Rustings

The days are a blur, running into one another like a watercolor painting with too much water.
Colors to canvas to liquid cognizance running endlessly.
Drip, drip, drip goes the thorazine caffeine.
The sun seems perpetually asleep as I find myself sitting across from him every night at the diner.
Buried under research hypotheses and court cases as the clock finds itself flirting with three am once again.
It's a frenzy of youth, and I save the best part of the day for last.
And at three-thirty in the afternoon.
Maybe it's the romanticized idea of rusted anodynes exposing flakes of emotional joints
Exposing those wretched things I had long since buried beneath the wake of my old life.

It's just sex. It's just sex. It's just sex.
Rehearsing the mantra over and over again hoping that the third or fourth or fifty-fourth time I would believe it.
Pulling me in close to his body at the end.
Hand on his chest as he lays there with his eyes closed
Feeling the warmth and muscle of his chest under my hand.
Eyes closed.
Shifting only to kiss my forehead.
Believing that I don't care just in case he doesn't as much as me.
Just in case I want to become further attached.
Spread this alabaster rib caged heart wide.
Smother the embers beginning to glow in my chest.

I wanted to talk to you about my apathy.
Watching the seasons pass from my window.
Wishing I was bone and metal softness.
Growing skin over these impasses
of petal sharp granite.

Anodyne rustings. 

I spend many a minute-hour trying to hold on to this.

Then trying to remind myself that if I'm accepted into my masters program I will be moving an hour and a half away. 

And neither of us can manage to stay faithful.
We would break it off before that because we know.
Or we just won't want to do the distance after spending every moment we aren't in class or I'm at work together. 

The things we presuppose.

It's more than just physicality and yet it's simply that.
Or the gains in recovered pieces marked by nakedness.
I couldn't feel for long while and it seemed that my body was separate from my mind.

I had rusted.
Resigned to that thing living we all remark on with a sigh.
The separation spread to my relationships, if that's what you could call them.
On autopilot playing Juliet, that's how he described me.
I denied it because I had found something good, something more mature, even if it was only mine for a moment.

Tomorrow I put on my elegant yet business like dress.
Slip on heels with made up face and hair.
Splash on smiles and don the charisma that is so natural to me.
I'll pretend I don't still struggle with my eating disorder.
That my sexual abuse is a thing of the past.
That my mother's frequent suicidal thoughts as a result of her PTSD from my father doesn't concern me.
That the fact that my father doesn't really support my education or really anything I did in my life or the fact that he hints at thinking I'm ungrateful and like my mother doesn't even cause me to turn my head in contemplation of looking back.
Healthy.
Tomorrow I make my case for why I am a fantastic candidate for the counseling program at this school.
I'm nervous.
A bundle of nerve and hope.

Cleaning off this rust. 

Vulnerable

I knocked on the door three times, "tap, tap, tap," before opening it myself.
He turned in his chair, looking at me with what I can only describe as something like lust and longing both.
Standing up, he pushed his chair back and quickly closed the gap that separated us.
In an instant my cheek was in his hand, lips on mine, pushing me against the door.
My keys and phone found the shelf next to my head as my hand lifted to rest on his opposite cheek, feeling his closely trimmed facial hair under my fingers, left hand tangling up to my middle knuckles around his shoulder length hair.
When the first fire had died, he held me close.
"I'm glad you're back."
Smiling, I nuzzled closer into his solid and warm chest.
"Me too. I missed you."

The drive home usually drags on, being the fourth year I've made it.
Not this time.
Getting out of my car, I looked at the window and took a deep breath.
Up the stairs to his door.
Exhale.
Knocked twice, softly.
L didn't hear it and I had to knock again, three times this time and much louder.
The opening door revealed a smile and he pulled me into a hug, going in for a kiss.
I turned away, saying something to avert what was happening.
We decided to go for dinner, Mexican, and I decided to have three margaritas.
Two Coronas for him.
Conversation flowed, but he could tell something was wrong.
I neglected to try and touch him, be close to him.
"What's wrong?" I asked, swirling my finger around the rim, licking the salt from my finger."
"You aren't as intimate. You aren't the same. What changed?"
"Not here." Eyes burning a hole through his.

We sat on his futon, but I had to get up and pace.
"I'm sorry, I just need a break. I know you said that usually when you and past girls have taken a break it didn't end up working out, but it's not you. I just... I just started dating you too fast. I needed someone to pull me out of that terrible relationship and that responsibility fell on you. I don't know why, but I'm so grateful. Listen, it's not that I doubt the end result. I still think you and I are a great match to get married someday. Right now, I just need to breath. Five years was a long time to be with someone."
Words a jumble.
"What does this mean for us? Just like not be intimate or do less couple things?"
"Well, it's not like we act much different than when we were just friends. We just touch more now. I still plan on seeing you when I'm home and still plan on coming to your Thanksgiving and having you come to mine. I just feel bad because our families think that we're getting married soon and I just need time. Tell them whatever you want"
"It's fine. We can just make this between us."
I swallowed hard.
"Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. I still love you."
Smiling, a bit of sadness touching the corners of his eyes, "I love you too."

"You're going to have to be vulnerable. If you looked back on the one that broke your heart and you could push a button to get rid of all the pain but would take all the good things you learned too, I know you wouldn't push it."
"You're right. I wouldn't."
"Sometimes you just have to trust. What you learn in the end is worth more than the potential of getting hurt."
I looked up into his eyes, probing around to see if this only held a crash and burn ending
"This has the potential to blow up in our faces, but I want to try. I've never felt this before so I don't know if that's what it is. You have. You have something to compare it to."
"What does it feel like?" Fingers running up and down his back, knotting at the muscle below.
"It's warm. I've never felt warm. I can be completely honest and myself with you. I can't get anything done with you around. If I fail out of law school it'll be because of you!" pinching me playfully.
"I can't get anything done with you gone or around." Smiling, I kissed his arm.
"I know what you feel."
"Good things?" looking up at him through eyelashes.
"Things you're scared to say."
"What are they?"
"This has to come from you."
"I don't like being vulnerable. Not at all. I like perceived vulnerability, enough to draw someone in, not enough for them to have me."
"Well, I can assure you that it will be necessary at some point."
"But only if you can be with me. Vulnerable, I mean. Although you're the one that usually is."
"I'm not scared of getting hurt. So I don't give a shit about how vulnerable I am."


"This weekend I went and bought turkey and bread, some cottage cheese. Healthy stuff we can eat. I even bought more turkey because I know bread is a trigger food for you and you'd just want the turkey."
No one but my best friend had ever taken the initiative to soften the raging protests in my mind when it came my ED.
I'm in deeper than I thought.
Tumbling end over end as he tries to heal my pieces, teaching me to be vulnerable, teaching me to feel.
I'm at the point.
I'm at the point where I can't think about anything else but him if I tried.
Desperately forcing my heart up and away from the end of my sleeve, but it slides back every time.
"My goal, if nothing else comes from this, is to take you out in that black dress you love to a nice restaurant and we order pasta covered in alfredo, but not red sauce, no, white sauce, because that's worse for you, and I want you to truly enjoy yourself an not worry. I don't want you to cry when you have to eat pasta."
"That sounds ridiculous, when we say it out loud."
"It's not. It's just something you struggle with. People don't take the time to understand and I want to."



As we fell asleep that night, I felt his strong arms wrapped around me.
Some guilt assuaged from taking the needed break, the needed time to search for who I was.
There was something perfectly right about this moment in my life.
Something like fate or a blessing.
It wasn't acquired in the most honest of ways, and I have lots of work to do on my own, but somehow he's the person I need to hold the mirror up  for the rest of my recovery.
If we never coexisted beyond this moment, I would be okay.
I will have learned lessons far beyond what I could have learned with L or on my own.
That's beautiful.



I could fall in love with him, I thought.

What makes you vulnerable?
Does it haunt you?
Does it make you scared?

Here I Am

"Eve's ability to critically think and hunger to know more about her social world was what encouraged me to talk to her about graduate school. She was always a good student, but the thing that stuck out to me is her inquisitive nature into understanding more than we can provide at an undergraduate level. She has a unique perspective on the world and with time she will develop confidence in her abilities and knowledge, which will make her very successful. Without a doubt, she would be an excellent choice for your school and I highly recommend her."

What is it about people that can take over the world that attracts me so?
That look of desire in their eyes.
Air of confidence.
Capability in each fingertip.
FIbers of humanity showing through.
Mechanical titans.
I watch them, wishing it was me, but it's not.
No five year plan.
No dominating determination.
No, I stopped being that kind of hungry when I decided I'd had enough of anorexia.

We lay there in the dark as we had several weekends in a row, just talking.
"It's like, I don't know. I can't explain it. I just know that other girls with eating disorders feel the same."
"Like what?"
"Like, like if you could, you would unzip your skin and walk out. You would walk out being the person you always thought you should be."
"Hm. And what would you look like?"
I paused. I had never been asked that question and suddenly I was lost for words.
"I guess I don't know."
"You should look like you."


I can tell you secrets only the sheets know.
Pieces of tomorrows shining on strands of my hair lost on his pillows.
Sunlight peaks through the curtain and I move it over slightly, looking at the leaves trying to hold onto their summer green.
Would I always be this rolling stone?
Heart that could never settle, never be scooped up into someone else's?
Always colliding, never fusing.
We often times think of the cheater as a monster.
Second to murder.
Selfish and sly.

Maybe I'm a sociopath
I thought that as I sliced the chicken, knife sliding ever so close to my fingers.
I need someone like Tony.
Someone to treat me like shit so I don't treat other people like it.
Consume, consume, consume.
Painfully aware of the strings that have come loose.
Skin that was sealed shut.
Writhing ugliness under the surface.
Pressuring the hinges.
Maybe that's what I'm learning from this.
I am selfish.
I consume your heart so that you won't consume mine.


In reality, the cheater is very often the 22 year old girl coming out of an emotionally abusive relationship, looking for herself.
It's the notion of being bound to another for life that scares me.
Growing up the has me shying away.
But I won't last forever.
I do love others.
Hurt for them.
And I have places and spaces and things I need to be.
I'll sort something out this weekend.


I closed the copy of my letter of recommendation one of my professor's had sent me.
Here I was, at the place I assumed I would be.
Here I was with hope and promise and bareness of self.


"Let's start at the top."
His hair fell on my forehead as he looked down at me, smiling.
"I like you eyes. They're beautiful and they're almond shaped, which isn't common for your facial structure. I like the shape of your face in general, with the angular features and high cheek bones."
"Funny, I had never thought I lived up to my Czech roots."
"You do."
 Then there's your neck. Long, thin, kissable. That leads down to your clavicle which shows and that sort of cereal bowl thing you have going on which goes into slightly boney shoulders, which I think all looks sexy."
He kissed my forehead and I automatically felt my hand go to my collar bone and deep hallow it made between my bone and trapezius muscle, the long prized measuring sticks of my ED days.
"Your chest is perfect. I don't know why you're self conscious about it, and your stomach is flat."
He held up my arm and closed his hand around my wrist.
"You have these little wrists that suggest you're fragile, which I also like, but I know you're not; you're strong."
Swallowed, cleared my throat a little.
More measuring.
You've got a back that's hard and muscled when I feel it and your legs are long and sexy and muscled. There's no give."
"Sigh... then there's my butt..."
"Shh. I was saving the best for last. It has a perfect shape, perfect everything. Most taller girls lose the shape with the length of their legs."
"I could still use a few more squats."
"You're beautiful."

Here I am.
<click "Submit Graduate Program Application>
I'm ready.

The Riddle

There's something about dead lifting.
Something brute and sexy.
Iron beckons you from the ground, daring, flirting.
Hands find their places wider than legs, butt down, knees bent.
Inhaling, I look at myself in the mirror and feel the roughness of the bar in my grip.
Tighten, untighten, steel, squeeze, exhale, lift.
Like everything in life, it's overcoming the heaviness over starting on the ground.
My form is nearly perfect and I can feel the measured glances of everyone around the gym switch to me.
Including the girl I silently compete with.
He said he had to get a drink during my sets to avoid staring.
I can feel it in my butt, my back, my hamstrings, my core, counting silently to myself.
I can feel something.

The three of us sat in the little 50's retro themed bar sipping martinis and mojitos, telling stories from our undergrads, times past.
Reckless and wild in our continued search for adulthood.
The alcohol trickled down conscience fortified veins like hot liberation and without thought I gently moved my hand to his knee which sat so close to mine.
Each finger slowly stroked his leg, one at a time in agonizing tempo.
His arm immediately rippled.
"It's kind of cold in here, I'm getting goosebumps."
Looked up, smiling at me.
"Yah, it's pretty chilly," rubbing my own arm convincingly.
"A little bit," his friend said, looking around the room at others sitting at their tables and making a comment about a mutual friend.
The moment conveniently falling through the cracks.
We came home early from the bars, picking up the makings of Scarlett O'Hara's.
Soon I was in liquor slumber, awakened by soft kisses.
Ending with his arm around my waist, only waking the next morning with the sun to go to my own room.

He likes Chopin and whiskey and gambles now and then.
When we're all studying we'll look up and he'll give me that smile, the one where we both want to sneak away and pretend I wasn't bad at commitment or making choices.
But my loyalties and my interests don't inhabit the same spaces.
Where are you L and why did you morph from my prince to my friend once again?
Sometimes people will say that you don't love someone if you're interested in another.
And I think that's because we don't all want to believe it, like it could happen to us.
We don't want to believe that people are as much like the wind as you think.
Transitory and graspless.

Who am I?
Sometimes the thought flits through my mind as I approach the bar.
The distance from standing to the ground is far when you're squatting with long legs.
I load the plates one at a time, quickly putting on the clips with a little snap.
They've always been a measure of who I was since I began my recovery.
Something about breaking 90, using great force to overcome the weight on your shoulders.
Something about overcoming who you see in the mirror.
We're all doing paradoxical things.
Some of us destroying things more than others.

<Light me on fire, I'll set a blaze in your heart.>


My iron will wasn't so iron and in the end I became molten metallic with a hint of blood.
I thought maybe I had found the person I wanted to spend my life with.
It's that unexplainable feeling that lovers whisper to themselves in the middle of the night.
That secret feeling you keep to yourself, buried in your heart.
He dismantled that and all I want to know is what changed?
How?
Something is stirring.
It's that subtle rush of wings in your chest,
"Almost time to fly."
There's a reason he came like brutal rain.
There's a reason he rips negativity from my marrow and burns it.

I got lost in the moment.
Skin craving his touch like fresh dawn.
Why not with L?
I was emotionally naked with L, and to a large extent, him.

I want to write on what's happening.
Something beautiful and terrible and confusing.
Like a storm, like softness, like disoriented time.
I grasp for words and emotions and I come up short every time.
I was (am?) in love with my very dear friend.
Maybe it was poor timing as it's always been...
Dove headfirst to escape my abusive previous relationship.
I won't tell him. Can't.
There's something there.
And if I'm being honest, I want this.
I want to be in my 20's having a whirlwind romance.
Soft sighs in the night.
No reservations, no destination.
Just lips to skin.
Knees touching under the table.
Words with double meanings around friends.
Talking about music and life and the soft spots in our hearts.
He's been healing me.
Making me comfortable with my body, my mind.
Almost as though he was supposed to be the one that prepared me for that terrible thing commitment, even if it's not with him.
Or L.


The sun refracts through my eyes and through the trees.
Air warm, sun a gentle fall.
Eyelashes softly flutter as night comes.
Fifth cup of coffee with cream.
Table covered with law books and Spanish and a research proposal like crumpled leaves.
"Do you like riddles?"
"Only until I can't guess the answer."
"Oh, this one would take you weeks. You may never get it."
"Tell me anyway."
"The tip of my tongue is already touching the roof of my mouth."
"That's it?"
"Good luck."
"Does it answer my text?"
"It's an answer. Far more cheesy than your text. There's so much in words. And it's a statement. Cleverly veiled. But now once you figure it out, you'll know what I meant, and when I meant it. And you will be surprised."
"What if I can never figure it out?"
"Then you'll never figure it out."