Ghostbuster Mary

My new therapist has me hold a purple plastic egg in each hand and follow a beam of pink light back and forth with my eyes as the purple plastic eggs alternately vibrate from left hand to right hand as the pink light and my eyes go from left to right and I talk about or think about each way that I am haunted. Perhaps I don't want to believe in ghosts because I am full of them already. 

Perhaps I haunt myself.

I've had about the same amount of boyfriends and therapists but unfortunately the former preceded the latter. I haven't been single for longer than 3 months since I was fifteen years old, which means I've been falling in and out of love and beds for half my life. 

"What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?" 

I am blessed and I am doomed. I am as I am, not as I should be. Forgive me father, for I am fucking human and I kill myself in order to live.

It makes sense to me, but what do I know? Each recognition is an impression of dead light. We are different each moment, as we are who we are as we are. I said that I don't know you anymore but I never really did. 

How could I?

Two nights ago I was at the bar feeling sad about what happened in France and all of it this year, and about the mother in my backseat who told me to get a gun, when I looked to my right and saw a bonsai tree sitting on the stool beside me. I smiled at the man on the other side and he smiled back at me.

Things I have to remember or else they never happened

Indian Rocks Beach, The house on 20th Avenue before it was demolished

The white hallway walls covered in crayon drawings, preschool cave paintings by Dom and I

Hand-me-downs from our cool cousins in North Carolina. Red plaid boxers and a smiley face tee shirt, corduroys.

Seeing mom cry for the first time. Something about Burger King

The bright red Lumina, before and after the crash

Mildred Helms elementary. The storyteller in the library, milkweed and monarch caterpillars

Kraft mac and cheese with brocoli

Becky the babysitter with braces. How I thought the rubber bands were gems

Simon, my invisible alien friend. Dom had Trisha the T-Rex who would come to speak with her through the bedroom window.

When Dom broke the trampoline and landed with her ass in dog shit.

Drawing in mom's bed with Home Shopping Network on the TV.

Riding the lawnmower down to the beach with Dad

Talking to Dad on the radio in the living room. We faxed him our drawings while he was in the middle of the gulf.

Sitting on the picnic table in the backyard crying up at the stars. Digger with her head on my lap, leaving it only to lick my face

The dream about mom folding a limp Digger into a cardboard box at dawn. This was when she went missing, I was convinced my mother had killed her and hidden her body in the garage.

Lipstick on Grammy's forks. Repulsive.

The way Grammy's dogs smelled after a walk. Breathing from my mouth.

Eating McDonald's chicken nuggets at Nana's apartment while she watched soap operas.

Singing Noel on the dock late one night

Learning to hold my own hand. God, don't touch me back.. Learning to hold little 5 year old me, little 7 year old me. Sitting screaming on that dirty carpet. Filthy no good carpet. Sitting with her hands up for all that world that went there. Sitting with those hands up. One of my first memories was looking at my hand in my mother's bedroom mirror and realizing in my small young brain how big my hand looked compared to how small I'd thought it was. Whose hands are these now? What am I touching

They are smaller than ever but look gigantic, mannish in photos.

Thank you thank you thank you fuck you I love you

Friday morning after a balanced breakfast

This morning I talked to a woman down the road about her outdoor cats and she invited me into her home, a large square one with windows all around the perimeter, and I realized she was a Scientologist. Living so near to one of their compounds and in a city so densely populated by them, I have reservations about the Scientologists that are punctuated by a sort of sinister fantasy. I imagine them whispering to one another through costly metal cans behind locked doors and windows with dense curtains behind wooden shutters. I also imagine the reality is much more dull and perhaps also more sinister than I imagine.

She was very nice and looked a bit like Mariel Hemingway.