I have no idea. It's just a doodle on a piece of scrap paper stuck into my sketchbook. Was I bored at some point and just sketched this? I can tell I didn't base it off any model, whether real or on paper, because of the face - I just free-handed it. I am going to take a guess that some professional development meeting boredom from when I was teaching inspired this mermaid right here. I do very elaborate drawings when I am annoyed that I am in a useless meeting that is wasting my time, because it allows me to escape into the drawing and barely have any sense of my surroundings. I produced a lot of shit like this while teaching:
That is actually what a picture of sheer boredom looks like. So, ok, fun, looking through the sketchbook!
But then I found this.
I don't think you can read it. It's terrible anyway, a draft of a draft. Have I mentioned here on the blog that I have this weird pattern of writing poems and then forgetting I have ever written them? And only recognizing that they are mine later because they are in my possession and in my handwriting? I have mentioned it now. I do this a lot. I don't know why this happens, and it is faintly disturbing if I think about it too much, so I don't.
This particular poem must have been written spring of 2006. I was in Morocco. And one of the great loves of my life (we'd already been lovers for 9 years, by that time), well, he was in jail. Specifically, in the psych ward in jail. On suicide watch. After taking too much meth, losing his mind, beating the shit out of a friend, stealing a car, and driving pretty much the vertical length of the United States before running out of land and doing something stupid on his drug-fried brain and ending up in jail. He was emailing me messages that were tearing my heart out. They were bleeding me, bleeding me more than it could have been possible for me to have contained so much to lose.
If you read here, you know of whom I am speaking. This is a love poem to my rapist, a year before he raped me.
This has totally fucked my brain for the night. This shit, I am just TIRED of it.
Gods. Isn't it annoying how randomly coming across something you'd forgotten about can bring back all the memories. It was one of the reasons why, after my ex-husband got re-married this last winter, I burned all the letters I still had.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to remember how I felt when I was 18 and madly in love with him, and wanting nothing more than to spend the rest of my life by his side - come what may. I don't want to compare that to the fact that he's now married to some other woman who, presumably, makes him a lot happier than I was ever able to. I certainly don't want to keep mourning what I've lost, because then I can't move forward.
If I found a letter that I'd missed, I think I'd want to burn it without reading it.
I write poetry sometimes too, by the way... though it's been a while since I attempted it. The last song I wrote for a friend... when I tried to show it to them, they treated it like meaningless and unwanted garbage, and I haven't had the heart to write anything since then.
I vote for burning the draft of a draft. Fire can be great catharsis for the soul. :)
Fuck, that is the shittiest fucking thing to find. So sorry, dude. D:
ReplyDeleteHere are some enormous kittens. Also I have tea and lemon cake and would share with you if the internet allowed it.
Also, god. People should first of all never rape anyone ever, but if they do, they should have the decency to drop off the face of the fucking planet afterward and take all evidence that they ever existed with them.
ReplyDeleteMy shitty ex sends me an email every six or eight months, like hey how are you doing, I was remembering some fun experience we had together and just wanted to remind you that things used to be good, anyway take care. And it is fucking galling to get emails at all but even more to get emails about fun things that were pretty much retroactively ruined forever THE NIGHT HE FUCKING RAPED ME. And every time I am a little squirrely for a few days afterward, like, does he know where I live? maybe I am in danger now like before?
I haven't even told my current partner that this happens because he would be furious (at shitty ex not at me) and that would be terrifying (even though completely safe). Shit is completely fucked.
Sorry you found that, Gayle. It's always shit finding old things you've written when your life was very different.
ReplyDeletePut it away. I'm not a fan of burning things unless they're truly toxic to you, because memory is important. It's solid proof of change and maybe one day, it will help you. If it doesn't, I agree with Kara, fire and cartharsis can meet well from time to time.
B., FOR REAL. THIS IS WHAT MY RAPIST DID. He felt the need to leave me a text message about how he was in this place we always used to be remembering me and he missed me and WHATEVER. I blocked his number after that - I don't need those messages. His email and any other ways he could contact me are blocked as well. I think it's an abuser thing. To let you know they can still get to you.
ReplyDeleteAnd Kara, I can't burn it - I feel like it is an offense to the muses to burn poetry (I actually have lines from a poem written near a decade ago that say just that: "I wanted to burn the poem of yours I found / but I didn't wish to offend the muses."
But also - I have had such loss of memory over everything about my rapist. This is like a link I had forgotten, because so often I have asked myself - how did I even GET into that situation? The poem is an awful memory, but it is still helps explain the road that led to here. I just put it in the overflowing folder that is labeled "Scrap Poetry." My memories are so few now . . . I hate even the thought of getting rid of any more, no matter how painful.
I kind of wish these comments were sent to my e-mail so that I wouldn't sometimes see the replies two weeks later...
ReplyDeleteBut yes... I think understand what you mean. I keep journals that I had when I was a child, and I go back and read them and I cry, but I still keep them, because my memory in general is SO horrible, and while some times weren't happy, it also helps me remember how I learned the lessons I learned and WHY I believe what I believe and why some people are just #@)$(*@# bastards who should have, as B. said, the courtesy to fall off the face of the earth. These are things I don't want to forget, even if I learned them in painful ways.
I suppose, while these memories hurt, they also help to make me stronger in the end.