If You Don't Mind Me or the Hole in my Socks

 "We can trust our inner yearnings, the ones we may have stifled in times past. We can realize our hearts' pure desires if we seek guidance."

    You know how they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions? I think it’s safe to say that every relationship I’ve ever had started with a good intention. Once, I even told a therapist about my most shameful hookup, and he simply replied, “It just sounds like the actions of a kind-hearted person.” How did I then hand over my $20 co-pay for that? It was never about the one-night-stand's feelings, but my own? You know—the shame I led the conversation with? Perhaps it was my fault for confiding in a man three times my age with those kinds of emotions. I thought his PhD in psychology would outweigh his gender and age.

    And he wasn’t wrong. Not really. Yeah. At the time, that sexual encounter was charitable. It’s what I thought going into it and what I thought coming out of it. It’s even what I told my friends. That was something—something I held on to.

When exactly did my feet get planted on the road to hell?

    Probably too young. In second grade, I wrote “housewife” on one of those little About Me worksheets under the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? As the only child of a single mother, my understanding of a housewife came from watching Married With Children unsupervised—no adult to say, This show is a little too mature for you. Peggy Bundy was a housewife who didn’t cook, clean, or even like or respect her husband. I could do that for the rest of my life. It seemed far more reasonable than my mother working full-time, going to school full-time, and peppering the few moments in between with standing in a food bank line.

    Even then, I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted to be the first in my class to have one, despite being far too awkward—and poor—to afford that kind of attention for a few more years. It was work to craft and carve myself into shapes and personalities that boys found desirable. But even then, it wasn’t enough to keep them. More work was always required to be a woman men wanted to keep.

    In hindsight, it’s a tragedy that every man who ever said he loved me never actually had the chance to love me. They only ever knew a version of me I made palatable enough for him. Of course you love this me—I made her just for you. Like a bespoke suit, she always fit. They never saw the messy tailoring or the scraps of cloth left behind. You know—those pesky, stupid little pieces of me they wouldn’t like anyway. The pieces they didn’t need. Didn’t want. Could be discarded.

    And what can I even say now? That I’m reformed? Absolutely not. Perhaps I am, at present, at my worst: a necktie that can fit comfortably around any man’s neck. Even Windsor-knotted for the last decade, ready to pull loose and unrestricted at any moment—for a husband I cannot explain.

    My twenty-year high school reunion is this year, and even if I were in the same state—or wanted to see any of those people again—I wouldn’t go. My husband would want to come too. I don’t want those two worlds to collide: my husband and the people who remember an eighteen-year-old me. I couldn’t bear him asking, “What? Are you ashamed of me?” 

    The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. I don’t know how to explain a man twice my age and twice my weight to a couple hundred people who are essentially strangers, whose last memory of me is a bright, happy, promising girl.  But, it’s okay, though. I hadn’t wanted to go anyway. Anyone from high school I want to see, I still talk to. My marriage makes sense to the people around me—the ones who’ve been watching my journey down and find the outcome rational. And it's been easy  for new people to take it at face value having never known any other version of me.

    Before you feel too sorry for me, I should confess: this path is exactly where I want to be. For now. That’s why I’m furiously plotting, writing, organizing my thoughts in orbits around how to make this relationship last until he dies—whenever that is. It could be tomorrow. It could be twenty years from now. If I wanted out, I’d be gone. I know all the off-ramps. I’ve used them before. But sometimes the easiest, safest, most comfortable course is straight ahead—navigating by muscle memory alone.

    There used to be a lingering thought of what might have been—what could have been—if earlier in my life I had worried more about simply being myself, and less about becoming what a man needed or wanted at any given time. Maybe there could have been someone I fit beside as-is, off the rack, without a single tuck, trim, or hem altered.

    But that thought has been replaced with a quieter comfort: that after the funeral, after a respectable period of grieving, I might return to all the pieces I discarded in service of another’s whims and wishes. I could patch them together, become as complete an outfit as I can—holes worn in my socks from the miles I trekked—and be wanted just like that. As I was, as I am, and as I will be. A patchwork of my good and even my self-serving intentions.

Your Stalwart Girl.

“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”

—Octavia E. Butler

I don’t lack punishment; I lack discipline. I have probably been punished for every choice and action I’ve ever made in my life—even the good and right ones. What I lack is the kind of discipline jocks talk about: the ability to set a goal and train the body and mind toward it, to orient oneself steadily in a single direction. 

My accomplishments so far feel like waking up, hungover, inexplicably at graduation, having learned nothing, yet still having a diploma slid into my hand after a hearty handshake with a dean whose name I don’t know, the stamp from last night’s bar still wet on my wrist. True story.

I’ve been like this since I was a child. No rules. No boundaries. No organization. No structure. Never had a curfew or a chore. Parents like moody roommates that pay more than half the bills. So perhaps it’s unbelievable, even to myself, when I say that I am trying.

 

That’s the crux of my problem: how to convert a wayward child, bouncing from distraction to distraction, into a grown woman built on a foundational ethos of study. How to do something I don’t want to do in the moment—even temporarily—in service of something greater.

What would I even want at the end of all this, if not the easiest, closest thing, as I have always pursued? What is it like to be running toward something instead of away from something? And there are other questions I don’t need to answer yet—but will, eventually. I'm all questions and no answers right now.

But, just give me time. Baby, I’ll be your stalwart girl. Just give me time. I will figure it out. I don’t know discipline yet, but I know I can’t mess this up anymore.

Aperture

    Next time you see me, don’t be surprised by how different I seem. By the end of the month, I’ll bear stretch marks from all this spiritual growth. My aperture is widening, letting in more light, like a pupil learning the dark—pulling shapes from shadow.

    Don’t feel too bad if you don’t recognize me. These days, I scarcely recognize myself. I reread my journal—not so old—and meet a self from not long ago. I blush, uneasy in the presence of this stranger’s thoughts. Who is this? Not me. Not anymore.

    She was forlorn, studying all the ways she might fold herself into the corners of your life. Hansel and Gretel, following a scatter of crumbs—proof that something had passed this way, that it might pass again. Each small fact about you became a tool: how could she shape herself to slip a little closer, inch by inch, into your orbit? The sweet delusion that she might someday become something you would want. Somewhere in that careful craft, she vanished.

    Her thoughts and actions bent toward becoming someone you’d choose. It never—not once—occurred to her that she might already be whole, intact, meant for someone she hadn’t yet met.

    I couldn’t read much more about this former self—an apparition lingering at the grave’s edge, dead but not yet gone. Gathering the artifacts of who I was before I met you, the image shifted. The foreground sharpened; the background softened into blur. With the aperture adjusted, a figure emerged—steady, undeniable. I had always been here. I had only forgotten how to bring myself into focus.

Turn Hope into Faith

“We have seen too much defeatism, too much pessimism, too much of a negative approach. The answer is simple: if you want something very badly, you can achieve it. It may take patience, very hard work, a real struggle, and a long time; but it can be done. That much faith is a prerequisite of any undertaking.”

—Margo Jones

faith /fāTH/ noun

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

On the phone, my friend said, “I’m just disappointed that I got so hopeful.”

At the time, I couldn’t quite relate. I have been disappointed in myself plenty—regretful, resentful, angry, almost always turned inward. But I had never felt disappointment over being hopeful. Hope, to me, had always felt like a virtue, or at least a harmless survival instinct. Something necessary to wake up tomorrow.

Her comment stayed with me for the rest of the day and sent me into a quiet meditation on hope itself—specifically, on how much I enjoy being hopeful, and how much I value being seen that way. A few years ago, in a moment of questionable judgment, I recorded myself reading aloud from my journals and sent the audio to a girl I barely knew. I remember apologizing, worried that I sounded too negative. She told me I didn’t sound negative at all. I sounded hopeful. She said it felt like, at my core, I was hopeful in every situation.

Hearing this gave me a deep, private satisfaction. I continued to repeat it to myself often: At my core, I am hopeful in every situation.

Even in situations where no rational person would have held out hope, I did. I clung to it stubbornly, convinced that optimism itself was a kind of moral strength.

Lately, though, I have begun to feel disappointed in hope itself. I’m not sure if this is what my friend meant that Friday afternoon, but hope now feels insufficient—too soft, too passive. It waits. It wishes. It leaves room. Hope holds space for a “no” it pretends not to secretly expect.

I have hoped for many things, and some of them came to pass. But lately, hope has also left me feeling stuck, like struggling in quicksand: the harder I hope, the deeper I sink. It feels as though hope has worn out its welcome, and I need to transform it into something more substantial——something with weight and consequence. Like water turned into wine. Like cream skimmed from milk, churned into butter, and spread thickly on bread. 

Something with weight and consequence. Something that acts rather than waits. Something like faith.

I am not religious, but religion speaks often of faith, and faith seems to be hope sharpened into a blade. Fortified hope.  Hope without contingency. Belief without hesitation. An insistence rather than a wish. Certainty. In this sense, faith becomes almost coercive toward reality itself. Make-it-so manifestation.

Consider the difference in language. You tell someone you are going to do something, and they respond, “I hope you do.” Now imagine they say instead, “I have faith you will.” The first allows for failure; the second pushes it away.

Hope, it seems, carries a quiet admission of doubt. We hope for the best, but somewhere beneath that hope is the suspicion that the best may not arrive. Faith, by contrast, insists on assured belief even in the absence of evidence.  

I don’t want to doubt. Even if belief makes me foolish. Regardless of if the thing I put my faith in never comes to pass. I want to believe fully, with the conviction of the most faithful pilgrim—certain, unwavering, and unashamed—and to live as though that belief requires something of me in return.

As the Bible says, "Faith without works is dead" sounds an awful lot like "Faith without work is just hope."

By the Throat

I accept the worst
and still expect the best.
But the lukewarm
I will spit from my mouth—
not one tepid second
as I take the future by the throat
and let it choke on my refusal.

The future will come.
But my patience is not ash;
I will not swallow it quietly.
I will not bow to delay again.

What I was warned of has learned my name.
I press myself into what will be
and force it to answer.
Let what comes next be clean and unbroken.
I will not soften—I have carried fire in my bones
longer than most widows know how to mourn.

His New Addiction

“You have the best smile."

John stared at the draft message on Instagram. Was it creepy? Over forty-five years, he had learned that the line between an earnest compliment and creepy was thin enough to disappear entirely. He closed the app. Maybe he shouldn’t send it.

From the hallway came his mother’s cough, then the slow drag of her slipper toward the bathroom. John slid the phone under his blanket, muting the glow. He didn’t need her catching him up late again, “on that damn phone.” As much as he hated her, he loved her. She kept him out of trouble. Her hovering was the only thing that had.

In his teens and twenties, he’d lived on his own and couldn’t stay out of jail. Every choice seemed to tilt the wrong way. His mother liked to say, “If it was a fifty-fifty shot, you’d get it fucking wrong.” When she got sick and he moved into the spare bedroom, her routines took over where the courts had left off. He stayed sober. He kept a job. He stayed out.

Now every day followed the same order: wake up, shower and shave, dress himself and her, medication, breakfast, a part-time shift, lunch, AA, medication, bathing her, TV. He could tell you what they watched on any given night. Tuesday meant NOVA. Tonight’s episode was about wild tigers once kept in captivity, now living in a sanctuary.

He could still hear the narrator: Used to his nine-foot-by-nine-foot cage, Sasha continues to pace in a small circle despite the acres now available to him. It may take years for him to adjust to taking up more space.

The toilet flushed. His mother shuffled back to her room. John looked around his bedroom. About the same size, he thought. Did it matter whether the tiger ever crossed the acreage? Eventually there was always another fence.

He pulled the phone back out.

He had tried everything—time limits, deleting the app, deactivating his account. He always came back. Through the small screen, he could slip into other lives.

For a few seconds he was in Greece, eating dinner with Lana. Then a beach, a blonde in a bikini smiling at the sun. A poll appeared: Red or pink this week? He tapped red. She wanted his opinion on her manicure this week.

A video followed—five women dancing in a bar. The tag said Toledo. Two hundred and fifty miles away. Close enough to imagine, far enough to stay put. He watched it again, then once more, studying their faces.

They wanted to be seen. They posted the selfies, the dinners, the locations. They could block anyone. They could make their accounts private. They didn’t. He followed, liked, moved on.

It felt like being a kid at the zoo. In real life, you never stumbled into elephants or tigers. You followed the paths, stopped at the glass, read the plaques. Largest land animal. Found across three continents. Species that would never share a habitat, gathered into one enclosure.

The women had bios instead of plaques. This one swam. This one was a Scorpio. This one lived in LA. This one was a boy mom. The algorithm guided him from one window to the next. He tapped the little red heart.

Then his finger stopped.

He zoomed in. A photo from his favorite account—a girl he’d gone to high school with. He hadn’t seen her in person in decades.

Just fingertips. Hers pressed lightly to someone else’s. Pad to pad, forming a small peak.

John set the phone down and pressed his own index fingers together, harder than he meant to, trying to imagine the pressure. He had never been touched like that. Not even close.

The caption read: Soft launch 😉

His heart thudded. He scrolled the comments, then closed the app and called his sponsor without checking the time.

“Hello?” A pause. “John?”

“I—I just needed to talk.”

Silence, then a sigh. “Okay. Talk.”

“I’m lonely.”

Another pause. “You want to drink?”

“No. I just—want something. I don’t know. I’m sorry I called. I know I’m not supposed to—It's not an emergency."

“Come to the nooner tomorrow,” his sponsor said. “We’ll get lunch.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll see you.”

“Love you, man. Don’t be stupid.”

“Love you too.”

John hung up and wiped his eyes. This was stupid.

From down the hall, his mother barked, “Who are you talking to? It’s three in the fucking morning!”

His stomach tightened, the same old childhood fear. “Work,” he called back. “Covering a shift.”

He reopened Instagram.

The draft message was still there.

You have the best smile.

He deleted it and typed instead:

I want a picture of your tits.

If he was going to be a creep regardless, he might as well be honest. He’d wanted to see them since Geometry. Just a soft launch. Not hard. Not yet.

He expected to be blocked.

The reply came immediately.

$100. Venmo or PayPal.

Maybe money was the key. Even the zoo let you pet the giraffes for a little extra.

Afterward, he slept soundly.

In the morning, he would be good again. He would take care of his mom, go to work, go to the meeting, eat lunch, and return to his room. 

The Only Warm Breath at My Ear

I haven’t been to a Party City in decades,
but I remember the entire Over the Hill aisle
from when I was a child—
pitch-black paper plates,
balloons stamped with gravestones,
cake toppers already half in the ground.

Having never been
to an Over the Hill party,
I used to wonder
who decided this was festive.

Now forty has snuck up on me,
tiptoed behind my back,
hands over my eyes,
warm breath at my ear,
Guess who?

Over the past few weeks,
four people have told me,
“You’re still so young!”

None of them my age.
Most much older—
to which I can only laugh.
Of course I look young to you.

And one—
younger by a decade—
who texts it quickly.
Of course you’d say that.
You’re studying a book
you haven’t read yet
peek at my bookmark page
and return to your prologue.

Despite all this, I know
we are all on death row.
So what is it
tugging at my shirt hem—
death, finally impatient,

or the decade I walked into
alive, reckless with options,
and am now backing out of,
hands half empty,
unsure what next month
even wants from me?