Female rage ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

love is such a finicky little thing, don’t you think? it can topple whole towers, burn whole cities, collapse whole empires just to feel the sting of it one more time. i would consider myself a passionate person and the people who know me best would say that is an understatement. i romanticize love stories like the notebook and romeo and juliet, ones with a twinge of melancholy intertwined in them. i’ve always understood that love requires sacrifice. something i find quite lovely about myself is that i have always loved people for exactly what they are. not many people have gone out of their way for me, but love has never been about what someone can do for me. i love people for the way they twitch their faces with something bothers them, i love people for the way their laugh sounds, i love people for the kindness they exude, the way they view the world and themselves, the foods they love, their goals and passions and hatred. i have always wondered why people tell me there are more fish in the sea when i have a breakup or that i will make more friends when i lose one. how could they be so indifferent? how could they minimize an entire person down to a crumb of actions? what do you mean remarry? what do you mean find a new best friend? it isn’t the service that i grieve, it is the person. doesn’t anyone hold anything dear anymore? doesn’t anyone care about the people they love? when you consider that we are all one in the same, maybe they are right. maybe the person i am grieving most is myself.

my reality has scars painted on it like an old piece of art in a museum. not monet by any means, but like the ones in the gothic section. you know, the ones with dark colors and mysterious backgrounds and characters with creepy, contorted faces. the ones that reveal little addendums the longer you look at it. the ones filled with anguish, grief, melancholy, fear, greed, lust. there’s a cigarette burn hole, a few really, in the seat where you used to sit. your favorite songs scatter themselves throughout my playlists as i make desperate attempts to claim ownership over them. a couple of t shirts sit in the bottom of a dresser drawer in my room that used to drape off your shoulders. even the shirts that have always belonged to me but you had worn from time to time sit untouched. the shower in my grandmothers home no longer reminds me of my childhood. the yearning for a familiar hand when my mothers criticizes my hair sits in my chest like a ball made of lead. a tiny painting consisting of a black background and a half moon of a kaleidoscope of colors sits in a box in the top of my closet.

all of these scars from a war that i will never know the truth of. i pick at them over and over, ensuring they bleed so they never truly heal, insisting that the scars be dark. i could go the rest of my life with no one knowing such a huge part of me. when you leave me out, are you leaving out a part of yourself? the ones i love may never get all of me the way that you did, even if they are more deserving. a quote that i resonate with goes like this, “everything ive ever let go of, has claw marks.” and it is used to be true, but i find letting things go a remarkably easy task now. i’ve never had many desires, but the ones i have had burn through my chest with the intention of burning the entire world to the ground. once you’ve released the only thing you’ve ever truly desired, it seems pretty easy to detach from every thing else. the final act of love truly is saying goodbye, i just didn’t realize id be saying goodbye for the rest of my life.

a recounting of events

I remember the events leading up to that night quite clearly, until I don’t. I was in a constant state of drug induced mania that was borderline psychosis and avoiding even the smallest emotion at all costs. I had struck up a deal with a teammate that I would trade her weed for some Vyvanse capsules. I didn’t know what they were, I just knew they were of more use to me than the weed. I traded her a few grams for 4 pills and bought my usual bottle of crown. I knew I would finish it that night and would need another the following night, it was homecoming for god’s sake.

There wasn’t often a moment that I wasn’t inebriated out of my mind, so I showed up to the pre party already pretty drunk. As I walked in, I popped a Vyvanse and swallowed a big gulp of crown straight from the bottle. I had let it slip to my teammate that I was in love with another teammate, as if everyone didn’t already know. It was obvious between the both of us, I just didn’t realize that a different story was being told on the other side. This teammate of mine seemed to know something I didn’t, but I had been avoiding the fact that my lover was seeing someone else for weeks so I quickly ended the conversation before she could tell me. I was still holding onto the fact that my lover had told me the whole truth when she said she wanted to take a break because of her recent sexual assault. I didn’t feel as if it was appropriate to clarify our relationship with each other, and I weep now when I remember that feeling.

We had only been inside for a few minutes and the room was buzzing with chatter. There were no overhead lights on, just a few warm lit lamps. It was mostly the basketball team, with a few others who frequented the apartments. No one was saying it, but it was obvious that I was not welcome or wanted. They had been keeping me out of things for weeks out of “concern” and I was ignoring it. It felt like an attack. It wasn’t that I didn’t know something was wrong, I was painfully aware that something was deeply wrong; I just didn’t know what it was or how to fix it. It was much deeper than popping pills and I couldn’t seem to come to terms with that, let alone try to express it to someone else. I was asking for help in the best way that I knew how to at the time.

I sat in the corner with my teammate while I waited until it was late enough that I could drop acid one more time with this lover of mine. She was leaving soon, and my world was about to collapse. It actually already had; I just didn’t know it yet. I was trying to sober up because doing acid while drunk really just ruins it. Then I heard my lover get that squeal in her voice, the one she uses when she’s really laying it on you thick, and my stomach dropped because I knew she was not talking to me.

“Come on baby, come with me,” she says to her lover.

My teammate looked at me with shared devastation and grabbed my hand with both of hers. She rubbed it gently as she apologized and handed me my bottle. The next thing I remember is a bright white hospital room in the ICU.

a few weeks ago i went to a party with a girl and there was a ton of drugs. the girl i went with left me there alone, and i didn’t touch any of the drugs.

i remember needing something to love from a very young age; something that was mine and mine alone, something i could carry. it’s always been much easier to care about anything else but myself. some of my friends did art, but my kindergarten teacher tried holding me back for not coloring inside the lines. quite frankly, i just didn’t have the time to give. it was boring. some people could play music but there was no one around to teach me or even hear my interest. in the panhandle, you basically had two choices: play sports or be nobody. at the time, i don’t really think i grasped the idea, but my mother did so i played sports from the second i was old enough to.

i played soccer and hated it because it gave my bullies an excuse to kick me in the shins and push me down. my mother made me do it for four years anyway. i could ride a horse decently well, mostly everyone could, so i rodeoed. i really enjoyed it but could tell that i was not the type to be successful long term in that lifestyle. i don’t know how or why i was able to recognize that so early on. i was good at running because i could go on forever and recover in under a minute, until i started smoking cigarettes. by that time id already decided basketball was what i would commit to.

in the summertime, i didn’t have school to escape to and summer camps don’t really exist in keyes so we had to do it old school and just play outside. barbarian, i know. my grandpa, my step fathers father, was one of the most genuinely sweet men ive ever met. he taught me to drive and how to be kind. he also installed a basketball hoop in my driveway so i would have something to practice on.

i spent nearly 8 hours a day on that basket for several years, even moving it to boise city with us when we left. i shot on that basket until i graduated high school.

i still remember being 8 years old and coming in after a long, hot summer day. i was thrilled because i had made a shot from the furthest i’d ever been from the goal and had perfected some dribble move. my mother was depressed, and uninterested in my enthusiasm. attempting to give her some of my own joy, i told her treat when i made it to the wnba, we’d never have to worry about anything ever again. my mother laughed and said “yeah right.” the concept of failure hadn’t really entered my realm yet, especially with all of the high standards i made sure to meet. puzzled, i asked for clarification, “well do you think ill at least be able to play in college?” her demeanor changed as she realized i was being serious. my mother has always insisted on telling the truth, even though she often chooses which truth to believe. a look of calm washed over her and she looked me deep in the eye when she said “no, i don’t think you will.”

for the next ten years i dedicated myself to the game of basketball and it loved me back. i made friends, learned valuable lessons about hard work and success and working together with other people. my dry mannered basketball coach paid me a compliment in my senior year that i will never forget, and embarrassingly sometimes shout out at parties when im winning a game of beer pong. “bratcher didn’t call me the best three point shooter in this half of the state for nothing!” i know, it doesn’t seem like much, but you have to understand the type of encouraging i was accustomed to receiving— none. it would be several years before i realized how much she had impacted me as a human being.

anyway, i got the scholarship. one day after my 18th birthday, and the most traumatic event of my adolescence, i signed to play basketball at southwestern college. this was my chance to show everyone exactly what they’d been missing, including my mother.

i was suspended twice and overdosed after being on the team for a year and two months. i played maybe 5 junior varsity games, for two minutes at the end of each half. i was more worried about losing someone who could’ve cared less than even thinking about what i had really cost myself. i’m often worried my life will play out in the same way, and wonder what i would be like if things had been different when i was 8 years old.

my mistakes swallow me whole and the consequences of my actions make a coward out of me. to find the most visceral pain, you have to cut the deepest. the blade that finds the heart is the one that leaves a lasting mark. even when i lock away all of my weapons, i find a way to wield them. strangers slip me their condemnations that i never asked for and i bleed all over them. i bleed shame and disgust, hand me downs from my mother. cover me in compassion and promise to hold me gently until i can negotiate a peaceful compromise. i reject their advances because their hands don’t reek of the same rejection you handed me. i still feel the needy desperation that ruled over me for so long, but even i can avoid that if i just inebriate myself enough. i haven’t accepted the fact that the sirens are louder when you can’t run from them.

cold nostalgia chills me to the bone. i shiver, and remember what it was like to feel your warmth. i go on a date, with someone who respects me, and gag at the thought of them loving me a fraction of the love that i felt for you. i distract myself with bodies that i don’t recognize until im so sick of them not matching your own that i isolate until someone assumes im dead. i touch myself and pretend it’s you that makes me quiver. i miss a stranger and convince myself that any human connection is the same as the merging of souls that you and i experienced. even now, i sneak away from my date, to write this in a bathroom stall. i can no longer pretend that my veins don’t bleed for you. i can no longer hold out for a bigger love that does not exist. this is my tragedy; my tragedy is you.

“To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us.”

— Joan Didion

gonna turn this into a blog like it was supposed to be and reserve the personal anecdotes for my journal. not that this won’t be personal, everything i have a hand in is deeply personal, but it will no longer be whiny and hopeless. it will be haunting and touching. it will scrape the disdain out of my bones and crush it into a powder for me to snort. it will observe my ever changing kaleidoscope of opinions like passing clouds on a long drive, and it will scream my full name into the void with how much it reflects who i am becoming.

do you remember watching me brush my teeth and wash my face? i remember you doing both. the way you squeezed your eyes shut and clamped your lips closed tight. you’d use vaseline and lavender after and it blew my mind. sometimes, when you’d watch me brush my teeth, i’d brush them a lil longer than two minutes. i always wished i could’ve kept my eyes open when i was washing my face. how do i love someone else when no one wants to watch me brush my teeth

a child killed themselves yesterday. everyone is angry, but not for the right reasons. no one listens. everything stays the same.

just sittin' and thinkin'

Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings

Embrace (Unknown)