Part 3 (1/2)

There were other, not cool times Like the tiainst asphalt in a pool of my own vomit with my pants down around my ankles Or the tiuy's bed with leather twine around my neck Or the time I fell from a second floor balcony and cracked, ”Lidia, can you still see irl” She looked like an underwater white octopus lady Pretty though

I's I thought would kill s I wished had, didn't What, I distinctly re the blood-brain barrier The mind body barrier The reality drea up the hole of es to follow

I was a zoene

It wasn't epic compared to the other wounds in my life

Rehab and relapse and remember all start with the letter R

What It's Not THIS IS NOT ANOTHER STORY ABOUT ADDICTION

It's not The Heroin Diaries and it's not Trainspotting and it's not Willia Little Pieces, OK? I'ful vignettes to relate that can colife It's not Crank and it's not Tweak and it's not Smack No matter how marketable the addiction story has become, this is not that story My life is more ordinary More likemore like everyone's

Addiction, she is inelse to you S So small it could travel a bloodstream

When my mother tried to kill herself for the first time I was 16 She went into the spare bedroo time I knocked on the door She said, ”Go away, Belle”

Later she ca room I went into the spare bedrooone Alone in the house with her, I scooped up an arht the roo She looked at me more sharply than I ever remembered, and more focused than I'd ever seen her Her voice eirdly stern and two octaves lower than the southern cheery slurry draas used to She said: ”Stay away; this isn't anything for you I'aze to the television General Hospital was on

I went straight into the bathroom and sat on the toilet and ate a wad of toilet paper My face felt hot enough to ignite I cried hard That hard kind of cry that brings guttural grunting rather than sobbing I muscled up my bicep and I punched the wall of the bathroom It left a small crack My hand immediately ached How I felt was alone Like I didn't have a mother Or a father At least not ones I wanted When I came out of the bathroom I felt a little bit like a person who could kill her

It scared the crap out of me I didn't call my father I didn't call an ambulance I calleda PhD, trying to erase her origins My sister told me to call an a roo to die could be a bloodsong in your body that lives with you your whole life I didn't know then how deeplyhad swu like wanting to die could take forhter as the ability to quietly surrender, and in the other as the ability to drive into death head-on I didn't knoere our hters after all

My mother did not die At least not that day Eventually I did call an aut out She was diagnosed with severe ned talk therapy as part of her recovery She saw a therapist five times Then one day she came home and said, ”I'm done” But when she ca as a live one Drinking Slowly Surely What she did next, well, soe fronedtreat laundry one day The place I had to go to every day for eight weeks was a soft Khe I was told that ”behavioral healthcare” is your ”doorway to choice and hope” That was the h the doorway I found bibles and Christians with thick gator- me on self-esteeht Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with me every day for moral support They always made me put the book at the front counter, but I kneas there I knew it had h the doorway to choice and hope were the saddest girls I have ever met Not because someone beat them or because sonant or even because they put needles in their ars or alcohol down their ever-constricting throats They were the saddest girls I have ever met because every one of them had it in her to lose a shot at a self and becoe becaram with a certificate I wanted to punch my mother -away a fifth of vodka a day - in the face But she was the sanature on my scholarshi+p papers a year later So I did not punch et out Hold your breath until you can leave You are good at that Perhaps the best This woman's pain could kill you

Later in life, after I flunked out of college, I lived alone in Austin in a crappy-ass efficiency off of the freeway I got into so onand alcohol counseling for six weeks in a very strange baseed folks Poor people, Mexicans, unwed mothers, African A in life's traffic through clearing spiritual barriers” A different healing slogan More self righteous hypocritical Christians There was even a woman in my sessions named ” Dorothy” My mother's name Or The Wizard of Oz I did my time there too, and left with yet another certificate Trustin life's traffic” Eventually

So then this is not an addiction story

It's just that I have a sister alked around for nearly two years when she was 17 with razor blades in her purse seeing if she could outlive the long aiting to get out of family

Her first round

It's just that I had a e with only her daughter the swimmer at home to witness the will of it

Her first round

I know that ell now It's the will of certainin bodies that can carry life or kill it

It's the will to end

Crooked Lovesong PHILLIP DID WRITE ME A SONG HE DID AND IT WASN'T about howaway from bold swimmer toward comfortably numb It wasn't about the three abortions I'd had before I was 21 It wasn't even about howTexans under tables Or all the nights I made him break into other peoples' ho he wrote for me was mostly instruel and his lover will back uitar better thanyou know, Ja took on a rather epic quality Way before Windham Hill But there was one, small, tender refrain that would come out of nowhere, or rather, it would co I'd known, and it went like this: Children have their drea on to How they fly, and take us to the moon They flow from you They flow fro on a driftwood log at our wedding, which was on the beach of Corpus Christi, Texas And it wasn't just- christknot inthe ocean The whole posse of people there bawled Nothing nothing nothing nothing about me deserved it But very deep down in irl who smiled from within the cavernous place I'd hidden her

Is that love? Was it? I still don't know It's possible But none of us are any good at nas do I do know this: it's the kind of thing that happens in stories

Phillip and I tried tocalled ”married” In Austin, Texas I don't kno to explain ent busto OK, that's a big fat lie I know exactly ent busto, but I don't want to have to say it Look, I'll tell you later OK?

While ere trying to be ot a job - the only job he could find - at a sign- company That's what happens to artists like him - a man with the talent of the n factory I got a job with ACORN Yep, that ACORN But I didn't give a shi+t about hurass roots By then, there wasn't ave a shi+t about I'd so colossally failed athlete/student/o an ani I know: daed women? We don't think we deserve kindness In fact, when kindness happens to us, we go a little berserk It's threatening Deeply Because if I have to admit how profoundly I need kindness? I have to admit that I hid the me who deserves it down in a sadness well Seriously Like abandoning a child at the botto Not quite killing irl s

The first thing I did was get drunk one night and punch Phillip in the face Yep, I punched the most beautiful talented musician and painter I will ever entle ht in the face As hard as I could Wanna knohat I said? I said, ” You don't want anything You are killing ” Classy Astute Mature Ehter

The second thing I did was get fired fro to go out into the hot Texas sun and knock on door after door begging assholes for money when all they cared about was their next latte and what pair of jeans that cost o to et beer money Then I'd sit on curbs and s sheets withthat happened is I got pregnant I'ularly Andlove - shocker But a seed went up and against all odds, in Breaking ht no chaser Theabout hi even deeper down inside me - like a hidden blue smooth stone - it all made that impossible forthe life we had together was anything but a sad ass country song, so asI could do, given the life I'd frankensteined I called lish at the University of Oregon and asked her if I could live with her Across her leaving e difference, across her life as a successful academic and my life as a reckless fireball The fact ere both adult wo very deeply in co women who they should be

It's not possible to explain to you how quickly and profoundly she said yes Maybe she aiting foras a house belly with ether, to make a family outside the lines Because it was the only story I could think of that h she'd left me to save her life, she someho to make a space for sister, child, self But I know too that it was a sacrifice to bring a daughter in froene He lived on the other side of town We barely saw each other He worked at Slish Sometimes we'd run into each other, and lock eyes, and I wouldn't be able to breathe I'd put my hand on my belly to feel as there between us It was all I had to give to him

Here it is What I didn't want to say before It's entle kindness But neither could I kill it

Family Drama WHEN MY SISTER WAS 16 AND I WAS EIGHT, SHE'D MAKE s

Like this: just hold this apple in youra partial bite out of it Yeah, like that Now hold it, hold ither socking the apple out fro it across the room, while my little blond head shot to the left with the momentum and my teeth clacked shut on my lower lip

Or this: see this ashtray? Do this Just blow in it One, two, three

Ashes going all up my nose and all overfroue on this one It's pretty!

I would have done anything

Leoing cross-eyed and fainting as a kid I thought she was est, most beautiful auburn hair I'd ever even heard of, better than the idiotic dollsme with hair that you could pull out from the tops of their heads - Chrissy with the red-auburn hair and the shorter platinum blond Velvet Whereas I had a kind ofQ-tip for a head Chlorine bleached head fuzz No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't pull any hair out of the top of , she could read and recite Shakespeare scenes by heart She'd seen the R-rated ” Romeo and Juliet” - she had the albus that went on walls She had a black portfolio al as me (that I was secretly convinced could be used as a sled) She could write poeuitar, recorder, she could sing, she could ice skate I er, if you discount swi I could do was dress myself It was a banner day if I didn't cry, pee, or rock back and forth like a little monkey