the split

he was there. at the door. in a suit. asking the same question he always asked. i didn't know what to say. usually it started mundane and ended with the cops, depending on how compliant i felt that day. i varied the answers so he would believe me. only he never did. in retrospect, he was my father. but, in reality, he was just some guy i met on a movie set. anyway. i answered him, not in the way i'm telling you, this part is for you. please know the difference when you are reading this. like. i was at the grocery store  buying food for our fridge. i was at work so i could pay our rent. i was at the gym to keep myself from going insane. i was everywhere and nowhere. but, i had nothing to answer for, i was loyal once i made up my mind about a thing.


i gave my loyalty away in handfulls to whoever could take it. no one deserved it. they never gave it back and when they did the price was ugly and one i wouldn't accept. giving in is something i don't do unless i'm fucking. and this man and i weren't fucking. we had crossed into war only. war all the time and who could cut deeper and smarter and quicker and leave invisible marks our future lovers would feel and never understand. we were masters at this war. like we had been born for it.


so-----------i hadn't bought myself any clothes in years. except slips. that was all i ever wore. slips and high heels. i cleaned our apartment with a glass of wine sitting there. i drank it like water with my hair up and makeup like elizabeth taylor. it was a meth apartment. like where they cooked it. my skin was covered in a rash that no doctor could place or take away. i had been to 4 specialists at kaiser in six months, but they couldn't help me. i went to erewhon, the health food store on beverly and they gave me some pills that kill fungus, but nothing helped me. nothing ever could. not until i moved away. after i moved away the rash left and never came back. not ever.  but, back then i was sick. i scratched all my skin off. i never itched during the day, but when i walked into the apartment, it started. i was allergic to meth or the chemicals that make it. did you know that the chemicals that make meth can burn through nerve endings if you live in an apartment too long? i mean one where someone was making it. someone who didn't tell you that was what the smell was?


the man was not what he said he was. that is normal enough. the man you love becomes something else and you accept it or you reject it. it wasn't love either. i'm a liar to call it love. lying is safer than to choose a more accurate word, but it was nothing like love. it was more like a sore that stayed and didn't heal. it was nothing i can describe without you understanding the depth of the madness that took me there. that made me stay. that made me know this was what i got as some kind of universal payment for betraying myself the way i did when i was seven. and that too, is not something i care to go into, it's just a split happened. i saw it and made the choice to stay with the sick self and lock the healthy one away. she's there if you look. she's there all the time. she just doesn't know she's there. that's where the problem gets tricky. and it's not like i feed her. something else does. and i don't control it. okay? so, don't worry too much, but just know, this is when you learned of it. and this is when i told it to you. i don't want you pretending it didn't happen later, like people are prone to doing.


so, back to it.  it's really that once the charade falls off, then what is left is a non-person. only, you don't know what to do with a non-person. i never learned that. what isn't normal is that once i noticed this dead heart-ness or soul death about the man (i shudder to call him what he was to me, but i lived with him in the manner that people who supposedly love each other do), i hid it from myself, because i was lonely. my loneliness was stronger than my ability to integrate with reality. do you know what i mean? day after day it was there---the void where a person had been---and i pretended it wasn't. that takes a certain strength in character to do that kind of thing. to deny what is and call it something else. whistling in your head like it's a sunny day when all it does is snow. there were times that i thought of moving in with someone else. i had some offers. i went to visit a man on beachwood and i was wearing my betsey johnson dress, the one that was falling apart. because i thought a slip would be too forward. but that dress barely covered me. all my parts spilled out. 


that other man had a beard, otherwise i would have crawled into his bed and gone to sleep. i would have done whatever he wanted me to, except i couldn't because of the beard. i cried in his arms. i told him how i was living and he cried too. we were like that for at least ten minutes. i don't know that man's name and he was my bridge back to humanity and he reminded me of what it means to be dead and alive at the same time. i wish i could find him and tell him how much it meant to me. that he could see what i couldn't and was brave enough to tell me. back then, if you told me something i didn't like, i cut you out forever. it's not too different now, although i say it is. but. i fought with him and ran out without my shoes with him shouting after me. i couldn't run in them and i sure as fuck couldn't go back for them. he had seen what i was. a weakling. how can you face a man once he's seen you like that? he knew i was willing to give up my life just to have someone to sleep next to, no matter how bad that person was. 


it makes me sad to remember it. and it makes me understand the cowardly hearts i have come into contact with. maybe to feel nothing is better than to feel something amazing and watch it die. that could break you into parts that you can no longer find. so that even if you want to speak to someone and tell  them what you want or feel, you simply can't. you are gone.