investments

Depending on who you ask, $25,000 can either buy you a lot, or not much. An ok new car perhaps, or the down payment for a condo. About 25 MacBooks. A decent education at a state college. For me, $25,000 is about how much I’ve spent in my life, either through insurance or out of pocket, on therapy.

I was nineteen years old until I finally got some sort of therapy. Nineteen may seem young now, looking back, but that’s a long time to go without talking, to go without speaking and I mean really speak, like from your gut and your heart. Nineteen years is a long time to go without having someone to really listen to you.

I pushed it all down into me, but it was all still there all those years, waiting to surface, erupt like a volcano, my tongue molten lava, and my voice buried under several layers of emotional sediment. I went at first because I took a razor blade and slit my wrists. It was my way of telling the world, and I suppose, my own self, that I was hurting on the inside.

Hurting myself was my way of communicating when I didn’t have the words or language to understand and express what was going on within, without, around and to me. I could go because I was finally away and at college, somewhere with the resources to help me or at least refer me, to point me in the some sort of direction, which just so happened to be the right one. And when I found the right therapist, the work of speaking and healing got easier.

Thinking of the girl I was at nineteen, I wonder about the countless others aren’t so lucky. Who go years or an entire lifetime without any sort of help, with nothing but the reflection in your mirror and the words in your diary to keep you company.

[...]

50 minutes/week.
$75 to $125/hr.
52 weeks/year. Give or take a few weeks to account for Holidays.
About 6 years.

That money was the best investment I’ve ever made and it was in myself.

a very corny love poem

If it didn’t rhyme
Would we still think that Love
Comes from up above?

And that when I say I love you
My words are true

That you ease the pain
And bring sunshine in the rain

Could you still turn the darkness into light?
Make my whole world bright

If it didn’t rhyme
Would I still dream of you at night?
And you’d make everything all right?

Would my heart still sing?
With the memories that you bring

Would my heart still skip a beat
Knowing each moment with you is a treat

Through thin or thick
When we’re healthy or when we’re sick

In good times and in bad
When we’re happy and when we’re sad

Could I love you at all times?
Even without the rhymes?

culture

Some liken culture to roots
Buried deep within

As if digging into the flesh of memory
Clawing at the idea of it
Picking away
At the fossils
Of history
Will yield you something
Real
Tangible

Something you can feel
In the folds of your skin

Taste
On the tip of your tongue

See
In the beads of sweat
On your father’s temple

Hear
In your mother’s voice
Calling you home

Hold

But,
you are not a tree
Standing
Still

You are a river
Flowing
Strong
And swift

You are not wood
Breakable

You are water
Fluid

You are both
Flow and source

My, Dear
Don’t you know?

You
are
part
of
the
ocean

the well

somewhere deep inside you
there is a well
filled to the brim
with the light you carry
on quiet nights
and calm mornings
you can dip your pen into that well
draw up courage
and write everything
your heart longs to tell

expectations

I think in a former life, my mother was my child and I must’ve done something really bad to her in that life because she sure gave me hell in this one.

My mother is one of the last people I told when Chris and I got engaged. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to share the news with her, or because I was scared to tell her, but because when I try calling her on the phone to schedule a time to stop by, it rings with no answer, not even the machine. I try getting a hold of her several times this way until I’ve decided something bad might have happened to her, that she’s lying at the foot of the stairs or something with no one to hear her cries for help. She lives alone.

I have no way of getting into the house because during one of her episodes of paranoia over the years, she changed all the locks, built a seven foot fence all around the house, installed motion sensor lights and a peep hole in the garage door. She wouldn’t give me a copy of the keys and told me our 8-year old neighbor, a black boy named Tyrone was sneaking into her house during the day and turning the television on and off when she wasn’t looking.

I call one of my aunts in Hawaii to announce the engagement news to her and ask her if she’s heard from my mom.

“She’s in the Philippines,” she informs me, “Didn’t she tell you?”

No she didn’t tell me. This is her second trip to the Philippines that I find out about through another person, as if she simply decided to go shopping at the local Walmart or something instead of taking her passport and a plane ride across the Pacific.

By the time my mother comes back home to this side of the ocean, I know she knows I’m engaged, that my aunt had gotten a hold of relatives via Skype and they had somehow gotten the message to my mom, up there in the big house that was built over where the small house she grew up in used to stand, the house with 3 bathrooms, an outdoor kitchen and no telephone.

I know she knows but she doesn’t say anything to me about it the first time we talk on the phone, nor do I mention anything about it. We don’t say much of anything at all, this time or any of the times I call just to make sure she’s still there. I arrange a time for her to be ready to open up the gates to her 7-foot fence so that Chris and I can visit.

The next day Chris comes with me to my mother’s fortress.

As we enter, I tell her, “Mom, I think you’ve heard already but Chris and I planning to get married.”

“Ok,” she says, turns around and walks towards the kitchen.

“That’s it?” I call to her.

“Go ahead,” she responds plainly, without any of the emotion a daughter would expect to come from her mother after sharing this kind of news. She goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge and looks inside.

“Do you want to eat?” she asks.

And that’s it. That’ my mother’s reaction. That is all.

Chris grabs my hand and leads me the short way from the front door to where my mom is standing, yelling out what’s inside the fridge for us to eat. Leftover chicken from Popeyes. Some greens from her garden. Dried mangoes from the Philippines. Some cheese.

This was all she had to offer.

I eat some mangoes and think of my father when we told him the news, how happy he was, how he gave Chris a high five and asked if we were going to Vegas or having a small civil ceremony.

When we told him we wanted a ceremony with friends and family and a reception after he suddenly turned serious.

“What about your mom?” he asked me.

I was silent because I knew what he meant, that he wasn’t asking me a question but telling me what I already knew.

“Michele,” he began, “Usually people say expect the unexpected. With your mom, expect the expected.”

Chris and I laughed at this, but my father’s face remained stoic causing my face to mirror his.

“Yeah, I know. We’ll figure something out.”

[...]

 

shadows in the light

I lie awake on my cot listening to a sea of pre-schoolers sucking on their thumbs. Nasty habit, thumbsucking, and I don’t do it myself for fear that my front teeth will begin to stick out like a horse. My mom told me that would happen.

Shaun and Shannon both lie somewhere to my left. Shaun likes to pick his boogers and Shannon likes to eat them. I think they’re disgusting but secretly, I’m jealous that they have each other. I only have me.

Somewhere, there’s Terrence lying sound asleep. He’s a little black boy with a flat top and lots of confidence. He’s told everyone that I’m his girlfriend, but he never even asked me about it. I don’t correct him though, mostly because I don’t really like talking here.

A fat kid named Jack told me I sounded funny when I said anything with an “r” in it. At first, I stopped saying words like relish and gorrila and eventually it became easier to just not say anything at all.

I watch the shadows dance on the ceiling, waiting for one of them to be my grandfather’s, waiting for him to take me away from this place because I hate it here. I’d much rather be with him, collecting cans or hunting for snails in the garden.

Finally, the door opens, and it is him. He gathers me to him and we spend the rest of the afternoon picking calamansi from the tree in the backyard and making calamansi juice.

The next day, I lie again, waiting for him to come to get me, eager to spend my afternoons with him, still too young to understand days like these don’t last forever. There are no more naps, no more afternoons spent in the garden, that you must speak even when you don’t want to, spend days in places you don’t want to be and no matter how much you watch the shadows dance on the ceiling, no one is coming to take you home again.

the path

follow your heart
even when it’s wrong
follow your voice
let it sing its song

follow your wings
and take the dare
follow your roots
they’ll tell you where

follow the route
that makes you feel
follow the doubt
it keeps you real

follow the fears
when you’re left bare
follow the tears
the truth lies there

follow the road
to help you steer
follow the wisdom
that makes things clear

follow the love
that lets you care
follow the words
you need to share

getting there

“We don’t have any room for you at our Chinatown facility. You’ll have to go to Alhambra,” the social worker in the nice crisp suit told me.

“I don’t want to go there. A friend of mine has been to the Chinatown facility. She recommended it. She said I’d get better there. That’s why I came in today,” I explain as calm as I possibly can. My eyes want to close and never open again but I fight to keep them open for fear that the next time I open them again I’ll be strapped to gurney with my hands and feet tied down.

“She hasn’t slept in three days,” Michael tells her as he slips his hand under mine.

“There’s just simply no more room,” she offers, “I can get her into Alhambra. It’s a good facility.”

He believes her.

The social worker asks if we have a ride to get to the facility and Michael explains his car won’t make it, that a friend drove us the 20 miles from Long Beach. She says she’ll get a vehicle to take us and asks us to wait in the waiting room.

We wait for nearly four hours until our ride arrives, an ambulance with a pair of EMTs and a gurney. If I had known it would’ve taken so long and that our ride would be a gurney, I would’ve taken a cab. Why didn’t I call for a cab? Even in Los Angeles there are cabs.

Eyes watch as I get on the gurney. There are straps to restrain me but they don’t use them. I ask if I can just walk to the ambulance which is four floors down, through the lobby and right in front of the building.

“Sorry. Policy. We gotta take you this way,” says the bald headed blonde guy with the hairy arms. So I stay on as they wheel me through a hospital full of eyes, eyes and lips judging me silently. The girl on the gurney with the slit wrists and the thin white cotton sheet to keep the cold away.

Why can’t I just walk out this hospital on my feet, with sone dignity? If it weren’t for being on this gurney, you might not even know something was wrong with me.

“Michael can come too?” I ask somewhere between the fourth floor and the second. I grasp his hand tighter in mine.

“Sorry. No. He can’t ride in the ambulance,” says the bald, blonde, hairy EMT. Why didn’t we call for a cab?

I don’t think he’s sorry at all. When we get to the lobby I tell them I’ve changed my mind. I struggle to get off and I tell them I don’t want to be wheeled around on a gurney and had no interest in riding in an ambulance.

“Sorry. You can’t do that. It’s against policy. You’re already in our custody,” says the EMT.

I struggle to get off but they grab my hands, pin down my knees, my feet. Slip a strap around one wrist and attempt to buckle it closed.

“No. No. NO. NO! NO!!” I scream, “I’m not going!” We are in a hospital lobby full of people, regular people, moms and their kids, dads. They don’t know I’ve come from the fourth floor psyche unit.

Michael tells me it’s gonna be ok but I know it’s not. Something in my gut tells me if they take me away in that ambulance, strapped to that gurney, alone and vulnerable, I’m never gonna see him again.

“What the world needs now…is love…sweet love,” I sing, “It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” I repeat. Louder. Again. And again. And again.I’ve never sung this song in my life. I’ve never had a good voice, but for some reason, I hear myself sing and think I sound halfway decent.

The other EMT, a black haired white woman with overly tanned skin stops trying to hold me down. She steps back.

“Let her go,” she tells the bald, blonde, hairy one, “She’ll be an involuntary admit. They’re gonna do a lot worse things than this to you there in Alhambra, honey. You just wait and see.”

I get off the gurney, back into the elevator, unto the fourth floor. I spread myself out over three waiting room chairs and allow my eyes to close. Michael gently lifts my head, slips his lap underneath to use as a pillow. I listen to him ask a friend to drive us. Why didn’t we just get a cab?

I keep my eyes closed. I let myself fall asleep.

I just want to get better I say to myself. That is all. I just want to be better.

there used to be

there used to be a girl
who cried puddles so deep
you needed more than rainboots
to wade through them

there used to be a girl
with scars so thick
you needed more than bandages
to heal them

there used to be a girl
with fear so strong
you needed more than words
to soothe her

conversations with strangers

“You ever feel like you’re a lion among sheep?” Piedra asked the dreamy-eyed boy with the hammer and sickle T-shirt. They had sat next to each other in art history class for almost a half semester now but this was the first time either of them had said anything to the other.

They had each scoped the other out though, occasionally making eye contact and silently judging each other based on what their witty or politically minded tee said each week. This week the boy’s shirt said something like I’m radical. Last week he wore a Star Trek shirt that said I’m a nerd. Piedra hadn’t made up her mind yet as to whether or not she liked the boy or despised him for being so ironic.

The classroom was dark as Prof.Walden walked the class through slides of artwork from post modern artists. His words hung on a single Pollock piece, a giant canvas with yellow, blue and red paint splattered seemingly randomly on it.

“What?” the boy whispered back.

“Do you ever feel like you’re a lion? Among sheep.” Piedra asked, non-chalantly as if they were simply discussing the weather, or sports, or homework.

The boy was silent as he strained to get a good look at Piedra in the dark. Long wavy hair, large round eyes and a plain white tee with nothing on it. No ironic saying or iconic illustration. Today, Piedra was an enigma.

“Yeah,” said the boy, “I suppose, sometimes, I do.”

[...]