burn my life down

from heart berries by terese marie mailhot

"zohar asked my mother if she could sleep next to my bed, on the floor. she listened to me all night. storytelling. what potential there was in being awful. my mindlessness became a gift. i didn't feel compelled to tell any moral tales or ancient ones. i learned how story was always meant to be for indian women: immediate and necessary and fearless, like all good lies."

"in my first writing classes, my professor told me that the human condition was misery. i'm a river widened by misery, and the potency of my language is more than human. it's an indian condition to be proud of survival but reluctant to call it resilience. resilience seems ascribed to a human conditioning in white people.

the indian condition is my grandmother. she was a nursery teacher. there are stories that she brought children to our kitchen, gave them laxatives, and then put newspaper on the ground. she squatted before them and made faces to illustrate how hard they should push. she dewormed children this way, and she learned that in residential school -- where parasites and nuns and priests contaminated generations of our people. . .

i can see grandmother's face in front of those children. her hands felt like rose petals, and he eyes were soft and round like buttons. she liked carnations and canned milk. she had a big heart for us kids. she transcended resilience and actualized what indians weren't taught to know: we are unmovable. time seems measured by grief and anticipatory grief, but i don't think she even measured time."

"you ruined me with touch. it was a different exploitation.

you asked me for my secret. i told you about the son who didn't live with me. i told you that i lock myself in the bathroom to cry when i remember his milk breath. i knew what it felt like to sleep next to him in bed, and he was just gone. i told you i go away.

you said you'd be on the other side of the door. that's how perfect love is at first. solutions are simple, and problems are laid out simply.

i knew that the way i had been living was too complicated for you to see up close. i should have consulted a healer before i went further with you.

our culture is based in the profundity things carry. we're always trying to see the world the way our ancestors did -- we feel less of a relationship to the natural world. there was a time when we dictated our beliefs and told ourselves what was real, or what was wrong or right. there weren't any abstractions. we knew that our language came before the world."

"i learned that any power asks you to dedicate your life to its expansion. things feel continuous when i think of my gifts and heritage. with you, things don't feel right sometimes. i believe you obstruct my healing.

what i notice with you is that i look outside whenever i'm close to a window, and i wonder how many women feel that way. i feel things i would rather feel alone.

things have become more real with you. every time i start to cry, you tell me that you can't keep me from leaving. i feel abject without your passion. i feel uncontrollable with you."

"you will always love me in a shadow. it's not torturous to be with you when i consider being without. instead of feeling the gasping pain of my powerlessness, i straddle it and put your hands on my breasts. i tell you that i'd burn my life down for you.

we try to remember each other this way, and i'm not sure how many times i can do this to you before i forget myself. i want you to will my pain away. i try to think that the things i do to you, i won't ever do harder to someone else."

"you said you love to failure. i made you full and flushed. you loved me until your body failed your will. you said making love was kissing my eyelids. i kept them open once and saw you differently. you rooted against me and forced my eyes closed like little coffins. i wondered how many bitter ghosts it took to create a cold feeling in a room. my face was covered in your sweat. i was all points and sharp corners before i loved you.

you don't appreciate that you've broken me. lovers want to undo their partners. i feel unveiled and more work than you had bargained for. i was unsure of the currency of men and unaware that losing myself would feel so physical."

"men objectify me, to such a degree that they forget i eat. you feed your dog more kindly than you feed me. that's men.

that was also my problem: an inability to distinguish you from other men when i am angry. i'm sorry. if only you could see how little i need in this hospital."

"the group counselor said that one must forgive for one's self and not for the perpetrator. this made little-to-no sense in my mind. we're all on meds here, most of us are half zombie and half antsy: a weird mix. in white culture, forgiveness is synonymous with letting go. in my culture, i believe we carry pain until we can reconcile it through ceremony. pain is not framed like a problem with a solution. i don't even know that white people see transcendence the way we do. i'm not sure that their dichotomies apply to me."

"terri explained self-esteem and its function, and i blame my mother for not saying these things. my mother wasn't big on esteem for herself, let alone trying to foster that in me. i think self-esteem is a white invention to further separate one person from another. it asks people to assess their values and implies people have worth. it seems like identity capitalism."

"she believed in subversion and turning things upside down. she mocked everything. my desire to be normal or sincere made her laugh.

'men will never love you,' she said once. 'they'll use you up, and, when you're bone dry and it's your time to write, you'll be alone without a goddamn typewriter to your name.'. . .

even mom's cynicism was subversive. she often said nothing would work out. she often said that trying was futile and still dedicated her life to other people through social work. when she was unemployed, she rallied for social justice. she did things that required hopefulness. she made a name as an angry indian woman who could consent and disallow things. indian women are usually discouraged from that basic agency."

"the first chapter in your book is titled 'wanting/ not-having.' you and i had a joke between us that i want you back, time and again, because i prefer wanting. even when i am there with you, beneath your breath, i still feel you withholding. it's like your breath -- that i know you've never had a cavity. you lean back and open your mouth. your mouth is so large and unashamed. i feel jealous and amorous when you tell me that.

i am partly sorry for the night i cried in front of you and began to hit myself. you had never seen me do that before. before, i was just temperamental about breakfast. the therapists reiterate that when i'm suicidal nobody is beholden to me. you have the right to walk away. i don't understand, though, why you would look at me the way you did."

"my body left resonance that can't be dismantled or erased. i don't know if men think about what seduction is. it was reading the work you love, and buying clothes, and making polite conversation with your friends -- convincing your mother that i could mother you like she does. it was laying warm towels across my legs before i shaved so that when you touched me, i was soft. it was withholding from you at the right times, and listening to you with my eyes and ears. i worked hard to assert intent on your bed and your body. i've soiled all beds for you with my wanting and preparation. i prepared myself for you as if i wasn't working as a server, going to college, or raising isaiah. the weigh and the dust of me are in every thread of your mattress. love is tactile learning, always, first and foremost."

 "because of my medication, i didn't cry over breakfast or minor transgressions. you believed me when i said the past was my fault. i believed me. when you were annoyed with me, i had to prove i was sane. i didn't speak my mind like i used to. you were beaming."

"i couldn't distinguish the symptoms from my heart. it was polarizing to be told there was a diagnosis for the behaviors i felt justified in having. and then, i knew some part of my disease was spiritual or inherited.

i had not stopped wanting to die. it was not romantic because it felt passionless - like a job i hated and needed. romanticism requires bravery and risk. the obsessive thoughts ruined things. good news was met with a numb feeling. the voice i heard was practical. it noted every opportunity to die and then noted how i refused to jump out of a moving car. i refused to take all the pills i could find. i refused to drink myself to death. i refused to cut my pregnant body. i refused to buy a gun. i refused to crash my car. and i refused to jump from a spaghetti interchange. i was aware of every opportunity i missed."

"i'm carrying a child by a man who abandoned me for being too emotional and then got me pregnant. my emotions are unreasonable, you say.

you talk to me like you're teaching rhetoric.

'you're making leaps,' you say. 'there are more pleasant ways of asking what you need from me.'

you carefully explain the semantics of your letter to lillis. you decide for both of us that, given my transgressions, yours pale in comparison.

my language strengthened through all this discourse. . .

you come back to the door to explain how you choose me every day. i only respond with questions.

'then why did you leave me in the hospital? what has changed since then, besides my pregnancy?'

i really want to know, and you can't explain. so, i can't fell safe. i can hear my aunt's voice, telling me that if my security depends on a man's words or action, i've lost sight of my power. i feel like i become worse, the more i know you love me. we are both worse for loving each other, it seems. it can get better. descending to ascend - they call it. everything feels ugly, and we are only at three months' gestation."

"the tips of you fingers feel like wet grapes. i wanted to bite every one. i told you that i needed help, and you asked me to leave. a friend of yours had just taken his own life. it seemed unforgivable that i would be suicidal or wild when you needed me. i know at my worst i appear disposable, or that i make myself that way."

"i went back to get my earrings from your house and saw you holding your laura in the doorway. i still knocked.

you told me to come back later.

how many times did i go back before i got pregnant? when did i become enough for you, and what was the distinction? it would help to know what makes me worthwhile, and what doesn't."

"'i'm not trying to be an asshole,' you say.

'sometimes trying to be the absence of something makes you that very thing.'

i understand i am talking about myself and leaving. we can sit together for hours with the deficit, and it's not unusual anymore - it's ritual. us both, trying to be the absence of something and forgiving each other for the children we have become."

"what do you even want with my sorrow? you are so inefficient with pain -- i realized you never had to cultivate it the way i did. the way indian women do.

you think weakness is a problem. i want to be torn apart by everything.

my people cultivated pain. in the way that god cultivated his garden with the foresight that he could not contain or protect the life within it. humanity was born out of pain.

i learned how to abstain from good things. i didn't expect the best things, and i have turned loss into a fortune -- a personal pleasure. it's not a sustainable joy, i know. i've seen you happy. being close to your joy has been a measured success. i've somehow retained myself, after all of this with you -- retained the ability to revel in loss. this loss has spun and twisted itself into silk my sons will hold to their faces.

i almost killed myself, trying to match your potential joy. it was taking my misery. the thing i am most familiar with. the thing i rove into love. i realized that i could have you and the pain.

pain expanded my heart. pain brought me to you, and our children have blood memories of sorrow and your joy, too. they inherited their share, to cultivate their own children, whose humanity and gentleness will remind them of you and me.

our boys, their compassion to will away inherited sorrow, it's what makes them good and mine and indian.

had i not been born and cultivated in this history, i wonder how dim and dumb my life would be. i feel fortunate with this education, and all these horrors, and you."