running: |rən|
verb ( running ; past ran |ran|; past part. run )
1 [ intrans. ] move at a speed faster than a walk, never having both or all the feet on the ground at the same time : the dog ran across the road | she ran the last few yards, breathing heavily | he hasn't paid for his drinks—run and catch him.
the thing about running, and me, is that we a
very complicated relationship. i started running at about the same time i started starving myself.
because it just seemed like the two go hand, in hand, together. in my world then, and even sometimes now, one can never exist exclusively without the other. before, it was just something i had to do as a part of my day, like measuring out my calories
exactly for a day, cutting celery into pieces, then chewing each tiny bite for exactly 12 seconds, no more no less. i let it define me, i let her define me, and now i can't let her go. i say this now, in the real world i'm much too private to admit that i am weak. i'm too proud to be vain , and too vain to admit to pride, for even that would be a fault...of sorts. yet, here it is. these things that happened to me. these things i know but never say aloud. i
want NEED for this to be heard.
I need to be heard, because maybe this is my only chance as being
normal ok. you don't have to listen, you don't have to read. but if you do. if you understand. i hope it lets you breathe, the way it does for me. because sometimes, i can feel it pulling on my little heart, and it's killing me. it's fucking killing me. running.
i wish i could let someone peek into my mind for just a second. in here. it's a jungle. but it's mine. i survived. i take pills. i hate pills. i love pills. the pills come from a doctor. i don't take them everyday. but when i do. well, i guess it's like being blind. but one day, one day you wake up and you see the world and it's SO beautiful in it's imperfection. you taste the color, the sky, the leaves, you see the tiny bits of dust swirling madly in their own pull in the perfect light of ray. then it's all gone. sometimes i can't sleep. but when i run. it's silent. and i'm alone. no voices. no boys. no dogs. you could yell and i wouldn't hear because everything is silent. i'm focused. it's all clear. and today, on christmas, this is what i thought while running.
i have nightmares. since i was little. still in russian, just as then, still in perfect vivid color. some of these nightmares aren't nightmares at all. they're memories. i'll never know what's what...but i have this feeling.
my mom is exceptionally attractive. at times, if we had been the same age at the same time, you would never have been able to tell us apart. until i opened my mouth that is. there is nothing my mother could have ever wanted and not gotten. boys never broke her heart. she never had a night alone unless she wanted one. she
was is the alpha female. and when i was little i adored her. like most little girls do with their moms. she, on the other hand had rather, mixed feelings about me. from family friends, eavesdropping, and general snooping around this is what i found out. my mom got pregnant at a very young age, and had my grandparents not fond out about me, i would not be here to tell this tale. she also would have never married my dad. just as young. i can't remember him clearly. just parts. and even that is enough to sometimes make my usually steady stomach churn. he died when i was little. and i would have never been told that he was run over by a train, while too drunk to stand on the platform. he got too close. and whoosh. under. but i was very smart, and one day cornered my grandma, and asked outright. even now, i can picture the way i would have looked then. this tiny fierce genius doll barely four feet tall, staring with her unusually large eyes. waiting. she sat me down. she told me everything. i didn't cry.
we already had visas to come here, to america. to start this new life. so it didn't take too long for my mom to get a new husband. i had quit living with her at the age of three, but i remember the fights she would have with my grandmother when i would wait for her to come to see me. my nana would make me wear these dresses, i hated dresses, and tights. which i still to this day despise as a mortal enemy. and for an hour i would stand, in front of the door. then sit. sometimes until i fell asleep. but my mom had an important life, and i never came first. i learned that early. it stayed with me. i wasn't allowed to talk when she was on the phone, i couldn't interrupt her when she was with friends, there were -never- hugs or kisses or i love yous from her in our house. she tolerated me. she accessorised with me. but she didn't want me.
the husband came with us to america. not right away, but a few months later. and for those few first months life was amazing. she -had- to be with me. to play doll. to braid my hair. to tell me stories. but then he came. and we had to move. and for the first time since i was three i moved out of my grandparents house. it started that year, when i was nine, and ended when i was eleven. he'd never really been mean to me before, but had never been nice. i didn't like the man. he wasn't my dad, and we were both too eager to point that out to strangers. me, because i was a little girl. and him, because he was a shell of a human being. when we moved they would team up on me. first little things. i cleaned the house. i did the chores. then they started to make fun of me. not just a little. he got my mother to start calling me a little piglet, and would send me to me den as often as he could, for where else would a filthy little pig like me sleep? i didn't understand. it was like this until i was about ten.
i'd done something. and eager to become more "american" my mother grounded me. and promptly left for work as always. i didn't care much. i had books. but i was so nice out. i crawled onto my bed, and then onto the windowsill. opened the window and sat curled there in the sunlight reading. he came in. yelling. i wasn't trying to get out. i was much too little to open the storm screen. but he already on me. he picked me up by my mothers shirt which laid over my little body like a dress and threw me against the wall. by the collar. the collar has a zipper. he's choking me. the zipper. the fucking zipper. again he hits me against the wall. this two-hundred pound man, standing proudly at no less than 6'. the plaster is hugging my frail bones. the wall now forming a me shaped pattern, the zipper is cutting my throat. the dog. it was the dog. our boxer. he loved my mom the most, but he loved me too, and finally only when he became hysterical with barking and growling did he let me go. i didn't cry. one clenched fist. the other, holding the wound. it bled for days.
when i told my mom she didn't believe me. only my grandparents did. yet they did nothing. a year went by. it was my first real lesson in true humility. when i realized i no longer had time to be a little girl if a wanted to survive. that was the year i stopped feeling sorry. i just turned it off. all of it. eleven now. silent. children are not meant to be seen or heard. my mother worked nights. i get the knife my grandpa taught me how to throw. i hold it in my hand when i go to sleep at nights. and one day. i find courage.
i'm not me anymore. she stands over the fat mans' half full bed. there is a dent where her mother should be sleeping. she holds the little knife tight in her had over his carcass. she waits. and when he finally opens his beady soulless eyes, and waits for them to focus, he sees her for the first time. staring. silence. and in her best russian she says to him.
"if you ever touch me, or my mom, i'll fucking cut you. from nose to navel. starting there"
it isn't her voice. it's cold and hushed. silence. little kid knuckles turning white. still pointing at the scar on his belly. waiting for him to dart at her so she can slice. but he doesn't. because she will. point. match. he never looked at me the same, but from then on when he yelled i yelled back. i wasn't afraid. i was numb. i'd take the big fights for my mom. she knew it. i knew it. but as messed up as it was, she was never as strong as me.
later, the year before i figured out control. starving. and a kind of ultimate sensory deprivation, the kind you usually don't recover from my friends' mom called social services on him. my mother told them it was a lie. they believed her. my grandparents didn't. they did nothing. i was sent to live with them for being an ungrateful little bitch. still. he didn't hit me. instead he tore down everything in my room. and when i came back, for the first time in years i cried. it echoed in my room, i wouldn't come out. my mother told me that i was being dramatic and to get over myself. i slept in the closet for weeks, not being able to take the bareness of the white walls and the echoes of this empty new place. little things after that.
"i'm home, did anyone call for me?"
"no"
"kay"
"wait, your gramma called from russia, your pappy is dead."
"that's not a clever joke"
"not a joke"
"that's not funny"
"not a joke"
"that's not a funny joke" and i'm hysterical now. but he wasn't joking. i loved my pappy. he was everything i could have wanted in a dad that i couldn't get back. he treated me like he would have treated his dead son. he taught me how to throw a knife so well i could kill a fish in the water with it. how to light i fire using only what you have on hand. what kind of berries and mushrooms will kill you, how to get water out of a tree. and now he was dead. and no one even told me her was sick. he was my hero.
and i loved him. and i love him.
the thing is, i forgave him. that was the easy part. in a way i feel sorry for that man. i wonder if he's even human. for him it will -always- be greener on the other side. but my mom. she needed me then, she needs me now, but i can't ever recall a time when i needed her. so like a mother would forgive her child for being selfish on the playground, i forgave my mom. for letting that man hurt me. for idly watching as i wasted away to almost nothing. for having more children. but sometimes i can't help to wonder. she's 42 now, when is she going to get -her- lesson in humility? then i stop running.
i'm tired now, and i feel kinda empty. i'll spell check later. nite.
Comments (2)
i would recommend, but from your latest earlier post i'm not sure you want the attention...
@livefoshibby - i don't know how i'd feel about that at all. not in a bad way i guess.