The Death of Small Creatures (8 page)

I keep going,
now with a big bathmat and two litres of water. I continue practising. You do not do yoga; you practise yoga. My muscles stretch, my core tightens, my legs grow stronger. It hurts and strains.

“A millimetre farther each time,” Wendy says. “Baby steps… wherever you are is where you're meant to be.” So I pull on my heels and arch my back and let my palms fall open.

I am becoming the half-moon, the eagle, the tree.

I can feel the earth beneath my feet.

I breathe.

I drink rose
petal tea, lean out my kitchen window and inhale the scent of life sprouting in the garden: geraniums, wisteria, clematis climbing up the fence, twirling around the lower branches of the plum tree.

Gatto blinks, sniffs the wind.

“I'm sorry, Gatto,” I say.

Ti amo. Ti amo. Ti amo.

The sign in
the Thrifty's produce section reads:
Very ripe mangos should only be eaten naked in a bathtub.
On the way home, Linden and I stop at Starbucks. I get a vanilla soy latte and say, “Sweetheart, you get whatever you want.”

We walk through the Ross Bay Cemetery, the bay sparkling in the distance through trees and rows of tombstones. Somewhere in here is Emily Carr. And Matthew Begbie, the Hanging Judge. On days like this I don't mind walking among the dead. “Do you think you're smart?” Linden says.

“Sure,” I say.

“What's your favourite colour?”

“Blue.”

“What colour is my hair?”

“Brown.”

“What colour is the sky?”

“Blue.”

“What was the first question I asked you?”

“Do you think you're smart?” I say, and she laughs, covers her mouth with her hands, her brown hair shimmering in sunlight. “I think you're amazing,” I say.

I catch myself smiling, thinking about eating mangos in a bathtub.

We sit down on a bench. I hold a mango in my hands, watch the white sails drift past in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Cherry blossoms float through the air. Every so often I see the bright colours of a spinnaker as a sailor jibes and changes course.

Is this the cloud lifting, these colours blooming against the blue sky? Is this the blue sky? Maybe I don't need to know why.

My front teeth pierce through the surface, find an edge and pull the pink-green skin away from the fruit in broad sections. I bite down and take the flesh inside.

Journal

December 4, 2008

Something mysterious happened this morning as I jolted awake to find my husband dressing in the darkness. It had the weather of acute despair, hopelessness and guilt all tied up in one. It had this weather but it had no name or shape or weight. It is awful to wake into such a nameless weather, like waking up stillborn but also alive.

I saw that he was in great pain. He had bags under his eyes darker than I've ever seen before. He was emitting a new energy, and perhaps it was this energy, this aura of despair, that pulled me from my sleep so urgently. It occurred to me that his pain might be trumping my own.

How selfish have I been?

His hair was messy. He looked aged. I realized my husband had aged overnight.

He had slept in for the second day in a row. He was in a hurry and late for work. He had been drinking last night. He has been drinking every night as a matter of fact. I saw that my husband has been in pain for a long time. He has steadfastly been going to work without fail, all this time, every day, earning money, supporting me, taking care of me, making child support payments to his ex, working every day at his job, trying to deal with sick and crazy me, trying to retain some semblance of a relationship with his children. For years, I have been crucifying him for wanting something basic like a solid ordinary life.

He turned to leave. I couldn't bear it, so I called him back. I said, “Honey, are you okay? I'm worried about you.”

He said, “It's okay, honey, I'm fine.”

I had to make things right, had to do something to ease the terrible despair that has now taken us both inside, had to do something about the hopelessness that I have dragged into this relationship. But what could I do?

I said, “Honey, come back. Give me a kiss.” And he did.

He was now dressed, had on his sweatpants, his hoody, black socks and white running shoes. He had bags under his eyes, had aged overnight and he'd just said he's fine and have a good day. He came back to me, back to the bed, and he leaned down and he kissed me. His lips were warm and soft, but the man inside was sad. I felt that my husband had almost nothing left inside him as his lips pressed against my lips this morning. I felt his dead dreams in the pressure of his lips against mine.

And here's the thing, the semblance of the truth, here's one thing, not God, no, not God, but the closest semblance to that one true thing as anything can be:

All of this, all of it, is because of me.

December 14, 2008

I am in love with Ativan. I take too many. It knocks me out, dulls the pain.

Last night I fell asleep with my head resting on my arms on the computer desk for four hours solid. The other night (my sister howled with laughter when I told her this) I was lying on the couch in the bunny room, cuddling Marcello and eating chocolates. I fell asleep, woke up the next morning with melted chocolate drooling out of the corner of my mouth and the majority of a chocolate wedged against the roof of my mouth.

I am becoming an invalid.

December 21, 2008

3:24 am.

There's a blizzard out there tonight. The wind is howling. It has snowed eight inches this evening. I went out into the blizzard to haul a basket of laundry to the laundry room. The wind and snow swept over me, covered one side of my face and hair with snow, in a matter of seconds. When I left the laundry room and returned to the house a minute later, I was again swept over with wind and snow, which covered the other side of my face and hair in seconds. That felt good somehow, to be evened out, to have both sides of my face up against the blizzard. I wanted to keep walking into it, letting the snowflakes and black sky mesmerize me, walk down Beechwood to the ocean, stand at the lookout above Ross Bay, and let the blizzard surround me then bury me.

How does this work? My mental status? There's nothing particularly new or interesting to report: same rapid fluctuations of extreme emotions. I think this is rapid cycling. I have had some good days, walking lots, downtown and back again, wearing my snow boots and feeling like a kid again, crossing fields of untouched snow just to be the first person to make a path.

I looked over at Leigh in his chair tonight, wearing his bathrobe, his elbow resting on the armrest, his hand against his cheek, head tilted, hair scruffy, and I could see that he was crying.

December 22, 2008

I am harpooned.

Pinned to a wall that is not a wall but worse than a wall; I am harpooned, pinned to existence.

Everyone is so far away.

I can't feel anyone.

December 23, 2008

I have been taking many photographs lately, pictures of snow and tombs and pathways and water. I have been taking pictures of beautiful things and ugly things, some close up and some far away.

Many pictures of my rabbits: beautiful beyond measure.

Footprints in the snow, untouched snow on the street, winter sunsets, pink, red, melting to blue and beryline.

Shifting the perspective, the camera angle, landscapes in night vision. The world reduced to a cool shade of blue. Portrait setting. I have taken multiple pictures of myself, arm outstretched, that dexterous fateful propping of the digital Olympus FE-115 partly on the palm of my hand but my fingers wrapped around it too, and the forefinger poised over that ominous go button, the little silver circle you press down upon, which in turn releases some shutter inside the camera box and likewise inside your heart, a little quiver.

Yes, this is me, this is me taking a picture of me, in the snow, at night, on the boardwalk by the sea, Victoria, BC, next to the Pacific Ocean, planet Earth.

Or just in my living room.

My cheek pressed flush against the Modigliani painting of the woman with black eyes and an elongated neck, the picture that hangs on a wall in our living room; that woman with black almond eyes, head titled, her loaded smile, Mona Lisa-esque.

Who are you?

I press my cheek against her cheek, press my lips against her lips, touch her forehead, place my hand over her mouth in one shot, place my hand over her eyes in another shot.

Will she go mute and blind (and in that order) if I in turn place my own hand over my mouth, then place my own hand over my eyes?

What is the relationship between the subject and the object, the person and the portrait, the artist and the art?

I kiss my Modigliani woman on the wall.

It's not about the kiss, the touch, the sameness of the sex, two women, one real, one false.

What is most erotic is the subliminal film of space (and time) that separates (or perhaps unites) the real from the not real, the real woman from the false woman.

I am searching for myself through a kiss.

December 28, 2008

Leigh was aloof all of Christmas day.

I think it was the booze. He'd been drinking all day, wine and so on, sparkling wine and orange juice with brunch.

On the subject of drinking, I haven't wanted to drink in a long time, haven't even been tempted really, but that day, at brunch, and in the evenings since, I have had the urge you know? Leigh was drinking Crown Royal last night, and even though I've never been a hard liquor kind of girl, it sort of appealed to me. I have, I suppose, quite simply been longing for some kind of fierce high, some potent chemical alternation of my senses and body.

Leigh and I avoided each other the rest of the night. I went in the bunny room and Leigh went to bed. Our Christmas presents to each other remained unopened.

January 1, 2009

Stoned right now.

It's 4 am New Year's Day. Tonight, in the company of friends and acoustic guitar, I smoked some weed.

Just now I walked home up Fairfield in the pouring rain. I was wearing my yellow raincoat and new black velvet hat. Rain dripped off the rim. I sensed rainwater spilling off my plastic coat in rivulets. I sang “You Are My Sunshine” over and over again the whole way home. I was quiet as I approached home. Leigh would be asleep, but somehow I knew I was in trouble. I slipped off my wet shoes and slick raincoat, tossed my hat on the umbrella rack. I made coffee.

Leigh appeared in his bathrobe, said contemptuously, “Oh—hi.”

I feel the distance. He sits across from me now, glowering, foul-faced, disgusted. In this moment it is clear that my husband hates me; just now, he hates me.

Leigh has left the room. I am still humming with the high. I know everything, my situation, my treacherous relationship, will hurt again soon.

I miss simplicity.

It's still raining.

January 1, 2009

An hour ago, Leigh:

Raging. “You leave me here to take off and spend New Year's Eve with two guys and your sister, two total strangers, come home at 5 am, etcetera etcetera… rage, rage, rage. Doors slamming. Laundry flying. Coattails of bathrobe flicking with menace, that too-loose, too-long fabric belt that wraps around the waist, if he ever tied it up, but he lets it dangle loose on each side, one long end almost touching the floor as he rages across the living room. It makes me nervous, not just his anger, but that wayward fringe of fabric, the untidiness of it, its potential to twist around an ankle, decrease a man's equilibrium in his own home, 7 am, after his wife has returned home from an evening out with platonic friends, an evening which he adamantly refused to partake in, as he did Christmas this year with my family.

He has just demanded to see my Facebook, all of it. I complied. I have nothing to hide. He spent some time scrolling through it all, the notes and wall messages and links and photographs and personal messages. He found nothing, declared aristocratically, “Thank you,” and resumed his position reading the morning newspaper in the green chair a few feet from where I sit now.

It's the unravelled, unkempt, unknotted length of belt on his blue bathrobe upon which I focus.

Everything is so loose.

January 1, 2009

Leigh has left for the day, went to the boat to work on the engine. I have taken a bunch of the clonazepam and Seroquel, and some other shit I found in the cabinet. Leigh's allergy pills I think. I was popping the clonazepam all night at my sister's on New Year's Eve too, because I wanted to feel some sense of levity, some kind of high, to sort of match the glee of drunkenness surrounding me. And then there was the pot.

Turns out I took a lot of clonazepam and Seroquel over the course of the evening on New Year's Eve. Now there are the pills of today. I am compounding drugs upon drugs.

I feel weird.

When I do this I am flirting with the idea that I will take enough and go to sleep and maybe, just maybe, not wake up.

I went out to go to the hospital earlier today after Leigh left, made it halfway there, turned back thinking,
Shit, do I really want to sit in an emergency room on New Year's Day?

So I sit here instead, typing to you, feeling high and weird, waiting for it to pass or not pass. I'm going back to sleep now, 3:30 pm, in the bunny room, about to cuddle Marcello.

This is going nowhere.

January 11, 2009

Yesterday I fell asleep on the couch with Leigh at about 11 pm while watching a movie. He tried to coax me into bed, get me off the couch. I was so out of it he actually helped me to my feet, but I laid back down again and fell asleep until 5 am this morning. At some point I rose from the couch and rolled into bed. Leigh says that at about 7 am I was giving him the most amazing blowjob, then he says I fell asleep with his cock in my mouth, fully erect. He says he felt my teeth settle onto the shaft, which he thought was sweet and erotic. He slid himself carefully off my teeth.

I have absolutely no memory of this whatsoever.

I gave my husband an unconscious blowjob.

Why do I feel slightly violated?

January 20, 2009

Counselling appointment with Fiona tomorrow. Issues I will bring up, to discuss:

• Inability to settle into my own skin and thus a relationship with any man, or at least with my husband… and all the anguish and conflicting feelings therein, the guilt one moment, the total love the next, and then numbness.
  
• Self-loathing
  
• I seem to either be totally insomniac or nodding off all over the place. I literally fell asleep while sitting in the upright position on the bus ride home tonight, out completely, twice. Then I'll stay up all night on the weekend, get more or less high on something or other, entrance myself, flirt with death, hug my rabbits, fall asleep so drugged sometimes I'm not sure I'll wake up. But of course I always do.