sense memory

Last night we went to a house, and it smelled inside just like a house that I once shared with another man.  A house that I was not happy in, a place where I didn’t feel I belonged, where I felt simultaneously resented and suffocated by adoration.  I couldn’t suss out why I got into a foul mood.  I felt like smoking because I spent the entire time out on the front porch, where a couple of the guys were chain-smoking, and I didn’t go inside except to pee because no one was hanging out in there but mainly because the smell and feel of the place reminded me too much of the old unhappy house.  I didn’t smoke a cigarette, although this morning my lungs felt heavy as if I had, probably just due to secondhand smoke.  That house lingers in my memory so sadly, that house represented some things I’d rather not face.  I went to live there because I needed to be taken care of, or at least I needed to be loved very much by someone who thought he could help me.  He was too mild for me, but we shared a genuine affection for one another, an affinity.  Even when we fought or he would lecture me I could sense that he was not saying what he really wanted to say, which was maybe that he thought I was a little crazy, or maybe that he thought I was an alcoholic. 

I stifled in that house, chafed, followed rules I didn’t care for and used water so hard it dyed my toenails orange.  I wanted to be comfortable there because I had so much—stability and companionship and rooms to walk in and out of, places for my books and a large television.  I only wanted to be alone at that house, and when he was away it was a blessing.  No, I didn’t only want to be by myself, I just didn’t want to be alone with him.  I enjoyed his company for the most part, but to be alone together meant that I could feel his disapproval more keenly, that his habits would grate on my nerves more sharply, or that we would attempt to recreate an intimacy that I had begun to resent and dread, intimacy that felt like punishment because there was no attraction for me anymore and I revulsed myself for continuing to go through the motions.  I was incredulous that this big love could just ebb away and that, unprepared, I was left with a cavernous need to love someone else, yet a lingering commitment to the first love.  The guilt was the worst part of it, and I struggled with it but denied it, shrugging, and claiming innocence.  I didn’t want him to touch me when we slept, side-by-side, and anesthetized myself in case he did.  You can see how this house turned into a prison but how I was afraid to leave it.

I was poor then, and afraid of becoming poorer, but that man in spite of his love, never offered to help me financially.  I assumed that was because he had even less money than I, and it wasn’t until years after the dissolution of our relationship that I found out he had a great deal of money, and always had.  It wasn’t that he was ungenerous, or at least it wasn’t just that he was ungenerous.  It was that he had it and was a stickler about not using it, for himself or anyone.  And that in some ways explains why my love for him fell apart.  Not because he would not support me, but because he was inexplicably awkward and cold in strange ways, and although I know he tried he never had a true facility with emotions.  Rather than long bear hugs he had been raised on shoulder-pats, and there was no way to reconcile the two.  He saw me abuse myself and was passive and although I never wanted someone to stop me, I would have relished recognition of the pain I felt.  When my mama was in the hospital dying my siblings and I huddled together like puppies seeking comfort, and I remember Josa saying almost to herself, “this is so terrible (especially for you, because), oh Em you are so sensitive.”

I didn’t know what I wanted or needed.  We never really feel real to ourselves, and that is how we can do the things we do.  Bravery or courage is another facet of disbelieving our realness.  So is doing something that ends up hurting other people, which isn’t intentional but still requires acknowledgment.  I don’t understand myself completely today, but I think I do understand myself better now than I did a few years ago, which means that I am making progress.  Like all progress, you don’t notice it during, and after some time you can see what change you’ve made and think about it as “happening”, even though it didn’t come about without some real effort.  I wish I had not hurt someone in a misguided attempt to find fulfillment.  I know that I have hurt others since.  I’m sorry, but I am not holding myself prisoner with guilt anymore.  I am getting better at this.