I remember her like that. I remember trying to stretch: to cross that span between the reality she saw and where she had left me; beached. I wonder what she was looking at when she stared off into her private universe, her face changing from anger to fear to a kind of absolute bliss. Does she and I share the same sense of private horror the way we share our DNA: Or is it that I’m more afraid of not partaking of her dementia? There is a strange comfort, a total lack of responsibility in being crazy. People expect so little from the mentally ill, “oh she didn’t mean it, she can’t help herself, you know she’s…” all in hushed whispers freeing you from the conventions that bind others, giving you almost a license to behave differently than would otherwise would be permitted. Which am I afraid of the staying or the leaving; each holds its own particular brand of horror.
Past lovers hold a conference in my head, comparing notes, exchanging antidotes, telling tales out of school, exposing me to each other for their own personal amusement. They hurl their recrimination at me (each had at one time or another sniffed out a different flaw that must be shared, picked apart with the others), they mummer old pet names almost forgotten. My mind’s eye pans over these men that I have loved or thought I loved or acted as if I loved or pretended I loved or simply wanted so desperately to love. The person they knew does not exist anymore, not in any form that they would reorganize. Listening to them chatter on and on about a child, a girl, a woman long dead is eerie and uncomfortable; but each of them is precious in hindsight. My eyes hover over their features. They are exactly the same as when we parted not a hair has changed. Their images are photographs. And so I remember. The sweetness of one, the laugh of another, the utter meanness and pettiness of yet another. That one over there so generous that he; he never; well he just never. I’m surprised by the fact that one or two of them can still bring a tear to my eye, that I still miss them, these old lovers still haunt me in some way. I would like to exorcise them, be fresh and pure and ready to receive a clean imprinting from a new beloved. To be unfettered with all this old baggage, suitcases of disappointment, satchels of shattered ideals. Was I ever like “that”? Is anyone ever like that.
