My One Good Thing

A forever exists between two words.

The thinking. The worrying. Over zaps of electricity traveling through infinite space that somehow emerge as ideas.

Einstein’s laws don’t apply when writing on deadline. Time idles to a halt, like my granddaddy’s old truck inching toward a red light. Yet somehow you still hear that engine tick even when you stay absolutely still.

A sentence.

Papa’s revving a motor now, but this one powers our riding mower. Outside my cracked window lie rows of damp grass ready to be collected. The sun, even in May, sizzles the cuttings. That earthy, primal smell blows in with the breeze and causes my throat to itch.

I swallow hard, check my phone and then return to the blinking cursor on the laptop in front of me. My eyes scrunch. I have two days until I turn this in. Two days to write an an inspiring, earth shaking column for our school newspaper. One that will relieve me of this burden and possibly, maybe, change my corner of the world.

And yet all I have is this paragraph.

Bad things happen. Without reason. Without planning. Without purpose. And all you can do some days is remind yourself that you’re not one of the bad things, too.

The bad things. All my problems revolve around the bad things. Or should I say thing.

I shift the laptop onto my thighs.

The keys are warm under my fingers, hot almost, as if they are provoking me to clack them. But the words don’t come. I sit and stare and flick crumbs from between the letters of my keyboard. And wait another infinity before adding two additional sentences.

But what if that’s a lie. What if underneath it all, I’ve become a monster all the same?

The curser pulses away the passing seconds until I backspace over the words I just typed.

You know how you keep a secret down so deep that you forget it’s there? Even when it rumbles and ricochets around your stomach trying to reach out and be known? Mine does that, too. But I’ve become numb to the awfulness and pain, which sounds badass until you understand what that deadening does.

I don’t feel most emotions. Which means we can’t understand one another. And so I fake it. The love. The caring. The trust. I mean, yeah. Sure. These feelings do rear their ugly heads. I’m not a sociopath. I asked my psychologist to make sure and he said to ask means I’m definitely not.

But my sensations are muted. Like a thick wool blanket smothering my soul.

Oh, trauma.

Ok. So that trauma has a name. A cause. An evil, if you will. Just his name conjures up his image. His face. The moustache. The callouses on his left ring finger. And fear and rage- the two emotions not affected by this dampening dead- bubble up and spew forth and cause my mind to spiral.

Which definitely chips away at my self-appointed title of badass.

That loss of restraint starts to take over even now.

Take a breath, I tell myself. And then the grounding exercises start. I smell the fabric softener on the worn cotton sheets and press into the down pillow beneath my shoulders. I listen to the dog from the farm next to ours yapping a percussive melody.

Ow. Owwwww. Ow. Ow.

Calmer, more controlled, I stare up at the ceiling. Clumps of stucco paint cover the space above like tiny balls of snow.

And then I’m back to my stoic self.

But the ideas I cast my bait for won't come.

Instead I return to my cell and hope he’s texted. The new boy. The one that makes my stomach bubble and stir as if I just drank a freshly opened can of pop. What a good boyfriend he’d make, with his pain-free past and freehearted future.

At the very least, he’d distract me from this moment right now. Because he won’t last. They never do. That's why I write.

The computer keyboard glows with a battery powered brightness. Be a flipping moth, Georgia, I tell myself. It’s beckoning you, enticing you. Let it attract your words.

I type a bit more.

Acts were perpetrated on me as a child. Awful, vile atrocities. Trust was held against me. Love was bartered for lies.

No one talks of these traumas. Not in our halls or health classes or in the locker room before gym. And yet I know some of you reading this must understand me. And it's to you I ask...

How do we heal from this darkness without turning away from the light?

A buzzing comes from beside my pillow. My heart tightens. I flop the laptop to the side, pick up the phone and see his name on the screen. My fingers can’t type my passcode fast enough. As I press the bubbled green icon hidden in a folder, I start to feel unease.

“Incredible. Perfect. Your body, all of it, God. You're amazing.” Those are the words he writes. And they are perfect.

An electricity runs up my spine. This digital world is better than this Friday night filled with deadlines and disgust.

And as I type and press send, the phone vibrates again with another message.

I can feel my finite forever become a little shorter.