*** Note *** This post is post of a live experiment. I’m making an attempt to complete NaNoWriMo; the goal is to finish a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Instead of just writing 1667 words a day and letting it sit on my computer I thought why not share with my readers the first few days of this process. Which leads me to this statement…
…This is unplanned & unedited writing…
…This process scares me and excites me. Let’s see where it goes…
Marina
Chapter One
Evening of July 24, 2011
I looked outside through the sliding glass doors at the beautiful garden much of which I had planted with my own two hands. I thought about how not too long ago the red and yellow rose bushes weren’t even big enough to be noticed yet now they extended the length of the back fence. I rejoiced in the fact that my children had already settled down without me asking, the dishes from dinner were done and I would be able to enjoy dusk in my garden for once. That time of day always is when the woman inside me awakes with a smile followed by incessant dialogue. I slowly brought the cup of coffee to my lips as I stared at the two-story tall sunflower in the neighbor’s yard. I swore that the face of the sunflower was mocking me. I took a long sip from my coffee before I headed upstairs to answer what the voice in my head had asked.
I gazed at myself in the mirror; my long thick black hair was all I saw. I barely recognized my face in the mirror anymore when looked into it these days. When I looked into my heart there were only remnants of that woman I should have been. Tired of living at the intersection of forcibly content with good enough and almost great I reached into the top drawer of the bathroom vanity. Very slowly I pulled out a pair of scissors. I allowed the thoughts that usually tormented me to just flow. With each thought I cut off another chunk of my waist length curls. Thought after thought hair fell to the floor like violent waves hitting the shore. I looked into the mirror absorbed every ounce of negativity the voices in my head delivered. I kept cutting hair but I did not cry. I would not shed one tear for the woman I had not become.
I would not shed one single tear for something I could have been. I had enough of living a life in which what was good enough for most women wasn’t good enough for the woman I was supposed to have been.
I looked into the mirror and screamed, “Fuck this hair and everything that could have been!”
In my bathroom alone with the voices and their screams I destroyed the woman I presently was. When there was not enough hair left to cut with the scissors I pulled out my husband’s hair clippers. I took a very deep breath before I brought the clippers to my head. Minutes later I was completely bald. I took the hottest shower I could tolerate in that repressive summer heat. From the shower I emerged completely naked without my famously flowing hair to hide my body’s sensual curves. I dried off. Put on panties, a sports bra, a tank top, running shorts, white socks and my almost brand new running shoes I had been promising to use for months then I headed out my front door.
As I started to walk towards the street my husband called from next to his truck. I did not acknowledge him too determined to stop, I kept going.
“Marina, what the fuck happened to your hair?” he screamed.
“Gone!” I yelled back as I started to run down the street.
“You cut all your hair off and now you’re going to start running?” he asked.
“No. I cut my hair and now I am going to start living!” I screamed angrily.
As I ran, I thought about everything I was feeling. I had been so very calm just not too long ago looking out in my serene garden. Everything I needed was inside that house but something always seemed to be missing. Everything I needed was within my four walls: sons that loved me, a man that provided for us and loved our sons. That house, those four walls, my sons, and my husband yes, they were everything I needed and wanted but something always seemed to be missing.
As I ran as fast as I could away from the house, those four walls, my sleeping sons and my husband I thought about what I had that was truly mine. I had nothing. I had everything I needed but absolutely nothing else. My four walls of comfort had become a prison of despair for a woman that always seemed to be missing something – inside. I took a left turn at the end of Foresta Terrace knowing that after that moment nothing would be the same again. My thoughts wouldn’t stop. The pain wouldn’t stop surfacing so as I ran as hard as my aching body would allow. It was like my body was sobbing from the inside out through aches in my joints and cramps in my muscles. I ran until I reached a bridge that went over the railroad and a creek right where the two began running parallel.
That creek like the sunflower earlier began to torment me with it almost complete emptiness. The water in it was dark, muddy and sustained no life. The creek had become the place where runners and joggers threw their garbage. My mind focused on a juice box floating in the dead creek. As I started to think of my sons a train blew it’s horn and scared me half to death as it rushed from behind me and past me back towards my house. I ran as fast as I could the other way. That train going full speed carrying livestock among it’s cargo so full of energy so full of life running alongside a dirty dead old creek. I was between them needing to figure out what was dead inside of me but all I could do was run.
Everything I needed couldn’t possibly be within those four walls if I so often felt like I was dying. I had started to dry up like that creek a long time ago. How could I have lied to myself for so long. That’s when the sobbing of my joints and muscles came out and I dropped. I allowed myself to sob and sob and scream. Between the sobbing I kept screaming to, “this can’t be everything! This wasn’t what I wanted but I love them!”
Since I was a child happiness and depression have shared a very thin line within my emotional center. Like the river and the train they’ve always run parallel with a very small vein of trail between them. I found myself sitting on that trail with each foot pulling me in a different direction but neither wanting to go back to that house. I felt like I was dangling. Dangling my entire being. Dangling on each side of that trail not knowing what it was that I needed to realign me back to center. I had no clue how to get myself together long enough to get back up to continue my run home. I knew it was going to be dark soon and that being on that trail after dark probably wasn’t safe. The fear of what could happen to me on that trail forced me to my feet but my feet did not take me home.
Further down the trail they propelled my run and the more I continued to tell myself to turn around that this wasn’t safe or smart the faster my feet ran away. The voices in my head laughed at all the fear based logic that I presented to myself so that I would turn around. The voices in my head laughed as my feet ran me towards my fear. Those voices kept laughing and mocking as the sun set faster and my feet disobeyed my commands. Whatever was missing had triggered this run without knowing what “it” was I could not control it or fight it.
As my feet ran the darkness began to blanket me fear crawled inside of me and every bush that swayed in the wind startled me until I started to cry again. I pleaded with myself to stop running in that darkness but the more I pleaded the more “it” took over me. “It” wanted me to feel the fear. “It” wanted me to experience the intimacy of fear. I wanted to go home back to my prison where comfort ruled and fear had no admittance. “It” kept me running for almost an hour until the wind blowing through the bushes no longer made me jump. I was growing accustomed to letting fear penetrate me then in the darkness I saw a figure. Something was moving and fear asked me what I was going to do.
Keep running towards it?
Keep running towards it.
Keep running towards it!
I did just that. I kept running towards the dark figure rushing towards me. I took a deep breathe hoping that this wouldn’t be my last run. Then through the darkness a deep voice emerged from the figure and said good evening as it ran past me and I barely made out a man’s jogging suit. Shortly after “it” said that was enough and I once again collapsed. For another hour I sat on the edge of the trail as close as I could get to the creek trying to see if I could make anything out in it. I had no clue what was going on inside of me but I knew that things were different and that something had awaken from a very long sleep. “It” was something powerful. Something very different from the woman that I had looked at in the mirror earlier that day. “It” was nothing like the woman I had hoped to once become.
“It” was in charge and everything that I had within those four walls back home was about to change. As my mind turned to the ones I loved most. To the ones in my house “it” reminded me that unlike me “it” didn’t need much less want what was within those four walls.
***the story continues here***
