I am not toxic. I am not perfect either. I am flawed and broken in places. I feel all of that right now. It isn’t easy. It isn’t easy to break open. To feel pain and light at the same time. It’s confusing. When I’m not paying attention, there are stories that play over in my mind. When I’m not paying attention, my breath stops and my stomach tightens and all of a sudden I realize I have been listening to a radio show of me yelling all the things I want to yell at you. One of them is this: “I’m not toxic.”
I don’t know why that one stuck out. Maybe because you repeated it several times. You brought your face near to mine and said my closest friends call me toxic. Maybe because I started to believe it. You said I’m not worth it. Over and over again. And I sat in the white chair - the old one with a tiny carpet placed crookedly to cover the worn seat - the chair nobody sits in anymore - and I looked at the floor.
We yelled at each other and then I couldn’t because your voice became too big. That’s when I sat and stopped. Even though it was loud, something happened and everything became quiet. In the spacious house, I watched the little statues tremble, the blue eggs on the half-finished mobile shake. Your face was red, your mouth open and I knew you were still yelling. But I couldn’t hear you.
We yelled at each other and then I couldn’t because your voice became too big. That’s when I sat and stopped. Even though it was loud, something happened and everything became quiet. In the spacious house, I watched the little statues tremble, the blue eggs on the half-finished mobile shake. Your face was red, your mouth open and I knew you were still yelling. But I couldn’t hear you.
Remember when you told me about the radish - the way you taste that first radish whenever you eat one? “All radishes are that radish,” you said. And I understood. Because I have a similar experience. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to when I was a child. In a moment when I know I am making a memory that will stay with me forever, everything goes quiet. There is a visual echo that reaches back in time throughout my life and also forward - like a tunnel growing into past and future. As I sat in the white chair I knew it was coming when your voice stopped working on me and time dissolved around my body. Everything about the chair became knowable. The fibers, rough against the prickles of my Thursday shaven legs. The whiteness, or attempt at white, softened with age and stains. The stories woven into fabric, buried in the armature, all holding me while I sat suspended in a reality apart from yours.
I kept telling myself, It isn’t true. Like there were two of me and I was suddenly the white chair, holding a little girl. As your voice faded in and the forever moment broke, I started to hear the ugly things you were saying. It isn’t true, I said as the chair. Don’t believe this. You are worth it.
What is true, is that I have been afraid from the beginning. I wanted to be with you so badly it was like all my insecurities came to the surface. Afraid I wasn’t beautiful enough, afraid I was too weird, afraid you would judge choices I have made in the past…or worse, that you wouldn’t want to understand them. I was afraid of your unpredictability, afraid of your lifestyle, afraid to like it and afraid that I would drown in you.
So I reached out in the moments when you didn’t show up. I tried to prove that I didn’t need you. I used friends as flotation and swam around performing sexuality, strength and independence. This, I know, only fueled our battles. This, I know, is hard to be with.
I’m sorry I wasn’t braver in the beginning. It doesn’t mean I’m not worth it. Even the performance of myself is worthy of love. I'm not perfect. That doesn't mean I'm toxic. I am flawed and broken in places. And it isn’t easy to break. It's confusing.
As children, just as our skulls have not fully grown together, there are parts of our selves yet unfastened, the parts later sewn together with experience and memory. But sometimes, in our adult years, the sutures come undone.
On the white chair, I cracked open and fell out of time. I discovered a part of myself sturdy and soft enough to break the fall. I feel strong, even though there is pain. And grateful, even though there is resentment. Thank you for bringing parts of me to life, for teaching me where I can grow and showing me where I am afraid. Thank you for reminding me that breaking can be beautiful.
As children, just as our skulls have not fully grown together, there are parts of our selves yet unfastened, the parts later sewn together with experience and memory. But sometimes, in our adult years, the sutures come undone.
On the white chair, I cracked open and fell out of time. I discovered a part of myself sturdy and soft enough to break the fall. I feel strong, even though there is pain. And grateful, even though there is resentment. Thank you for bringing parts of me to life, for teaching me where I can grow and showing me where I am afraid. Thank you for reminding me that breaking can be beautiful.
