Unknowingly Isolated

I had seen her around from time to time, and noticed the way her outfits were carefully chosen but still made no sense. She was a good woman in her thoughts from time to time; other times I could hear her soft cries of regret and mistrust of her own flesh.

I had seen her around from time to time before I knew fully what she meant. She’s quite pretty and plain. She is happy to a naked eye.

Late one night, walking on the cabin boarding that had soaked up the humidity of the day, I felt at ease and strong in my body. I felt like I knew what I wanted and I could get into my home to reach it. I wanted a bath, alone, with steaming water and sweet scented soapy bubbles. I wanted my hair up, but I wanted small strands to reach down to the water and get slightly wet. I wanted to tease the idea of having the whole mess fall down into that soapy water.

Walking. Walking.

Still walking, I slow my steps at the end where I turn to the stairs. I notice a small plastic cell phone. Pink. It’s a clamshell version, lying facing up and open, with buttons that sparkle and glow in the faded darkness. The toy is in front of a door, an apartment like my own, but vacant with papers weathered and curled hanging from the doorknob. No one lives here, no one appreciates the long views and lightning bugs in the forest at night.

A baby cries. I can always hear babies crying all around me in my home, especially howling in the bathroom through the pipes. It’s not unknown to me, in a complex with couples as fertile as the green manicured grass all around us. This baby is different–she is crying with the intimacy of a grown woman. Babies cry as a response to something they are usually unaware of that causes them discomfort, not knowing how to fix it. This baby is different–she is aware of what’s wrong, she’s aware there’s nothing to fix it. It seeps into my flesh and feeds my veins the type of adrenaline I’d need to reach to that golden tarnished doorknob.

The door creaks as I open it, matching the baby’s high pitched cries and throaty expressions.
The apartment is muggy and warm, confirming my suspicions that the place is vacant, untouched, virginal ground…waiting for another fertile couple to occupy its walls with loving embraces and fights, and babies that cry differently and more perfectly than the one I hear all around me.
I walk slowly into the living room, seeing in the still darkness other strange children’s toys thrown around in odd positions.
A Barbie is vivid to me even through the darkness, bent and contorted into a strange backward crescent shape, with hair wild, red and stringy over the beige and plain carpet.
The home smells of that sweet smelling soap, of lotion and sparkles a little girl might have…infiltrating my nostrils and reminding me of the somber evening I’d planned.
The adrenaline reminded me that I knew this would happen eventually, and it’s all following a course.

I found her in the far bedroom, the one as large as three bedrooms with an odd shape and contour. She sat near the window, catching a bit of fickle moon light, smiling and crying at the same time. I had seen her around from time to time, more put together than this, although this was always visible on her arms and legs in long paths of bruises, on her face in the narrow curve of her eyes and confusion in her mouth’s expression. She was making noises a mother makes to calm and entertain her child, but they were in a higher octave than many would consider normal and seemed to be influenced by the adrenaline in my own veins. She was practicing baby speak on growth hormones, her face distorted and tensioned due to the overwhelming nature of the sounds her mind implored her to create.

Another version of her with chubby arms and legs thrown about the floor, twisted into a backward crescent and howling into the night, cut on the bottoms of her feet and complete with a thick and dampened diaper. Another version of her, unable to benefit from the highs coursing through her blood, suffering from the strain put on her understanding, and completely knowledgeable about happiness and unhappiness at the age of 18 months. Another version of her with a dirty slate, the slate that comes from understanding what it is to be an expense to your creator.

You’ll never undo the burdens you create in this life.

I sat to speak with her and wiped away a mascara tear before it dropped onto her color coordinated, expensive and still somehow incomplete outfit.

She talked to me about depression. She talked to me about medication. She talked to me about mind-warping pills and falling down repeatedly. She talked to me about being trapped in her own body, aware of her actions and unable to prevent and control them. She talked to me about being a good Christian, about her trials and errors, and about how she tries and fails so often but continues to try. She wanders from friend to friend, but people only stare at her blankly in avoidance. She tries to interact, but there’s no one to interact with but her own second self. She seeks out people, but no one could ever understand her… no one would ever even try to, it’s far too dangerous. She wishes she knew what it was that made people treat her differently than she sees people being treated on the bright lights of her TV at home.

She was strangely knowledgeable on the facts of birth control, living organisms in the womb, how to prevent them, and how to ignore the reality of abortions and care for them if you cannot prevent them. Her words slurred only slightly, her tears came and went, and her eyes told me she was present even through the strange body actions and quivers.

The crying of her second version ceased and began often, and it never fully stopped. It came in surges that were completely unpredictable, in waves that I began to recognize as something her first lives with and fails to react to. In a way, they are both completely numbed. The first fails to recognize the second as she wails and screams, the second wails and screams about the first…but the stimulus is never consistent or necessary. It is completely unpredictable and therefore comes and goes without reason or cause, as a result of a numbed feeling of constant rejection.

I sat cross-legged as I did as a child.

I bit my inner lip and hoped neither would see.
I bit back a tear or two myself, and longed for that steamy, sweet and soapy bath I had planned on instead. I felt dirty, from the intentions this world has for all of its creatures, and all of the things I could be but am not. I wandered out, but not before stretching at the door… my legs had fallen asleep and my arms were really hurting me. I stretched into a backward crescent shape, and continued on the cabin steps to my door.