Allison's Archives

She’s back. She shows up in a ruckus at my door, swigging a bottle of wine, on her worst behavior. There is no incessant punching of the doorbell or rapping at the window demanding to be let in. I forget she still has a spare key. She lets herself in after kicking her shoes off on the porch—the final slither of rationality she hasn’t yet nursed with the alcohol. I don’t hear the sound of her arrival, but the house becomes instantly permeated with the scent of resentment and precocity. She sits on the couch of my collarbones perfectly, like it was always carved for her and only her. Where my anatomy is hallowed, she fills and fuels me. 

I offer her afternoon tea with breakfast cereal and a side of last night’s chocolate cake, hoping she will sober up, calm down, and take her leave. She pushes it all away, asks me why I push her away. She accuses me of being ungrateful and calls me names. She reminds me how she is the reason I am still alive today. That, without her, I would have long since been reduced to an ill-functioning mayfly on the wall. How rude of me to so ghastly treat someone who always knows when I need her before I care to admit! She empties the bottle. 

I say nothing. I feel everything. I feel her. I ascertain her showing up. She explains that it is because denial has unlatched itself from my tongue and someone else has to step up. She knows I’m no good alone. So she stays, and I let her. She fluffs my pillows so I can punch them. She puts out tea so I can soothe my throat after screaming. She buys the overpriced three-ply tissue and cheap vodka from the grocery store for when I am done crying. She sharpens the pen and lays the paper out on my desk for when I am ready. She runs the bath when I try to run from reality. She lays out the breakables for when I overboil. She stretches out her arms to catch me when I faint from asking questions that I will never get the answers to. When I have given up on yielding a semblance of closure, I curl up next to her in my very own collarbones and wait for the next time warm hands pick me up. 

She’s back. My anger has become comfortable nestled in my collarbones. I want to know when she will leave, but I am also terrified at the hollowness that will resume when she does. If grief is love with nowhere to go, then anger is pain with nowhere to go. I hurt all over but I can’t see wounds or cuts or breaks. It is an absolutely marvelous phenomenon how she convinces me that I am in pain without any tangible evidence. There will be no gauze or tourniquet, no band-aid or anesthesia. How do you fix a problem you cannot see? There will only be her and me, sitting in the shadow denial has left, witnessing the passing of time—tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick—until bargaining jumps the fence of my backyard and makes a home out of the chip on my shoulder.