It’s confusing to be told not to give up. Give up on what? Surely not on myself. I may be a cynic, occasionally even a depressive, but I have never doubted that I know my own mind like a best friend. No, what they mean is don’t give up on us. Us? Us! The people, the planet, the pastiche, the thousand blistered pantheons, the torn paintings in pastel, the pastures with their peonies, clouds and horses. I can’t respond to this because I don’t know how. I mean, could a drop of water give up on the ocean? Could David give up on Michelangelo? I can’t give up on us any more than my shadow could give up on me. But maybe I’m told oh, Emma, don’t give up so often because my desire to run away is so obvious on my face. My desire to summon a wave or a scalpel to cleanse, to cut myself away. The desire not to belong, to separate, to be distant, to be chemical isolate in the bubbling char.
I look up how to fix an old piece of technology and find a review condemning me: This issue is just user error. I laugh. What else could I apply this to? Is my pain just user error? I broke my life apart but a smarter user would have known better. Lacking in the appropriate technical acumen, I did not plan, I did not optimize, I did not buy the optional protective case, and I failed in a way that is not just permanent but also eternal, because the manufacturer doesn’t even make this item anymore.
What’s my problem? My problem is that my father has the pride of a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and my mother the fanatical vulnerability of a martyr, and these qualities have not mixed well in their daughter’s helix. My problem is that my brother, infinitely more sensitive, infinitely the better version, is proof that I cannot be so bold as to attribute all my issues to the uncontrollable forces of nature. Something went wrong that cannot be blamed on another. User error. My problem is that I left my heart behind at a convenience store. Even the promise of care of the manufacturer under warranty could not have fixed that.
Jean, who I do not speak to anymore, once compared a piece of writing to a block of ice. Clear, powerful as ice, she said. Instantly, I saw her vision in my mind: Massive, perfectly rectangular, sat in a small cool pool of its own transparent blood, the reddish light of the sunrise slicing through the blue body. I wished I could have communicated to her how much I loved her description. As it was, I was only able to smile idiotically and say wow, cool repeatedly. Maybe my most significant problem is that, as my brother once said, my soul won’t fit through my mouth. Instead, my spirit seethes in time with the beat of undistilled and uncommunicated feeling. So many people have left my life through a door that won’t open again. So many people have left my life through a door that I myself locked behind them, and I called that independence, I called it victory, instead of giving up. But still I think of her, still I retrieve the thought of ice from my pocket when I need to remember what it is to be clear and perfectly legible, to be honest and forthcoming in that honesty, that is, to be true. To be ice unrobed into liquid and then back into the red.
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