Life Between the Crosshairs

The trouble with being a damaged person is that you identify with other damaged persons you encounter. You spend a lifetime patching up those gaping wounds, packing them with distance and indifference. You walk around in a shell of a body, your eyes watching but your soul sleeping. You build a wall chest-high, armor to protect your heart and all that can damage it. Fragile, it lies hidden, yearning for tenderness that only love can administer. Only that can truly fix you.

When your eyes fall on a person - living life in a shell of their body, looking on with unfocused eyes, you recognize it. You see their pain, feel their wound - fall in love with their suffering. And you build a door and give them a key. You let them in, hand them your broken wing and rejoice in your sameness. You assume - unfailingly - that any animal that is wounded as you are - will avoid the cold, rusty legtrap. But you’ve forgotten never to assume.

You give them all they need to destroy. Your heart, your soul, the inner self that you protect so fiercely. You draw them a map to your tenderest muscle and colour it in. You laugh when they laugh, cry when they do - and try to uplift them when they are dented.

But you have forgotten: sometimes - people aren’t what you perceive, and they will rob, stab and blind you. Some people are broken beyond repair, and what appears good about them only smells sweet because it rots from the inside.

It is a smell you will never forget.

I promise you.

DAG

Today I watched myself.

From a hidden corner I watched as this shell of skin lived.

Dance puppet. Smile on command, raise your eyebrows and feign interest. Move through the day, accomplish this, finish that, start the other.

I watched as “I” moved my hands up and down, extending digits, retracting them. Laying the ridged pads on textures around me and feeling nothing. Disconnected, I peered through my own wet eyes, dulling colors and fading details. Lain aside.

Turn the pages, one by one, take in the words. Black and white impressions that I see when I close my lids, but I cannot ever know what they say. Scan and re-scan, look for the meaning, pretend to invest . . . sleep peasant. Tomorrow is another day.

I watch as my feet lift and lower, planted on the ground, toes splayed - solid. I do not move them. I sit in this darkened corner and I will those ligaments to refuse. Disconnected. They owe me nothing and do not heed my commands.

Chew and swallow. Gnashing teeth, pulverizing what goes in. Over the tongue and down the throat into the gaping blackness. Digest. Make eye contact, show smile lines - say interesting things. Dance puppet.

Motionless motion.

Inner inertia.

Disconnect.

Sleep.

In the quiet darkness I wait for sound. For whispers, for words. The darkness confuses me, I am without orientation, senses or reality, as the world clamors beyond my sanctuary.  It feels just at the end of my fingertips, and I trace the blackness around me.

My hands slip over the fabric of the world, sliding over smooth, even places. These are happy times, memories preserved behind glass that has become dirtied. I pass over them, searching for the real, skipping over the textured linen and reading the snares, the pulls - the tatters.

Searching, sliding, cascading across the surface, frantic fingers search for the key. Scrabbling over the patchwork life until they stop, fingering the edges of a torn reality. I contemplate. In the quiet darkness I keep one thumb posed over the pulse of the beyond. And without decision, I pull.

As the strands let go, straining against my pressure, beams of light curl over the edges. Slivers of real, whispered sounds straining, ripping - my silence ruptured.  Peering, squinting - fighting the brightness of that around me, clanking and tinkling at first - growing louder and thicker until it is roaring over the tears and blowing the threads around me.

Punctured.

I’m running in endless circles. Accusations, phrases, guilt - apology and then we begin again. Each moment is spent on the edge of the world, walking the razors edge balanced on one toe. Despite the acrobatic dance I perform, egg shells crush beneath my feet, shards embedding in the soft spot between my toes leaving me limping. Limping and weeping. Blindly I feel my way around this thing - a solid granite boulder in my path - searching for a crevice, a handhold, something to help me overcome. Circling around and around with nothing but smooth slippery surface to greet my tattered hands. It mocks me.

I have searched for the answers. Searched for a solution. Returned again and again to the drawing board until it is worn ragged with disillusionment. I’ve found nothing. I have rummaged, emptying this dusty trunk, tossing aside memories and battle plans and comfort toys from my childhood, searching. At the bottom I find nothing but the yellowed water stains of yesterday’s tears. Still unsatisfied, I’ve clawed at the lining, pulling old and crumbling satin from the fasteners, once crimson now gray, looking for the word I lost somewhere. Searching for that piece of the puzzle, the one thing to make the world make sense again. I am greeted only by rusted clasps and weathered corners. I have learned nothing, found nothing - but cold, unyielding steel.

Under old dusty sheets of faded flowers I found a mirror. Cold shiny glass that reflects only those twisted masks I wear. I leaned in, trying to look into my eyes, trying to tap into my soul - searching for that answer. No matter what angle I use, or how close I get, the vision flicks away, dancing in my periphreals, taunting me.

Taunting me.

I throw them out there and watch them waver, like heat waves on the desert highway.  They glisten in the light and they shift, changelings with identities other than what I’ve sewn for them.  Gaining strength, they come clearer and take a distinct shape of their own choosing. Vibrant nothingness that contains the everything within its transparent womb. Then suddenly, they dissipate and scatter to the winds.

Those words, they return like poltergeists, wreaking havoc in the simplicity of happiness. They flock home, full of those good intentions you’ve spawned, but changed - vengeful, evil. They bang the cupboards of your soul and stroke the slumbering cheek of contentedness. Lingering, watchful murmurs search for the rip in your fabric, a weakness, a defect. One tiny rent and they transform into daggers, arrowheads seeking the soft tissue of your underbelly. They almost  always hit their mark, digging in and twisting until you scream.

They’re here, laying in wait outside my skin. I can see them taunting my security and I am frustrated. With each one my tongue forms, I try to ease the burn of the one before, smooth over the punctures in our shields and pave another route. But I am paralyzed. We’ve cast them out, given them life and limb and then dilegently pounded them with the iron hammers of perception. Twisted them into glistening weapons, sleek spears dipped in the poison of misunderstanding. Tentacles that twist around our hearts, barbed and rooted in impossibility.

And we are halted. Words infused with good intentions are tarnished, dripping in the blood, sweat and tears of our efforts - mocking, hailing, screaming. We are locked in our private prisons, arrested by these simple words, powerless to create another to catch the first. Restrained, I can do no more than run in this circle - detesting those paradoxical creations and gagging on their tails. Silenced.

I stood today, two feet planted firmly on the slippery ground. It seems a metaphor for the changing world I live in, feeling what is beneath you is somehow solid, will hold you up even when the wind blows your hair in your eyes and slaps your cheeks. But it doesn’t.

Below my feet is a nation wide sheet of ice, masked by the crisp snow that crunches under the set of footprints I leave behind, lurking. It is black and it is sheer and it is always unyeilding. It confuses my toes, toes that want to press their weight into security but find only give. And when it gives, and my feet come out from underneath me - I reach out for that which propped me up. It’s gone.

I look back at those prints, tracks I’ve left in my wake as I push relentlessly forward, and I see destruction. I see the refuse of all I’ve touched in my struggle into the real and I’m filled with regret. I wanted to turn left instead of right and just walk, plodding away from all that is too much real for me, pain and hurt and disappointment, bitterness that took root in the place love should have been, and rotted.

Yesterday, I fell flat on my back and I lay there akimbo. I lay there waiting to catch my breath again. The world crushed my chest and the breath pushed out of my lungs and tears gathered in my eyes. And I looked for someone to pull me up. To fill me with oxygen and make the stars disappear from the edges of my vision. All I heard was the wind.

I’m still waiting.

Alone on a train aimless in wonder
An outdated map crumbled in my pocket
But I didn’t care where I was going
‘Cause they’re all different names for the same place.

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun
And I knew no words to share with anyone
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed
And all the different names for the same thing.

-Death Cab for Cutie

That space is empty. I didn’t hear you walk away, but I see your footprints in the dust.

Empty.

It is as if the sound has been sucked out of the world, a defeaning quite that filters only the muted thudding of my heart in its chamber. Photographs hang on the wall, suspended in laughter and hope…yellowed now, curling at the edges, blackened. I will not touch them.

Abandoned.

This room is suddenly stripped of all its colour. Violet, vermillion, canary… bleeding to muted gray, shifting and swirling and becoming thick and endless black before running down the drain. I miss them.

Silenced.

I am no longer solid. I am slipping back into the unreal. I fear it, powerless to resist the pull… north to south and I cannot stop it. Contorted, I bend, I resist, I give in. I am crumbing, feet of clay and hands of ash, flaking…blowing….flying…

Gone.

Today feels very heavy. I feel like the world is crushing me, with its weight and intent.

It’s cold, the snow has been blowing and the trees are bare. I know I am staring down the barrel of winter, and I’m feeling like it’s reaching into my bones. When the sun goes away I am lost, spinning in darkness and gloom and praying for it to rise quickly, rise and warm my frozen skin, chase away those goosebumps on my soul and please give me some joy. And while I’m hidden under the blankets of gray, I’m taking inventory.

Somewhere, I think I’ve lost a little piece of me. An important piece, that certain feeling that you had when you looked around and saw how full your life was, full of joy and love and laughter. A warmness that seems to be absent to me now. That place is barren, dusty - abandoned. I long to fill it again but my fingers are petrified. Frozen. Immobile. These lovely things are slipping through those fingers, pulled away. Like a thread on my sweater has been yanked and I’m unraveling. I’m unraveling and no one noticed.

And somewhere, riding on the howl of the wind I hear this….

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?

Indeed Floyd. Indeed. *sigh*

Hello, and welcome to the world of Double Agent Girl.

This is intended to be a welcome post, a come on in and take of your shoes, or maybe don’t, because my house is a mess and please pay no attention to the grilled cheese sandwich stuffed in the mailslot. My kids are crazy. *Ahem*.

So just move those toys out of your way and sit down, with your shoes on, and I’d love to offer you something to drink, but the dishes are dirty and I’ve run out of coffee days ago, between my commitments as a full-time university student and single mother turned volunteer (teacher’s college is so hard to get into you know) and research assistant who moonlights as a writer and photographer when she’s not in the corner trying to control the voices, you’ll have to forgive me if I haven’t gotten to the groceries.

But I digress.

Have one of these cookies I found way at the back of my cupboard, they may be a little stale, but still good enough for our adventure. Watch your feet, I recommend tucking them under you, because my living room is a speedway, not a living room - didn’t I have YOU fooled - and Thing One and Thing Two may go breezing past at breakneck speed, moving at a state of blur with insane cackles trailing in their mist. They’re fun like that.

You’ll find, if you push around the piles here and there, a few golden moments. Moments when time seems to freeze, allowing you a glimpse at the beauty that is life, moments you could never get back. There is a smattering of hilarity here and there, always refreshing to the palate, and from time to time you may uncover some sadness. It’s all here, waiting to be found, mined and polished into a jewel with beauty that never fades. I’ll be your tour guide on that journey of discovery.

Just try not to get sniped.

DAG.

You can also read me here: www.doubleagentgirl.com and I co-write here: www.craftastrophe.net