"It Is Myself I Have Never Met..."

"It is myself I have never met whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind."

I memorized this line seven years ago and I say it to myself almost every month when that familiar bout of "otherness" passes through. Sarah Kane, a remarkable British playwright, wrote this beautiful morsel of prose in 1999—the final line of her final play 4.48 Psychosis. She died by suicide soon after finishing it.

I spoke this line in a bathtub full of lukewarm water, strands of hair, and the shed skin cells of my fellow performers for many, many nights in August of 2016. A formidable soup of the work we'd done that summer. The rehearsals, the memorization, the hot, sweaty build days all bled together in this tub. We were 22 and 23 and running a theatre company—this being our first production. Brutal, but we were hungry and mad (no, not like "crazy," we were literally angry people) so it all worked out just fine. We had the passion and angst and support to see it through, to bring it to life, and showcase it to the few who turned out to see it.

A remarkable piece of work, I am proud of what we did. I look back on those days fondly and smile, but as the distance grows between those Black Box brawls and now, that same smile feels bitter and achy. I don't just look back and see the tub, the water, the screaming, the yelling—the gorgeous poetry of it all, no. I see the outline of a body. A crime scene. A shadow. A previously undefinable loneliness was brought to life during my time with that script. And it visits me sometimes, this creature. That creature. The creature.

I see the creature that was born from Sarah's words—words that encouraged this feeling I've housed deep and low (in a body that doesn't feel like my own) to take its first breath. And I've been running from it ever since. It taps me on the shoulder a few times a year and playfully reminds me that it's coming. It reminds me of its gospel. It reminds me of its truth— a truth so intoxicating I claim it as my own sometimes and dab it on my collarbones and behind my ears. It lingers still if you stand close enough to me.

It gives me breaks sometimes, this creature. Years, even. But we dance and fuck and mingle for a long while when it comes around. And it feels so good to be beside them while they're here, but lately they have me wanting to leave this body, this existence, this life, behind. Pack it all away nicely in a little old suitcase or trunk on the bedroom floor. Maybe someone more capable and deserving and lovely can unpack it and hang it in their closet in a few thousand years, they say.

Maybe.

I cling to the hanger, my grip loosening a bit each go-round.

And on suffocating summer days, when the cacophony of cicadas has severed the last bit of sanity I have left, I feel that creature's breath along the back of my neck and it reminds me that I am a collage of my rejectors. I wear the face of my grandmother who only speaks the language of abuse and bigotry. The face of a father whose judgment rivals that of The Almighty. The hips and stomach and thighs and cellulite of a mother dedicated to the art of shrinking herself in dressing rooms, crying to her baby daughter about her maternal roundness—her size 6 jeans. She dedicates her life to the love of men who are capable of no such thing and while I pray I don't house a duplicate heart, I am wary on this August Wednesday. Wary of being left like Papa left me when he called me a "cunt." I asked my teacher on Monday what that word meant and they never looked at me the same. Maybe they didn't like me anymore after I asked. Maybe they were afraid of me like everyone else.

Maybe.

When it visits, the creature reminds me that I am meant to be alone, too "other" to belong to the others. My life started to make sense when they told me this. I started to make sense. I was born chasing friends who weren't really friends and family who weren't really family. Falling in love with people who didn't want me, just the idea of me. Not so different than Mother after all. Still, I think I'm closer to people than I really am—believing that maybe I've found a home when it was really just cruel indifference repackaged as politeness.

Never the smartest, the most wealthy, the most pretty, the most talented—virtues my family measures one another on, backs against the kitchen wall, we stand on our tiptoes to prove we are worthy at all.

Who am I without the approval, the validation, the acceptance of these people who clasp their hands so tight around this ruler? Instead of patiently waiting to be measured, might I just slip through the cracks in the floorboards and let them forget about me? Forget to hold me to their rigid expectations, the definition they've placed beside my name. I've never met "Lexie"—how could they? Will we ever truly meet each other? Has our family's unwillingness to speak of love, of feeling, of emotion robbed us of one another?

Maybe.

I'll ponder that and I'll bide my time with the creature this August. I may even recite that line of the play to it tonight when I am robbed of sleep. It'll clasp its claws into my dimpled flesh as I speak the words from which it was born all those years ago.

And maybe it'll take me to that bathtub again and let me soak. Maybe I will imbibe on the truth, the promise, the hurt it has preached for the last eighty-four months and sink below that water.

Maybe.

Or maybe I will trade places with that creature. Let them enjoy the fetid water for a change. Maybe they'll forget they don't know how to swim. Maybe they'll forget they don't know how to hold their breath. Maybe I won't care. Or maybe I'll resuscitate them, my lips held tightly against theirs, because I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to an old fling.

Maybe.