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I’d forgotten how hard blogs are. There’s a story to tell and I keep thinking it’s about Nepal. I should be writing about Nepal. I am supposed to be writing The Nepal Story, after all. So, why can I not write about Nepal?
Dramatic sigh.
I was once told by my mentor to trust my instincts when piecing a narrative together, meaning I shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think I can manhandle an experience if I don’t let it unfold. My story hasn’t even unfolded yet. I want to write a redemption story that hasn’t happened, so it’s no wonder I can’t write about it. Truth be told, mine is probably not a redemption story anyway. Deep down, I know Nepal as a requisite transformative experience will be dark because, when reduced to its smallest divisible parts, Nepal is all in my head.
And there’s a writer in there, too, who refuses to shut the hell up.
From a distance, a shadowed mirage is waving at me like a summer heat reflection on hot pavement and this passage comes back to me:
Despite our best intentions, we forget the dead.
Do they forget us? Jane Summer, “Erebus”
So. Leigh “Bindo” Binder*, if you refuse to die, I’ll just have to kill you off in a mediocre poem that’s an apology as much as a lament.
Sleeping Beauty
When the stem drooped and the petals died,
I slept
Sleeping beauty sleep
I awoke to gold
Light too bright
You offered me a dim corner
You and I shared caramelized melancholy
Like cotton candy
Adolescent sweetness, the things that grew in our heads
Restless dreams like your cigarette smoke
From a few thousand miles away
Choke me awake
Weighed together like stone
Bound and pull down like some English great, we weren’t built for this life
But mostly: Have we lived our eternity?
*Leigh Binder was a friend and fellow writer, who died two years ago leaving only his writing and YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-43KL2khFHhJ-LmRqA-y2A) to haunt me.
I’m dead with dying
There is an eye I refuse to catch
I was born with knowing
I look and I listen and I discern
I know
You’ve caught my eye
I’m not God
But I know
Tell me everything
The bile and the filth and the worst, pour it
All that will be left will be left behind
Listen to my knowing
Let me catch your eye
My knowing is a reflection
There’s no dream I can’t decipher
I simply know
You tell me what’s the matter
And that’s what’s the matter
A reflection
through kinder eyes than you can’t bear to see
This is my knowing
I was born in January
I am dead with dying
There’s an eye I refuse to catch
It’s the eye of a child
Who won’t let me see
Something terrible happened
Something awful and humiliating
Something that drained my blood from my face my screams from my throat my heart from my chest and
Something that puddled my potty down my leg and between my toes
Something terrible
And I don’t know
Something terrible
And I don’t know
Hollow now
I won’t catch my blue eye that eyes me in the mirror
I was a child born dead with knowing
It was January
It was cold something terrible
Something terrible
And I don’t know
This Medicated Lady is thinking irrationally again.
Irrational because.
I’ve been considering a diet consisting only of those flavored ice pops
especially the blue ones
the ones I like the least
Irrational because.
No one but me looks forward to a psychotic break
Irrational because.
It occurred to me that I’m tired of being medicated
tired of being in need of medication
tired of being in need
tired of being
Irrational because.
Right is what’s right
right as opposed to wrong
right as opposed to left
right as opposed to write
write as opposed to rite
Irrational because.
It makes sense.
Irrational because.
A secret thought
I would have followed through
smile on my lips
but alas I missed the exit
again
He was dangerous. A naked middle-aged man except for the leopard underwear. Not boxers, briefs, tight briefs. He was drunk and yelling and screaming at my friend, stomping around, dick flailing about. He ordered her out of the room, to talk to her mother.
So he was in the room with me.
I was maybe 13.
I guess it’s not molestation. Indecent, yes. I was sitting in bed. I just wanted to go to sleep. He sat by me. I made sure to cover myself up with the sheet. I felt my heart beating, and rising panic in my throat. He pulled the sheet away and said I didn’t have to be shy.
And then I was looking at the two of us from a distance. He didn’t touch me. He rambled on, my friend came back. There was more yelling and then sleep.
He didn’t touch me, as if I’m defending him. He didn’t touch me, as if it doesn’t matter that he was clearly interested in fucking a barely-teenage girl. He didn’t touch me, but only now can I acknowledge he didn’t have to.
Come.
Die with me a little.
The lampshade was tilted
at an acute angle
so that the glare of humiliation was undeniable.
I talked to a Potential Suitor (PS) last night. He works with the elderly, who tell him their secrets. An elderly gentleman told him how, at night, he kept his door unlocked at the nursing home in order to satisfy the womenfolk. He informed PS he had a different women every night. I laughed.
Other conversation ensued.
And then.
PS: I want to be one of those old men driving around in a convertible with a lot of gold chains and checkered socks.
ML: Ha. You’re going to keep your door unlocked and keep the ladies coming. (A horrified realization of my unfortunate choice of words and awkward pause…because clearly he heard it, too, and knew what I had just said and was unsure how to take it.) Ur, I mean, keep them coming in your room at night. (Oh Dear Lord, shut up, ABORT, ABORT!!! Say something else!) Ur, I really like a good pair of white socks.
Ah, death comes in tiny spurts.
I’m pretty sure my shit smells worse than yours.
My friend said she didn’t want to be that girl. I told her not to worry, I had been that girl undercover for years. A few days later, I decided to try bulimia out again for shit’s sake (literally). I only tried it a couple of times before, gagging myself with nothing to show for it but the aching aftermath of dry heaving. But it’s years later and I realize I never gave bulimia a fair shake (make that shit).
It’s a matter of developing a balanced diet of disease. I’ve always been able to binge. Although I haven’t been doing it of late. I say purging is better for strict weight loss; otherwise, you are just neutralizing the Burger King.
It’s okay: tell me how wrong it is, but know that no other thought seemed as brilliant as taking two laxatives in the late afternoon and then two more later, before bed, and swigging it down with pure acid (Coke Zero).
In hindsight (do the puns ever stop?), running (another one!!) to the bathroom at 10, 3, and 5 during sleep time is not exactly fun. My stomach gurgled for hours. It sounded like Charlotte’s Montezuma’s Revenge that caused her to shat on herself in the Sex in the City movie. It didn’t end up being that bad, but it was not pleasant.
Am I really advocating an eating disorder and giving how-to’s? Give me a break. My epiphany: It’s always better to hug it out than shit it out.
Listen
I’m tired of her
I’m tired of hearing her
I’m tired of seeing her
Since she’s on her way to good health
or on her way to not-so-bad health
Her complaining and her refusals
are symptoms of a petulant child
I have no patience for
Since she’s going anyway
I wish her gone already
Ramblings of a Medicated Lady: Words of Woe by Loria Taylor 
Your Sympathies: