The “she” is both me and all the other women I have running through my veins.
I look so much like my Great Grandmother here. She had huge blue eyes and a kind smile that whispered “everything will be ok” and sometimes, “I know what you did but I’ll let you tell your story nonetheless”.
It’s almost December and the last couple of months have been a blur of school and work and family and projects and all the usual stuff that both invigorates me and wrings me out like a dishrag. I thrive on it and loathe it at the same time. Like cocaine. I remember those days.
I’m done with school for about a month and then she starts right back up again and still those visions of bopping into this office and sitting down and banging out a masterpiece won’t let me sleep at night. The stories I want to tell. The poems that I want to write. The tears and knees I want to jerk out of people. I’ve always loved helping other people find their feelings, and most deeply loved helping people find those hidden hurt places that still breathe hope and fierce living even if they think their life has devolved to canned soup and Dr. appointments. I need it for myself too: the magic. The creativity. The adventure. The “more than this” even if the “this” is pretty magical.
I am absolutely fucking exhausted most days and my last appointment with that handsome, bald doctor who also happens to be a naturopath and a vegetarian confirmed what I already knew: that my chronic pain is not going away and that I am now going to be one of those people who sometimes have to chose between doing things and resting. Seems that my body has finally won the battle of “you will learn to relax if it kills you”. I smirk thinking about that one because bitch, I’ll rest when I feel like it and not a moment before.
My Mother runs through me too. That hard and fast woman who is street-smart, streetwise, and toothy as fuck. I’ve always admired how scrappy she is, how eat up with the wild boundary of “you will not run over me and if you try I will eat your fucking liver”. And she is beautiful and doesn’t know it. She’s never known it. She’s always chased it as if it wasn’t sitting right there in her lap and that makes her both tragic and beautiful with the authenticity of a woman raises up on “not good enough”. My family has always sucked at saying, “Hey woman, you wild beautiful thing, I think you are magical and don’t you dare talk yourself out of believing it because the sun and stars applaud when you enter the sky every night…”
My Momma wants a Louis Vuitton purse. I think they are hideous but it’s what she has her heart set on so I am going to get it for her for Christmas. It’s extravagant and ridiculous but I want her to have it if it’s the last thing I do. I had dreams of bringing her here to Atlanta and letting her pick it out but I’m afraid to wait. Afraid. More than I’d like to admit. She’s busting her ass so hard these days and I can see it draining her. All the way down.
That purse is happening. Come hell or high water.
And where is my Aunt Nonie when I need her? That woman always looked like Mae West in a bullet bra and bright red hair and she had the fanciest fingernails and long legs. So elegant and sassy and I want to live like her. Get up every morning and paint myself and feel fabulous and lounge like a kitty admiring myself all day and take my shit off with cold cream at night.
But here I sit in yoga pants and no bra. Face half painted but hair wadded in that bun I always do. Red hair from a bottle. Legs like stumps.
Still me. Still all of them.
Different package.