Is this thing on?

  In the past I would write scathing emails to my daughter’s co-creator…no not God…the guy that contributed the other X chromosome.  I sent them off apparently to a field of chirping crickets.  He never responded. I would tap keyboard and blow on my screen asking…is this thing on?  It led me to be the angriest person alive.  I would have dreams of beating him.  I had a dream that I was on top of him…pinning him to the ground…punching his face until I was tired.  That was one of many angst-filled, ass-kicking dreams.  I slowly developed a stress twitch over my left eye.  One that lasted from conception to approximately my daughter’s first birthday.  Now it lays in waiting until she’s a fourteen year old with Daddy issues and a penchant for poll dancing.  Which I said to my mother once and she was appalled.  Nikki, why would you say something like that?  I’m like what…It’s not going to happen?  No one gets me.  When it comes to her grandchildren my mother is humorless.  She accuses me of the same but as you can see…  

    Once I closed one of my scorching notes with the line…My vagina has depreciated in value by letting you in it.  At the time I wrote it I truly meant it.  And it made me laugh.  I wondered does it actually decrease in value?  And does it decrease with quality or quantity?  What benchmarks are held for it?  Does it set a standard in vagina excellence?  What would it’s Michelin star rating be?  In the end I came to the realization that the insult was not his.  It was mine and mine alone.  I was the fool that believed lies and let him in.  His part was played with the sophistication of a swine and the grace of a wombat.  You know how a wombat runs with it’s flaps flared all wobbly and bow-legged.  You get the idea.   But as crudely as I can remember him being I was the blockhead for ignoring all the red flags and falling for his nonsense.  My daughter and I just ended up being non-sequiturs along the path of his life…some illogical sidebar that he redirected himself from.  But that’s okay.  I have grown and now know that he would add nothing to this tight little unit other than more stress and eye twitching…which as I said before is reserved for my daughter’s teen years.

   

From sex to bacon...

     My first lucid dream happened when I was a teenager.  I dreamed that I was in my bedroom looking out of the window.  The house next door was facing me instead of toward the street like it would have been in a waking state.  And at that moment I realized I was in a dream.  I thought if I were to reach outside the window someone will grab me and pull me out.  So that’s what I did.  I reached outside and strong hands grabbed me at the wrists.  It frightened me so that I woke up.  I never saw the owner of those hands.  I tried to pick up where I left off when I returned to sleep but no luck.  I will never know who it was that grabbed me.

      It took a couple of years before I would be conscious in a dream again.   When it did happen I would usually resort to having sex with whomever I wanted to have sex with, fly or try to speak to dead people.  The latter wasn’t a very lucrative endeavor as I would try to talk to dead famous people and the people or persons who would show up were no one that I recognized.  Now I regret not paying attention to them because they actually could have been the persons I was trying to reach in a different form.  It’s hard to tell when you’re walking the thin line between conscious and subconscious.  Sometimes I would become lucid in a nightmare.  Someone or thing would be running me down and I would manifest super powers to thwart the attacker or conjure weapons to defend myself.  Or I would simply tell myself to wake the fuck up…and I would. 

     I have not been able to do this dream trick in years.  And it seems my dreams have taken on a whole new dimension of ordinary.  Gone are the days of orgies and super-villains.  Hello to mundane.  I dream about grocery shopping and forgetting to pick up a vital item.  I dream about running late to appointments….trying desperately to get where I need to be but shut down at every turn.  Then there are the truly anxious dreams I have about losing my child.  I will give you an example of a mundane flight into the dream world that I referenced in a conversation with my mother.  Conversations with mothers are never mundane.  

     My mom was telling me about a bumper sticker she had seen on a car traveling on the highway recently.  The bumper sticker read “I Love Bacon”.  My mom was floored that someone could love bacon so much that they would express it on their vehicle.  Of course I could.  I love bacon that much.  Unfortunately I only eat bacon at most three times a year because it’s so deliciously horrible for me.  She did not believe me.  She asked if I would sport a sticker on my car proclaiming it.  I said…sure if I didn’t have a nice car.  I’m not putting any stickers on my car now but my previous piece of shit would have been littered with stickers broadcasting my bacon love if I had come across them in my travels.  She was dubious.  So I told her of a dream that I had just a few days earlier.  

     I was on the set of a show or backstage at something.  Pizza was delivered.  It was pizza piled high with delicious strips of lengthy, crispy, deliciously dangerous bacon…not cut up or shredded…actual whole pieces.  It was mounded so high that I could not see the pizza underneath.  It was heaven.  I grabbed a plate and massed as much bacon on it as it could hold and began eating.  That was is it.  The entire dream that I can recall.  I remember feeling satisfied and happy.  It was a powerful dream.

    My mother thought I was crazy for loving bacon so much that I would dream of eating it.  But it’s something that I deprive myself that I love…like real full fat mayonnaise and feta cheese.   A cheese that mother insists tastes just as delicious in the non-fat versions.  Oh, her poor palate. 

     My grand adventures into my subconscious are over…or are they?  The night that I had the conversation with my mother I dreamed I was feeding a wild pig and it tried to bite my hand off…no lie.  Maybe these are foreshadows of what’s to be.  I hope the former dream is anyway and not the latter.

Old habits die hard...

     I tried to run away once when I was about ten years old.  The only imagery I had in my head on the subject came from cartoons.  So as a result I got a big rag and in it stuffed my change purse, my curling iron, a change of clothes and few other miscellaneous items that I can’t remember.  I attempted to tie this to a long stick.  That didn’t work.  So I unscrewed the brush from the broomstick and used that instead.  I got on my bike and made it about a half a mile before I cried and returned back home.  No one was the wiser.  I don’t recall my parents being home at the time.    Now my ideas about running away have changed dramatically.  Well, let’s hope they did because I think I would be a little off my nut if I still had the same imagery in my head as when I was ten.   Sometimes at night after my daughter is in bed I get in my car and drive around my little one block neighborhood with the radio blaring.  Sometimes I cry.  Sometimes I laugh.  Sometimes I sing.  Sometimes I scream.  And other times there is complete silence.  The distance has not changed in thirty-something years but the quest has.   Obviously the love for my child outweighs any desire to flee any given situation.  Now my real runaway fantasies include her.  We jet all over the world and stay in boutique hotels and posh resorts that I will never, ever be able to afford without a Powerball win.  We hike mountains in Europe.  We stay in that underwater hotel in Fiji.  We swim with dolphins and speak several languages…dine on the most delectable dishes…and have not one care in the world.  We still carry our belongings in rags tied to the ends of sticks.  Old habits die hard…

She's not missing a damn thing...

      When I met her father I was totally in love.   People told me I was insane.  I didn’t know him well enough…long enough.  Others told me that if I knew it was love then it was love.  And behind my back would tell others I was crazy.   I was hooked when we first started talking.  But let me back up.

      Meeting him was the end of a year and half long battle with my raging libido.  At the time I had no idea that the reason my hormones were out of control was because I was thirty-five and my biological clock’s alarm was ringing.  Instead of hitting snooze I went out on the prowl.  I went out dancing, flirting and drinking.  I equate my actions now to that of bird’s…ruffling my bright plumage,  singing my sweetest warble, and posturing in the most flattering of poses.  Dancing and batting my eyelashes and trying to make my lips look and taste like the most edible things on earth.  Sometimes it would work and others I would come home alone with frizzed hair, runny eyeliner and a bag of chinese chicken wings.  Making love to chicken wings only got me fat…not fat and pregnant.  Damn I miss those wings.  

     I prepared myself for intimate encounters.  I always wore nice underwear.  I cleaned my room everyday and scented it with vanilla and butter-cream frosting scented candles.  Yes I did.  Now every time my foot depresses the trash can lever and the lid opens my room is wafted with scent of used diapers.     A scent that in the wild would get me eaten by a bear.   I even had my own supply of condoms.  The ones that would ultimately not be used when I met the love of my life.    

     It was a long year and a half.  So when he messaged me on New Year’s Day 2009 I was ready to be done with it all.  I let down my guard and let him in.  A couple months later my uterus was growing ten times its normal size to accommodate who is now the love of my life.

     As much as I hate him I do not regret a thing.  I may be stressed and broke…and stressed but I would do it again.  Because I don’t hate him for getting me pregnant or helping me get myself pregnant.  I hate him for not being her father.  I hate him for not caring enough to see her…or call her…or write her.  I hate him for not helping me in any way from the moment he knew I was pregnant.  I hate him for abandoning her without apology or remorse…for being so careless with her life and feelings.  I hate him for being the person that he is and not the father that he could be.  It’s going to take everything in my and my family’s power to make sure she does not grow up with the infamous ‘Daddy Issues’.   I mean we’re all damaged goods.  Aren’t we?  Knowing that I can’t say with any certainty that my daughter will come out unscathed by not knowing her father.   I can only keep plugging away.  He’s missing out on someone beautiful.  She’s not missing a damn thing.

But he already knows...

     My best friend of many years died four months ago.  It still feels like yesterday.  I remember the moment I heard the awful news and replay it in my head like an analog recording.  Playing the tape…Rewinding it back to the beginning or specific words in the conversation…hearing the screech of the magnetic filament and the heavy click of the stop button.  

     I was giving a piano lesson when his mom called.  I would have never answered in the middle of a lesson but I was waiting to hear from her and anxious to find out how my friend was getting on.  She asked if I was driving.  I said no.  Then the words came over the phone…David died today.  And for seconds…I’m not sure how long the thought that she was joking went through my head.  She’s joking.  Why would she joke like that?  She wouldn’t joke like that.  This is real.  She’s not joking.  The gravity of it hit me like a ton of bricks…right in the chest…bowling me over…staggering to find a seat.  Oh my god.  Oh my god.  That’s all I could say as I wailed into the phone.  She kept asking me if I was going to be okay.  She wanted to drive to my house to console me…console me!  I apologized to her and said I would call back in few minutes.  I’m not exactly sure why I was apologizing. For not being able to speak? For wailing and crying in her ear?  Because her son just died?  All of the above?   My students tried to console me and I tried to reassure them I was going to be alright.  Then I went into the bathroom and screamed and cried and banged on the wall.  Things I still do today.

     Today I met with a friend that had David’s (that’s his name) guitar because he had left it at his place after they gotten together for a jam session.   He gave it to me to return to his family.  I called his mom and told her it was in my possession and that I could drop it off at any time.  I was not sure if I would be able to keep it in my room as it is such a personal item of his.   She however was out of town and asked if I could hang on to it for the weekend.  I said sure…no problem.  

     It stands in the corner of my room.  From here it looks almost as tall as I am.  Encased in a black leather bag it poses a sizable threat to my emotional being.  The weight of it is heavy…in feel and in feeling.   I stared at it for close to an hour wondering if I should open the case.  I know this guitar was his favorite.  The ecstasy and pain entwined in those strings is palpable.  Even in the bag…across the room…in the corner.  I want to take a look and feel close to him again…strum where he strummed…pluck where he plucked.  But the grief of his loss is overwhelming.   I’m not sure if I’m ready to be overcome with  melancholy and passion and elation and sorrow all at once.   It would be like looking him in the face.  The thought makes me tremble.  For now it remains encased in the leather armor it wears to protect me.   I really just want to run over to it and hug it and hold it and tell it I love it.  But he already knows.

My hope still flickers...

  My doubts are many.  My failures are paramount.  My successes are few.  My mistakes are spotlighted…highlighted.   My body image is skewed…skewered.  My cupboards are full.  My wallet is empty…and bank account dry.   My voice is cracked.  My tears are saturating.  My inclination is declined.  My child is happy…healthy.   My hope still flickers.

Boy am I a sucker...

 I am lost sometimes in a sea of indecision. Toppling to and fro on waves of doubt and uncertainty. Every where I go there are always words of encouragement to just do what you love and follow your dreams…make it work…live for me. And there are parts of me that want to believe that anything is possible and I can be anything and it’s not too late. And then I get swallowed up by a tumbling surf of bills…reality…shitty diapers…doctor appointments and groceries. The swell engulfs me and snuffs out my light of hope. I feel defeated. The lump in my throat grows and the disparity of being a poor, single mom overwhelms me. Tears release. Then I pick myself up and light my little candle of hope again. Boy am I a sucker.