Fall Hug

The lady at the register slipped me the penny I was digging in my pocket for with a motherly wink. The guy in front of my parallel spot pulled out as I was pulling in, and gave me a smile as he left. The guy who works at the post office stopped to talk to me and tell me I hadn’t been in for a while, and that he missed my smile. The girl at Starbucks with the bright pink lips sprinkled extra cinnamon on my pumpkin spice latte and told me to have a spooky weekend.

There are some days where it feels like everything is just giving you a big hug. Everything collectively, with big ole arms and a nice chubby face. You know this is happening when people walking cute dogs continue to walk in your path and stop to let their puppies jump up to get closer to your face. You know it when you look at your phone and see text messages from friends that make you smile. Or when you and the guy at the bank start talking about Dead Snow, the Swedish movie with Nazi zombies in the snow, and five of his dude coworkers come out to join the conversation. Or when at first your truck won’t start, but you hit the dash and it fires.

These days are scattered throughout the weeks. Life is full of mundane and significant, forgettable and illustrious, depressive and invincible. The sandcastles we build so meticulously, only for the tide to come and wash them away. The things we spend little time thinking about, the things we obsess over, and the things we are curious about. Human nature allows us to forget about days like today the same way we neglect to thank someone for making us feel good…but never forget to let someone know they made us feel bad. Memories may very well be the most important thing in life—making them, remembering them when we need to, and feeling a sense of peace when looking at them collectively.

It seems unfair that nothing lasts forever. I know the gooey hug I felt from this unwilted fall afternoon will fade, and tomorrow I may want to kill the same person who let me kiss her dog today. But today, today is pumpkin spice lattes and fall leaves and my favorite thin grey sweater, my Fonzie truck and this juicy piece of pineapple in front of me. It is a kinship with strangers who are building their own sandcastles, and who suffer them knocked down in their prime just like me. It is a bottle of coffee creamer with a note from “the boys”, and the wet noses of Plaka and Sir Charles as they jumped onto my bent knees and licked my face in downtown Magnolia.

How you tell someone about an experience affects how you remember it. What details you leave in, what parts you decide to tell, and what words you pick to describe them. It’s all a part of something else. Whether you wanna believe that or not, or think it’s bullshit or not. You change the tide for someone else, and they effect yours too. In Kalamazoo one Sunday afternoon in November, I forced myself out of bed to go to Harding’s on the corner of Westnedge and S Park. I was very depressed, I think I had spent the night before drinking by myself or something similarly depressing. I went to Harding’s because I hadn’t eaten and there was no food in the house, and I figured I'd get another bottle of Wild Irish Rose to fuel some writing. It was around noon:30, so a lot of church people were sprinkled about. This very large black family all piled out of an old Lincoln the same time I was parking. They were dressed modestly, in their respective Sunday best, the smallest girls with white gloves on giggling and racing each other into the store. The mother had one of those half-hats with the net over her eyes, and a matching pocket book in her hands as she tried to keep up with the girls. Grandpa was wearing a light brown suit with suede trim and a sturdy cane. He had a very awesome hat on, the kind like Kevin Federline tried to ruin by proxy.

While the happy family bounced its way into the store on kittens and rainbows, I hurt a little more inside and moped a little slower behind them, probably showing evidence of my impatience with their display. Grandpa stopped at the entrance and leaned against the wall to smoke his pipe. As we got to our dancing point, he wrapped his frail but large hand around my entire left forearm, stopped me in my tracks, and pulled me close. “Whatever it is, honey. It will pass. Everybody here loves you, and everybody here will continue to love you. You hear me?” He pulled me closer until our faces were just about touching if not for the pipe he tilted away to protect my face. He released my arm and struck a match as I stood there dumbfounded. A few quick puffs on the cornhusk pipe and he waved his hand toward the door forcefully and said “Get on.”

I walked inside the store completely unsure if that exchange had just happened. As I got my busket and started to collect junk food, it was easy to convince myself that I was still drunk and had imagined the encounter. In any other state, and with any less timeliness and authenticity, I would have screamed if an old dude grabbed my arm like that. If it hadn’t struck me so deeply, I would have told the old man to take a walk and stop eating crazy pills. I relaxed after four or five aisles, with Triscuits and a block of cheese in my basket. I knew that shit didn’t just happen.

I walked to the west end of the store where they keep the liquor and wine. Cuz, PS, in Michigan you can get liquor wherever you want, right off the shelf. Not like in Washington where you have to make a special trip to one of the six liquor stores in Seattle and really mean it if you wanna drink depressed. I digress. I walked to the wine aisle and started my hand out for the Wild Irish Rose “White” (editor’s note: do not ever drink the Wild Irish Rose “Red with Ginseng”). As my hand reached for the bottle, I shit you not that the same frail but powerful black hand wrapped around my wrist. “Except for this. This does not love you.” He smiled as I stood back upright, squeezed the outside of my left shoulder and rejoined his bouncing family as they exited the store.

I didn’t stop drinking forever that day. I wasn’t necessarily lifted instantly from my hole of depression. But the experience left me feeling like rhyme and reason don’t care what superstition or chance leaves out. And superstition and chance don’t care what rhyme or reason blocks from belief. All of it counts. What my Magic 8 Ball tells me to do counts. What an old strange guy in front a grocery store tells me counts. What I write right here counts. And that lady who winked at me as she helped me this morning counts.

I don’t have anyone to thank for today, but I know that it’s not just my attitude that nets me this paycheck.

Seattle, we are breaking up

I left Michigan with no license, a college degree, and a love of motorcycles. I always knew that I could never make my mother proud, so I guess I was shooting for makin Dad proud. I could work on cars with relative authority already. I worked at an oil change shop, actually changing oil and being a hood tech. I worked at Auto Zone, actually selling parts and doing diagnostics. But to speak of it now, you assume I was sometimes allowed to touch tools and answer phones and run the cash register. I know, I look dumb. I’ll be what you want. I'm too tired to care anymore.

Dad used to never let me touch the air tools when we’d work on a car together, and I felt a swell of pride the first time he handed me the impact and said “go to town” on my wheels. I just never felt as good when Mom would scowl at my hair, or delight over me helping in the kitchen. I was never my mother’s daughter, and I guess it’s just time to accept that. Short of becoming a nun, she will never get the daughter she always wanted. That’s ok, a lot of us never get what we want.

So I had just let them both down hugely in September of 2007. My second DUI, more than three times the legal limit in my body and my head through a windshield. No parent would be proud. Things were rather difficult then. Sure, I was a good kid who wasn’t ripping kittens’ heads off, or out on the streets tryin to get knocked up; but I was pretty damned low after the accident happened. I took it so hard, I asked the judge to put me in jail for the maximum sentence of 365 days served. I was very prepared to go to jail. The morning of my sentencing, I took all my jewelry off: 8 earrings, 3 rings, two bracelets, three toe rings…the reality was setting in. I was ready.

Judge Phyllis McMillen didn’t let me go to jail. She told me that I would “get hardened in there and become a worse criminal.” That I “have too much to offer society on the outside.” If you take what a district judge says seriously, that’s a lot of pressure. She’s now a 6th Circuit Court judge newly appointed by Granholm. And good for her, she is a fair and honest judge who doesn’t take shit.

So now I was looking at no driver’s license, living in Pontiac without a friend for miles, working in Flint and Saginaw, and needing to get to Oakland County Courthouse twice a week for the next 18 months, and to breathalyzer testing every day for the next 18 months. Oh, and a lot of fines and restitution. I made it work for as long as I could. I made friends with a coworker at UPS and paid him to swing down and pick me up on our way to Flint. I walked to my breathalyzer tests, 4 miles, in the snow. I counted on REALLY good friends (especially Steve-O) to get me around and to police stations to blow into their machines if I was out of the county. I showed up at 7am every Wednesday for Sobriety Court and gave my progress to Judge McMillen, with my dad sitting in the courtroom. I showed up at 9am every Friday to meet with Angie, my probation officer, with my mom sitting in the courthouse waiting room. I went to MADD presentations, I went to AA and did on-line Smart Recovery meetings 4 times a week. It was hell and I deserved every minute of it.

Eventually, I couldn’t make rent on the new house I had just gotten on the lake. Then a skunk moved in underneath the house and had a spraying fit that trapped me and Andy in the bathroom with me throwing up in the toilet and him in the bathtub. It was a circus and we couldn’t leave cuz I didn’t have a vehicle. I had to call my mom to come rescue us in the middle of the night. The smell was really that bad. It was the last straw, and a physical manifestation of how bad my life stunk at that moment.

I decided to leave Michigan. When Mom finally got to Pontiac from Howell, I had boxes packed through my teary hurting eyes and loaded them in her van. She hated how impetuous I was. I told her “That’s it. I’m outta here.” I started thinking about where to go. I don’t have family I’m close to anywhere. I couldn’t come up with a real good reason to move anywhere. Seattle came up, as it had right when I graduated college. Back then the plan was to just start driving toward Seattle and see what happened. I was so committed then that I did leave all my possessions on the street in Kalamazoo, such that everything I owned fit in my Sunfire. I didn’t do it then because right before I was to go, Wolf told me he had cancer and I felt like I should stay. But I guess that was a mistake.

So, after having to move back in with my parents, and making my mom leave work early to come back to Howell, pick me up and drive me to Flint and sit in the parking lot for 5 hours…my God she was a trooper for doing that. Anyway, after making her do that and being uber depressed sitting at their house trapped without a ride for about one month, I decided to go to Phoenix for one express reason: to go to MMI and become a motorcycle mechanic. I bought a plane ticket and just went for it. Dad came with me to help get me around and find a room to live in so Mom didn't worry.

Long story short, accidentally moved in with hookers, made people hate me, roof caved in, sun was trying to kill me, hated Phoenix. John had just made a move to Seattle when shit was at its worst in Phoenix. I told him to look for a 2 bedroom cuz I was on my way. I sold all my shit on craigslist, shipped him a handful of boxes, bought a one way ticket to Michigan to see Erin and Pat get married, and bought a one way to Seattle after the wedding.

Seattle was full of fresh beginnings and potential. I got a job bartending at the Fisherman’s Terminal. UPS finally got me transferred so I worked both jobs for a while. Then I decided to enroll at Lake Washington Technical Institute and do their Harley program. It was February and I was riding my motorcycle—illegally, yes—40 minutes at 6am every morning, then riding it straight to work til 11pm. It was miserable, but looking back at it now, I loved it. There was something happening, and it was so important to me that I was doing something uncomfortable and irrational just to do it. You can’t trade that feeling.

The sense that there is forward motion and more purpose to waking up every day. The sense that you were onto something and would keep chasing it until it either bit you or let you pet it. It was a chase and I was all about keeping pace. It’s not until now, when I often can’t get excited to put my feet on the floor in the morning, that I realize how good I had it when things were full of potential. Sure, grass is always greener and hindsight is 20/20, but even then I had this sense that I was on the right path, and that I was lucky to have something that made me obsess over it and drew me to spend late nights and devour information about it.

One of our first assignments was to interview shop owners and mechanics to be sure that we really wanted this for a career. I loathed doing this assignment. I rode over to Steg’s shop the day the assignment was due, skipping class to get it done. Him and little Danny were there working and let me come in to warm up. Steg was impressed I had ridden up on such a cold day. I told him I ride year round. We chatted. A couple hours or somethin went by and finally Steg says “Shit. Why don’t you just drop out of school and come apprentice for me here?”

So I never went back to school. Made up a lie about my grandpa bein sick and had flights back to Michigan already to support it. They gave me my money I hadn’t paid yet back. I worked for Steg 6 to 7 days a week for free. Getting there usually before anyone was there to let me in. I separated hardware. I swept. I cut pieces of stock for them. I grinded on things. I made support brackets. I put my time in being shop bitch. Then I started working on jobs. Changing tires, swapping out belts, oil changes, 50,000 mile service jobs, tune ups, brakes. Then we got more into motors and trannys, wiring and fab jobs. It sounds stupid for me to say it even now, but I was a legit mechanic for a little bit there.

I was at the shop whenever I wasn’t at UPS, working nights as a supervisor. I made Psycho a website. I took over parts ordering and parts running. Jumping on my bike to fly on down 50 miles south to see Ziggy at Classic Thunder or blasting over to Aurora Suzuki and throwing a new tire over my sissy bar was definitely a good time. Even rolling up 45 minutes to Lynnwood Harley for Tranny Fluid in pouring fucking rain in early March was a good time. Steg had a good roaring fire goin in the shop for me when I got back and peeled layers off to see them steam and sizzle on the concrete floor. These were good times.

Rent was outrageous at the Russell Street shop. Every time I drive by the empty place I get all nostalgic about how many good feelings and potential I felt there. I felt like the motorcycle world was about to just spread its legs for me. I absolutely felt like I had found my career and was about as lucky as I could get by stumbling upon the shop that Steg had just come to own. Steg was a good friend, and really like a father to me. We spent a lot of time together working at the shop and hanging out at the shop and moving the shop and talking about the shop and being at the shop. I was a perfect roommate for John because he never saw me.

I was fucking legit. Steg and I would roll to events and ride the shovels around and it was like I was living what I saw when I had slept back in Michigan. I had respect, I wasn’t the office girl answering phones. Well, sure, I did that too. But I had such a sense of satisfaction while I worked there. We moved the shop to a new location and things never really recovered after that. Steg had moved into the shop and was battling the depression this fucking city plagues everyone with. I was living on part-time wages, but rent was low split between John and I even though we lived on top of each other in a one bedroom house. But it was a wicked good time to sit in the basement with our bikes halfway torn apart and drink Rainiers. I took for granted how nice it was to have somewhere to work on my bike, and someone to drink with while I did it.

So, in keeping with a timeline…then something kinda awful happened last year in August and I had to cut free of the shop and get square. All my trying to make my dad proud had paid off splendidly and now something horrible had happened with my mom. She worried about me all the time. She heard about me dating way older biker guys and owning guns and running with trouble. And she only heard the stuff I couldn’t keep a secret. And, she had every right as a mother to be so worried she couldn’t sleep at night. I was living dangerously. And I was enjoying it.

So after the awful thing happened, I sort of snapped to. It was subconscious and conscious at the same time. I guess with hindsight I could say that I was trying to go the other route and make my mom proud. I got a boyfriend right away. I got respectable and stopped working at the shop and getting dirty. I moved out of the house with John and got a swank condo with my then boyfriend. I celebrated Christmas with his family like I had always been a normal person. I nested like crazy, I even bought an apron and made dinner and breakfast. I was my mother’s dream daughter. I quit UPS and got a full-time office job. I got my driver’s license and quit riding my motorcycle.

I feel like it happened so fast. My motorcycle felt it the most. It won’t run, and it sits in my parking garage as I type this as a glaring symbol of a confusing past. I am frustrated that I have nowhere to work on it. I am more frustrated that I chose a life that didn’t include a garage and place for my tools. I am even more frustrated that I spent so long pretending to be a motorcycle mechanic, and was so thoroughly convinced I was, to only amount to not being able to even make my own run. I have accepted that I won’t ever convince somebody I know what I’m doing…and I guess, why should I try? Yea, I’m just a girl who answers phones all day, and oh, how exotic that I own a Harley, but don’t worry, it doesn’t run cuz I don’t know how to make it run cuz I am just a girl. I am just a girl who you can tell to go get you lunch, who you can have stuff 500 envelopes because your time is more valuable. I am just a girl who goes to work at 8am in a vehicle, and goes home at 6pm to her cat, and goes to bed with her guns. Wait, that’s kind of different. Mom wouldn’t like that I sleep with a gun under my pillow.

I video chatted with my parents a few nights ago. I told them I was considering moving back to Michigan. Mom’s first response was “Listen, Chryssa, we don’t have enough money to support you making the move and living there without a job. Just stay where you are.” It was a hard blow. The reason being that everything in my life right now is built by my hands, paying rent for a place I thought I’d be living in with a boyfriend, going to work every day like a good worker bee and taking shit so I can show Mom how responsible I am. I never asked or expected her to give me anything…I never expected she would think I assumed I could live off of her. I can accept that I will never be what my mother wants me to be. Not without strangling my favorite part of myself.

I don’t know where I want to go, but I know I have to get out of here. Seattle is a place that reminds me of things that almost were, that are no more, and that happened that sucked. I can’t come up with anything I want to do, any place I really want to be, and I feel like I couldn’t be any farther from that feeling I talked about before. That feeling that I am doing something I like so much that I would walk through hell for it. Maybe it’s writing. I am doing it while I sit here at work and answer phones and click off the screen when people walk in. I am skipping my lunch and an interview phone call to finish typing this thing I don't know who will read. My life has to change but try as I might I just can’t get a clear vision of how.

Eve Just Wanted to Know Shit

If you didn't have the privilege of private school like I did, here is a synopsis of the earliest story in the Bible.

God created the earth. A bunch of animals, a bunch of trees, a bunch of fruit, a shitload of water. This took Him seven days, but it is hard to know what seven days was since there wasn't a sun or moon or watches. On the seventh day, He took a rest. By the eighth day, He was lonely, so He created Adam to pal around with. They were BFFs, and God taught Adam all about all the crazy fun stuff He had invented. He let him live for free in the Garden of Eden, and Adam never wanted to leave because he didn't know anything about anything outside of the garden. Cuz that's the way God wanted it. He told Adam that Adam could only learn from Him, and that there were these two trees in the center of the garden, but Adam couldn't touch them. One of the trees would give Adam eternal life, and he would never die. And Adam was like, "What's death, God?" And God was like "Don't worry about that." The other tree would give Adam knowledge. Not all-powerful instant know-everything knowledge, but enough to be able to figure things out on his own and not need God anymore. (And, PS, God totally lied to Adam when He said "Now, Adam, I don't mean to scare you, but if you eat off that Tree of Knowledge, you will die." Look it up, it's in the Bible. First chapter.)

After some time paling around with God, Adam knew everything God would let him know and got bored. Adam would say "Well, that's cool, but what is this thing between my legs for and why is it all blue?" And God was exasperated with this same question ALL the time and was like, "Well, I guess I will make something for that." So while Adam was sleeping one night, God crept in and took one of Adam's ribs right the fuck outta his chest. Like a mad sorcerer, or like God, he was spinning all kinds of dirt and magic dust and angel's hair and flowers and butterflies in a small hurricane around this one rib. First some slender ankles and cute little graceful feet started to form. Then some milky white skin and ticklish shins, and some sturdy but soft thighs. At first Eve had a really big cock. But God stepped back pinching his chin, and thought He would make a change. And then the greatest engineering: He thought, "Well this is simple, I'll just make this kind an inny."So He shrunk the cock, moved it up, and used a flower as the basis of the vagina. How pretty.

Then He made the hips match the thighs, the shoulders match the hips, and right at the end He sort of tripped and grabbed her chest to keep Himself upright. Hence, boobs were formed. He made her throat all sexy, and her jawline all small and cute, and then He gave her really big pretty eyes and pulled big eyelashes out of her eyelids. And that looked good, so he pulled her lips til they were big and pouty too. Not Angelina Jolie pouty...those are not of God.

And when He was done, Eve was standing there all sexy and gave God a wink and it was right then, right at that goddamned moment that God sort of was afraid of what He had done. This thing had a lot of power. I mean, it was just standing there naked without a single weapon and God was afraid. So He kind of just pushed her with a stick toward Adam as Adam slept innocently and said "Ok then. I guess, do whatever...oh wow, don't do that...well, ok."
And that was how Eve met Adam. And that was how Adam found his special purpose.

So after awhile, Eve gets bored just like Adam had. Only she didn't want a companion cuz she knew exactly what the thing between her legs was for. It was only for having fun. Cuz this was before God had any intention of women having kids. People always say that we are the only mammal who has sex for fun, but in the Bible (a pretty widely accepted piece of literature/history) Adam and Eve lived in that garden for a really long time without aging, without kids, and just having a really, really good time.

Adam was perfectly content. He had been made first, he had a bigger paycheck, he got to talk alone with God whenever he wanted, and God had made Adam his own personal bang slave. Things went on like this for awhile. Eve was kept in the dark, but she really didn't care too much because she didn't know what dark was. Adam didn't give a shit what was going on as long as he got to keep banging Eve.

So one day Eve wanders off and is walking through the garden. She was probably singing a song, or playing with her hair, or smacking her gum. She hears this slithery sound and giggles and stops to talk to Mr. Snake. Back then Adam and Eve had no fear of any creature, since they were all creatures of God and since they had no knowledge over what was good and what was evil. So the snake talks to Eve for awhile. Tells her she has a bangin body, and with some curlers she could get some real volume out of her long hair. He teaches her the duck face and tells her that she can control Adam, like, anytime with this face.

Then he says "So, do you wanna know more?" And of course she's like, "Um, totally." So the snake bites off an apple from the tree and offers it to her. She's like "Oh wait, snake, that's the tree God and Adam told me I can't have anything to do with." And snake is like "You know, if I were you, I'd be sick of this micromanaging God already. I mean, what has He done for you? He barely even talks to you, and yet He and Adam go off hunting and fishing and play poker every Thursday night. Where's your piece?"

She was like "Well, you do have a point. I suppose one little bite will just catch me up on everything Adam knows." So she took the apple from the snake with her little graceful hand and wrist, she lifted it to her supple red lips, and she took a big juicy bite. They don't tell you this in the Bible, but she had her first orgasm right there. Turns out, Adam was crap in bed. Completely neglected the clitoris and just bam bam bam while she laid there like a starfish.

Right after she climaxed, Adam walks up and she is like "Whoa Adam, you HAVE to try this apple." And of course Adam is totally square and doesn't want to fuck anything up or be any kind of homewrecker and he tells her no way. She is really insistent because she wants him to learn how to do to her what she just learned can be done to her. She bats her eyelashes, she rubs on her titties, she says he can do anything, ANYTHING to her if he will just take a bite of this apple. You see, this is because she now has the knowledge of how to get her way, like, all the time.

So, Adam bites the shit out of the apple. The snake hisses a laugh cuz he has messed up God's plan to keep two dodos around to worship Him. Now these two only people on earth have the free will to learn everything and decide if loving their master is a good idea or not. It's a good allegory for growing up and learning about the world, and gaining the wisdom to decide if your parents did a good job or not.

Anyway, God was super pissed. He made Adam and Eve feel like total, utter shit for disobeying Him after He had given them everything they ever needed. They suddenly became aware of their nakedness and made leafy clothing. Eve was so ashamed for being such a harlot. She didn't know what had come over her. The initial impact of what they had done was overwhelming, they freaked out and ran from God who banished them from the Garden of Eden. God was so pissed at them, He decreed that it was now Eve's job to make babies who would maybe be more obedient than these two had been...and oh yeah, it's gonna be REALLY painful and REALLY gross when this happens. In fact, these new people are going to make you miserable for the better part of a year, then rip their way out of that once pretty flower with no mercy, and it may kill you, but it's worth it if maybe, just maybe, these new people will be more grateful to Me that you have been.

And Adam and Eve did have a bunch of kids. But the first one of them murdered the other one. To be exact, and this is a rarely trumpeted fact, in Greek, Cain's name translates to "from the evil one." So, either from Eve and she is evil, or there is a theory that the serpent is Cain's father. Ew.

So here's the moral of this story: women are to blame for everything bad that has happened in this world because they learned how good a proper orgasm feels. God has kind of a bad temper. Adam was totally cool with just getting to bang Eve all day long. And serpents are the sexiest, smartest beasts on the planet. Apples taste really good. Orgasms feel really good. And I find it no coincidence that I have a raging case of ophidiophobia. Look it up.

Jigsaw and a bottle of wine

She was at a crossroad.
When looking to the future didn't produce solid leads, she looked to the past for clues. Pictures, hairstyles, smiles, a way to gauge which phase was good and which was not. Meditation teaches you to name things so that you can let them go. Compartmentalizing is an easy way to understand.
A drunken phase, a writer phase, a musician phase, a motorcycle phase, a cog phase. Good solid friends overlap them all. The before this happened phase, the after that happened phase. Real detective work was at hand. Where did she look the happiest? What was happening at that time? Look for something that lasts.
She walked to the gas station across the street for a bottle of wine and some smokes. Is this falling off the wagon? Well, it wasn't too high off the ground and it's really not moving very fast if it is.
There were some real successes in there. It wasn't all bad, that's for sure. But the next move seems so likely, but so mysterious. Perhaps she had gotten more careful in her maturity. Perhaps flipping a coin and moving on gut feelings wasn't enough anymore. Life here in Seattle isn't so bad if she could get over missing her friends so much. She moved because she had to, and she could.
A woman like her can go anywhere. Do just about anything. But our generation is plagued with the inability to do. We can dream, whine, plan, save up, have goals and know that we are destined for more. We can feel like that next big move is just around that corner over there on the other side of the street. A lot of times we feel severely cheated and disillusioned. A lot of times we just can't find something good enough to get excited over. It's not that we don't want to be passionate; it's that we just don't see something worth it. The world is crumbling under our feet and even though nobody is being overly dramatic about it, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks everything is working just fine.
So do we find a job polishing the fine china on the Titanic? What if we really like china. Corporate greed and nasty politics have people sleeping in the streets to find a voice. Shitty banking systems have good people being foreclosed on. Birds are falling dead from the sky, fish are washing up lifeless. Husbands and wives are cheating on each other and getting divorced. Doctors are living in mansions and refusing to treat the poor. Alcoholism and drug addiction are claiming a high enough percentage to silence any great voice that could make us feel better. People are screwing other people over out of necessity. We work jobs we hate just to survive. Where is the humanity? Who has time for love anymore?
She started looking for an empty can, to turn it on its side and crush one side in a little, use a safety pin to poke some holes. Shit. Not one goddam can in this apartment. She took the hippie water bottle, burned a mouth hole in the side of it, took some tin foil and formed a perfect bowl, took her post earring out and gave it some holes. It was like she had gone to weed college or something. Oh wait, she did. Picked some leafy green stickiness off the bud that one guy left here earlier this week, and smoked it. Jesus. Was this falling off the wagon? Who ever said there was a wagon in the first place?
She was in this spot because she hadn't made a solid decision in over a year. Auto-pilot had her somewhere in Nebraska with nothing but corn fields on either side. Kind of forgot how to drive after this long. Kind of don't know why we got in the car in the first place.
If only a green light prevailed, she could drive real fast and real sure through it. Nothing is perfect. Only red lights and a whole lot of yellow. I suppose even a green light doesn't guarantee some asshole didn't run his red and is barreling right toward you. He was probably drinking.
If I go there will be trouble, and if I stay it will be double.
She acts real tough, but this place is getting to her. A roommate was a welcome distraction from what has become the middle. The middle, but far away from everything. There had been breaths of greatness, updrafts of awesomeness, and aftertastes of satisfaction. It wasn't all bad, that's for sure. But what is next? What seemingly shot from the hip move is coming on so hot?

All I Could Do was Nod

I'm gonna tell you a story that is funny at some moments, really sucky at times, mildly uncomfortable at the bridges and socially awkward in the middle. You're welcome to hold the person's hand next to you, and squeeze it when it gets scary in here. This is an exercise in being a writer again and holds nothing back.

Chapter 1
     When I was nine years old, there was this adult that the planet of Me revolved around. She lived in Lima, OH in a doublewide and had three sons who were about 10 years older than me.
     She was the kind of aunt who kept her fingernail polish in the refrigerator and would, yes, of course paint your tiny nine year old nails with polka dots or zebra stripes, your choice. She would get in the car and go buy the gel frosting to write your name on your cupcake. She would sneak you out of the trailer window at dusk to take you to see Fievel Goes West at your parents' disapproval. She also took you to get your ears pierced at a Christian's inappropriate age.
     She slept on the floor beside me in sleeping bags every other weekend when we were there; even though her adult bed paid for by adult dollars was only an adult's arm-length away. She was just as enamored with Beauty and the Beast in the theater as me; I'll never forget the same youthful look on her face against the flickering yellow dress when I looked at her...as a seven year old expecting her to give me that "Oh, I know little one, it's so cool" look. But she didn't even notice me looking back at her, she was glued to Belle dancing across that big screen.
     I bought clothes that looked like hers. I bought boots cuz she only ever wore boots. I counted the school days in between getting down to Lima and going roller skating or drinking hot chocolates like adults or making Christmas ornaments with her. There was no safer place in my life, in the world, than laying across her legs, with her Lee press-on nails ghosting across my back gently.
     Sometime around the summer of 1990, she met a guy who would become her second husband. I did not like him from the first time I met him. Some could have argued it was blatant jealousy on my part. She no longer slept on the floor with me in my Rainbow Brite sleeping bag. Her nail polish was replaced by his beer in the fridge. Sometimes she had this look on her face that my retarded dancing couldn't brighten. I even started to annoy her.
     It was the morning of Nov 11, 1992 when I was getting ready for school in my new "mexican skirt" just like Aunt Lynnie's, and my new tan lace up boots just like Aunt Lynnie's. I walked down the hallway to the living room and it was as if I had walked into another universe based on atmosphere alone, before anyone even said anything about what happened to her. I distinctly remember finding it hard to breathe through my screaming instincts as I caught the looks on my parents' faces.
     The first two bullets she fired went across and through Ron's upper thighs as he was sleeping in bed. The third bullet lodged in the wall behind her head in the front room near the entryway. They said she probably didn't even hear it.
     As a nine year old, I was certain that that asshole Ron had murdered her and staged everything. I had long daydreaming sessions of how he could have done it. That's why the bullets missed his penis, cuz he only wanted it to look like she was aiming there and missed. Surely she had been a victim of something easier to understand than severe depression. Surely I could point the finger at a person instead of a concept. Surely she didn't leave me without so much as a personal note.
     Being so young at a tragic funeral is a weird bag. It's like everyone is looking at you for signals. I can't recall my brother or I crying once. Even when they led us in and put a tiny step stool in front of her open casket, with a fancy white doily cloth over her disfigured face. It was like we were holding out on tears or emotion because we knew that's just what these adults wanted. I can still clench my jaw to the point of headache if that what it takes.
     I remember a lot of time spent in the dimly-lit funeral home kid's room with that shitty wood balls on a wire maze "game" and a lot of daytime TV. I remember looking at a lot of similarly confused children's faces from the other funerals going on at that home. We were marooned there for hours each day while the adults did their adult sad things. But seriously, what is it with that stupid balls on a wire maze thing? All you get to do is move them up and down the same path, over and over. Every time I see one of those I want to kick it.
     At one point my other aunts and cousins took me with them to the grocery store. I started to feel somewhat normal again and ran up to one my aunts standing beside Aunt Lynnie's son and called her "Aunt Lynnie" by mistake. Freud applies to nine year olds too. Well everybody just started to cry right there in the store, except for me; I just felt like a big asshole.

Chapter 2
     Something strange happens when the adult closest to you commits suicide. You grow up really quick, so you can be there next time and make a difference and be old enough to understand how to help. You feel a smorgasbord of emotions from anger to depression to abandonment, and since the adults are dealing with equally bad feelings, you kind of get through it on your own.
     My parents sent us to some different therapists, but I just fucked with them. As if these assholes could understand me. They asked me to draw something, I drew a flower and watched them smile, then colored it black and watched them scribble notes like idiots. My favorite game was to amalgamate the troubled child in isolation so she doesn't get hurt again, with the angry kid who has been abandoned. I could hear them make the decision that they knew me whenever I drew my brick wall, and then left one brick out strategically. One therapist threw her pen across the room one day when I let slip that I was only playing the character she wanted. She said, "Has this been fun for you?"
     The real truth is, at nine years old I had already determined that my fate would be the same of my aunt and my grandfather before her, who swallowed a 12 gauge from his own shotgun. I was named after Aunt Lynnie, with my middle name and all. People always said I looked like her, and I reminded them of her all throughout growing up while our family still talked to each other. I frequently freaked my cousins and aunts out as I grew and picked up habits like hers or did things like she did. It became clear to me before my teens that eventually I would die by my own hands when things got bad enough, just like my family had done. Just like my idols had done. At the tender age of nine, I had figured out that none of life mattered and all of it would eventually end in tragedy.
     That left a lot of room and a lot of years to be reckless and carefree. I broke a lot of bones as a kid because I had no fear of death. I jumped off balconies and climbed the tallest trees. I rode my bicycle into rose bushes and ate 8 Advils at a time. I didn't really relate to kids at my private Christian school, got picked on by the rich girls, and spent time on the playground learning to swear inside the big half-buried tractor tires.
     At sixth grade I entered the public school system and met my best friend on the first day. She thought I was weird and exciting, I thought she was caring and gentle. We rode the choppy waters of middle school together. She had the best parents, patient and kind and still in so much love with each other. It made my mom very jealous that I spent most of my time at their house.
     Through high school Jesse watched me increase in rebellious activity. Dating much older dangerous guys, ditching school, jumping out of my window at night, drinking and generally going crazy. I was certain for the last 5 years that I would die at the age of 18, and frankly I had nothing to lose in the few years before that. I was good at music, so I played in a lot of orchestras and bands and sang in choirs. I was good at writing, so I wrote for the school newspaper eventually becoming its Editor-in-Chief. I was good at math, and science and English and history and took a bunch of AP courses. But none of it was for any other purpose than to pass the time. I knew, even though nobody else did, that it was all leading up to my ultimate demise at 18.

Chapter 3
     I had made one previous attempt before turning 18. I was 13 at the time and found a full bottle of unmarked pills in my bedroom, left by a grandparent when they borrowed my room, I figured. I found them when I had been sent to my room for some misdeed and was cleaning in an angry state. When the bottle found my hand, I felt like it was fate telling me it was finally time to go. Finally....at the old age of 13.
     Here's the funny part of the story I promised you.
     Two days after finding that unmarked bottle of pills, I scribbled a note and decided to eat all of them. This is the first time I am ever telling this story. I waited until everyone had gone to sleep, and had Mom buy me some silk pajamas the day before. They were yellow, with big stupid flowers all over them. At 11:11, as a dedication to Aunt Lynnie's death, I got up out of bed, poured a big glass of water and ate all 15 or so pills in that bottle. Which takes a long time, coincidentally. And a lot of water.
     I laid back down in bed and accepted my fate in the most emo way before emo was cool: I folded my arms over my chest in an X, like a vampire and waited to fall asleep. I did eventually fall asleep for some period of time. And when I woke, around 4am, I came to find out that grandma had misplaced her Lasix, or a similar water pill that caused me to wet the bed profusely.
     My dear mother thought that I had a bad enough dream to make a 13 year old have incontinence. I had become the uncool character on Heathers, who not only failed to commit suicide, but who had to convince her mother that it's not so weird for a 13 year old to pee herself as we flipped the mattress together at 4am.

Chapter 4
     Fast forward to 18 years old, I took a whole bottle of Advil but woke up the next morning as if nothing had happened. For a while I was convinced that I had died and everything in my life was actually a part of the afterlife...just a little worse. Have you seen Wristcutters? Just like that. This feeling has intensified mushroom trips for me to an uncomfortable state.
     When I hit college, I had surpassed my time limit, and now I REALLY had nothing to lose. The way I saw it, I was working on borrowed time already and getting emotionally hurt was only benefiting my cause if it could drive me to finally do it. I did some really awful things in college. Some really awful things were done to me in college. I fostered relationships with friends who were equally reckless and I feel somewhat responsible for pushing that destructive bar maybe just a little bit higher.
     I tried a couple more times in between 18 and 24 to end life, but they were just unsuccessful. I was never careful. I never wore my seatbelt. I sped like crazy. I bought a motorcycle and rode it as fast as I could without holding the handlebars. I drank more than everyone else. I gave way less fuck about everything than everyone else.
     In June of 2007, I had graduated by a miracle with a degree from Western Michigan. I moved across the state by myself and lived in Waterford. I didn't know anyone for at least a 40 mile radius. I went to a bar alone. I woke up in the shower beat up and with the water running to maybe keep me alive after whomever put too much in my drink. I was disturbed this had happened to me. I was actually rather disturbed.
     I went to a shrink, this time looking for actual help. Thus ensued the radical malpractice and my journey on anti-depressants including Lithium. They caught me in their web and even after the hallucinations and confusion and horribleness started, they told me I couldn't quit taking the meds or else I would die. They really tell you that, too. That you will definitely die. So I took the meds for 3 months, exactly how long these doctors promised it would take for them to settle into my body and start working properly. On the 90th day, I quit all of them and got the tattoo on my forearm: "The hardest victory is the victory over self." Aristotle.

Chapter 5
     I had gone 24 years without dying, I'd be damned if some doctors were going to tell me that I needed pills to stay alive. Two weeks after quitting the pills, my friends John and Eron came out to spend the night with me and then help me move the next morning to a new place in Pontiac. I was moving in order to get a fresh beginning and get out of the apartment where bad things had happened. I spent weeks looking for the perfect place, and found a house right on the lake in Pontiac. I felt like it would be a new beginning.
     That night also happened to be John's birthday, so we elected to go to a nearby bar and only have a couple of beers to celebrate. Eron had ridden his motorcycle, and John didn't have to drive because it was his birthday; so we hopped into my Pontiac Sunfire and went over to Shorty's in Waterford. Yadda yadda yadda, the band is sitting at our table with their instruments playing requests, the bar owner was putting full fifths on our table, and I was tipping back a bottle of Goldschlager.
     We hit the tree at around 60 miles an hour. I came out of my blackout looking down at my bloody hand on the pulled emergency brake, and a waterfall of warm gooey blood falling over my eyes. I pushed the river back into my hair and sat back to hear John say "I can't believe that just happened."
     We all got out of the car, I left my hand on my forehead to act a dam for all the blood from my head going into the windshield. Unseatbelted, of course. I looked at the giant oak we crashed into and said "Who plants a tree this big?" When the police floodlight hit our backs, I had one hand on my forehead still for the blood and the other on the back of the car, all three of us trying to push it home and get away. We turned toward the cop, leaned on the back of the car, and passed cigarettes to each other as the cop said "Who was driving?"
     Four years later I had moved to two different states and finally got my license back. At the accident, I had a .27 BAC, and it was my second DUI in the state of Michigan. The first one being 2 weeks after turning 21. My police record also boasts multiple speeding tickets, multiple sound violations, and an MIP. It was determined that I was a repeat offender with a major alcohol problem by the state of Michigan. Luckily, the judge listened to me when I told her that I didn't have an alcohol problem...I had a recklessness problem. In scientific terms, I had the "I don't give a fuck" syndrome that AA would not help. I told her that the probation programs wouldn't work for me, because I knew what I was doing when I committed the crime. I asked her to put me in jail for the maximum sentence. She refused, and instead let me leave the state and do a specialized probation program (basically fit to me exclusively.)
     So I moved to Phoenix in order to get out of Michigan and comply with the probation on a "Fresh Start" program. I already had a college degree, so I opted to pursue motorcycle mechanics at MMI. Really, I needed to get out Michigan and motorcycles seemed like a good plan to follow.
     Well, I don't know if anyone has told you, but Phoenix sucks. Especially if you're a fair-skinned redhead, and accidentally move in with prostitutes. Yeah, that really happened. Craigslist. So, I jumped ship and moved to Seattle without ever having been to Seattle. I sold everything I had accumulated in six months in Phoenix and got on a plane. I worked two and three jobs, I went to school for motorcycles again at Lake Washington Technical Institute for a little bit. I worked at Psycho Cycles as Steg's apprentice.
     I was still pretty reckless, but I wasn't really drinking much. I was hanging out with guns and bikes and drugs, and riding really fast with no license, and running from cops. But there was new balance to it. I didn't have a deathwish, I just wasn't afraid to die. I felt like I had squared off with intimidating demons and had survived. I felt like my experiences had given me character and a lot to write about. I was plugging away at fixing motorcycles and living the life. An outlaw, but an educated one. Still biding time, but more receptive to the future.
     But there is one more sad story that interrupted my quasi-dangerous life irrevocably.

Chapter 6
     A year ago today, August 5th, my phone kept ringing really early in the morning. I slept on a futon at the time and was working two jobs, at something like 60-70 hours a week. The night before, I couldn't sleep at all. I was all in a tizzy and crying and sad and depressed as shit without a real good reason. I called off to the motorcycle shop (not that I needed to call), and finally fell asleep about 5:45 am. I ignored the phone and turned it off. Finally around 9am I turned it on to a dozen missed calls from my dad and brother.
     I called my dad back.
     He answered the phone with this statement, "Your mom tried to kill herself. She is in intensive care in a coma."
I replied with the typical "What?" and more shock-related one word statements. Based on my reaction, he started to cry and handed the phone to a nurse. She explained to me that my mother had been found by a neighbor in the tub that I grew up using, after spending the whole night dying slowly on an overdose of my grandpa's medication.
     Dad had been away on business trips frequently during that time, and my grandpa had a serious case of dementia that my mother supported him throughout. She obsessed over his care and drove over an hour to see him at the nursing home 6 to 7 days a week while working full time and suffering from sleep apnea. This was something like the 10th nursing home he had been in since all the others did not meet her satisfaction. I can't argue that there isn't a nursing home in existence that would meet my standards if I really cared about the person I was forcing to stay there. She was stressed to maximum capacity, my dad resented my grandfather for kidnapping all of his wife's time, and she worried like crazy about her only daughter across the country being a biker. I knew what was going on.
     My roommate and good friend lent me $500 to get on the first flight back to Michigan from Seattle. Everything was weird that day. I tried to go about my usual routine and went to Starbucks; but I froze at the counter like a sad deer in the bright lights of needing to make a decision. Bless that girl barista, her human instinct knew I wasn't nuts, and she said so lovingly, "Want me to pick something out for you?" All I could do was nod. It was a delicious frozen mocha that did, in fact, make me feel better while it lasted.
     At the airport everyone looked like aliens, completely unaware and unable to communicate with me or make sense of the look in my eyes while I wondered if I'd ever see my mother again...while I comprehended that she had actually committed suicide. As the plane picked up speed at take off, it shook the tears from my eyes and shuttered them down my cheeks. I just started to cry and I knew the lady next to me wanted every juicy detail, but I put my headphones in and tried not to imagine Mom's body getting colder as she laid there alone through the night dying with her regrets.
     The night before, my mother's last words to me were in a text that came from left field. "Chryssa, I love you very much. Find a man who really loves you. That has always been my only wish for you." I thought it was a weird text at the time, but I didn't bother to respond to her.

     I had a layover in Philadelphia--one of the shittiest and dirtiest airports in America. It was something like 4am when I landed there, feeling so out of my way and trying to get a signal to check in at the hospital and see if she was still alive. The nurse was sympathetic and kind, giving me every detail and telling me that she was still in a coma, but that her vitals were coming back. If the nurse had been an overworked intern just coming to grips with the fact that dying was a part of her job, and had been difficult or a bitch, I might have had a panic attack at the Philadelphia International Airport.
     I got a shitty bagel from the shitty bagel stand and put the shitty amount of cream cheese on it with the shitty plastic knife as the workers continued opening for the day. The early morning airport seemed like the most foreign place to be while my body coursed through shock and into anger.

Chapter 7
      Part of me didn't want her to live. I wanted to rush in to the ICU with the sound of buzzers and alarms and nurses and doctors rushing everywhere trying to revive her lifeless body in an unforgiving fight. I wanted to say Good Fucking Riddence to a woman who left me and did something we know in my family hurts like shit. Our family is well-versed in suicide and what it feels like for the survivors. It feels like utter shit.
     You are left mourning a person, only you can't just miss them because you also kinda have to be mad at them, but also feel kinda responsible even though everyone jumps all over you to tell you that it's not your fault. And it's not your fault, cuz you didn't pull the trigger; BUT, it is kinda too. Yeah, I said it. It is. Cuz that person is dead and you were their daughter, their mother, their friend, their whatever that should be able to make them feel better. Oh no, you can't BLAME yourself because a human can't carry that kind of guilt, but you also can't dismiss it entirely. There are always signs, we are just lulled into thinking that we can't rock the boat.
     So I landed in Detroit and rushed out to the pickup spot and had to wait for what felt like an hour, but might have been 30 minutes for my friends to pick me up. I was pretty pissed about them being late since I had just flown across the country and did want a fighting chance to get there before she stopped breathing for some kind of closure. Or something.
     The car ride was weird. They tried to lift the atmosphere; and did well for their efforts. One of my friends there, Rachel, is a nurse at the UofM hospital where my mom was. The day it happened, I called her and she went right over to be with my dad and to check in on my mom. My dad kept telling me how grateful he was to have her there. Lateness doesn't matter shit when someone will do that for you when you are 2500 miles away.
     When we got to the hospital 45 minutes later, Rachel took me right up to the ICU and rushed me to my mom's room. The door was closed, but the whole room is made of windows. I saw my mom's eyes were open, people all around her and she was talking slowly to a tall, young doctor at the foot of her bed. When I came around the corner in a bustle, everyone looked my way. She looked right at me.
     For the rest of my life I will never forget every minute detail of that moment.
     The look on her face was a mixture of disgust, anger, embarrassment and the deepest depths of sadness. I froze in that spot even after she had quickly looked away and back to the doctor like a good pupil. I suddenly became aware of my appearance, unshowered and greasy from a couple nights without sleep and from flying. I felt like I embarrassed her to the doctor when Rachel ushered me in. I heard my mom say in a labored and scratchy voice "This is my daughter."
     The doctor put his hand out to shake mine, but I could barely see him in my tunneled vision and walked right by him. I hugged my mom gently and quickly. It was awkward and awful. I wouldn't wish it on a person that I hate dearly. She held my hand to keep me right beside her and gave me another look that said a thousand words as the doctor began to ask her questions again. My cousins, my father, the nurses, some other people were all gathered in this tiny room around her. He asked her if she got along with her husband...the guy sitting right beside her in complete apathy from major shock. He asked her if she had been sad for a long time. He asked her if she felt like there was no other way out. She stroked my thumb with hers over and over to keep me there.
     Finally having enough of the circus, I went outside and shut her door to give her some semblance of privacy and feigned dignity. I was immediately angry that the doctor was asking her all of these questions in front of a crowd. I know they give suicide attempts to interns because they basically can't kill them...but I found this public questioning ludicrous. I stood outside her room until one of the ICU nurses told me I couldn't be there and chased me outside of the unit and into the waiting room.
     Nothing could have prepared me for what had just happened.
     After a wait there, my dad and the others came to tell me I could go in. I closed the door behind me so we were alone. I said to her, "Well, you had your chance. You don't get to do this again."

Chapter 8
      A month after returning from Michigan I met a guy out here in Seattle. On our first couple dates I had mild panic attacks, and even though I didn't tell him about my mom, he was sympathetic and told me he could protect me. I fell into my first truly committed love affair. After two months we moved in together. I stopped working at the motorcycle shop and sold my tool box. I got a full-time job and quit working at UPS after an 8 year career there as a part-time supervisor. Life became quiet.
     I was truly in love with this guy, but he has wicked jealousy issues and started going through my phone, my computer, my notebooks, my Tmobile account. I put up with it for a long time when it comes to acceptable behavior standards, among other things that I thought were a part of "the hard part" of relationships. Plus, I couldn't believe life hadn't handed me my soulmate just in time to save me from all the bad feelings of my mom's suicide attempt. I mean, that would be fair right?
     As a result of my fervent need for stability, that boy is heartbroken and I am in an apartment paying double the rent. Working a job that I hate to buy things I don't need. Nah, just quoting Fight Club. It's not that bad.
     My job could be worse. My life could be worse. There is always worse.
     But I can't deny that nagging voice that tells me I am destined for more than faxing and answering phones. That maybe life isn't as tragic as having a skill that I earned a degree for but never use. I may not write the next American Novel, or get the Pulitzer to hang next to my Sobriety Court certificate. But if the words aren't in black and white, I can't really say I ever tried.
     At 28, I can finally let go of something a nine year old told me was fact. I tried to be tragic like everyone around me, but it just never worked out. I never anticipated needing to make a career, or figure out what I wanted to be as I grew up under fucked up beliefs. I was always, perpetually, just on a collision course of destruction and just-throw-it-on-the-carpet-cuz-we're-moving-out-tomorrow mentality. My great unknown is living like tomorrow actually does matter, and every choice counts for somethin.