Drinking was not a lifelong coping mechanism for me, which is something that’s very important to my story. When I was in my thirties, I started using alcohol as a way for me to deal with what was happening with my physical and mental health. This isn’t uncommon for people with the Celtic Curse.
It is important to understand that in the U.S. hereditary hemochromatosis isn’t something for which we routinely test. A lot of women aren’t diagnosed until they’ve gone through menopause because that’s when their natural phlebotomy ends. In fact, most medical professionals I’ve spoken with seem to know very little about HH. And we—those blessed with defunctive HFE genes—just think we’re going crazy.
The short story is that this disease fucks with a person’s head and heart, liver, spleen, bone marrow, pituitary, pancreas and the central nervous system. Excess iron in your heart affects the heart’s ability to circulate enough blood for your body’s needs. Hemochromatosis can also cause abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias)and congestive heart failure.
Hemochromatosis. In the U.S. we don’t routinely test for this inherited defect — people at risk frequently get diagnosed very late. And because we start getting sick with things that can be written off as mental issues — it’s not uncommon to turn to alcohol as a means of self-medication.
YOU’RE AN ALCOHOLIC, YOU’RE AN ALCOHOLIC, MICHELLE KATHLEEN O’KANE FEISTY’S AN ALCAHOLIC!
After I died and forgot who I was, people kept telling me I was an alcoholic. I couldn’t remember anything else about who I was, and I literally prayed every day that I would die, so drinking quickly became an innate part of what was left of whatever I’d been. I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t want to feel or care. I was totally alone. I had nobody. I had no family. No money. No memory. No car. No license to drive a car. No home.
(Intrinsically, writing was like naturally using my right hand. It’s just always been something I just do.)
Alcohol was all that was familiar and the only thing that could help me to start meandering in this life I don’t remember. Drink myself into a grave? Yes, please, and as quickly as possible. I wasn’t a mother anymore. I wasn’t a writer. I wasn’t a wife. I was an alcoholic. With severe brain damage. I was no longer — I was no longer. The end. But nothing was actually ending.
I didn’t feel like any of the people who expressed concern about my drinking actually cared about me. Michelle. Feisty. Whoever she was/is. There were only two people who seemed to care from a genuine perspective, and that wasn’t enough. Also, I was fucking brain dead and nothing anyone said made any fucking sense. I couldn’t remember what people said to me, so what I lived with was how it made me feel. A (sometimes) walking corpse.
And then, later, in Dallas, I was hospitalized in a semi-coma due to hepatic encephalopathy from ammonia poisoning.
And then, some indecipherable time after the hepatic encephalopathy coma, someone called just to say hi and see how I was doing. At this point I’d been on heart drugs for a bit. I was explaining to this person that since I’d been taking meds for my erratic heart, I’d been a lot more…calm. I hadn’t been craving xanax and/or vodka, which, for me, had become an increasingly constant and overwhelming want.
My friend said: “You started drinking heavy when you started getting sick, in your late 30s. You’re not an alcoholic. You’re someone without health insurance. Or family. Or a home. Or help.”
“Also —you’ve been fuckin’ nuts.”
Suddenly — something someone said made sense. And so, in 2018 +/-, I stopped drinking. Even though I could only get the medication for my heart for a few months, it had showed me that I hadn’t been imagining anxiety or a fast/erratic heartbeat. Meditation doesn’t cure internal organs that are failing due to iron overload. Neither does vodka.
My name is Michelle and I’m Feisty. I’m also a crazy, disparate, sad, ill, legit crazy, sarcastic, infinitely disoriented person. Who knits. A lot.
And. One of the neat things about iron overload is my fabulous, iron infused, luscious mane. When, like, I have hair.
Like a lot of people, I wake up every morning. I’m sure this is true because I’m alive. Again. I’m in a living room, on a sofa. Staring at my hands. Hands that still move and do things like hold a fork and bring food to my mouth. Spaghetti is delicious.
A cyclone spins inside my skull, memories and knowledge torn apart by jagged winds. Spiraling thunderstorms blast mine with heavy rain. tangles with a tornado.
Happy, sad, embarrassed, confused, disappointed, scared, disparate. I never remember why I experience these emotions. Sometimes I scream them. Sometimes I dream them.
My phone tells me that it’s Saturday. I recognize that I am at Jake and Gina’s house. I wonder if we had sex. I will forget them later. I don’t remember where I live. I have three roommates, both of whom I like. One of whom is my son. Every morning I wake up and think of him and he’s eight. He’s eleven. And I am thirty-six, about.
Where I woke up, this house—not familiar or comfortable. Nothing is. Every morning I wake up, filled with confusion. It’s a storm, my brain is a hurricane, throwing thrash at my skull. The trash are my memories. Some of them belong in the trash, and some are there by mistake.
Moving hurts. My hips and calves, it’s a screeching pain, but the muscles don’t remember the pain from yesterday. I either feel like my ribs are stabbing my lungs or so sad I just cry. Every day.
I live with Louise, my best friend, and I have done so for over a year. I know it’s been this frame of time because she has told me this and I have written it down. I don’t remember where I wrote it down. Lost notes.
I do feel at home in my home. I think everything becomes distant when I’m away from it. I think a lot. It occurs to me that I haven’t left my house in days. People tell me to leave my house, and I want to. People tell me to do a lot of things, and the telling me makes them feel good.
The sounds of outside are terrifying and intriguing, with a shocking amount of screeching. I have no reason or recollection of why things like sounds scare me. But I only remember sounds.
I remember that I got my clit pierced, and I remember spreading my legs on a sterile bed so he could stick the needle through my clit. The piercing hurt more than childbirth. I remember that a few weeks later that barbell fell out of my clit, on the playa. But I don’t remember this morning.
I am walking and it’s getting dark. I’m glad that I remembered to wear shoes because the cement is hot. I know it is because earlier I watched the news and the person on Jake’s television told me it was going to be over 95 today. That person was a woman, and she smiled in a way that brought up the entire left side of her mouth in a straight line. I only watched her because I wanted to see if her mouth would touch her nose. She had a small waist. I imagined her driving a Saturn, with two doors. Just two doors for Ms. Sunshine.
My legs feel like drumsticks and I keep dropping them. Clink click clicking clap. The cement, the concrete, the sound of gravel under my drumsticks, is a grimy rhythm. Like my memories, rolling in dirt and being trampled by objects. Words hurt.
Words are crevices in mountains, and must be waded and climbed through. My drumstick legs are walking in the crumbling dirty crevices of other peoples’ stares. My heart hates thinking, figuring, remembering. I gave my life away and now he has my son and I have no ability to hear that voice of the person—that person who will always sound like my son. It’s another sound I made and I wish I could hear it every day.
But. I don’t have a phone and I live somewhere far away, and my drumstick legs can’t make a beat as we clank up the rocky mountains. I can’t walk home. I can’t walk into the ether–even it’s mine.
I climbed a tree, and the tree was in a forest. It was a dry forest, the ground was all dead weeds. I suppose they weren’t weeds, in the forest. They become weeds when they make it into a yard. I miss the forest.
Like a lot of people, I wake up every morning. I’m sure this is true because I’m alive. Again. I’m not yet dead. I’m in a living room, on a sofa. Staring at my hands, hands that still move and do things like hold a fork and bring food to my mouth. Spaghetti is delicious.
My mind is a storm. I can’t stop the hurricanes. Happy, sad, embarrassed, confused, disappointed, scared, disparate. I never remember why I experience these emotions. Sometimes I scream them. Sometimes I dream them.
My phone tells me that it’s Saturday. I recognize that I am at Jake and Gina’s house. I wonder if we had sex. I will forget them later. I don’t remember where I live. I have three roommates, both of whom I like. One of whom is my son. Every morning I wake up and think of him and he’s eight. He’s eleven. And I am thirty-six, about.
Where I woke up, this house—not familiar or comfortable. Nothing is. Every morning I wake up, filled with confusion. It’s a storm, my brain is a hurricane, throwing thrash at my skull. The trash are my memories. Some of them belong in the trash, and some are there by mistake.
Moving hurts. My hips and calves, it’s a screeching pain, but the muscles don’t remember the pain from yesterday. I either feel like my ribs are stabbing my lungs or so sad I just cry. Every day.
I live with Louise, my best friend, and I have done so for over a year. I know it’s been this frame of time because she has told me this and I have written it down. I don’t remember where I wrote it down. Lost notes.
I do feel at home in my home. I think everything becomes distant when I’m away from it. I think a lot. It occurs to me that I haven’t left my house in days. People tell me to leave my house, and I want to. People tell me to do a lot of things, and the telling me makes them feel good.
The sounds of outside are terrifying and intriguing, with a shocking amount of screeching. I have no reason or recollection of why things like sounds scare me. But I only remember sounds.
I remember that I got my clit pierced, and I remember spreading my legs on a sterile bed so he could stick the needle through my clit. The piercing hurt more than childbirth. I remember that a few weeks later that barbell fell out of my clit, on the playa. But I don’t remember this morning.
I am walking and it’s getting dark. I’m glad that I remembered to wear shoes because the cement is hot. I know it is because earlier I watched the news and the person on Jake’s television told me it was going to be over 95 today. That person was a woman, and she smiled in a way that brought up the entire left side of her mouth in a straight line. I only watched her because I wanted to see if her mouth would touch her nose. She had a small waist. I imagined her driving a Saturn, with two doors. Just two doors for Ms. Sunshine.
My legs feel like drumsticks and I keep dropping them. Clink click clicking clap. The cement, the concrete, the sound of gravel under my drumsticks, is a grimy rhythm. Like my memories, rolling in dirt and being trampled by objects. Words hurt.
Words are crevices in mountains, and must be waded and climbed through. My drumstick legs are walking in the crumbling dirty crevices of other peoples’ stares. My heart hates thinking, figuring, remembering. I gave my life away and now he has my son and I have no ability to hear that voice of the person—that person who will always sound like my son. It’s another sound I made and I wish I could hear it every day.
But. I don’t have a phone and I live somewhere far away, and my drumstick legs can’t make a beat as we clank up the rocky mountains. I can’t walk home. I can’t walk into the ether–even it’s my ether. This I know. Still, I keep looking for my own beat.
Every day, exponentially expanding, are my thoughts. I then forget them. I have a room and all I see are things I’ve collected over the past two years. Yarn and knitting needles and more colored pencils and more yarn and…and the rest is mine, my things. My things fit into a box. My small purse and my three backpacks. My two photos of myself and my son. My flute. My ancient tv, on which I watch Friends and Sex and the City. My old bathrobe.
My photos are in my old house, where my son still lives. We were sitting on the sofa, the sofa I chose with my husband. As far as I know, my ex husband, my son, and the new wife still sit on my furniture.
My things represent my life because they are my life. My life is in this room, with my blackout curtains blocking out the back of a giant satellite dish that overlooks the pool five stories below. And across the way there is another giant building with the exact same apartments housed within. Each has a minuscule balcony that nobody uses unless someone is smoking. Sometimes I smell cigarette smoke from the twenty-somethings who live next door. On Saturday nights they play rap. I have never met them.
What’s familiar to me are my knitting needles and my yarn. I know people I see on my decrepit television. I know when the tv finally dies I won’t have that. I try to focus on what I do have but less and less do I have any kind of desire to bother. But, I’m still a writer. I still have that.
I want to finish the hat I’m knitting for my son. I want to finish something. I wanted to finish my life, but I haven’t and I won’t. When I die I hope there’s something good to do. Something to finish.
I have memories, and I want to talk about them and, more than anything, I want to see them. I want to go on a drive through Hope Valley and I want to buy a sandwich at the Genoa Store and I want to drive to the Playa and I want to get in a truck and drive into the desert and I want to go find hot springs and I want to smile and I want to drive that weird road that seemed to go nowhere and had nothing particularly memorable about it except that it was old and there was a town with a Smith’s and a gas station and and old church and I want to see those things. I want to see a sunset from my own porch. I want to make toast in my own kitchen with my own dishes and I want to drink water from a glass I remember finding at a thrift store. Instead I’m just sitting in this room, with the dark curtains hiding an outside that means nothing and I’m looking at facebook and seeing familiar faces and I’m confused because I have no reason to make new memories and no way to do so. I have no relevance and nothing I see is relevant to me. I am a million miles away from anything familiar and I’m driftless in the sky.
Every day, exponentially expanding, are my thoughts. I then forget them. I have a room and all I see are things I’ve collected over the past two years. Yarn and knitting needles and more colored pencils and more yarn and…and the rest is mine, my things. My things fit into a box. My small purse and my three backpacks. My two photos of myself and my son. My flute. My ancient tv, on which I watch Friends and Sex and the City. My old bathrobe.
My photos are in my old house, where my son still lives. We were sitting on the sofa, the sofa I chose with my husband. As far as I know, my ex husband, my son, and the new wife still sit on my furniture.
My things represent my life because they are my life. My life is in this room, with my blackout curtains blocking out the back of a giant satellite dish that overlooks the pool five stories below. And across the way there is another giant building with the exact same apartments housed within. Each has a minuscule balcony that nobody uses unless someone is smoking. Sometimes I smell cigarette smoke from the twenty-somethings who live next door. On Saturday nights they play rap. I have never met them.
What’s familiar to me are my knitting needles and my yarn. I know people I see on my decrepit television. I know when the tv finally dies I won’t have that. I try to focus on what I do have but less and less do I have any kind of desire to bother. But, I’m still a writer. I still have that.
I want to finish the hat I’m knitting for my son. I want to finish something. I wanted to finish my life, but I haven’t and I won’t. When I die I hope there’s something good to do. Something to finish.
I have memories, and I want to talk about them and, more than anything, I want to see them. I want to go on a drive through Hope Valley and I want to buy a sandwich at the Genoa Store and I want to drive to the Playa and I want to get in a truck and drive into the desert and I want to go find hot springs and I want to smile and I want to drive that weird road that seemed to go nowhere and had nothing particularly memorable about it except that it was old and there was a town with a Smith’s and a gas station and and old church and I want to see those things. I want to see a sunset from my own porch. I want to make toast in my own kitchen with my own dishes and I want to drink water from a glass I remember finding at a thrift store. Instead I’m just sitting in this room, with the dark curtains hiding an outside that means nothing and I’m looking at facebook and seeing familiar faces and I’m confused because I have no reason to make new memories and no way to do so. I have no relevance and nothing I see is relevant to me. I am a million miles away from anything familiar and I’m driftless in the sky.
Jesus is not some abstract idea or person who died 2,000 years ago. He is alive. He said, “I will never leave you.” He knows you cannot do it alone. We are too weak, every last one of us. Who do you know that really “has it together”? No one- not you, not me – there is no security here. No perfection here – yet- until he returns. There is no plateau that we reach on earth where everything is happy and harmonious because of our physical appearance, our home, our job our income – that is grasping at empty air and only in our spiritual life will we reach it — only with Jesus accepting His Love — in believing in Him can we experience that security & happiness that everyone seeks.
–Kathy 1977 Trinidad, Ca
What do you do when you’ve lived your life and survived? Do you get a shotgun and kill yourself? Do you shoot yourself in the head? If so, how do you do it? Point at your temple? Or do you shove the gun down your throat, pointed up to get a good shot, to do the deed, seal the deal? Your arms are not long enough to hold a shotgun. Also, you don’t have a shotgun.
You have: bleach, a box of razor blades you bought twenty years ago, at Flax Art Supply, and a very sharp chef’s knife. But the knife was a birthday present so it seems disrespectful to use it to slit your wrists. Plus, wrist slitting seems like an acute challenge and you’ve never been good with details.
There are many variables in something you’ve seen perfectly executed thousands of times, in films. In movies, most of the time, when people get killed they get killed with a bullet. Pills are for the wealthy. In movies, wealthy people are poor.
Meanwhile, at night, when you lie in bed, concentrate on the areas that bother you (your sinuses) let your mind sort of float through your sinuses. Then feel that the spirit of the lord is flowing there, soothing & healing – drying up your sinuses (you can even try it at work when you are troubled). You can ask Him to remove the pain. Just say, “Please, Jesus, take away my suffering.” Just try it. –Kathy, 1976 Trinidad, ca
What you want to do is you want to put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy, the point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. And a field doesn’t require a heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. It’s a method of problem solving. It’s a process of a set of rules. It’s Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you your times tables, and that X=0 but they never call it a language or reveal that zero actually means nothing other than it’s a number reflecting more money than you have in your pocket.
It’s like when I would wait to take calls, like from the guy in Santa Clara who got raped when he was thirteen. While riding home from school, he got pulled off his bike. That man paid me $1.99 a minute to listen to the story and I was never given an algorithm for that. He raped himself every day, having unprotected sex with strangers, and then paid me to hear the stories. I could not fix him.
It took a lot of years to understand algorithms and I still don’t. I was never very good with math. That’s where they trick you. It’s not about math or numbers or logic. It’s not, but they trick you. Logic. They throw around so many terms, all the terms, and they leave you. You wonder what the words mean: are they word problems? Calculus? Blind luck? While your brain still functions, kinda, you think about the parts of your life that were good. Or, you just make up some good parts. Isn’t that what you do? What you’ve been paid to do? You make up pretty stories, write them down, and sell them. Romance novels. A bunch of pretty stories.
Still in my dream, I wake up. Today I’m in a Bed & Breakfast. In Ireland. Under moss. Fresh eggs. Wet grass. An Irish female voice, humming through damp air. Salty air. The always comforting scent of my husband. He reassures me. And that feeling makes me uncomfortable. I think about breakfast. I smell the scent of fresh bread. There will be cups of butter, and maybe some bacon. And muffins.
The bathrooms here are tiny, but it’ll be fine. I’ll leave the breakfast table before him, bounce up the soft, spiral, blue staircase, enter our bedroom, enter the tiny bathroom, and puke. In Dallas. I look past peeling formica counter and the plastic bottle of soap. I think about scones. That was my mind gifting me a memory, through dreams.
Date: July 4, 1963 Place: Madrid, Spain Weather: Very Hot,. We crossed the border into Spain early this morning. Once across the Pyrenees, the weather & scenery became dry & flat. We ate lunch in Bruges the birth place of El Cid. In the evening we arrived in Madrid. Tomorrow we visit the Prado Museum.
Love, Kathy
July 22, 1994 Day 2 in Killarney. Our lodge is actually about 10 miles outside Killarney. It is an old farm house & the ladies that run it are very nice. We have a large, comfy bed, our own bathroom, & huge bay windows looking towards the mountains. Aside from the plastic pillows that our pillow cases keep sliding off, the bed is nice, & the room stays dark.
Last night I was coughing all night, but I was asleep. Finally Jay told me I was keeping him & everyone else in the place awake. Oh well. We were going to try & catch the tour of the Gap of Dunloe , but it wasn’t meant to be. After B-Fast, we hurried into town to try & catch the jaunting car.
Well, we drove around but never saw the place, so Jay said fuck it & drove back to our B&B. It turned out to be fine, because we decided to drive to the Burren instead. It was beautiful. We found a waterfall that we had to hike to across some mushy land in a serene valley. First, we walked along a river for always. We were walking along when we saw a little family of swimming mongooses (or something). They were cute, swimming in the river & out on land all in one smooth stride. /
We crossed the valley through the mushy earth, dodging the hidden streams & sheep shit. By the time we got to the waterfall, the few people that were there were leaving. We climbed around on the rocks underneath the fall. We could have had a quickie but that’s another story. Michelle, -1991
When I sleep, i have memories,
In dreams
And I see the beach in kauai
Our honeymoon
You were my idol
My Lancelot
You were fun
And happy
And you liked me
And i loved you
And we ate, a lot
We would drive, across the street
There was a mini mall
With a nice restaurant
We ate there
I wore a dress
You wore shorts
You were tall
To me, your legs
strong
Now I don’t remember
You being so tall
As i get closer to death
I get closer to appreciating
My life
i remember so many
Good things
I gave up a lot
Because you wanted me to
Do something else
I remember houses we nearly bought
On the northern coast
On the islands
Near slo
Near San Diego
Around half moon bay
In la honda
San Juan islands
Mexico
Skyline
North bay
South bay
Carson city
Genoa
Minden
Quail Valley
I didn’t have to believe
Because i knew
I knew you’d always be there for me
No matter what
Even when I was living in a park
Dying and half dead
Buried in my head
My tangled mind
Was some thought
That you’d still be there for me
My Lancelot
Today I woke up in Scotland. Now, we’re in a tavern/pub. It’s upstairs. It’s around noon. We parked on the dead-end ally, on the right side of the street, the front of the small car facing the two story building. We walked inside, turned right, and walked up to the second floor. It’s pretty inside. It’s all wood. Shiny, caramel wood walls. And bar. The left side of the pub are windows. There is random stained glass; flowers, a cross, a pretty mosaic. Outside is grey. Wet. It seems like we are, often, walking through clouds.
It’s fun to try and order vegetarian food. We sit at a high table, climb onto a shiny chair, and see what’s written on a chalkboard behind the bar. We are meandering in the highlands, with Cawdor Castle being today (or tomorrow’s) destination. You order soup and a beer. I have a cider and a salad. Later I’ll ask you to stop at a market so I can get some cookies.
Now, a local asks us where we’re from. We are told that this man’s son is currently in New York, but the father doesn’t seem to know why, exactly. He drops his shoulders and laughs. We laugh too. We’ve observed that Scottish people have big smiles and big laughs, so it never feels super gloomy here. Not really.
We haven’t yet been invited to the Scottish boy’s birthday party, that happens later. We’ll see a young man lifted up, while sitting in a chair, and he’ll be carried around the large room to pick up the pound notes his friends and family are waving at him.
I’ve been coping better in unfamiliar places. Jay has, without purpose, made this happen. I never feel unsafe with him. He’s confident, he’s the smartest person I’ve ever known-that never changes. It took me some time to realize I was safe, with him. I’d never known what it felt like to be safe. It gave me a sense of safety that would grow, allow me to take a lot of risks. Taking risks, with Jay, is what forced me to start living.
I fell back asleep. I wanted to travel more. I wanted to go back to that super scary Scottish road that wound and wound and wound…But. I woke up in Hawaii. That was okay. I loved waking up there. Especially Kauai. It wasn’t our honeymoon. It was when we stayed closer to the North Shore. We drove our red rental car to a spot on the road where there was a sign that pointed to the right side of the road. We parked there and hiked, in the mud, down to a beach. We walked through all the trees and mud, and then to the sand. We set up on the beach. We saw fish. We swam in the ocean. Every time I got into the water in Kauai I was in awe of the warmth of the ocean. Every time. I’d no idea that the ocean could be so warm. It wasn’t in Half Moon Bay. Or near Eureka. Those were the only oceans I’d been in, until I met Jay.
Someone said, “Be careful. Watch out for jellyfish.” That freaked me out. But it was okay. When I was with Jay, I was okay. I knew I always would be okay.
I woke up again, today. I’m in my art gallery. I love my gallery. Jay came by to set something up on my computer. I’d been looking at the DWR catalog. I wanted to get Jay something nice. I wanted to get him something to sit in, something that was beautiful, and wouldn’t be uncomfortable. I wanted him to be able to be comfortable and not be hurtful to his back. I was researching the Eames Lounge Chair. And Ottoman. It was beautiful. I knew he’d love it, but wouldn’t ever buy it for himself.
I was sipping a cranberry martini that Jay had made me when I started waking up. In this room. In Dallas. I hadn’t opened my eyes but my face was wet from tears. This was normal. Flynn hates me. I gave him many reasons to do so. He’s not my son anymore. He’s a man who hates me. I’m sure there are many others. I am on the bed, in the hospital, Jay is holding my hand. I am pushing Flynn out of my body. And I’m doing it with no pain relief. And preeclampsia. Jay keeps telling me I can do it. You can do it. So. I do. That was January 7, 2005.
I never wanted to believe all of the things I knew were true, about me, for other people. I’m a piece of shit. And I’m insane. It says so right on my medical records. So far today, many times, I’ve wished I could rewrite my own story. Now, I see a life, my life, that hasn’t stopped living just because I’m no longer in it. I want to a return character.
Every day I wake up all over the world. I think about how to stop the incessant waking up. So far, none of my attempts have worked. The other day, I woke up in Ireland. We’d just hit a cow. And I went to sleep in Dallas. By myself. Knowing that the biggest memory loss I’m living with is the fact that I’m hardly a memory, for anyone, anymore. I hope that, soon, I wake up in that little white villa, in Andalusia. We drive to the convent, with that 5′ wide, windy road, and we ate those delicious chocolate treats the nuns cooked. Jay purchased a flower from a nun. He gave me the flower. I hope that I wake up again here, soon. And that I never go back to sleep.
Jesus is not some abstract idea or person who died 2,000 years ago. He is alive. He said, “I will never leave you.” He knows you cannot do it alone. We are too weak, every last one of us. Who do you know that really “has it together”? No one- not you, not me – there is no security here. No perfection here – yet- until he returns. There is no plateau that we reach on earth where everything is happy and harmonious because of our physical appearance, our home, our job our income – that is grasping at empty air and only in our spiritual life will we reach it — only with Jesus accepting His Love — in believing in Him can we experience that security & happiness that everyone seeks.
–Kathy,1977
Trinidad, Ca
What do you do when you’ve lived your life and survived? Do you get a shotgun and kill yourself? Do you shoot yourself in the head? If so, how do you do it? Point at your temple? Or do you shove the gun down your throat, pointed up to get a good shot, to do the deed, seal the deal? Your arms are not long enough to hold a shotgun. Also, you don’t have a shotgun.
You have: bleach, a box of razor blades you bought twenty years ago, at Flax Art Supply, and a very sharp chef’s knife. But the knife was a birthday present so it seems disrespectful to use it to slit your wrists. Plus, wrist slitting seems like an acute challenge and you’ve never been good with details.
There are many variables in something you’ve seen perfectly executed thousands of times, in films. In movies, most of the time, when people get killed they get killed with a bullet. Pills are for the wealthy. In movies, wealthy people are poor.
Meanwhile, at night, when you lie in bed, concentrate on the areas that bother you (your sinuses) let your mind sort of float through your sinuses. Then feel that the spirit of the lord is flowing there, soothing & healing – drying up your sinuses (you can even try it at work when you are troubled). You can ask Him to remove the pain. Just say, “Please, Jesus, take away my suffering.” Just try it.
–Kathy, 1976
Trinidad, ca
What you want to do is you want to put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy, the point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. And a field doesn’t require a heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. It’s a method of problem solving. It’s a process of a set of rules. It’s Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you your times tables, and that X=0 but they never call it a language or reveal that zero actually means nothing other than it’s a number reflecting more money than you have in your pocket.
It’s like when I would wait to take calls, like from the guy in Santa Clara who got raped when he was thirteen. While riding home from school, he got pulled off his bike. That man paid me $1.99 a minute to listen to the story and I was never given an algorithm for that. He raped himself every day, having unprotected sex with strangers, and then paid me to hear the stories. I could not fix him.
It took a lot of years to understand algorithms and I still don’t. I was never very good with math. That’s where they trick you. It’s not about math or numbers or logic. It’s not, but they trick you. Logic. They throw around so many terms, all the terms, and they leave you. You wonder what the words mean: are they word problems? Calculus? Blind luck?
While your brain still functions, kinda, you think about the parts of your life that were good. Or, you just make up some good parts. Isn’t that what you do? What you’ve been paid to do? You make up pretty stories, write them down, and sell them. Romance novels. A bunch of pretty stories.
Still in my dream, I wake up. Today I’m in a Bed & Breakfast. In Ireland. Under moss. Fresh eggs. Wet grass. An Irish female voice, humming through damp air. Salty air. The always comforting scent of my husband. He reassures me. And that feeling makes me uncomfortable. I think about breakfast. I smell the scent of fresh bread. There will be cups of butter, and maybe some bacon. And muffins.
The bathrooms here are tiny, but it’ll be fine. I’ll leave the breakfast table before him, bounce up the soft, spiral, blue staircase, enter our bedroom, enter the tiny bathroom, and puke.
In Dallas. I look past peeling formica counter and the plastic bottle of soap. I think about scones. That was my mind gifting me a memory, through dreams.
Date: July 4, 1963 Place: Madrid, Spain Weather: Very Hot,. We crossed the border into Spain early this morning. Once across the Pyrenees, the weather & scenery became dry & flat. We ate lunch in Bruges the birth place of El Cid. In the evening we arrived in Madrid. Tomorrow we visit the Prado Museum.
Love, Kathy
July 22, 1994 Day 2 in Killarney. Our lodge is actually about 10 miles outside Killarney. It is an old farm house & the ladies that run it are very nice. We have a large, comfy bed, our own bathroom, & huge bay windows looking towards the mountains. Aside from the plastic pillows that our pillow cases keep sliding off, the bed is nice, & the room stays dark.
Last night I was coughing all night, but I was asleep. Finally Jay told me I was keeping him & everyone else in the place awake. Oh well. We were going to try & catch the tour of the Gap of Dunloe , but it wasn’t meant to be. After B-Fast, we hurried into town to try & catch the jaunting car.
Well, we drove around but never saw the place, so Jay said fuck it & drove back to our B&B. It turned out to be fine, because we decided to drive to the Burren instead. It was beautiful. We found a waterfall that we had to hike to across some mushy land in a serene valley. First, we walked along a river for always. We were walking along when we saw a little family of swimming mongooses (or something). They were cute, swimming in the river & out on land all in one smooth stride.
We crossed the valley through the mushy earth, dodging the hidden streams & sheep shit. By the time we got to the waterfall, the few people that were there were leaving. We climbed around on the rocks underneath the fall. We could have had a quickie but that’s another story.
I’m tough. Everybody has always said so. I didn’t complain, because I was tough. I would stand up to anyone. I would try most things, if they were dangerous. I mean, the times I was molested, it was done by trusted friends, family, and a gymnastic teacher on the floor, during practice. I was never abused riding a bus or walking around at night or walking around the Czech Republic in the dark. In the snow. I did get surrounded by a bunch of boyish men, on a train, on my way through Slovakia. They cornered me, around my seat. One sat next to me and touched me. I said, “Go fuck yourself.” It was the only time I’ve ever uttered that phrase and still been scared.
Jesus is not some abstract idea or person who died 2,000 years ago. He is alive. He said, “I will never leave you.” He knows you cannot do it alone. We are too weak, every last one of us. Who do you know that really “has it together”? No one- not you, not me – there is no security here. No perfection here – yet- until he returns. There is no plateau that we reach on earth where everything is happy and harmonious because of our physical appearance, our home, our job our income – that is grasping at empty air and only in our spiritual life will we reach it — only with Jesus accepting His Love — in believing in Him can we experience that security & happiness that everyone seeks. –Kathy, 1977
So I got tougher. And drunker. And so did the world. I was never tough enough. Unless I was drunk. Now, I’m in an apartment complex. Dallas, technically. Could be anywhere, I don’t care. I have no key and nowhere to be. I just want to see trees and my son’s smile. If it’s not broken, break it.
It’s the idea of people doing things before they die. I don’t feel that way. I’m going to die one day, no matter what. And I don’t really care if there were things I didn’t see or experience. I wish I could relive my life. I wish I could not be sick. I wish I could relive Flynn’s first Christmas, with all the dogs who are now dead. I wish I could cook in that kitchen. I wish I had my garden. I wish I remembered my son’s twelfth birthday. I wish I remembered all of his birthdays. I remember the delivery room and how big his head was as he was pushed out of me.
I wish I had my hammock in my tree. I wish I was smelling the flowers from my honeysuckle bush. I wish I was riding a snowboard down a hill for the first time. I wish I had a broken leg because I had the balls to play roller derby. I wish I still had friends. I wish my world included something beyond this box. I wish I had lived more than a fraction life correctly. I threw up pretty meals because they were too pretty, reflecting a life I didn’t deserve.
My things represent my life because they are my life. My life is in this room. Blackout curtains block the planet-sized satellite dish. The dish overlooks the pool five stories below. And across the way there is another giant building with the exact same apartments housed within. Each has a minuscule balcony that nobody uses unless someone is smoking. Sometimes I smell cigarette smoke from the millennials who live next door. On Saturday nights they play rap. I have never met them.
What’s familiar to me are my knitting needles and my yarn. I know people I see on my decrepit television. I know when the TV finally dies I won’t have that. I try to focus on what I do have. Yet, I have less and less wish to bother. But, I’m still a writer. I still have that.
I want to finish the hat I’m knitting for my son. I want to finish something. I wanted to finish my life, but I haven’t and I won’t. When I die I hope there’s something good to do. Something to finish.
I have memories. I want to talk about them and, more than anything, I want to see them. Wind around Hope Valley. Eat a sandwich at the Genoa Store. Jump on the journey Playa. Jump into a truck, drive into the desert. Discover natural hot springs. Smile. Pack lunch for a spontaneous back into Nevada.
Watch sunsets from my own porch. I want to make toast in my kitchen with my own dishes. I also want to drink water from a glass I remember finding at the thrift store. I’m sitting on my bed, 8 stories off the ground. Black curtains hiding an outside that means nothing and I’m looking at Facebook, which should mean nothing.
I watch their memories being flung into a cloud. Into clouds. Into a forgotten place, where green water makes up a dark pond. I jumped. And sank into the quilted textiles of my worlds. I still breathe in a there, in that world that persistently takes place 5 years ago.
Confusion forces me to stop questioning. If my point of reference is 5 years behind this minute, then this minute changes infinitely. These changes occur in an infinity of infinite blocks of time.
Michelle O’Kane 