Building 11 “Holding On”

The rain fell like hot fire upon my skin. Some part of me knew that it was cold, but I did not feel it. Instead what I felt was the whipping of my hair as the wind tussled it about, the dying leaves on the trees gripping on, battling against the onslaught of the storm, desperately trying to fight.

Fight with everything that they are and ever could have been, just to hold on.

If they lose their grip, if they let it slide for even a moment, the result is obvious, as the leaves on the ground are testament to. Do the leaves sense their death coming, like their mother tree feels it when their bark is damaged or the words of lovers are carved into her? Do they hold on out of obligation, or are they doing it because they are supposed to?

The rain eventually calmed, my father's attempts to draw me inside were finally heeded, and I finally went inside. And you would think after standing out in the rain, the temperature forty something degrees, with no coat or shoes, you would think that I would have felt different than I did.

But instead I felt warmth like I haven't felt in such a long time.

It feels like when my mom would hug me when I got home from school, and it is the way I imagine I will feel when I finally get to feel your embrace. Removed from thinking or the thrumming of my heart. Just a steady, growing warmth that I focus on with all my might, lingering on it and gripping it like the leaves grip onto the tree in the storm.

Desperately.

Even now the rain is still pattering, and my hair is still damp, my clothes soaked, though my dad has tried to get me to change. But I don't want to change. I want to feel like I did before, like I did last year when I dressed up as my nightmares, and for the first time felt the sort of power and confidence such a performance could bring to me. Last year when I got home I was soaked to the bone.

I was soaked, and I was trembling by those things my mind still chooses to lock away from me. But most of all I was warm even though the rain had been cold, just like it was tonight. But my dad cannot destroy this costume like he did the last one. He cannot toss it away without any consideration of how much it matters to me or why.

He can't because I am wearing it, wearing my skin and smiling like a child. If anything is different, it is that before I was scared, but now I am happy in a deep and primal way. I haven't felt like this ever since I was told that there was something wrong with my brain.

Tonight I think about it, and no pain comes to me. I don't care what the reason is. I don't care what the pain is supposed to be whispering to me. Tonight I am whole and I am not broken, and though I want to cry tears of joy, I know that they will not come, because for once I don't feel like crying.

People like me feel like crying a lot. We don't. My mother didn't.

The thing in the rain doesn't.

She was there you know. She appeared out of the corner of my vision. That thing in black.

I watched her as I stood alone in the rain.

She was dancing and swinging about, her joyous laughter not audible, but it was felt all the same. As I watched her laughing, the rain falling on her skin the color of empty space, her eyes closed with pleasure, I felt connection, like a distant memory. Some part of me is scared of that. Some part of me should be scared of that, but I am not listening to it tonight.

Tomorrow I may feel horrified. Tomorrow may come and all those warm feelings will fall away like a dropped ice cream cone or being forgotten after school. The excitement will fall away, and I will be forced to feel bad again. Just like I am and always will be.

I will feel human, that terrible, awful feeling that claws at my skin and causes my head to throb and my muscles to groan in gnashing, terrible pain. I will feel like that again, when tonight I feel so very different.

So very very different.

Tonight I felt like a monster, and tomorrow that will scare me. I know it will, and I will write you again telling you how sorry I am to have made you worry like I have. But tonight I will not.

I Refuse!

Tonight I am thinking of Max and of blood and of rain and the smell of mold and moss and dirt, and the smell of worms as they rise to the surface, desperately trying to escape one horror only to crawl right into another. Tonight I am awash with these smells, and a feeling of warmth that won't stop.

And finally, after so many many months, I feel warm.

And I love you.

And I don't feel scared at all.

But just for tonight.

Tonight I am living. And tomorrow I will die, fall away from the tree, to begin to rot.

Like all the other leaves that finally let go of the branches.

Because living like this, as your strength fades away.

…

I don't know how I stand it.

I don't think I do. I just endure, sit in it instead of pushing past it because there is no pushing past it. It is a weakness of the flesh, and that is just the way things are for me.

That is the way it is for some people.

My hands are starting to hurt again, an aching pins and needles running up my arm.

I am going to rest now.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.

I am so sorry for making you worry.