Frozen, Broken, and Hearing the Lyrics for the First Time

I feel as if I heard the below lyrics for the very first time today, and in hearing them, I see exactly where I am in my life...

You only see what your eyes want to see
How can life be what you want it to be
You're frozen
When your heart's not open

You're so consumed with how much you get
You waste your time with hate and regret
You're broken
When your heart's not open

Mm, if I could melt your heart
Mm, we'd never be apart
Mm, give yourself to me
Mm, you hold the key

Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know I suffer the same
If I lose you
My heart will be broken

Love is a bird, she needs to fly
Let all the hurt inside of you die
You're frozen
When your heart's not open

Mm, if I could melt your heart
Mm, we'd never be apart
Mm, give yourself to me
Mm, you hold the key

I hold key but I'm stuck in a cycle of fear and self-loathing with a near continuous inability to be vulnerable. I seem to be unable to truly forgive and I never forget. I definitely feel broken, frozen, closed.

Subway Stories: An Observation Toward Forest Hills

He sat next to her on the hard, orange-colored seat in a Queens’s bound subway car, fanning her with a bright pink fan covered in white leaves. He was 65 if a day. The light glinted off his 80s style herringbone necklace. His beard and mustache were close-cropped, well taken care of. His backwards facing cap said Nike.

Her age was indeterminate. She might have been younger than he but from the looks of her, cigarettes and, I don't know, drugs maybe, had taken their toll. She was still attractive in a worn kind of way, but she seemed worn down, tired, but more than tired. She seemed spacey. She grabbed a scarf from her backpack and dabbed it across her face. I couldn't see the wetness she must have felt.

Her bleach blonde hair was brushed straight back from her face and gathered into a short ponytail. She was wearing all white. She looked fragile and vicious all at once.

The sores on her leg could have been from over-scratched insect bites. Or cigarette burns. Or they could have been the broken skin of a shin bashed too hard against a coffee table. But to me those glaring sores looked like puss-filled ulcerations the can result in over-active drug use.

Her face was made up. She seemed the type to never leave home without it. But it wasn't garish. Just enough. She knew what she was doing. Her eye lids were lined with long fake lashes that didn’t quite fill the expanse of the full lid. They were generously covered in black mascara, which accentuated the empty spaces on either side.

She leaned over to him and kissed him gently in the cheek. He turned his face so that his lips met hers. Another kiss. He loved her. I could tell. And she loved him. He continued to fan her, loose wisps of her bottle blonde hair blowing back and forth in his created breeze. 

I had heard her mention Forest Hills in her cigarette-choked voice when they first sat down on the train. But Forest Hills didn’t seem like their final destination. 

I never heard his voice, but watched him listen intently to every world she said, fanning, fanning. She closed her eyes and lay her head on his shoulder. I watched as he pulled the bottom of her shirt dress down over a thigh he must have felt was too exposed. He would protect her until he died. I knew it. I bet she knew it too, even if she did seem slightly languid at the time.

I wonder where they were going with their five bags of stuff? I wonder who they were? I’ll never know. 

Exit

Ivy's Revenge: A 30-Day Tweeted Serial...(And Scene)

Her anger frightened her. Her fear frightened her more. It was done. Blood covered her hands. She could feel splatters on her face. She steadied herself on buckling knees. The sweetness of her revenge warmed into nausea. She retched.

The hot bile violated her throat. She heard the sloshing sound as it hit the floor, a yellow marriage of fear and adrenaline. She watched as the pooling blood mingled with her sick, her heart racing. Each inhale of breath brought with it a sting and a gasp.

The red pool continued to widen around the head of Katie's limp body. The remains of the icicle jutting from her throat now barely visible. Warm blood had done its job. Blaine smiled as she watched the perfect murder weapon disappearing right before her eyes.

As the blood oozed toward her feet, she let go of the kitchen island she’d been using for support and stepped out of its lazy yet engulfing path. Her knees held, barely. She watched with hypnotic fascination as the surrounding white tiles drowned willingly.

As her pulse began to normalize she became immediately aware of the ambient sounds that up until then had been muffled by her pounding heart. There was chocolate bubbling in a saucepan on the stove. Its gurgling and popping mixing with the strings of...what?

She listened. She recognized those strings. Too many garden parties in her youth. Vivaldi, “Summer,” Movement 3, if she wasn’t mistaken. Those violins pierced the air with electricity. They represented hail or flies. She couldn’t remember which. Did it matter?

“So much drama,” she playfully said aloud of that particular movement. “I couldn’t have chosen a better theme song if I’d tried.” Her fear had lightened to relief. She stepped to the stove and removed the pan of chocolate from the burner, turning it off after.

“We wouldn’t want to burn the house down, now would we, ‘Katie’?” She venomously spat out the name as she looked over her right shoulder at the body lying on the floor. Katie’s eyes were open. Somehow that was creepier than the fact that she was dead.

Blaine continued to stare at Katie’s eyes, skeptically. She was completely creeped out. An icicle to the neck? Sure. No problem. But the open eyes of a dead woman made the ugly butterflies start to flutter in her gut. The music changed abruptly. Vivaldi fini.

From the twangy sound of an accordion, she thought it was something French. She rolled her eyes. Then someone started to sing. Edith Piaf, perhaps. She wasn’t sure. Bougie. What she was sure of was that she had to wash the drying blood from her face and hands.

To get to the sink Blaine realized she’d have to avoid Katie’s legs, which were lying parallel on the floor between the sink and kitchen island. She hugged the counter, edging her way to the right. She turned the water to hot and waited for the steam to rise.

It scalded her hands but she needed the angry violent wetness to wash away the dried residue of her anger, her revenge. As she splashed it on her cheeks, the burning brought with it stimulated nerve endings and tears—from pain, from release. Her body throbbed.

The tears continued as she reached for the yellow dish towel lying on the counter to dry her face and hands. Her pent-up rage was waning, the emptiness it left behind filled by a sense of elation. But the fucking tears...they carried sadness in their stream.

She’d carried her anguish for years. It was deeply rooted. But tears and sadness were not an option. She hated the dead woman lying on the kitchen floor. “So you go by ‘Katie’ now? Cute,” she said sneeringly. “Well, I found you Bethany Wakehurst. I found you.”

“And guess what, Bethany? Oh,” she paused, “May I call you that again?” she asked mockingly. “Anyway, I changed my name too. To Blaine. But I can tell you, I’m Ivy Wakehurst, Revenging Angel.” She laughed at herself. “I know you thought I was dead. Surprise!”

“And now, it’s you who’s dead.” Ivy smiled. “You left me unconscious in a burning house. From one woman to another, that was a shitty thing to do. Me surviving though? Twist. Yet here I am, standing over your dead body, by my hand, in your own house. Wow.”

“It’s crazy, right? I mean, it sounds like something you would do...plan revenge on the person who ruined your life.” She edged back down the counter toward the stove. She picked up the pan of chocolate and inhaled deeply. “I love the smell of chocolate. You?”

She took the stirring spoon that was lying next to the stove and swirled it around in the cooling chocolate. As she lifted a still warm dollop to her mouth she noticed the spoon rest said Somerston, Rhode Island. “Of course,” she said as she rolled her eyes.

“Of course you would have something from your past hidden in plain sight.” She lifted the spoon to her mouth and gently touched the chocolate to her upper lip. Cool enough. “You know, we’re both women scorned, me by you and you by me.” She ate a kiss of chocolate.

She closed her eyes in indulgence. “This chocolate is amazing,” She turned to look directly into Bethany’s dead blue eyes. “Did you add vanilla and salt to this?” She was back to the pan when she heard a gurgle from the floor. She froze. Fear seized her body.

Her stomach clinched. She dropped the spoon and watched the chocolate partially absorb it. A cold sweat mottled her body. She thought she might be sick again. She gripped the counter to steady her once again weakened knees. “She’s dead,” she reminded herself.

“She’s dead,” Ivy repeated the words to herself like a mantra. “You know she’s dead.” She took a deep breath then whipped herself around to face Bethany, still lying on the ground. Blood bubbles were foaming from the hole in her neck left by the melted icicle.

That sound was like something from a horror movie. Ivy thought she might take it to her grave. She could never unhear it. She shivered and grimaced. As her body began to relax once again she said to no one who could hear, “Revenge has too many side effects.”

The voice she now definitely recognized as that of Edith Piaf continued to sing what sounded like a mournful tune. “I lived in fear of you for a long time. But fear is a dark place. And my anger was just the light I needed to see me out of that darkness.”

Ivy picked up the yellow dish towel and carried it with her as she walked around the kitchen island. She avoided the now motionless pool as she bent forward and placed it over Bethany’s face to cover her soulless dead blue eyes. “Did you feel this euphoric?”

“I didn’t know how I was going to feel,” she continued. “But I haven’t felt this much bliss since the day I first kissed Christopher.” She lost herself in the memory of that day. She might’ve swirled there forever had it not been for the ring of the doorbell.

“Shit!” she said as she looked around the room. The icicle had melted. She hadn't stepped in the blood so there were no shoe prints. She quickly ran around the kitchen island and pulled open a drawer next to the stove. Bingo. Luck was on her side. Dishtowels.

She quickly took one from the drawer and began wiping the counter’s edge where she’d steadied herself getting to the sink. She wiped the handle of the drawer she’d just opened. She wiped the kitchen island where she’d kept her buckling knees from buckling.

The doorbell rang again. A sounding cry to escape. She began moving quickly, “90 miles an hour” she remembered her mother saying when Ivy had been moving too fast. She looked around the room. She saw the pan of chocolate. “The spoon!” She whispered to herself.

She breezed around to the other side of the island, grabbed the visible portion of the spoon that sat frozen in the suffocating chocolate, and wrapped it in the dish towel. “Time for me to go, Bethany.” Covering the knob, Ivy quietly slipped out the back door.

Social Media Disinterest Syndrome

I have now come to believe that social media is extremely detrimental to my mental health.

Tweets with questions and clever thoughts get no response. Instagram posts where I try to say something honest and, in my mind, important, get no response. I try to be involved. I use the hashtags I think will send the tweet or Instagram pic to a community of people who would be willing and maybe even excited to start a conversation. Nothing happens. 

I call the feeling I feel when there's no response: Social Media Disinterest Syndrome. It's a heaviness. I can feel its weight depress upon my body. I can physically feel it change my mood.

Popularity has always been a desire. Crucify me if you want to. I wasn't popular in high school. I was the queer, the faggot, the joke. I was friends with some of the popular kids, but I never ascended to their ranks.

Why should this still matter to me? I don't know. I keep asking myself that question. I've been out of high school for 30 years and that past should have no relevance for the adult I've become. But try as I may to fight it, it does. I suffer from a lack of confidence and an inability to validate myself. I fear my own opinion being the wrong opinion. I fear criticism of said opinion and the confrontation that could follow. Could. I'm living in fear of something that hasn't, and mostly doesn't, fucking happen.

I want to be seen, but I want to hide more. I want to lift up my voice in protest but I want to remain under the radar.

Twitter and Instagram are reminders every day of my lack of popularity and an apparent inability to connect with people. And when I think about connection I am reminded that I don't connect easily IRL either.

Social Media Disinterest Syndrome affects me every day. Yet I keep putting myself through it, hoping this day will somehow be different. If you're reading this, and you clicked on the link via Twitter, then you already realize I'm putting myself through it again today.

How many of us hope that strangers will validate us and fulfill our cravings? I know I'm not the only one. Likes and retweets and even comments create a dopamine effect.

More often than not I wish for the courage to leave my phone at home, or at least in my bag, and to disengage from all of it. I just want to deactivate it all like I deactivated my Facebook.

Maybe I'm too old. Maybe I'm out of touch. Maybe I'm not as clever as I think I am. Maybe I'm just not that interesting.

Maybe my expectations are just too high. This always leads to disappointment.

Social Media Disinterest Syndrome is a real thing for me. I am living with it...or surviving it. I don't know. It's exhausting.

Without the Work, Nothing Changes

I have to do the work. I don’t want to do the work. But I have to do the work.

It was suggested to me by my therapist today that I want someone to do the work for me. Ouch. The truth hurts.

It doesn't come easy for me this change that needs to happen in my life.

When my therapist says, “Baby steps,” I get so frustrated. But he’s right. The change isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time. I’m 48 now, and I’ve been marinating in this anger and self-loathing for a long time. It’s going to take time and that means that I’m going to have to do a lot of work.

The first step is to start believing I deserve to be happy. The second is to find the courage to be so, then confidently project that to the reflection in the mirror and to the rest of the world.

The third step is to stop being a victim of my past experiences. (Am I creating my own victimhood?) Things were said. Things happened. We all have issues from our pasts. But not everyone lets those issues affect them so easily in their present.

A fourth step might actually be to stop and realize that I'm projecting onto others what I'm actually doing to myself, e.g. believing that my father would think I brought a gay-bashing on myself when really I'm the one who believes the bashing is his own fault. 

It’s not going to be easy. But then again maybe nothing worth while ever truly is.

The anger and fear are debilitating. And remorse has become the lesser of the two evils between debilitation and intimidation. Self-loathing might as well be a shirt that I put on years ago and have yet to take off.

I have been surviving for a long time but not living. And as Adele sings, “I want to live and not just survive.”

So how do I do this? How do I step out of my comfort zone and step into the lions den with no fear of the bite?

That remains to be seen but step in I must. Otherwise what’s the point?

An American in Paris

There is a freedom that comes with being somewhere else; being a stranger in another country. Yet I am realizing with more and more frequency that I stand in my own way on the path to that freedom. 

I am in France. Specifically, Paris.

I desire to set myself free and be alive in the air that is different from what I normally breathe. I wish to blend in, to look as if I belong. Therefore, I’m afraid to make mistakes, afraid to be the American that I am.

I’m not doing anything wrong. I just wish to adhere to the customs, meld with the culture of the country. 

We Americans are very different than the French. 

This, my third trip to Paris, came with many memories of how to get around, but with more apprehension in how to just be. 

I found myself embarrassed to speak the language that I had been working on for weeks prior. I knew that I was an outsider but didn’t want to be perceived as such, even though I knew I couldn’t possibly sound as if French was my native language. 

Sometimes the mere greeting of Bonjour led to a response of Hello. I felt saddened by this. Even though I knew the Parisian to which I was speaking was ultimately going to have to converse with me in English. 

I know this comes from a history of not wanting to look like a fool and a strong desire to not be mocked. 

My heart is filled to bursting with happiness when I’m in Paris. Why is it then that I can’t accept that I am an American in Paris and just enjoy the air?

What Am I Doing?

“What am I doing?” he said aloud to himself. Did he mean with the day, the morning, that moment, his life?

The coffee in his cup was cold...again. He'd already warmed it once in the microwave. He didn’t ever seem to be able to finish a full cup in its state of straight-from-the-French-press hotness. Many days there were multiple trips to the microwave just to invigorate the sweetly bitter liquid with enough heat to warm his throat as he swallowed. Why should this day be any different?

What am I doing? That question continued to plague his thoughts. It was a big question that led to other questions. He couldn’t answer any of them really. Or wouldn’t.

The exotic fragrance of bergamot from a candle burning quietly on his kitchen counter wafted into the room where he sat. One whiff of its perfume always put a smile on his face. It was the essence of comfort, luxury, and happiness, set free by the heat of a flame.

His own flame was flickering. He wasn’t aging gracefully. Just that morning he’d been admiring a picture of a handsome older man in the pages of Vogue magazine when he read that the man was 48 years old. He felt like he’d been slapped in the face. He was going to be 48 years old himself in a mere three months. Reality! He didn’t see himself as older. He wondered how others see him. He thought he probably didn’t want—or need—to know.

“Time is a funny thing.” How often had he heard that phrase in his life? Where did it even originate? Does it even matter? Not really. Time isn’t funny. It continues forward through the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful. It has to continue forward otherwise he’d be dead. And he didn’t want to be dead…at least not today.

Dead is a heavy word loaded with fear and darkness, the inability to escape the black nothingness of the unknown. Gone. 

He had often wondered what life would be like for the people who know him if he was no longer present in their lives. Since he feared the word death almost as much as its result, he thought about this lack of presence as more of an absence. Like, say, severing the connective tissue that is cyber space, freeing himself from the binding filaments that are often more detrimental to his psyche than beneficial. Then he pondered the essay he would most assuredly write called "Separation Anxiety and the Negative Effects of Solitude" and decides once again to stay present and connected albeit more limited than before.

The perfume from the burning candle continued to fill him with contentment…and longing. The coffee inevitably cooled once again in his cup. He took a deep breath. He sipped, grimaced.

Time moved forward, his pendulum swinging, marking. His flickering flame did not set him free. 

He was told recently that he needed to dig deeper to uncover the truth of his sadness. He was good at avoiding.

So the question remains: What am I doing?