I hate me...

I hate me...

It’s11:15 pm on a Thursday. It’s raining. You are in the den playing World Of Warcraft, the cat’s licking her ass and I am sitting in a plush beige 3^rd hand recliner in the living room of a 2 story house nestled in a suburbia which exists on the fringes of a large city in California .

The living room has shag carpet that someone told me was once orange. It might have been 25 years ago but today is an unpleasant muddy green with splotches of moldy brown. The curtains are yellow and as old as the carpet. A bowflex sits in the middle of the floor, unused, unwanted and glaring ominously at any one who passes it by.

The room is flanked by 3 bookshelves all spilling over with binders of world maps, recipes, math and English assignments, craft instructions, etc. Two plaid couches (from the late 70s?) mercifully covered by bright red table clothes, hold up the rest of the walls.

The walls themselves are plastered with a concoction of African and African American collectables, oddities and art work which start off as museum worthy then hyper jump directly into the realm of offensive and tasteless. Example: Hand carved wooden mask from Nigeria next to a green, red and white hand stitched circular pot holder that portrays a black female child in classic red lipped, moon faced, darky, pickanninny style. This is the standard décor for the rest of the 2 and ½ bathroom, 4 bedroom house. To summarize it looks as if the 70’s a Costco/Sams ( or what ever local where house supply store your familiar with) size box of Reese’s pieces, a teaching supply store and the Black Power movement got together for one wicked foursome and heaved all over the place.

The art, the carpet, the furniture, the room, the house all belong to my possibly- future -mother-in-law and is a physical manifestation of the mental and emotional abuse she endures from her husband. I used to feel sorry for her. I don't anymore. She stayed. She stayed here. She constructed her tomb. She chose to accept. I want to grab her and shake her. I want to wrap my hands around my neck and wake her up. Sometimes I even want to blame her for how my life is. If she would have demanded more of her husband and for herself you wouldn't be the person you are today right... right? That has to be the reason for it. Your father is an ass, your mother his tool and you a cross between them both.

I’m hungry. I want to stuff the hollow space within with something heavy and solid. just to pretend I'm whole. The emptiness is something food could never truly fill... but right now its close enough. I open the door to the refrigerator and look inside. It is just like the walls, just like the house, just like your mother, just like me… full of useless odds and ends, going off and in need of cleaning, in serious want of catharsis. I close the door to that little pocket of insanity and tragedy so viciously that I can hear clank of 8 13 month old salad dressings bottle cry out against eachother. Although I wonder if I have broken something I am quite certain that I do not care.

I feel destructive. This isn't good. My minds not well. I should go upstairs, sleep off or through this storm.

I might as well take a Valerian root and go to bed. I say this out loud. But the only one who hears me is the cat. Who is busily content at the moment so she could care less. I repeat my plans for retirement again, louder. And I hear you say "Go ahead I will be right up."

It's 2am before you actually comes to bed. Your feet which areicy cold from sitting in front of the window while running your latest "instance", brush against the soles of mine. I feign sleep and roll away from you but you snuggle closer and suddenly the cal king size bed isn't nearly large enough. You place your hand around my waist and slowly, slowly inches your fingers up until you are cupping my breast. Warming your frigid fingers from my body heat. I know you don't mean to be a pain. I know you just want to be close to me. But I want to cringe, I want to push you off, but I don't want to explain why.

So I lay there and I wait for your breath which comes in deep sighs to even out. I wait for you to stop your slow and gentle grinding into my back. I wait for you to sleep. And when you do I un-twine myself and push away. I'm colder than before.

I'm wide awake now.

And I'm pissed because I have to get up at 6 and go to work then leave work and go to class until 10pm and you don't have to do that.

I want to shake you. And tell you to get it together, get a real job so we can get out of this house. Get in school, get a life so I can get some respect for you. Get it together... so we can get together. Because I am so damn tired of holding our world up. So tired of being here, in this house, in this place, in this state of mind.

I want to tell you that you are killing me. That you have been killing me for five years! I want you to stop it!

But I don't. I pull the covers closer and force myself to fall asleep. In the morning I'm cuddled up next to you. It's warm, comfortable, familiar... the curve of your side against mine and the cadence of your breath, the beat of your heart.

And for five minutes right before you open your eyes, before you say good morning, I love you. I wonder if this is how your mother feels and I hate myself for it.

 

I hate this house

I hate the walls

I sometimes hate you

but most of all

I hate me

for continuing to be

here

In this house

within its walls

it's rotten, it's crumbling

it's going to fall.

Before that happen I'll come awake

I'll grab me and slap me, I'ma give me a shake

Just for now I'll sleep and grieve

But one day soon I find the strength to leave.