Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis

I am absolutely and completely terrified.

Each night in Richmond, I have stayed up dream cycles past the rest in my house, grinding my teeth and fearing sleep, only to free fall in guilt when 4 am rolls by.

I do not have enough time.

I want to be able to talk to my mother, to tell her how completely frozen I am in life about the thought of disappearing from it for a month.

I want to tell her I'm terrified that I will never make it back.

I want to drive to Lovely next weekend, hug him, and push time back to set gender roles and before driving abilities.

I understood that I would be nervous. I understood that I would be scared.

I did not understand that I would feel every nerve in my body grind to a sit-in. That I would let books gather in the corner, only to jolt awake right before the sun appears, panic set in about gathering deadlines.

But when I sit at the computer, I cannot write. My body will physically not let my fingers touch the keyboard.

Trying to grow up is turning my thoughts younger and younger.

At least, I finally understand what it means to be trapped in my head.

Dammit.

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

A ghost appeared out of nowhere tonight to ask if I still write. Perhaps it was surprising, except that several apparitions have asked the same thing recently.

And here I am, early morning, wrapped up in EMT gear, freezing and wearily awake.

Hampshire is sucking at my bones. I was not prepared to grow up this fast. It wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't the only one.

And yet I come home night after night, exhausted with a backpack full of mandatory papers, only to hear complacent voices from all rooms of the house.

I didn't think it could happen after such a long summer, but I miss Richmond.

Mealticket and the Gentleman and drives along familiar streets.

Perhaps its because I won't be there for Christmas. Perhaps its because I should be. The mother of my mother has a death threat running through the marrow of the bones, and no matter how much the rest of the relatives talk about gamma rays through their clenched smiles,

I'm well aware how this could end up.

I wasn't particularly upset until I realized the mother of my mother will probably never see the children I bear.

And that's how I know I'm growing up too fast. I sit in the shower and daydream about telling my mother to pick out a grandmother type name.

This cycle of birth and birth is wearing me to death.

Christmas to me is cold sleet, Rashka tearing paper apart, children born to save marriages running around a sea of credit card debt, and the smell of the stairs creaking as my grandfather slipper shuffles down them to his chair and glasses. Things I love.

Not hot tropical weather. Not an old Catholic woman I don't know. Not religious zealots.

I'm paying good money for this type of learning experience torture.

Birth has become my life. I just only hope it doesn't take it away.

20 should be drugs and sex and short term love and college.

I suppose I'm just living more ones than others.