Gardens

What a beautiful day filled with gifts.  I remember what a gift it was when I drove home from Virginia with my mom and listened to The Vines for three hours.  It was also a gift when me, my mom, and dad wrote our names on a piece of concrete in South Philly.  They smiled and I loved their smiles so much.  So much.

Today was another gift. Every minute, every second.

I drove up to see my beautiful parents and grandmother.  We went out and had a nice dinner.  I looked across the table at my brittle little grandmother.  I wanted to sit across from her because I wanted to see her cute little fragile body.  I love it.  I love her.  I love her tiny arms, her blond blond hair.  I love the way she moves.  All of the years flowing through her veins are beautiful to me.

We ate.  We ate a lot.  Then we went to a store.  My parents offered to buy me an outfit.  I declined.  I should be buying them outfits.  I love them so much for all they've done for me.

So then we went to the mall and headed into a record store.  Dad said "Nikki, do you know who Cat Stevens is?"  I hesitated and said "I don't think so."  He said, "Psht, oh my GOD."  Then he bought me a Cat Stevens album.  He said "Nikki, every time you're stressed out, listen to these three songs."  He pointed to three. I promised I would.

He took us far out of the way on the way back to my grandmother's house.  He brought me to the peaches in his back yard.  He picked one for me and said "eat it, it's clean, they're organic."  So I did, I ate it right there and was covered in peach juice.  My parents' stray kitties walked around the yard.  I went into their house and there was a bowl on the counter with fresh food in it for the stray kitties.

And then we went to my grandmother's house and she was so happy to have us there.  She said "let's sit out on the back porch."  A few minutes later she came right on out with vanilla ice cream cones for us.  I love her.  And after my parents left, she sat in her kitchen and gossiped with me about past and current loves.  She then sent me on my merry way with a bag of snack foods, like always.

I went back to my parents' house real quick because I forgot to give them the syrup I bought them from a berry farm.  Then my dad showed me some.. pieces.. from.. someone's graden.  Hahaha.

I love my crazy family.  I do.  Today I was talking about my dad with my roommate and I said, "Well now you know where I got it from."  She looked at her girlfriend and she said "Yeah, that's true."  Her girlfriend immediately agreed.

When I was mad

It feels like fall of 2012.  I feel it deeply in my chest.  I remember those days.  Waking up, going to bed, waking up, going to bed.  It seemed that as soon as Christmas would come, another one would follow shortly after.  Cookies, coffee, wine glasses.  TV playing in the background.  Quiet office below me, except for those three winter days where Santa came to come make the neighborhood kids laugh.

How did I do it for so long?  I must have gone mad.  I think I may have.  I faintly remember sitting on the stoop under the street lamp, hair all crazy, shiny black 6-inch stilettos.  A cigar in one hand, a glass of red wine in the other one.  A pen and a pad helplessly lying on the weathering wood.  Red lipstick smeared around the edges of my lips.  My thick liquid eyeliner in excess running below my eyes, darkening my already-dark dark circles.

The neighbors would walk by and smile at me but I knew what they were thinking.

Now here I am in 2014 and it feels like I was transplanted into a different world where I’m doing the same things, and I should be.  It’s 7:30 a.m.  I still have that coffee cup that’s bigger than my head.  It still has the same French press coffee nestled inside of it with a little bit of soy milk and organic cane sugar, how I like it.  I still have candles lit in front of me, the window is open.  They’re different candles, it’s a different window, but it still feels like 2012.

I think my fatal flaw this summer has been my overactive brain.  I’ve always been one for thinking entirely too much.  He left me.  Whatever.  Move on.  Be Nicole. Be alone and be happy in your loneliness.  Go to the canal, go to the pond.  Go to the willow tree.  Go to the frogs where you used to write poems and smoke a cigar.  Go to the strip clubs where you used to watch women slither down the poles and sit in your idling car with a white chocolate mocha with cinnamon on top.  I feel like this all hit me a week ago so I have just begun lighting candles and opening windows.

                                                      

Who am I?  That’s a good question.  I want to be a Nicole that I’m proud of.  I want to be the young professional that I am, but I don’t want to be too professional, otherwise the “young” part might disintegrate faster than I want it to.  I want to travel by myself and listen to the wind.  I want to write poetry that is so beautiful on the first try that I hardly have to edit, maybe just a punctuation mark here or there.  I want to go eat breakfast by myself.  An amazing breakfast that puts a smile on my strawberry-loving face (so it must surely have strawberries). 

I just want to be happy with BEING.  Just that, being.  Being what?  Being anything.  I just want to be content.  I want to feel like the world wrapped it’s arms around me and snuggled me closely.

Nicole it’s not all that bad.  It’s NOT all that bad.  And you liked yourself when you were mad.

My soul

So I had two fairly strong margaritas but I made my way to Kensington in one piece, somehow.  He lived in a tiny red brick rowhome that had cockroaches on the sidewalk in front of it, but it was nice in the inside.  That's generally how it works.  There's cockroaches on my sidewalk too, but they know they're not welcome in our home.

He hands me a beer.  He hands me a second before the first was done.  Whatever.  I have to pee.  He gives me a tour of the house.  His tour ends in his bedroom, whatever.  I look at his books, his movies.  I'm drunk.

I'm on the floor, I turn my head.. the door is closed.  Initial thought, "Shit."

I felt pressured.  I let him get on top of me.  I let him kiss me.  I hardly kissed back.  I wasn't sure what I wanted.  His friend interrupted us for a second.  I was happy he did.  I remember hoping that it was the end of it.  It wasn't.  He began kissing me like we never stopped.

He got me up onto his bed.  Great.  I don't know what to do.  Do I like this?  Don't I?  Maybe means no, right?  I don't think I like this, but what do I have to lose?  I'm single, I'm miserable, I'm drunk, I'm lost, I have little self worth.  Is this fun?  Isn't it?  I don't know, I can't tell.  I think it's supposed to be.

It continues, he kisses my neck.  It feels okay for a second, and I like the fact that it was keeping him from my lips.  I didn't want to kiss him.  I didn't like kissing him.  What do I do??  What do I always do when this happens?

Make it hurt.  I like it when it hurts, it removes me from the situation.  It removes any emotion.  I tell him to choke me, pull my hair, smack my ass, bite my neck.  And he does.  So hard, in fact, that it leaves bruises.  So now I am thinking, "Oh my god I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do.  He wants me to touch him.  I don't want to touch him.  I don't like to touch boys that I don't have feelings for."  At this point, his friends are in Fishtown and I don't have an escape plan.  He's disappointed in me, he can tell that I'm trying to get away.  He looks at me and says, "You're not ready for this, are you?"

And in my head I'm thinking, "I would never be ready for this with you.  Never.  I just didn't know what to do.  I had no idea in my mind what I could do or say."  I could have said no, but I felt pressured.  So half his fault, half mine, right?  Is that how it works?  No, I don't think so.  Mostly his fault, for being a dickbag asshole who corners girls in his room when they're intoxicated and vulnerable.  He knew I was emotionally vulnerable.  He knows I'm a mess who can't seem to grip onto life these days.

But maybe I gave off the wrong signals?  Maybe it was a communication error?  Back to half my fault, half his.

I don't know, but as I'm lying there it dawns on me, my things are outside.  He says "stay right here and I'll go get them."  I say "no I'm coming!"  And he says "no stay right there."  I don't listen to him.  I take this as an opportunity to pull my pants back up (he pulled them down over my ass so he could spank me) and throw my shirt back on (so fast that as I was running down the steps, I was still fixing it).  He already has my stuff, he's moving fast.  He wanted to corner me again.  I feel safer in the living room.

But he pushes me against the wall (softly) and says "Let's pick up where we left off."  I said no.  Just flat out no.  I have to go.  I have to go home now.  I start apologizing.  The "I know I'm broken" thing.  It didn't occur to me until the next day that I had nothing to be sorry for.  Nothing.  He says a few more things that make me feel guilty and then we stand outside on the cockroach infested sidewalk.  I'm sad.  I tell him that I'm even further in the clouds now than I was to begin with.  Poor Alex. He knows about Alex.

I leave and I'm happy to have left.  In the morning I wake up with big blue bruises on me.  A reminder of how stupid I am for having put myself in that situation.  I'm such an idiot.  I hate myself.  My soul, not my body.

Last night, in the jungle of the situation at some point we peeped our heads through the trees.  He said, "Nicole your body is perfect."  Men say this to me all of the time.  I get it often.  I don't respond to him.  He says "But you know that already, don't you?"  Yes I do, but I don't care.  I say to him,

"Yes, but I worry about my soul."