So Much to Say

it's hard to know how to talk about the last several months. a few days after my last entry in May found my sisters and I upside down on the Jones Falls Expressway, having been hit by a motorist driving on a suspended license (cause: DUI).

we all got out. but we were not fine. i was not fine.

a month or so before the accident my birth father and i began talking to each other by phone. i was sussing him out, enjoying the exchanges, but keeping him at a reasonable distance. i know and do not know this man. i knew him instantly, and to an extent i feared his lack of knowledge of himself. so much more dangerous because his lack of awarenss masquerades as deep knowledge.

it is the one time in my life i have been completely aware of another person's motivations and fully committed to my own lack of desire for any specific outcome.

now, he is unreachable having fled his most recent wife for the blank whiteness of alaska. before this, though, he faithfully called me several times a week. ardent as a lover, more ardent still because while i welcomed his calls, i did not care if he called. eventually he asked for a loan. something black crept to the edge of my thinking.

June and July. a constant state of fear and mistrust. at no time did i not suspect my life of ending. i was frail and fragile and every interaction was tenuous. for several days i considered strongly that i did die. my days were a disparate essay.

to make matters worse, i hated the house my middle sister and i moved in to. the dog, too, could not seem to adjust. for a while eating required coaxing, great theatrics.

i started sleeping upstairs in the living room--the one room with an a/c unit--like a long-term visitor.

and then, well... things got even more unsettling.