The Aftermath of an Accident

There is a photo of me, my face rather, that is swollen with pregnancy and crying. My hair is pulled back and my upper lip is poutier but only in the center- a marked sign that I had been suppressing my tears to no avail. The ink trails that spill down my cheeks indicate that I had just gotten home from my shift at the barbershop. Although the viewer can’t see, I can tell I’m naked- I’d never be caught anywhere near my bed in the clothes that suffered the hairs of hundreds of strangers. I took the photo of myself while I was pregnant with Moonie as a reminder to not let my father back in.

Look what people are capable of.

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I am fascinated by those that don’t cry, ever, and I personally know very few. I don’t think of myself or crying in general to be the superior way but I don’t understand where the tears go; where they might be stored. Even when I’m word or breathless I still give in to the hot that will inevitably stream down my face. Even I can still race through time and memory to my seven-year-old self pausing mid-crisis in epiphany. My eyes are literally taking a piss. How brilliant. How fucking weird.

It isn’t uncommon for me to visualize this- both my seven-year-old self or the pissing-eyes part whenever tears take hold of the back of my throat. This is where I experience crying first, you see, long before any water swells and eventually falls. Whatever it is that awakens my tears strangles me and then a peace offering. I made the accidental mistake of teaching my body to earn its relief, I suppose.

There is a lot of crying around here these days. Like I said, I know very few folks that don’t and none of them live in this house.

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I’ve never felt inclined to ask for consent when writing about me until recently. I want you to come inside while I make a pot of coffee or tea or politely request you make us a cocktail so long as I provide the ingredients because you should know that I do the food and rarely the drink, and tell you that I’ve lost count the number of times I have held and rocked and wiped eyes and face and nose and fed and shushed and rubbed a thumb across the backs of hands and across shoulder blades and the base of a skull and I’m not talking about our children’s.

I want to tell you how I scream-cried into Little’s galaxy comforter while putting laundry away because I felt so out of control that I would have given anything to feel just a tiny bit bigger and I’m wounded enough to know how big I can feel when I scream. I want to call and ask if you’ll come over and get in bed with me so long as you change out of your outside-clothes and not because I want to fuck you but because I want to be held instead of holding. I want to text you that I’m tired and sometimes I do but I’m careful to leave out the parts I want to say but can’t. I want to write about how I hate this part of me- this delicate and very human part of me that still has the ability to cause me shame. That sometimes I want to lock my eyes shut and cover my ears. That I want it to stop.

I am just (just?) water after all. I’ll swallow all of us whole.

I want to take my inner seven-year-old outside and let ‘er rip.

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I don’t ask my mother for consent when writing about her- at least not in the way you might think but that’s a different story. She’s dead, you know, and I didn’t consent to her departure but I am grateful for it and I like to think that’s how she feels about my writing. I write about my family systems and my father, both of which are alive but not necessarily to me, not entirely. I don’t feel guilt or shame when writing the way I do about it or him or them but I’m still learning to write about something and someone that’s about me and us and with this particular situation I can’t without writing about him- him being Anaya’s brother and if you’ve made it this far and have no clue what I’m talking about see here-

and I cannot simply call and ask him if it’s okay to do so and this time I would like the opportunity. For the obvious reason- for the permission, but mostly because I want to know if he is capable of doing so. I might not worry about my mother haunting me but I do wonder what the outcome is, the potential harm, when someone is flesh and bone.

It isn’t mine enough to be justifiable today and I need that to be enough for you (literally you) and for me, for now.

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The aftermath of an accident spiderwebs across the reality of everything and everyone it touches, subtly or otherwise. You can make charts and lists and categorize. You can strategize, rationalize, you can make it sterile and you can reckon.

To be clear we do and have done both. The brown eyes I look into while we’re talking or laughing or crying and in bed and across rooms and while we’re kissing are still the same brown eyes that I love but show//tell too many stories I wish didn’t exist. I want to shuffle the deck. I want to skip this song. I want a second chance that doesn’t even belong to me.

My husband asked me to shave his head a few weeks after his brother was in The Accident and I couldn’t help but notice the symbolism. For him it’s practical- a way to save time and money and yet I wondered if he considered the ritualistic nature. That sometimes you need to feel in control of something tangible. For the times you need to let go of something when you don’t actually want to let go at all. I shaved his head- taking care of his sensitive nature, using a hot towel to lift any strays, tending to detail the way we both appreciate. He looks like a Tough Guy now and I reckon we would give anything to appear stronger than what we feel sometimes, right now, on repeat these days. The softest man, the softest human I know looks like a badass right now and I don’t know if the irony feels equally soft or a punch in the gut. I breathe ritual into him by way of tinctures and cleanses. Breath-work and prayers. I won’t shave my head in solidarity, not yet, not for this, but this is my offering.

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Anaya says he doesn’t remember his dreams but he doesn’t have to because I hear them during the rare occasion I get to watch him sleep. He doesn’t need to remember because I do for the both of us. The chapel from the hospital comes alive in my own dreams these days and ever since the accident I have a reoccurring one where I open the door to what I know to be the chapel inside that hospital only to find Anaya poring over a newspaper at a kitchen table unfamiliar to me with a cup of coffee nearby. He is older in my dream and his head is unshaven. He is silent but looks up at me like I am a welcomed surprise- like he wants me to come to him and I do every time.

When I tell you I would give anything to make it stop for him and for him.

I might be magic but I’m not a magician.

Biggest love,

AR

PS I’m very excited to finally spill about my latest project and I’m tired. I’ll be back soon so leave the light on.

PSS Hello? It’s almost autumn? I have Halloween decorations up as if you would expect anything less.