I’m often assaulted by my own physiology. The external world is my puppet master — its thick, hairy hand pulling at my strings as I move, speak, perform. Then, after, I scurry off behind the curtain, hyperventilating backstage with my head between my legs, the crumpled brown paper bag rapidly filling and emptying.
The previous night wraps around me when I wake. There’s a nostalgic disappointment — like heading back to your hometown only to find the grocery store turned into an auto parts shop, your friend’s house sold, the familiar corners rearranged. You walk next to your life, peering in on it like it’s a windowed storefront in one of those downtown fancy clothing shops.
This is why I drink. Smoke weed. Do risky things that make the fucked-up-ness of living go numb.
An image of my mom surfaces — not of her alive, but of the wake of her death. It comes like a broadcast flicking on, a jack-in-the-box popping out unexpectedly, startling. Those slow rising and falling notes — duh, duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-duh — the monkey chased the weasel.
And there’s also Dan.
Ellensburg. Rolling hills, ranchers and hay farmers as kings, the Yakima River’s gold star for fly fishing gives the area its fame. I lived there for seven years, and in the final two — when I moved across the mountain separating east and west — I had my hopes set on him.
In the process, I sacrificed. I allowed a tiny monster to live in me, a devil-like deal where I loved, obsessed, and saw his face filled with love for me. I rested in the imagined reciprocity — that someday he’d wake up, wipe the fog from his eyes, and choose me.
I stayed stuck like that for years. Thousands of days I lived with that gremlin, who eventually bored a hole so deep it built its own sticky cocoon. Then, one morning, I woke up. Literally — from a dream.
In it, I was seated next to him — his glowing face, that enchantment, that I can’t believe he’s with me feeling, the eclipse of finally. But when I woke and replayed the dream in my mind, I saw something missing. A chunk.
Later that morning, during a conversation with my husband about his past and its impact on his sexual health, I listened while pacing back and forth along the kitchen island. Because of some tougher moments, he said he needed security from me. What could have been a simple answer — yes, of course — became something else entirely.
I started talking about the ways I’d locked myself into insecure relationships. How I’d neglected my own needs just to keep the other person around. And suddenly, that old film reel unspooled — how hurt I’d been for so long, how I’d normalized wanting someone who didn’t want me back.
I cried for all the hours that spilled out of time’s hourglass and for my pathetic grasps at an invisible mirage. But this time, I didn’t need the illusion. I knew I would not allow it to happen again.
Going On 40 
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