and I won't lay down, there's a darker shade of courage (part XIII)

(Continued from part XII.)

A longer one, again. Two years have passed at this point.

Nov 28, 2015, 11:51 AM

[given name],

Still breathing. Occasionally wondering why. I think it's more habit than desire at this point.

In the writing of the...whatever it is...I've been doing this November, I've been trying to cull from all sources to track down things. Conversations we've had, notes both in and out of world, fragments of thought in all the places I have to store them. I haven't worked through physical notebooks; not sure I'm going to, because there's more than enough words to evaluate and transcribe from email, iPod and notes saved on the comp.

Anyway, I found a more exhaustive transcription of the September incident, and thought I'd toss it in here. Again, no idea why, other than it's become habit to write to you.

Shadow man. Missing Master. Shadowmancer, High Priest of the Hourglass. I'm amusing my brain coming up with alternate titles for you, when before, 'love' or your name were more than enough. There's a morbid humor there, somewhere, or maybe it's just me.

Anyway, the note. It's from another note on the iPod, dated July 23, 2012:

"It's a quarter to two and I've been seen for my somewhat yearly mammogram. The breast health center moved from an overly pink office, suffused with ruffles and quilting, to a more neutral structure, all exposed beams and copper-cast, oversized gingko leaves.

"I have about an hour to kill and--sitting outside of the hospital--every excuse assumed if I don't get through this without tears.

"So. Day before yesterday, around five in the morning, I decided to stop staring out the window sleeplessly and I started writing on the iPod, the way I'm doing now. I came about as close as I've ever come to a straight goodbye letter--at least, when the goal is to say anything but goodbye.

"As one might imagine, this left me emotionally unsteady, but after spending some time watering the pillow with silent tears, I thought I'd regained some measure of control, and finally fell asleep.

"The next day, all I wanted--ALL I wanted--was to take some in-game pics of an ongoing charity event. Unbeknownst to me, one of my computer case fans was on its last legs. Added to this was the fact that I'm having animation caching issues which were frustrating enough on their own to deal with.

"I overslept, which meant I woke up with the perception I was already late on things. A friend of mine, far more technically savvy than I am, was trying to analyze why the animations weren't working for me. I'd spent the first hour being awake in stripping down an extra AO device and packing it with static (AKA, unmoving) animations to make it easier to take pictures.

"Then the fan cut out. My mouse froze on the screen and nothing would get it moving again. Finally, I hard-crashed the computer, breathed for a bit, then tried to start the computer again.

"And nothing. Oh, it started fine, but when it hit the verification screen after the BIOS, it wouldn't load.

"And I...just dissolved. No amount of coping strategies stopped me crying, and I was simultaneously hurt, angry and afraid. And the one thing my brain seized on to make it better was cutting.

"Now, for anyone who doesn't know the story--or hasn't seen the pictures. because I'm not sure I'm just going to send it to you--in September of 2002, we were in a situation where we had given notice to move on our place, and suddenly had no money to move. As it turned out, we spent the last three weeks in Spokane surfing various friends' couches, feeling like we were leeches on our friends' generosity, but at that time, in September, we had no idea where we were going, and both Cat and I were under a crashing burden of stress.

"Another step back--since I hit puberty, I've off and on used self-mutilation as a way to deal with emotional stress. While this absolutely wasn't helped by the old boyfriend who stubbed cigarettes out on my arms, and my natural propensity to scar from non-self-inflicted wounds, I will say it's been something I've struggled with for decades.

"Back to 2002. Late one night, after yet another argument over money, I was sitting up at the computer and got the strong urge to cut. I sat there for two hours, feeling helpless against this compulsion, and finally decided if I was going to do this, I was by the gods going to make it memorable.

"I found a very sharp kitchen knife and a seam cutter I wouldn't need past that night. I went to the bathroom and got alcohol, gauze, antibiotic ointment and tape. I returned to the kitchen with two more things: a small, blue glass bowl, a lit candle, and a glass of Bombay gin and tonic water over ice.

"For the next two hours, I set to work. Sterilize the skin, make the cuts. Sterilize the skin again, the blade again, breathe through the alcohol's bite, make the cuts. Take a sip of gin, breathe, and sterilize the skin again. Shudder with the pain and do it all again.

"It felt longer, but that was the first hour. When I was finished, I heated the blade edge of the seam ripper, and burned along the cuts, sterilizing and reheating the seam ripper as I went.

"That took the other hour, and I now know how I would smell cooking. When it was all over, I dressed the wound, carefully bandaging it, finished the last inch of gin, and went to bed.

"For the next ten years, this has worked as a deterrent. When I've really wanted to cut, I think of how branding myself felt, and I don't. Sometimes I actually have to reach up, and trace the marks, but...it's enough, and I don't.

"So. Yesterday. Sent what my mind is thinking as the Goodbye Letter, without ever actually using that word. Feeling an inordinate pressure to cover Hair Fair, even though logging onto SL makes me depressed and jittery just logging in. More than a month of having my eyes blur, trying to take pictures through flawed, stuttering animations on my virtual self.

"And at least three months, if not four at this point, of absolutely zero contact from that oh-so-distant love.

"And my computer dies and won't work. And I absolutely dissolved.

"And I wanted to cut. I even planned out where: a six-inch vertical slice down my right thigh. Thinking of the brand didn't stop me. Thinking of promises I made, to both myself and that distant love, didn't stop me.

"Somehow, somehow, I held to a state of teary, shuddery stasis, and went so far as to pick out a knife and walk around carrying it. I wracked my brain for any excuse to stop what I wanted to do.

"Standing in the kitchen. One hand on the sharpest knife we have. Going over how many gauze pads we have, where I can find paper tape, where I can track down antibiotic ointment. And it hits me: I do this, he wins.

"And I stood there. Thinking. Because [f*ck] him, he doesn't get to win. He doesn't get to break me because I'm too weak without him not to pick up old habits.

"And this week, especially. Today, annual mammogram. Tomorrow, food bank run. Wednesday, labs and bloodwork to see if all the stress of the last month has kicked my thyroid to the curb again. (Personal opinion: I think it has.)

"Then Thursday, Cat leaves for physical therapy. And she'll be gone at least a week, but all of us are suspecting at least a month away from us.

"I put the knife away. I dug around our limited stores of alcohol and resigned myself to a shot of Amaretto, because we have no rum or gin. I forced myself to make a salad, and grimly ate it while watching SVU episodes for the second season of the show. And I didn't stop crying for two hours.

"But there's no cut on my thigh. Granted, on occasion I'm tracing where it would have been with my thumbnail, but I'm not pressing hard enough even to scratch. The girls got home and they brought me coffee ice cream. The bad fan on the comp got changed, I downloaded new drivers for the video card, and spent time with old and new friends watching Spoony's latest Ultima review, and running around in City of Heroes.

"And I will count this down hour by hour if I have to, but I'm not giving in.

"But I'm back to fragile and insecure. And honestly, if this is what everyone else feels when they hurt, I'm wondering why in the hell I fought this hard to feel."

Again, not that you're reading these, but the beginning of this thread still mentions summer, and we are far from summer's balms. So I'm tying it up here, I'll start a new thread to not talk to you in.

[Em]

I'm stopping it here for a while. Not only because of the glut of revelation in this one, which I'm still going to end up publishing, because I'm me, but also, because these were just the ones that turned up on a search for first "poet" and then "others". It's a good general overview, and I think that's enough. For now.

No--one last bit, because I wanted to track down if I'd saved whatever I was considering as the final 'goodbye letter', and...I can't seem to find it. There seems to be a large gap of July 2012 missives, and I may have deleted it. But I found this, after finally making the call that went to his machine:

Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 2:28 AM

I know you're alive now.

And I still love you.

You're a goddamned idiot.

But I still do.

[Em]

And that is all of that.

(Written to OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" on repeat because I needed something more upbeat than memory.)

(And actually...there is one more.)