(Towanda!) Alexandra in Limbo

Like when the coffee is just too freaking hot to drink.

Like when they tell you you are a bad person enough times for you to start believing them.

When all you have is small potatoes and you decide to buy the sweater anyway.

When you wake up every night to what can only be described as an existential stomach pain.

When you just can’t seem to find it in you to start doing the spring cleaning.

When you cancel everything to stay in and stare at the wall.

When you linger in bed, eyes closed, wanting the day to just go away.

When you pick up the book you were dying to read and feel nothing.

When you stop trying to tell people, and merely answer “Fine, I’m fine.”

When you start using the same phrase with your husband.

When you feel life is being measured with a tea spoon instead of buckets.

When you look outside and don’t want to go there anymore.

When you feel you can never ever get rid of all the dust in your house.

When they won’t answer the phone anymore.

When they tell you they are too busy to talk.

When you start telling everyone the same thing.

When you can’t understand when it started happening, all this exclusion.

When you can’t take it anymore.

When they tell you you are not a nice person, you are a tight-ass, difficult, that you are nothing.

When you start wondering if people were always this mean to each other, and you are only now waking up to the fact.

You were never cut out for the bohemian life style.

You were someone who changed her pillow every week and aired her sweaters after every use to prolong their life.

You woke up at the same time every day.

You wrote meticulously in your diary.

Not one piece went missing from your puzzles.

You made scrapbooks and organized your photographs according to theme and time.

After a while, you stopped longing for company.

You unlisted your phone number because you became afraid of the strange men contacting you, thinking you were some sort of fellow convict.

You started looking behind your shoulder and contemplating getting an alarm of some kind.

You grew old, withdrawn, and bitter.

Your hair turned white.

You lit candles, reciting “What harm was done to me, here is twice the harm to you” nine times.

You decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.

You felt horrible for wanting to retaliate.

You remembered when you used to sit on the porch swing, with the evening sun shining on your bare legs through the vines, you remembered an immense beauty and felt a lost, primal love for even the spider living in the juniper bush. But that was gone now.

You ate the exact same dinner every night.

You no longer allowed any exceptions.

When your husband told you you looked like you were about to burst into tears every night you said goodnight to him, you looked away.

When he said he was always there, if you ever felt like telling him what the matter was, you felt your tongue tied as if by a spell. 

You started thinking maybe that was your own doing, by mistake.

You figured this must be finally what being an adult, a grown-up, was like. Years flashing by, friends disappearing, another small life lived in the suburbs. You became an old woman.

Alexandra! What must be done to make you see the beauty of this life? How can we get the message through to you? Can you not see the incredible light all around you? Must you indulge yourself so? You live, you die, Alexandra, and all this surplus suffering makes no difference at all, you are right about that.

Alexandra! There is love there, I promise you. There is love and kindness and goodness, and taking into heart people’s thoughtless words means only giving them unnecessary power over you. Quit toying with sorcery, and mean it, if you are going to practice magic!

Alexandra! Please come back. Come back to me. Come back to me. It is not over, and you will not succumb to this pointless self-pity! It isn’t over, I tell you!

Alexandra, my dear Alexandra! If you give up now, where is my competition? Get a grip, Alexandra, and pull your head out of your ass! We have unfinished business, and while I may not live in the juniper anymore, I am alive and need you. There is no light without darkness. And I am your darkness, darling. I am it.

So quit making up excuses, Alexandra, and get with the program! Ours is not a union forged in hell, but in love. If you didn’t know it then, know it now. Get yourself organized, Alexandra, and fight me. Fight me! I’ll be waiting. I will always be waiting and loving you in the shadows.

(Thinking of Alice Hoffman, John Updike, Stephen King, and Margaret Mitchell)