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My fever broke yesterday. It had been a year.
My heart has a specific rebuilding process when it's been broken. First, I stop eating. Not on purpose... I just can't stand the feel of food in my mouth when my heart is broken.
After a while, I start eating again. That's about the time I stop crying. By then, a dull calm has descended over me. The heart stops aching and is simply comatose. A low grade fever settles in. I resume normal life. I look normal. I act normal.
Something is missing. At that point, I am five steps back from my life. I can see it and hear it, but it doesn't touch me. I am uninvolved in my life. I eat, but I cannot sleep.
The heart coma lasts as long as it needs to. The swelling goes down and the heart wakes up. The trauma and coma have left a thick crusty layer of scabs around the heart. Nothing gets through. I am then two steps from life, surrounded by a thick membrane of protection. It's warm. The fever grows.
By then I am close enough to normal that I can play act at connection. I kiss. I have sex. I go home and lay awake, wondering what is so broken in me that I cannot get out of my head when I do these things.
The heart, of course. The scabs fall off. The membrane thins. The things inside me and the things outside me almost have a chance of meeting. They see each other, doh see dohing on dark street corners.
At this stage, I get frustrated by the membrane. The fever makes me restless and achy. I miss love. I itch, like the skin under the cast you're getting off tomorrow.
Then all of a sudden, something shifts and the barrier between me and life bursts. The world rushes in.
--
My hands are covered in paint.
I've spent the past six hours creating a... thing. For a person. A girl.
I don't do this normally. Arts and crafts are not my thing. I typically follow a pattern of getting VERY into something, buying all the stuff to do it, and then giving up when my product is lackluster. See also: jewelry making, stained-glass, painting, sculpting, sewing and silk-screening.
Yet somehow I am not deterred. It occurred to me earlier today that I wanted to make ART for this girl. And so I am.
This is an impulse I haven't felt in many many months.
It makes me happy and hopeful.
Love,
Beth
My heart has a specific rebuilding process when it's been broken. First, I stop eating. Not on purpose... I just can't stand the feel of food in my mouth when my heart is broken.
After a while, I start eating again. That's about the time I stop crying. By then, a dull calm has descended over me. The heart stops aching and is simply comatose. A low grade fever settles in. I resume normal life. I look normal. I act normal.
Something is missing. At that point, I am five steps back from my life. I can see it and hear it, but it doesn't touch me. I am uninvolved in my life. I eat, but I cannot sleep.
The heart coma lasts as long as it needs to. The swelling goes down and the heart wakes up. The trauma and coma have left a thick crusty layer of scabs around the heart. Nothing gets through. I am then two steps from life, surrounded by a thick membrane of protection. It's warm. The fever grows.
By then I am close enough to normal that I can play act at connection. I kiss. I have sex. I go home and lay awake, wondering what is so broken in me that I cannot get out of my head when I do these things.
The heart, of course. The scabs fall off. The membrane thins. The things inside me and the things outside me almost have a chance of meeting. They see each other, doh see dohing on dark street corners.
At this stage, I get frustrated by the membrane. The fever makes me restless and achy. I miss love. I itch, like the skin under the cast you're getting off tomorrow.
Then all of a sudden, something shifts and the barrier between me and life bursts. The world rushes in.
--
My hands are covered in paint.
I've spent the past six hours creating a... thing. For a person. A girl.
I don't do this normally. Arts and crafts are not my thing. I typically follow a pattern of getting VERY into something, buying all the stuff to do it, and then giving up when my product is lackluster. See also: jewelry making, stained-glass, painting, sculpting, sewing and silk-screening.
Yet somehow I am not deterred. It occurred to me earlier today that I wanted to make ART for this girl. And so I am.
This is an impulse I haven't felt in many many months.
It makes me happy and hopeful.
Love,
Beth
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