This morning, I caught my reflection in the door of a giant SUV. I was distorted like a fun-house mirror. I was, at once, this split existence, tall and straight in a flowered skirt and chocolate riding boots, melting against metal like Salvador Dali.

I reminded myself of Schrodinger’s cat, the famous experiment where a cat was placed in a sealed box with an atom of nuclear waste. The nuclear waste was set to decay in small amounts. Those small amounts might or might not be enough to kill the cat over a period of an hour.

Schrodinger wanted to answer the question, When does a quantum system stop existing as a mixture of states, and become one or the other? If we do not know if the cat is dead or alive, until we open the box to witness, does this mean that the cat exists as both dead and alive simultaneously? How important is the observer?

Isn’t it cruel to put a cat in a sealed box? Why isn’t anyone asking that question?

I am entirely bored by the woman in the flowered skirt and the chocolate riding boots. I do not have much faith in her distorted reflection.  I am, however, fascinated by the empty space that is the distance between these two things existing.

This empty space is where I want to search for words. Words as strange as quantum mechanics.

Someone asked me, on Fromspring, What makes you feel? It is a curious question. Here are some accumulated moments that shape my days.

I sit in my car in the supermarket and watch an elderly couple loading groceries into their Chevrolet. The man opens the door. The woman pulls back her hair. He lifts a bag. She reaches out her hand to grab the eggs and the jam. They move like choreography. She walks the cart back up to the front of the store. He fishes in his pocket for the keys. Ordinary things are so beautiful.

***

My son slams a tool into my face. My head is an explosion of pain. My brain rains stars. There is blood all over my face. In the distance, I hear a sound that is not human. A primordial howl. This sound is coming from my child’s mouth. Did you know that terror makes an echo? I stare into the mirror and watch my bruises bloom. Pain flowers.

***

I drive to work. I am black and blue. I happen upon wreckage. The body of cars are twisted like Edvard Munch’s Scream. There is the smell of burnt rubber. Flashing lights. The cars in front of me slow down. We are moving like a funeral procession. At the collision site, there is a direct impact between what I imagine and what exists on the slick street. I crane my neck to see across the highway divider. I face death on a rainy Tuesday morning. I drive away.

***

Sex is the only power we really have. A friend writes this in an e-mail. It feels like deep breathing. I remember sitting in a therapist’s office, talking about the shame surrounding one-night stands. My therapist listens and says, Do you ever think you are using these men just as much as they are using you? I was afraid to let go of victim-hood long enough to really hear her. 15 years later, I listen to my friend. She reminds me of forgiveness.

***

What makes me feel? I think I answered the Formspring question by saying, Everything. I wish I had written a quote from Perks of Being A Wallflower, instead. I think it answers the question perfectly.

So, this is my life. I am both happy and sad. Really, I am just trying to figure out how those things can exist simultaneously.
-Charlie

***
If you are reading this post in a reader, you need to click on through. I have a new header. It is a picture of street graffiti that was taken by my dear friend Tara. If my words don’t make you feel, this photo certainly will.

The curious girl with the father of dirty fingers and calloused thumbs leaned against the frozen wall of the supermarket. She ate a peach. She took sloppy bites and let the juice drip from her chin onto the collar of her shirt.  She liked to watch people enter and exit the supermarket. She would examine their carts filled with vegetables and laundry detergents. She would peer into their bags, try and imagine what color they painted their kitchens. She liked to imagine what they might be making for dinner that very night. The curious girl was a spy.

In the parking lot, a foreign couple walked hand and hand. Their heads were bent in a conspiracy. The wind picked up. It bit down on the shoulders of the girl’s thin blouse. The wind reached out its hand and snatched the woman’s scarf. The scarf rose into the air like quotations surrounding unspoken words. It swelled against the sky like heartbreak. The girl watched the scarf. She ached.

The man took long exaggerated strides across the parking lot in a vaudevillian attempt to halt the flight of his lover’s silk scarf. The woman laughed. She threw back her head.  She offered her throat, exposed and vulnerable.

When the man caught the scarf, he cheered. He raced it back to his lover. The woman greeted him in a thick embrace. He kissed her like desire. The curious girl watched as the lover wound the length of the cobalt scarf around the arched tender of the woman’s milky neck. The woman sighed sweetly.

With her lips still sticky and wet from the juice of a peach, the curious girl heard this sigh and it unhinged her. She watched the man winding the scarf around the woman’s neck. She felt it like a noose tightening.

Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  YOU are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not NEED you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust ME. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not NEED you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. You disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Fuck you. I hate you. YOU disgust me. Do not talk to me. Do not look at me. I am better than you. I do not need you. I despise you. I detest you. You make me sick. You are vile.  You are filthy. You are a waste. Pay attention to me. See me. Want me. Need.

Who am I writing to? Why am I writing this? Is this good writing? Do you see yourself in this? Where? What part? Are you shocked? Surprised? Moved to tears or rage? Are you completely indifferent? Do you love me? Do you hate me? Do you care? Just tell me. Won’t ya?

This room is the color of Santa Fe, the color of the sand in St. Martinique, the color I imagine my womb. There is no color in the sky. I watch the sky hoping I could pinpoint the exact moment it turns from light to dark. Like, when I was small and I would try to identify the exact moment that wakefulness became sleep. I wanted to touch the divide. Every morning, I would wake up surprised that I had no history of it. We are something, and then we become something else. Sometimes you miss things.

The children are eating pancakes while I type. I read what I’ve written to my husband. I like this opening. It is random and without purpose. David says this post reminds him that there is no self. Self implies that you are who you are, that you never change. Things which do not evolve die off. I listen to him speak, and all I can think is that sometimes we dream like dinosaurs.

I just want to float like a fat white cloud in a fat white sky on a splintered green bench on the wet green grass. I want to be like Sexton and write, A Little Uncomplicated Hymn for Joy. I want to see Ntozake Shange’s poem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enfu, performed. I imagine reaching the end of the poem with a crowd of listeners. Together, we would recite,

i found god in myself
& i loved her/ i loved her fiercely

I have been thinking about performance art, about progress. I like the idea that art is an organism that breathes. You read my words like an inhalation. The intent of my thoughts convert with each exhalation. Everything changes. This is and is not the theme. Simply forget theme.

Sometimes, I think of something that strikes me as beautiful.  I become a rush of fingers.

Marriage is hard. That is such a simple statement. A true statement. Sometimes marriage is too hard and a couple realizes that they need to walk away. I think that is incredibly brave. I can not imagine how hard it would be. I wonder how many of you have ever wondered if that couple might be you? Maybe you thought it in your head when disappointment built, or aloud in arguments where you strike out to hurt. If so, you are not alone.

I met my husband while in college. We started talking at a dorm room party. We have not stopped talking since that night. We moved in together within six months. We were young and relatively poor college kids, rolling up quarters to buy gas and the cigarettes we smoked back then. We laid on the rooftop. I use to ask him, What if?

What if a genie said he would grant you every wish you had, but it would mean that I had to lose a leg or be horribly disfigured? Would you do it?

Inside a silly game, we both knew what I was asking. There were things that made me afraid. What if you hurt me? What if you lie? What if you break my heart? What if I break yours? I wanted protection against the inevitable.

This year, my husband and I will be married for 10 years, together for over 14. In this space of time, I have broken my husband’s heart in ways both small and large.

Some would say that I am not an easy woman to love. I have thrown around the word divorce as a weapon. I have let my anxiety get in the way of my logic. I have pushed away my husband’s need for the simple intimacy of having me, his partner, look him square in the eyes. I have spent hours on the internet engaging with others when I should have been engaging with my husband. I have even wondered, in the very darkest of moments, if Dave was truly the one. If you knew my husband, what we have together, you would know that this is the most egregious fault. I am not proud.

14 years together. We are not poor. The roof is over our heads. The ground is under our feet. We construct and deconstruct our daily boundaries. We ask questions. We no longer play, outright, the game of, What if? Instead, we live it.

What can we do to make sure our children grow up healthy? If we buy the new house will it be something to make us happy, or a burden we can not afford? What are all the ways we can ask forgiveness for how we hurt each other? If we evolve separately, let us promise to remember that we love under the exact same stars?

I think that what and If might be what constitute a marriage. My marriage has been a series of what and if. It has also been about, Why? I used to constantly ask why does my husband stay with such a difficult woman? Why does he continue to love me so faithfully when I have made so many mistakes? Knowing Dave, he will answer for himself. He will come here and he will say sweet things because he is good and kind and whole in ways that I admire. I am lucky that way.

I do not know if we can ever truly explain, why. Sometimes we just are.

When my husband and I first met, I was unsure and insecure. For a long time, I thought that David saved me from myself, my loneliness, my pain. I have learned that another person can not fix the cracks, the fissures of self. I can take credit for that all on my own, even if I am still a work in progress.

There was a time when I could not see past all that David did for me, to realize that I do for him too. I note with pleasure the absence of space when my hand reaches out to find his. I am a really good listener. I fill our house with goofy laughter. I burn toast with grace. I mother with love and good intent, always, his two children. I am a devoted wife.

I am also a reflective enough wife to know that i have been selfish. Finding myself should not be about dismissing the person that I love. This is what I hope to be forgiven for.

My husband and I are beautifully bound. We fail in a million different ways on a daily basis. But add us up to sum, and we make it work in all the ways that count.

David, I love you. Then. Now. Always.

Last night, I read a post from a well-known male blogger* that made me confused. He wrote about being in high school, having a crush on a girl, being denied her affection. As I first read, I could relate. Who hasn’t wanted someone or some thing so badly they experienced anger when denied? I have. What happens, however, when anger spills over into action?

This particular blogger wrote about thrusting his hand between a young girl’s legs when he and she were both in high school. A girl he described as wearing a silk blouse and no bra. A girl that he desired. A girl that did not want him. While pushing himself unprovoked and uninvited between her most private space, he demanded, “Is this what you wanted?” The story ends with the girl in tears in the backseat of a car, and the blogger admitting his own actions were scary.

I wrote a private e-mail to this blogger and asked him why he shared the piece online. I wanted to know what his motivation was for publishing it. He replied by telling me he wrote the piece because it was true. This made me furious. Does truth automatically make something acceptable? If we write our dirty, hateful, secrets are we immediately made brave just by the telling? What sort of community are we if we heap an author with praise just because he or she sits down and writes about his or her own repulsive act? What sort of society are we when another blogger comments that the young scared girl in that car was not even a victim?

My head spun. I tasted bile in my mouth. I physically shook. I needed to step away, from that blogger, from Twitter, from my own head. I went to sleep. Upon waking up this morning, I realized something. I thought my anger came from wishing this blogger had written the piece with more remorse. Not true. It was not really about that blogger. What I really want is retribution for all women. I want every single man who has ever hurt a woman in a sexual way to spontaneously burst into flames right….about….NOW!

Am I angry? You bet I am. I think the question is why isn’t every person angry that violence still happens in small ways like the backseat of that car? What good is sorry, really? If the two men that took advantage of me, while I stumbled like a sloppy drunk in the snow, apologized for the bloody raw ache they left inside of me, would it make it better. Fuck! No!

This post is not about re-hashing my old wounds or stories. I’ve claimed my own status as a survivor. I do not need to go backwards even when there are posts and people that trigger the memories that propel me down the rabbit hole of my own history. I just need to make sense of why this particular post from this particular blogger had me so enraged. There has to be more than just the telling, his and mine. Simply writing it down is not enough. What do we learn from it?

Some of you who’ve been reading me for awhile might remember a story I told you about when I was younger. There was this cocky kid named Tommy who corned me on a deserted stairwell. He thrust his fingers uninvited and unwanted up my skirt. I was this shy, awkward, girl who had never been looked at much less touched by a boy. It was not what I wanted. It made me scared and confused. What I left out, when I previously told the story, was that three days after the stairwell incident happened Tommy asked me out. I said yes. Yes? It felt strange and scary but good to be wanted, even when the wanting part was done all wrong. Just writing those words brings back all the confusion I felt when holding the phone to my ear and saying yes to dating a boy who previously violated me. I never told Tommy that what he did that day on the stairs felt dirty, frightening, and wrong. I never spoke up when he broke up with me and spread untrue rumors about my body to the entire class. I never said a word. Silence is a weapon young girls and women are taught to use against themselves.

When I first read the post of that popular male bloggers, I felt the same type of conflict that I felt as the scared confused girl I once was. This post was written by a blogger I knew and generally liked. Someone I saw as gentle, dorky, kind. I never would have imagined that story being attached to his history. After reading the post, I could not help but question every thing I knew about him, start to read deeper and more sinisterly into what I thought were previously funny and harmless tweets. It made me wonder how much I could really trust any online “friendship.”

Knowing the blog world like I do, I knew the commendations for his “bravery” were coming. This is where the real tension was for me. I started to doubt myself. Who was I to be angry? Who was I to speak out in dissent? In fact, I wrote a tame first comment on the post where I danced around the issue of my own discomfort. That is what “good” girls are trained to do. Aren’t we? We don’t rock the damn proverbial boat. We never speak out. We maintain the shame in silence.

I think when women are silent we all become the metaphor of that girl in the backseat of the car with some angry guy trying to shove his fist between our thighs. I’m not going to let that happen to me. I can not worry that what I feel is not the acceptable response of the community at large. I can not worry about my own alienation. I will not be 12 years old again, crying in my childhood bedroom.

I think what that male blogger did to that girl was disgusting and wrong. I think some of his tweets are inappropriate. I hope that people read his post and they are shocked and disgusted too. I thought about linking him, but I do not want my writing to be about calling someone out. Even though, that is what I am essentially doing. This really is more about me trying to deal with the complexity of my own emotions.

I hope his post is read. I hope people actually discuss, disagree, determine their own feelings outside of the context of the group. We can learn from this, from anything, if we are willing to go further than just to write disclosure off as some brave act. I do not think there is anything brave about what this blogger did in writing his past down, even though I too found myself using the word “brave” in his comment section. In fact, I think writing this post was an inherently selfish act because the blogger is the perpetrator and not the victim. What is he really looking for? Absolution or traffic? The answer makes a difference to me. Even if it is absolution, it won’t be found so easily here.

I have learned that women do not always need to be so forgiving. I was at 12, and even at 19, forgiving others and hating myself when waking up bruised and missing my underwear. I will never again let my own silence make me that complicit.

*edited to add the link of the blogger. Go here to read his story. Although, since my post has come out, his initial post has changed. He has “toned” down his story. It was originally written about her not having a bra and him putting his hand between her thighs, not just resting on it. I wonder why a person would edit a post that they wrote because it was “true” then quietly change it when people took issue with it. Interesting.

*New Edit*

I asked Neil why he edited the story after the comments and my post came out. He wrote this, “I edited it because it was too intense and I wasn’t getting the reaction I wanted. I am not a journalist. I am a writer.”

*Final Edit*

Neil changed the original blog post back. He also shared this post. I think it is only fair of me to post it. I also hope we continue to have conversations as a community about all the issues that came about because of all these posts and tweets.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

My hands are as sure as the Virgin Mary. I do not fumble finding my children crying frightened in the dark. There is no need to whisper, Momma is here. My hands calm babies like pulpit sermons. My fingers preach the benefits of sleep.

I am not whole. I am not fractured.

I’ve been losing weight. It is not intentional. I just forget to eat. My husband fills my book bag with cheese sandwiches and cups of chocolate pudding that I misplace somewhere between leaving the house and stumbling into the faculty room. It is like my teeth are too lazy to chew, my hands too busy to forage. I have been subsisting on bottles of diet Pepsi and random snatches of trail mix. I’m getting thin. Every couple of days I have to reintroduce myself to myself in bathroom mirrors fogged with steam. What was once curved and fleshy is now pronounced, hard and definite.

Why hello there hipbones. Haven’t seen you in awhile.

When we were 13, my friends and I invented a game. We would swish, swish, swish our hips parallel to the pavement. The goal was to count how many times the tipping of our adolescent gravity could evoke the honking of car horns racing by on the two-lane road. We were innocent girls let loose across the gravel summoning grown-up danger from the safe concrete of sidewalks and the cut of freshly mowed lawns. We never really wanted or expected the pickup trucks to stop.

Is there even a point to me telling you this story? Probably.

***

I told myself that I would stop blogging. On Halloween, I took my children trick or treating and then quietly crept up into my parent’s bathroom and sobbed. My son is struggling. I sit here worrying constantly about words like evaluation and denial. I finished two pieces of writing for publication this week. All I can think is what good is pride when your three-year old son trembles in the backseat of his grandmother’s car before pre-school, and once there becomes anger personified?

I do not have any answers.

I was going to stop blogging. Many of you wrote that I should not leave. You said you would hate to see me go. For a long time, I was convinced that didn’t matter. I constantly surprise myself.

I have only just found you, a few of you wrote in comments and private e-mails. You make me feel a little less alone.

There is such kindness in your words. I like to picture you, a woman in a nightgown that replaces her three-piece business suit. You nurse a bottle of beer or a tepid cup of tea in front of a computer screen that holds my words.  Are you a man with a casual sweater who is tired of constantly straightening his own tie? Here. Let me loosen it for you.

When I sat down to blog this post, I thought I would ask you stupid questions.
When you look at me, what is it that you see?
Please do not answer.

I worry that you will read this and imagine me quite sad. I am sometimes. Mostly. I am not. Really.
My life is full of mortgage and marriage, defeating scary monsters hiding in the closets of my children, and the mirror on my bathroom wall.

Sure. I am losing weight. But, it is not intentional. I simply forget to eat. Every couple of days I have to reintroduce myself to brand new kneecaps and the wings of newly drawn shoulder blades, the former curve of me now pronounced and sharp. The terrain of my body is a constant discovery.

This blog is another body. One of words.
I think it would be nice for it to remain soft and fleshy, undefined.

At least for awhile. If that would be okay with all of you.

Kate from Sweet/Salty has written a beautiful book. I will be buying multiple copies of this book to give as Christmas gifts to all of the children in my life. She is graciously offering a free copy to a randomly drawn winner who completes the meme I’ve completed below. I would suggest you go check it out for yourself. Well….What are you waiting for?

*****

1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It’s up to you. What do you choose?

I would take Siddhartha as my companion. We would carry nothing on our backs. We would travel by foot.

2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?

There is a book about the Armenian genocide called, Three Apples Fell From Heaven. It is heartbreaking and tragically beautiful. There is a scene where a mother must abandon her child, give him over to death under a rotting apple tree. The scene is told from the perspective of the infant, who looks skyward to search for the face of comfort in a godless sky. The pain of this moment has always wrecked me. I would escape into this book to hold that child to my chest for as long as time would let me.

3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?

I would bring back Holden Caufield from The Catcher in The Rye. I would hook him up with social networking. I think if Holden had a blog, he wouldn’t have felt so alone.

4) The Cave by Jose Saramago is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact, I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.

5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?
Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird. Who would not want to grow up under the guiding hand of the most honorable man in all of literature, Atticus Finch?

6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?
Gollum, and his lust.

7) Every time I read Art and Lies by Jeannette Winterson, I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.

It is imperative that The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy be made into a movie. Now. I am already picketing an independent film producer for this—but if he or she casts Frieda Pinto as Ammu, I will not be happy. I will, however, be appeased if he or she casts Shohreh Aghdashloo.

9) The Beach by Alex Garland is a book that should have never been made into a film. Even the heat that is generated by watching Leonardo DiCaprio for two hours on screen could not save the abysmal adaptation that was that film.

10) After all these years, the rape scene in the book, A Clock Work Orange, still manages to give me the queebs. (Please tell me that “give me the queebs” means to be terrified.)

11) After all these years, the shooting on the beach in the book The Stranger, by Camu, still manages to give me a thrill.

12) If I could corner the author Cormac McCarthy who wrote The Road, here’s what I’d say to him in one minute or less about his book: The line, If he is not the word of God, then God has never spoken, was the most startlingly true statement I have ever read about the way a parent could love their child and ache to protect him or her. You wreck me, Sir.

13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Feminism is for Everyone by Bell Hooks. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to stop shaving my armpits and burn my bra.

Now, my friends, it is your turn.