There is no way to tell this story without first telling you I have never been able to decide on a clear path. I change my mind a lot. I cannot choose which way to go, but only spin like a top when it comes to finding my way. It makes people around me wonder about me.
It makes me wonder about me.
It makes me wonder about her. The other me, the one who things happened to, she who knows the things she knows born out of the experiences she walked through. She – her – that girl.
So much of what she has seen and felt, I don’t think about. I can remember scenes from the past and feel sympathy for her. She was alone and friendless and kept her books and her brother close to keep her company. She walked home by herself, blocking the sounds behind her – mean sounds and mean words from the classmates she grew up around. Her town was a small one, there was no escape from the repute that had been draped over her at a young age: dorky, ugly, heavy. Weird. “Mary Goon, Mary the Goon—turn around! Why are you walking so fast, come talk to us, we want to ask questions, we want to –” She runs as fast as she can.
I feel pity for her, what a terrible time for that little girl.
She had experiences I can barely believe really happened. But, they really happened. Many were good: she really did find friends in college – they didn’t know she was “the weirdo.” She really did the hard work to grow up and to assess which parts of her home life in childhood had been good. Which parts had been bad.
Some weren’t good: she really did have someone put a gun to her head while she was alone at work. That really happened. I don’t like to think about what that must have been like for her. I think that would be pretty traumatizing.
She really did fall in love and have her heart broken. Well, I can relate to that—that’s a pretty universal experience, I think. I remember how she cried and cried and cried, so heartbroken it could have inspired epic art…poems, paintings, passion plays.
She really did receive phone calls informing her of the losses—grandfather, grandmother, grandfather, in-law, -in-law, in-law, mother, father, husband, in-law. Beloved brother. The people she loved who one by one fell out of her sense of space and who she will be greeted in tandem when she departs into the afterlife.
That girl was blessed with multiple lifetimes in this lifetime. She’s experienced worlds of pain and iterations of love, ad infinitum. She was a child, she has children. She felt hurt, she feels hope. She continues to spin, a top spinning into the next verse of her prose, into the next chapter that is the story of her life. I care about finding out what happens to her.
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mary june brown 