Lydia Jay
I'm a builder. A planner. I have blueprints in my head to make the perfect home. Tall walls. Big ones. Thick walls that most people find difficult to climb. These walls are thicker than brick. They are walls made of words and movies and conversations. They are made of invocations. They are fastened with flags and people demonstrating. I need the walls to be strong because I’ve got someone to protect. I want the walls to weave together all the things that I am desperate to create. The walls are new because I can't be what I was. I need to protect what I was. She needs to be safe. It's a castle, but she's not a princess. No. She's not been treated like a princess. In fact it's quite the opposite. If you need evidence that life is really not precious to most, you can study the way she was treated. Someone took her oxygen, and someone took her lips. She was climbing the rickety ladder towards womanhood when someone made the ladder into a thicket. It ripped her apart, and she fell to the earth and when she landed the thorns were everywhere. The circle of caretakers ignored her hurt and unleashed their weak and worthless desires. That’s how I found her. She was flat like a soldier, dead on a battlefield. And I cradled her. I found the safest place I could: in the middle of me. She needed love. She needed protection. I armed myself. I found new identities. I wrapped myself in a new gender. I gave myself so many titles. I pinned them to my chest. I wrapped my chest with the power to fight her attackers. I made myself a weapon. And then I started to build. One thing and then another. I found allies. I loved my moon. I had enough to become a planet, and that's what I was for her. That's what I am now. The moon and I are together. She orbits me, and I keep her close and safe. She lets me be the man that I am. She never confuses me for the little girl we used to be. Outside of the walls of her identity and my gender and my sexuality and my choices of partners, I am a warrior. And the flags and the colors of the demonstrations help me to comfort her. The cover the sound of her crying which now is getting softer and softer as I uncross my legs and part my hair to the side. We chant at our attackers even though they have their weapons, too. We eat Thanksgiving dinner with them, but my moon and I never stay in the house. We slept in a tent in their backyard. Our childhood bedroom stays empty and dark. We are a solar system. At the center are the enlightened planets. You can still find her castle where she sleeps forever. Nothing will touch her again. I will see that. I'm man enough for that. Because I am a builder. A planner. And I have made her safe for good.
I have always wanted to be a seed. Yes, it's what the dead things discard and cast out into the fields. Hard. Sweet. Something you might find in an expensive salad. But that's not where I want to be. I want to be close to the earth. I want the compelling hand of gravity to reach up and pull me into the soil. I have potential. I can grow. I am not the fruitless waste of the dying flower. I get to be a flower myself. On this planet, there are those that celebrate the birth and death and rebirth of a god. Yet here I am with the collection of seeds, billions of us across the planet all doing the same thing without a pretty pink hat or a chocolate bunny or a tortured messiah. I have seen the footage of my siblings. I have watched them speed up the video, and I know what will happen to my body. It will be destroyed. And yet somehow the different parts of me will become a part of the new. And there will be new parts of me that will grow. And instead of being brown and hard and still, I will be green and fluid. Every second I will grow. You can see it happen so fast. Rewind it and watch it again because it's a miracle. I want to be a miracle. I like the inevitability of knowing my transformation. I will have a new name. Will I still dream the same dreams? Will the things that used to scare me still scare me because as a seed I certainly knew fear. I've never been afraid of pain, but I always had a fear that somehow I would wind up at the bottom of a swimming pool. Or be spit into a coffee can. Or get stuck in the grooves on the bottom of somebody's snow boot. I was terrified of being useless. I was terrified that I might never grow. But here it is. Here I am. I feel the cracking of my spine. I feel my fingers coming apart. I can curl up one last time as the inert waste of the universe until I become a flower. I can't wait to see which one I'll be.
My mother cleans the coffee table at least once a day. I can admit that it gets dirty. Dusty. Stained with the rings from the bottom of our cups. How many times have we not used the coasters? How many times have we ignored her request to "clean up after yourself?" But I don't think it matters. I'm pretty sure that we could all disappear for weeks and weeks and she still would clean it every day. Even if no one was using it. Of course it's not just the coffee table. It's everything. Everything is cleaned. I think before the dust gets a chance to float quietly towards the ground, she has the vacuum cleaner out and she is working it. She's got them in different sizes with tons of attachments. Each one of them sucks the evidence of our existence from the surfaces of our life and makes it seem like everything just came from the factory. Growing up I saw my mother as a jigsaw puzzle, but I never bothered to put her together. I was happy to be nearsighted in her house. Most kids would moan about wearing glasses at 10, but it gave me this delicious excuse to not see the things she demanded I see. I left my glasses everywhere. She bought me more than one pair and would plant them throughout the house. I knew she had a pair she kept hidden somewhere in the kitchen just in case I lost them all. Because there's nothing I liked more than being blind. Oh I could get around. I could find the toilet. I could sit close enough to the TV to watch any cartoon I wanted. I could see things up close. My phone was always at the tip of my nose. I could ignore my mother's warnings because how much worse could my eyesight get? In the car I didn't need to see where we were going. At school I always used a handout. For most of my childhood, I didn't need to see. For most of my childhood I certainly never saw her. In my head she was the giant flowers that were once painted on the walls of my bedroom in the home we used to live in before we moved. She was a blue petal on a green stalk. She would bend this way or that but she never moved. I don't remember seeing her walk or run. Everywhere we went she was always there, but she always seemed planted. If we went to the beach, she stayed planted in the condo. If we went to an amusement park, she always seemed planted on a bench near a trash can that she would point at and tell us to toss our garbage. I would feel like her warnings to me were trestles that would stretch from wherever she was to wherever I was going and keep growing straight. Because she wanted to make sure that I would become the woman who could see without seeing. She told me she would be my eyes for as long as I needed them. What she didn't say was that one day she wouldn't be there at all. Growing up I certainly took it for granted that everything was tidy and clean. This proved to be something difficult for me to do as an adult just like it was impossible for me to drive because the DMV said I was “legally blind.”. Sitting in the back of a thousand Ubers, I look up and expect to see the green leaves of my mother's hand gripping the steering wheel on both sides, carefully guiding me through the universe. I knew that no matter what happened, she had an extra pair of my coke-bottle glasses somewhere in the car. All I ever had to do was ask.
When I walk into a hospital, all I feel is envy. Look at all these injured people. These sick and deteriorating people. They have stopped. There's nothing more important to them right now than being fixed or getting well. Whatever problems were leaning against them can now be ignored. They don't have to pay the gas bill today. They don't have to call their grandmother and thank her for the birthday gift. They don’t have to break up with their boyfriends. Not today. Today is a free pass. And what do you have to do to get this free pass? You have to hurt. You have to be in pain. You have to be coming undone. Dying. All the things that make hospitals so interesting. I have walked through the hallways of the admissions building on a college campus, and they look a lot like a hospital. But when you go through college buildings, it's dull. It's like white noise. Everyone there is just a cut out. They are engaged in worrying and studying and wasting their time with their worries. But I can walk through a hospital that has the same linoleum and the same wood panel walls and the same numbers on the doors, and I see grief. I see concern. I see the haggard look of a doctor who's running from one place to another just to give bad news. I see a television that's glowing in a room where there is a woman who is propped up on a bed but she's not watching the Price is Right. Her mind is someplace else. Her mind is contemplating the end of existence. How much more interesting is she than the 19-year-old sophomore who's stuck himself into the tiny space under a stairwell with his laptop propped open and his earbuds in his ears. He is stuck in the present. He is completely enveloped in dry thoughts and ideas that are relevant to him today. He's got to finish a project. The music in his ear becomes lyrics in his mind. It's all happening live. He's living it now. But if I walk past a hospital room where there's somebody wrapped in bandages, I know that she's not thinking about downloading apps. She’s not worried about the PowerPoint that she's supposed to make for work on Monday. Oh, they are expecting the PowerPoint, but did not anticipate that she would be disfigured in a car crash. Her boss will give that job to someone else. Right before the F150 made a left turn from the center lane when he thought he had room to do it, this woman was thinking that the PowerPoint would be the death of her. And now her death is wrapped around her head. She's got no space in her brain or in her heart or in her body to think about a PowerPoint. There's no space inside of her to do much of anything but breathe. And she's not even sure how much longer she's going to do that. But even breathing isn't something she's thinking about. No. Her thoughts turn to 10,000 memories. 10,000 snapshots. Everything is cascading inside of her. She couldn't possibly pick out the lyrics to a song if she were wearing earbuds. She couldn't possibly come up with a good bid for the showcase. Because she's not present. The thumbtack of time has not pinned her to the present. Something happened in the accident and that thumbtack went flying off and now she is free to float anywhere in the universe. And that's what's happening to her now. Even if she touches the bandages, she doesn't feel them. The memory of the truck crumbling the front of her Audi is a slide that sits on top of another slide that has the memory of her grandfather taking her to the mailbox on a Friday afternoon when her parents were at court and he had to babysit her. It was a quiet walk but at some point she looked up at him and she told him that she loved him. And of course he told her the same. There's another slide with the birth of her son. It was a long labor, but this slide is the moment that they placed him on her chest. It's funny how you don't mind blood in certain situations. Like now. Her hands are bloody. It’s dry and caked. She held her son when he was bloody. There are beeps and tubes and wires and people talking quickly now. The present state of the emergency room becomes another slide that sits inside with all the others and when the light passes through them everything of her life becomes one image. What's remarkable is that she can see everything at once and it's all so beautiful. Like a painting. Like a trip around the world. And even though all of it sounds like so much noise, she closes her eyes and listens to everything one last time.
The worst thing about being lost is worrying about the people who are worrying about you. If I'm lost, I still have me. I also know that everyone in my life is where they're supposed to be. But my loved ones don't know where I am. They are missing something that I'm not missing. They are missing me. I have a history of getting lost. All throughout my life I have tended to wander off. One time I was following my mother carefully who was wearing a tan colored raincoat with a tan colored belt. I was holding on to it as we moved around the farmer's market. At some point I looked off to the left to see a stand with brown bananas that I later discovered weren't bananas at all. They were plantains. But at 7 I didn't know a plantain from a banana so I tugged at my mother's belt. A foreign voice responded. I had been following some stranger who didn't realize I was holding on to her belt. I was a slight girl. I didn't take up a lot of space. It's possible she didn't even feel me there. A lot of children would have cried, but this wasn't my first experience with being lost so I knew exactly what to do. I looked up at the woman and said, "You're not my mother." She was shocked at first, but then she replied, "did you lose your mother, little girl?" I wanted to reply, no. I'm not lost. My mother lost me. But I wasn't really into talking much at that time so I just shook my head and let the woman take me to a police officer. I found out later that my mother found a police officer on the other side of the farmers market. Why the police officers didn't just radio to each other, I don't know but it took a good hour for us to reconnect. I think my mother understood me. Whenever I was lost and then found, she was never mad at me. She just asked me where I went and what I did and what I saw. In fact it became an opportunity to have a pretty interesting conversation. Over the years, I got to see a lot of things that my mother would have missed. I started to believe that maybe my mother enjoyed the fact that I got lost. It was like she had an extension. She had another pair of eyes to see the universe. She got to be in two places at once. Once I got lost in the bathroom. Whenever I took a bath I would make the water murky with soap, and I would slip under the surface so that my mother couldn’t see me at all. I challenged myself to stay under the water longer and longer. One time she reached into the water to unplug the drain. She was shocked to find me there. I wondered if she had forgotten I was in the bath. I hoped for that. Another time I got lost in a way that scared her and made her angry. It was the night I ran away. I didn't think I was lost, but this time I was. I had somewhere to go. Anywhere but there. And that's exactly where I went. It took me somewhere rotten. There's never been a time when I was lost that I thought I was in danger, but this time the danger was inside of me. Not everybody in my home was as kind as my mother. There were people who were angry at me, especially my uncle who lived with us. I kew him. I saw him, and he knew it. He was not a healthy man, and he was never kind to me.He only liked my sister. I hated this. Was I jealous? I suppose so. But oftentimes I simply felt the way you might feel if you were in an elevator in a high-rise that was falling. Helpless. What could you do? They say you should jump up and down, but hat can't be good. Jumping up and down can't be the solution. I would think the only thing you can do is pray. And then wait for death. So when I saw my uncle with my little sister I would pray and wait for death. For her or me. I definitely prayed for him to die. The night that I ran away was a terrible night for me and my sister, but I was the only one who got attention. Only three of us knew what really happened that night. It was just another horrible night for my sister, but it was the night I confronted him. It was also the night that I learned exactly how far I could run in my bare feet. There was an Amber alert. Eventually a woman walking her dog saw me hiding behind a tree in a park. It was very late. The woman told the police that her dog would not stop whining so she had to take him out. I guess I'm glad that she did. By the time I got home, there was a lot of confusion. This was the only time my mother was ever angry at me for getting lost. And she yelled at me in a way that was unfamiliar and unkind, but I was glad to have her standing there yelling at me. My sister was terrified and wanted to sleep in my mother's bed which was something she would never do. But tonight she said yes. And I slept alone in our room. I was glad to be scrawny that night. I was glad not to have my sister's beauty or her shine or her curls. Because my uncle left me alone and my sister who had been lost longer than I have been was finally found for once.
Let the library of my love be warm and open but not too well lit. I would like you to squint just a little when you read the books that I give to you. I cannot think of a more loving expression than for you to sit here and open me like a novel and read me until your eyes are too tired to continue. I want to be spread out across your chest as you slip into unconsciousness. I want to feel your finger between my pages so you can hold your place. I want to know that you touched the leaves of my life with your fingers so that you can flip through me forever. Read me. I want to be a story that you find engaging and that you feel like you can't stop reading. It will take the shutdown of your mind and your body to stop you but when you wake up, I will be there. And you will start again. And everyday you will read me this way. It doesn't matter what happens outside. I will make sure that my library is always open for you. And to have you inside of me this way is to make me a dream. I don't need for us to be equals. I want you to be my reader. I want you to pause and think and wonder about my story. I want you to read sentences out loud because they move you to do so, and I want you to take notes. Use a soft pencil to underline the parts of me that you want to explore. I am an author but only for you. And there's only one book I want to share. It's not published. Not yet. But as you read it I know you hold the copyright. It's in your heart now. Because my life has gone through you. My life is inside of you the way you are inside of me. Only it's different. Because I have become an idea in your head and you have become a heartbeat in my body. You lounge with me open. Isn't this what happens when you read anyway? You hold the book and the book holds you. That's an embrace. Let me embrace you, my reader. Let me tell you the stories even after you fall asleep.
Memories tear through me. They are like the claws from some giant beast. I don't know how I stay whole. They attack me and they reach inside of me. They want my heart. I won't give it. I won't let them have me. I am going to live in the present even if it means being mauled. I live inside of my skin. It is a fortress for me. You can see me if you like. Maybe the eyes are the beasts. Maybe they are the ones attacking me. Maybe the eyes are you. All of the eyes. Each one of you right now who is reading me. These are my words. This is my body. I am like Jesus in that sense. I'm a sacrifice. For so long I resisted. If I turn my head all the way around I can see my past. It's a bloody trail. Blood is the thing that keeps me alive, and yet it is like a relic of all my hurt. And yet here I stand. Because I want to show these creatures, these monsters who would peel the skin from my body that even without the cotton comfort of protection I am repellent. Your desire does not equal my destruction. I thought that was true for so long, but now I know. Because when it's my desire, you crumple. You are destroyed. I want myself more than you want me, and that's the secret to my invincibility. Oh, there will be more blood. I know that. I see the world in which I live. The eyes are never full. They are always hungry. But I'll stand in the lens of the world. I will infiltrate the eyes. I will find the vulnerable spots in the cornea and the retina and the imagination that leaks like a rotten grape into the mind of the monsters. I will drink it like wine. And you will not see. I don't just mean that you won't see me, you won't see. You will look at me and be blinded by my beauty. It's a poison you know. This beauty. And I'm not afraid to fill your eyes with it. And when they cry they cry poison. And they will try to look at me again but I will be the light. I will be the sun. There won't be a way to see my nudity. Because even if they see it, it won't matter to me. I want to be naked in front of them. And that means that their eyes will fall out. And their heavy arms will die. Their fur sheds and then they are like me in the mirror. And I will make them bleed. Because you can't want what you can't see. The flowers and the insects and the speeding traffic that surround my home all ignore my skin and my breast and my lips. None of them see me. But I see them. And I make an inventory of the things that stare and the things that don't. And I look at the beasts that are dead. I see their eyes are glass and stare up without blinking. And I step over them, my wounds still dripping. The trail of my injuries becomes the pathway of my spirit. And I'm not afraid to look back and see just how far I've come.