2003-05-18 - 6:29 p.m.

'the next morning (or before i forget again)'

I remember looking at myself in the mirror, running my fingertips over the hurt places on my neck. And somehow they seemed more familiar than my face. I remember locking myself in the bathroom in the dark. And I don't know how long I stayed there while he slept in my bed. I remember sitting in my orange chair, watching him call his friend to come pick him up and he looks at me and says 'Why are you mad?' I remember him noticing my bruises and smiling kind of self-satisfied. I was outside of my body when he kissed my forehead and said, 'I just went through a bad breakup.' Then he left. I can't say I remember calling Penny or what I did during the time I waited for her to get here. Aside from those small frames of frozen memories, I don't remember much of anything about that whole morning. Hours passed. Of that I'm sure. And I lost them. I lost them all to the haze.

Penny says I called her and told her I needed someplace to sleep. She said she came to my door and I showed her the marks on my shoulders. And on my neck. She says I talked to myself as she drove. Muttering things like, He just wouldn't stop and I told him no. She says I told her that it hurt. And I know now that I probably did, because it did. Hurt. Deeper than than purple places. All the way down to this core place inside me that I knew had to be black and blue. Now the blue's all faded. And I'm nothing but the blackness. It widened and spread. And I'm wrecked by the black place that ate my hopeful heart. That swallowed my trusting soul. It's weird to not remember, but to know. Now I know. More little snatches of the horror story that I lived through, but are told to me like they happened to someone else. More sharply jagged little pieces for this fucked puzzle that's become my life in his wake.

I'm collecting them now. All of them. Like coins or stamps. Because they're mine and I'm taking them back. Because hopefully once I find them all, I'll be able to smooth and dull the edges. I'll be able to construct from them a saner life. A happier life where I'm not cut by them at every turn. I'm not pinned down by the knowledge of memories I've forgotten. But now somehow know.

�

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