into a corner and decided to self-consciously go along that route. You will see what I mean.

Nowhere to go


Her voice quivered as she spoke into the phone. It took all of the confidence she could muster. A deep voice bellowed on the other end. She quickly hung up, hoping there was no way to trace the call, but of course there was. Everyone had a way to retrace calls these days. As the young woman in the café had said to her horrified café confidante, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. She knew that. So why did she do something so stupid. Why would she think that she could trust something so private in such a public venue? She should have just gone to the internet. But she needed to hear the soothing sounds of someone’s voice in her ear, a voice as soothing as a hand stroking her hair or rubbing her back.


She decided to go out. She buttoned up her jeans and pulled on a t-shirt, slipped on her boots, and went out the door. It was a warm night and she decided to walk the 10 blocks or so down to the bar that she had been meaning to go to. As she got closer, the cell phone in her pocket began to ring, a ring that said the caller was unfamiliar, but when she looked at the number, it was not an unfamiliar number at all. She put in back in her pocket and continued walking.


Being new to town, she didn’t know anyone yet. She had moved here less than a month ago after she had quit her job and decided to reinvent her life. She had taped a note to her boss’s door, using a bit more tape than was required for the job, and gave her 5-minute notice and a forwarding address for her check, her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s address. She left town two days later, go a PO Box and arranged to have her mail forwarded. In three days time, she had changed her whole life, including her cell phone number. There was only place that knew her number. She looked around instinctively, knowing that she was being silly and paranoid. No one was paying her any attention, but was that a good or a bad thing? Could someone snatch her off the street without being noticed?


She walked up to the bar and put her hand out to pull open the door. Something stopped her.


It was the realization that this scenario had been played out with every possible ending. If she met someone and had a one-night stand, it would either be the pornographic version, or the post-modern “wasn’t that meaningless” version. If she went in and no one noticed her, it would be the sad and lonely Lifetime women’s movie or it would be the self-help realization that she didn’t need anyone but herself all along. Come to think of it, that was also a potential Lifetime movie, made for lonely women that didn’t want to admit it and tried to seem empowered. Perhaps she would have the crime novel ending, in which the mysterious stranger from the phone sex line would have tracked down her neighborhood from the incoming phone line and had started hanging out, in hopes that she would start to take chances with her lonely, empty, sexually unfulfilled life and he would be there to snatch her. (This was also a potential porn plot line, although much darker and one that she was loathe to admit that maybe she had come across once or twice in her internet viewing.) Perhaps it would be the action movie ending with all of the same plot lines as the crime novel/porn story ending, except that she would get away and potentially kill her captor. If she went in and nothing either happened or failed to happen, if people talked to her and she felt good but left alone and didn’t call any of them, that would just be a modern slice-of-life film or novel, or maybe a short story. She started to feel a sense of panic rise in her as she stood at the door, delayed, unable to stay or go.


OMG, she thought. Maybe she was stuck in some kind of hipster stream-of-consciousness writing!


Guy Debord was right. Living in an overmediated culture, there was nowhere to go, nothing original to be done. Our life is prescribed, stolen from us in a media feedback loop so intense that there was nothing to be done that hadn’t already been mapped out in some way, easily recognizable as an Oprah book or a movie of the week. She had created a situation in which an original response to whatever would happen to her was impossible.


She stood at the door with her hand out. The world as she knew it was now stopped, although people were clearly moving, asking if she were going in, edging around her, and eventually asking if she was ok.


She nodded absent-mindedly but remained frozen.