Nothing to Keep My Hands Warm
© Rachel C
This weekend, all it did was rain. It rained, rained straight down to the ground, heavy, thick, rain. The temperature dropped to below freezing, below zero, and the rain became ice as it plummeted. It gathered in the yard, on the branches of bare trees and bushes, on the sidewalks and streets. It piled to five inches, maybe six, and refuses to melt. My world is buried under half a foot of pure ice, and yet not crumbling under the pressure.
The cold reaches everywhere. Sitting in the living room is uncomfortable alone, but no one was alone this weekend. My sister came home, brought food, ready to sit it out with the comforts of a home she doesn’t so much consider home anymore. She brought her best friend, who has been a member of our family since before I was in high school. Wrapped in blankets in the living room, watching television shows now on DVD and movies we have seen more than a million times, they sat for a day straight, and I sat with them, glad to have the warmth of other bodies just feet away. Glad to no longer consider myself alone. At least I didn’t feel alone for a while. I didn’t feel alone, I didn’t seem alone, I didn’t think that I was. But, that is the humor with being alone on a deeper level than physical. Because I wasn’t physically alone, I could distract myself from how emotionally alone I feel when I see everyone I have spent this past month with—when I see everyone that I told myself I would prove wrong. I haven’t, I guess is what I am trying to say. I haven’t because I let them make me feel lonely, because I let them make me feel excluded, because I wake up bitter when I hear them in the next room, all the while I know I shouldn’t. But, I do, because they are not who I want them to be, and I am hardly who I know I can be.
That is such a...well, it’s a self-motivational thing to say, and for me to once again say it I feel redundant and dumb. Dumb because I know better, because I know I shouldn’t have to say it anymore. Dumb because I know it, and I would never believe myself anyway. Yet, here is the funny thing about feeling dumb or never believing it anyway: everyday this week, these past weeks, I have proven the dumb feeling wrong; I have proven my unwillingness to change just a misconception of my self-confidence. And of my capability. So, how dumb do I really feel now for saying it; for saying I can be better than who I am? For saying this isn’t who I am at all, but a façade built by the people around me, a barrier only they can break down? That is the silly talk, the dumbness indeed. I built this wall, yes I did; thus I tear it down, all on my own. And waking up bitter is just another sign that it’s been far too long; just another signal that I have kept myself on the wrong side of the wall for longer than I needed to.
When I felt secluded, I would make a joke; I would say I felt like I was on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. We all know which side was the wrong side, which side I found myself on. Somehow I always felt like everyone who should have supported me had snuck to the West side, and I was barred. Named communist and kept out. Different, improper, inappropriate for democracy. But, isn’t that irony? Shouldn’t democracy have let me in anyway? Democracy was a hypocrite, and communism a façade; and the wall as just something to let us all distinguish between the two, even though we all knew they were somehow the same. It was a wall, an iron curtain, a sheet of ice to keep us apart so that we could never know just how alike we were; so that we could continue to argue and distract from the reality that all any of us wanted was to never feel alone. One of us, one of us didn’t understand that standing on the East side didn’t mean everyone else was wrong to stand on the West. She didn’t understand that, in order to be accepted, she had to find a sledgehammer and cross the barrier herself.
I think she does. Maybe it is a little too late. Communism fell, and democracy is on the spread; maybe it is a little too late to see beyond the sheet of ice.
I know who I am, if that isn’t too presumptuous to say. I do know how I am, the person who is under all of that ice. My sister, when I was sixteen, called me an ice bitch. An ice queen. I see it now, this layer of frozen tundra. I am not saying at all that she was right, because I think part of that wall rests on her, but I see the matter on my skin, in my hair, but not over my eyes—not anymore. I think I have the possibility of melting, I think I know the person below is bright and shiny. I think I was just waiting for it to happen, but now I know I have to find the ice pick and pull away the frost. And, even though it makes me feel dumb to say, I have to shed the layers of dark and twisty, scary and damaged, to get to the bright, to get to the shiny, to get to the warm without needing to be in a room full of people to find it.
Standing at the dinning room window, half past nine as the day has already turned to night, I watch the ground sparkle on the top layer of ice. The tree branches are crystal, the bush in the front yard is like a blown glass sculpture, the sheet of ice glistens like one thousand diamonds. It’s so beautiful, so peaceful, so elegant is the idea that you forget there is half a foot below cutting off life, freezing through the green, chilling the world below. The only thing that can give the grass, the trees, the earth hope is to remember that soon it will melt, wash away, and everything will be given a second chance to be new.
This weekend, all it did was rain. It rained, rained straight down to the ground, heavy, thick, rain. The temperature dropped to below freezing, below zero, and the rain became ice as it plummeted. It gathered in the yard, on the branches of bare trees and bushes, on the sidewalks and streets. It piled to five inches, maybe six, and refuses to melt. My world is buried under half a foot of pure ice, and yet not crumbling under the pressure.
The cold reaches everywhere. Sitting in the living room is uncomfortable alone, but no one was alone this weekend. My sister came home, brought food, ready to sit it out with the comforts of a home she doesn’t so much consider home anymore. She brought her best friend, who has been a member of our family since before I was in high school. Wrapped in blankets in the living room, watching television shows now on DVD and movies we have seen more than a million times, they sat for a day straight, and I sat with them, glad to have the warmth of other bodies just feet away. Glad to no longer consider myself alone. At least I didn’t feel alone for a while. I didn’t feel alone, I didn’t seem alone, I didn’t think that I was. But, that is the humor with being alone on a deeper level than physical. Because I wasn’t physically alone, I could distract myself from how emotionally alone I feel when I see everyone I have spent this past month with—when I see everyone that I told myself I would prove wrong. I haven’t, I guess is what I am trying to say. I haven’t because I let them make me feel lonely, because I let them make me feel excluded, because I wake up bitter when I hear them in the next room, all the while I know I shouldn’t. But, I do, because they are not who I want them to be, and I am hardly who I know I can be.
That is such a...well, it’s a self-motivational thing to say, and for me to once again say it I feel redundant and dumb. Dumb because I know better, because I know I shouldn’t have to say it anymore. Dumb because I know it, and I would never believe myself anyway. Yet, here is the funny thing about feeling dumb or never believing it anyway: everyday this week, these past weeks, I have proven the dumb feeling wrong; I have proven my unwillingness to change just a misconception of my self-confidence. And of my capability. So, how dumb do I really feel now for saying it; for saying I can be better than who I am? For saying this isn’t who I am at all, but a façade built by the people around me, a barrier only they can break down? That is the silly talk, the dumbness indeed. I built this wall, yes I did; thus I tear it down, all on my own. And waking up bitter is just another sign that it’s been far too long; just another signal that I have kept myself on the wrong side of the wall for longer than I needed to.
When I felt secluded, I would make a joke; I would say I felt like I was on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. We all know which side was the wrong side, which side I found myself on. Somehow I always felt like everyone who should have supported me had snuck to the West side, and I was barred. Named communist and kept out. Different, improper, inappropriate for democracy. But, isn’t that irony? Shouldn’t democracy have let me in anyway? Democracy was a hypocrite, and communism a façade; and the wall as just something to let us all distinguish between the two, even though we all knew they were somehow the same. It was a wall, an iron curtain, a sheet of ice to keep us apart so that we could never know just how alike we were; so that we could continue to argue and distract from the reality that all any of us wanted was to never feel alone. One of us, one of us didn’t understand that standing on the East side didn’t mean everyone else was wrong to stand on the West. She didn’t understand that, in order to be accepted, she had to find a sledgehammer and cross the barrier herself.
I think she does. Maybe it is a little too late. Communism fell, and democracy is on the spread; maybe it is a little too late to see beyond the sheet of ice.
I know who I am, if that isn’t too presumptuous to say. I do know how I am, the person who is under all of that ice. My sister, when I was sixteen, called me an ice bitch. An ice queen. I see it now, this layer of frozen tundra. I am not saying at all that she was right, because I think part of that wall rests on her, but I see the matter on my skin, in my hair, but not over my eyes—not anymore. I think I have the possibility of melting, I think I know the person below is bright and shiny. I think I was just waiting for it to happen, but now I know I have to find the ice pick and pull away the frost. And, even though it makes me feel dumb to say, I have to shed the layers of dark and twisty, scary and damaged, to get to the bright, to get to the shiny, to get to the warm without needing to be in a room full of people to find it.
Standing at the dinning room window, half past nine as the day has already turned to night, I watch the ground sparkle on the top layer of ice. The tree branches are crystal, the bush in the front yard is like a blown glass sculpture, the sheet of ice glistens like one thousand diamonds. It’s so beautiful, so peaceful, so elegant is the idea that you forget there is half a foot below cutting off life, freezing through the green, chilling the world below. The only thing that can give the grass, the trees, the earth hope is to remember that soon it will melt, wash away, and everything will be given a second chance to be new.
January 14, 2007
Author's Note: It feels good to know you're on to something.
2 comments:
very nice analogy...im excited for you that youre on to something...and on a side note i use to be comforted by minor acts of nature that would create a detour to our otherwise routine days, not anymore...
Hahaha, yeah...well....
I have used that analogy for years, and it is totally perfect. I feel like, in order to be accepted, I have to be just like everyone else, thus "democracy" is indeed on the spread, or I am just awkward and unloved. Something like that. No, yeah, I'm brilliant.
Hahaha, also, this global warming thing that is fucking us all up, yeah, it believes in karma.
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