2010 ReWrite Version 2
Fear is what comes at us during the strangest times. u should know this, soulless coward. u sold your integrity & now, not even the dark wired fences outside, nor the threatening trespassing signs- which only further encourage curious intruders btw, nor the darkly colored walls in your mansion- will ward away the phone calls from people whose life insurance policy money u so eagerly drained. wife number 3 left so u sleep alone.
A buzzing sound jolts you awake to the sound of car alarms going off. The smell is vile. You’re lying in a pool of your own vomit, in a room you don’t recognize. how could you drink amaretto sours and curacao liquer when you had an admissions appointment at harvard the next morning? You know the feral hyena coming to swallow you whole is justly deserved when you show up late to your new job for the second time. can’t u ever be on time, you overgrown bum? The force of that fear is what causes you to break the law because you are afraid you might lose the prosecution case you spent a year building. planting evidence, r u serious? what would ur father say? what’s next?
What halts your breath for a second or two is the way you try to overcome your fear, as you try to catch your breath before you speak up in front of an entire auditorium of people who despise you for your crestfallen appearance. u cant talk in front of people without sweating like a pig. u dont know what ur doing. ur not qualified. if u try to make a sound it will come out like a clucking noise.
Being afraid is how you lose yourself in sleep for days at a time because the prospect of waking, then having so much to clean up, is shaking you down. She’s the friend you don’t want but can’t get rid of, or the enemy you never knew you had. ur not depressed, ur weak. u cant hold down a job. our father and i always supported u.
You try to avoid eye-contact when the trembling makes it impossible to stand up straight. You erase the evidence that, on the nights you couldn’t sleep, you still reach for your phone to text the guy with caramel-coated lies over backstabbing promises. the only way we can dispense these drugs is if u give me money here &now. um, cant i send someone with u? Why you needed to know you weren’t alone, you won’t say, but even the last on your list don’t text back today. You swat at the tears that emerge when the married man, a man who could be a plumber, a janitor, or a tree-cutter comes over to your house. It’s apparent he is and always will be a fixer, and only his hands can soothe you from falling into sharp, jagged pieces of blood stained glass. why? 2confusing!! u heart him, but in the way a girl loves a boy, not the way a woman loves a man.
Smudge is what’s left behind from the night you tried to take apart your soul into a painting that’s always forgotten. Your fear is the only thing keeping you from jumping off the roof of a mall, and it is the only thing keeping you from not leaping right off of that roof of the Stateside Rovers mall. started as such a clear day. ur a liar and a thief. the pity card won’t work anymore. u will hav nothing left if she leaves. she’s wild and untamed beauty, but the other half of her is rabid & nonsensical, making stabbing motions with invisible knives. she wants to cauterize us, make everyone impotent. nobody brought presents to her b-day. hell, nobody even showed up. im going, and now she can get that divorce she couldnt admit to wanting, hell, ppl will even feel sorrow for her, the widow. cant let ppl feel sorry for my bitch.
Try to decipher how it could cause you to pee your pants in the first grade just because the teacher created a new policy, saying too many first graders use the bathroom pass. no breaking the rules! respect authority! Bicker over how sleeping becomes a mechanism that merely greases your nightmares into terrors you can’t name over and over again, trying to send you the same message and failing. why is he stalking thru ur dreams as if it’s his land he’s stomping on? Notice the way you keep nodding off as if you have been inhaling poisonous gas this entire time, for you remember somebody saying that medications mess with how much oxygen intake your brain gets, and how your body gets tired of the switch being fucked with all the time and your body not knowing how or when to intervene. u will never be able to do anything again, ur an old bag with no new tricks. ur used up.
Stay away from the fear that comes over you when you learn that you are losing your memory and that you will have to wear diapers as you grow older, using up the last of your pension fund. u will have to sleep on cold cement & ppl will only see a bag lady when u walk by. a cautionary tale. Ignore the surprise on your face when the only person you relied on laughs in your face and tells you they never wanted you around, they just liked your money or your body and they don’t care for it anymore. bitch, my iphone is 10x more valuable than u. at least i can put it on silent when im in public. Press past the neglect you see as you look into the mirror and realize you are getting old. mirror mirror, dont compare. Don’t look out windows anymore, for the blur you see might just be your daughter running across the street, barely noticing when the car stops so she can keep running across. On the days you can’t save yourself, much less your own offspring, stall. The month you realize you are about to lose your kids and there is nothing you can do to get them back, blame nobody. On the sunny Wednesday you pick up a gun to gain control of a situation and your hands begin to shake uncontrollably, don’t forget to aim before you shoot.
There’s fifteen irritating voice mail messages left on your machine that you don’t want to listen to. There is a flood on your hands that you can’t bail out of. Mortgage is pressing down on you and there is nobody to hold your hand. who would want to hold ur hand anywayz? Usually there’s a place you to go to when you are that afraid, but what happens when that place stops letting you in? Then you have another fear. The fear of the*86‘d-
Being kicked out of the last place of refuge you had makes you quiver in places you didn’t know were capable of that kind of movement. Having to actually use those two quarters to call out for help and hearing no answer, not because they didn’t hear you but because they don’t feel like answering. please please pick up. it’s an emergency. for real. i mean it. i always mean it, but i really really mean it now. only u can cradle my pain with a well placed lie. You’re beyond the helplessness of having to leave a husband that makes demands you cannot meet anymore because they are beyond your scope of comprehension. i dont care if he doesnt love me back, or if the phone rings at night with the navy telling me he’s a bad man, or if he is suddenly forced to take a sexual harrassment course. if he got kicked outta the military for rape, she probably made it up. really, i can’t know what happened for sure. she’s surely lying. i’ll put my hands up to my ears and hear what i need. He promised he would never go to a strip club, and now he says that he needs a third girl living with you for him to have sex with, and you don’t say anything. i know im stuck, but i wont leave. i love him.You don’t leave him, and your son grows up afraid that nothing will ever change. i wish my mother had just had the courage to leave him. i will rescue all damsels, even if they want their distress.
Take the hesitation in a policeman’s trigger before he gets himself shot by the criminal he didn’t want to have to take out. Find the primal cry of a baby that won’t stop crying in its teenage mothers arms. Follow the shivering of the hardest man in jail, trying to remember the sound of his mothers voice. Note the puff of a cigarette that helps keep denial at bay until one day the cigarette doesn’t work anymore. Feel the lovely plush of a needle into a vein until the blood clots.
The only thing that circumvents fear is the absence of fear, but as long as you use drugs or sex or people not to feel fear, the fear will come back to you as soon as you don’t have your blanket around you. Lie about the sensation that something went wrong and nothing will change it. The worst of all is being given a chance to fix it all, then fucking it back up for the ninth or tenth time.
Don’t admit that people like to harshly say the word “stupidity” with a certain reluctance and a roll of the eyes, as if by treating it with an iron fist, they can beat it out of their lives for good. Soften the lies you swiftly tell the welfare workers who come in asking you about the bruises all over your body and you tell them, no, of course you fell down the floors for the tenth time. he doesnt know how to show love without his fists. Forget the dreams you have afterwards of leaving home and never coming back again. Hoard those broken promises as you would ratty newspapers. When the ceiling comes falling down from the weight of everything you couldn’t throw away, don’t let the firefighters in. They won’t understand. They will bulldoze their way in, and instead of history they will see garbage piled over garbage. who would let themselves get that far gone, man? that stench. how could anyone live like that, what a disgusting ho. Forget what’s lost.
Take the moment you turn from a victim into somebody that has to batter other people for making a mistake into an opportunity to smile crudely.
Ransom Letters 