Old Girl
Tuesdays when the sun is still out at 8 pm
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There are some days I want to burst out crying in a way that is so tumultuous, my soul floods out of my eyes. An extended screeeeech through my irises. I want to scrunch my face and ease my eyes through the total anguish. Pouring everything I have locked inside. That will be its chosen portal. Through the water.
Water reminds me of the dual nature of pain. An afflictive resource that gives way to release. That forgoing, that loosening, that sinking back into pleasant form, is the quip of aliveness. The muscle tightening and softening. The heat of a fresh hit and its regress to cooling.
The bags under my eyes were exceptionally pronounced today. I looked like an old child. The woman in my back pocket was nowhere to be found, so today, yes — I would be somewhat of an adolescent.
I looked at my hands and wondered how they got to be so beautiful. That was something my mother gave me. Beautiful hands. Though hers were far more beautiful than mine. Longer and more elegant. Clever. Mine were oddly still childlike. Immature. My fingers had the remnants of elongation but with the shrink of youth. When would that womanly exertion appear? It felt to me that sometimes parts of my body were locked in some kind of eternal girlhood. But, that was impossible. And I was reminded of it daily.
Youth, when you had it, could sometimes feel like a bad thing. Though all bad things undergo a transformation when you leave them. We experience youth with such haste! Just as we begin to understand the luck of our state, we notice it surreptitiously fades. That felt like it was happening today. Youth and aging in a tug of war under the languid expression on my face. Gravity working its wonders and vandalism. I held a hand mirror over my body as if I could watch it transform me in real-time.
My room felt extraordinarily empty though nothing had been moved. The summer heat was engulfing me and even though my air-conditioning was working perfectly, the lethargy of the city was affecting me — intensely. Even brief stints of walking or driving doused me in fatigue. My head failing to relinquish this weight for hours on end. How could I be this tired? I was young, goddamnit.
And free
…
now,
how is it exactly
that I became
free?
I looked at the untouched bags of groceries piled in my kitchen. All non-perishables that had been sitting out for days. Laundry waiting in the dryer. Bed jostled. Ten-times reworn jeans on the floor. An explosion of shirts and jackets on the couch. Scatterings of empty plastic once iced black teacups. A water bottle facing condensation. I was becoming so lazy. The realization wasn’t enough to make me do something about it, but it was enough to disturb any sense of urgency to change it. All of my projects as of now were fueled by my own guidance and momentum. Yet, I didn’t even have the energy to leave my bed.
Are you really alive if you choose to just exist?
— God, I hope so.
Life does move slower when you’re alone.
The image of my smile lines was a constant presence in my mind. Though they were faint, my imagination took the duty to make them wickedly more pronounced. Every time I rushed to look at my reflection, they never were as deep as I thought. But some days when the air was extra dry and unforgiving, they were. Today was one of them.
I wanted to stay young forever, but I knew better. I knew there would be some prize waiting for me after cutting the ribbon of old age. Aging happens so slowly and so fast at the same time. An illusory mind-fuck. What even is time, anyway? You can’t hold it, yet it eternally makes its marks on you.
I try to hold onto my life by coating an extra dense moisturizer on my smile lines, to stall the ticking clock, to make my life feel like it will take longer. That I will somehow get extra time here if I manage to look as young as possible. I can exercise stopping time in its tracks by meeting my skin every morning and every evening with an army of defensive cremes. Which I apply with precise exactitude and militaristic order.
I wonder what time thinks of me,
watching me go to war.
Time!
How can I freeze myself at this ripe age to escape human inevitability?
But Time
of course
doesn’t answer.
At least in the way I want it to.
Well, I’ll keep up my regimen so at least the lines in my head might diminish. I’ll perform these hopeless duties so that the girl in my mind thinks I’m frozen. To convince myself there is more beauty to look forward to.
I lay attached to my bed grazing the sides of my mouth, indulging the remaining stillness of the day. Before the tumult of night. I try to think of stories to write but I can only write about myself. I’m so tired of only thinking about stories. I want to live them. Though the physical realm is so painful and unpredictable. It is so much easier to dwell here in the plush of my head and the known space of my studio. Where I can age in peace or something like it.
A rogue thought strikes.
I suddenly remember.
A life can only be extended by the memories it is given. Our lives stretch like an elastic band to incorporate and absorb all the experiences we fall into or seek. If I let my bed swallow me I will become nothingness. My life will lose its elasticity and dwindle into a short, taught band. My lines will still grow deeper.
So,
let me try and stretch back into my life.
Maybe then my fingers will grow and my face will be inconsequential. The girl in my mind will drop the mirror and start running. To which I will leap over the broken shards to run after her. Leap out of my bed to meet her. So, that maybe we can crash on opposite ends of this circle and converge into something ageless. And, any thoughts of those creases will be irrelevant because we are too busy breathing and living and extending the bands of our lives together. I can string my words together like a line that eliminates all others.
Where I, myself, act as the narrator that plucks me from obscurity and into the beating heart of it all.
I will get up and face the stories of my unlived life.
I will find the missing woman,
And I might become her.
So beautifully written!