Strong is the heart that heals itself
Back when my life began, which was not the day I was born, but rather the day we arrived at the Greenbush house, that day was when everything fell apart. The person I am today is a person shaped by those years. Lonely was the house that held our trauma. Our hands were cold by the light of a winter moon. Waking often in a cold house without heat. Struggling to the gas station in a car that shook, rattling too with a broken heater of its own. We filled up only what we could afford: a gallon of heating oil in a jerry can. We returned home and poured the oil directly into the tank, knowing it would not last until morning. We were very cold. We could not afford warmth, of all things. The pipes froze solid and winter drew on, somehow, we didn’t freeze to death. Being poor took on an entirely new meaning. The bathroom floor began to rot. The pipes were always leaking when they were not frozen. The engine failed often. And the car was frequently mired in snow and ice. And then one day, you got dirty water on clean dishes. Though it wasn’t about the dishes in the end.
What happened next haunts my chest a frail ghost. It is not for you to know. And it doesn’t matter.
Some memories are meant to stay, while others vanish with time. Like the smell of old books. The fluttering of a dream at the back of your mind upon waking, or sunlight at the very end of a long day, on the cusp of dusk. Memory is fickle and time hardly makes sense.
Lonely was the hand that turns the hours of the clock. Time passes.
Once a month (or was it once a week?) I’d go down to the church in town to gather food from the food bank. Stood in a long line of other poor people who couldn’t afford to eat.
I remember finally coming home after the worst day of my life. I sat down on the couch and swallowed a sour silence like a cherry pit into the bottom of my stomach. You whispered that you were too afraid to move, in a voice that destroyed me. Then, I took your hand and led you to bed, which at the time was a mattress on the floor. I don’t remember if we slept that night. The memory already gnawing and hungry.
The next time the kitchen was flooded like that it was with water and well after the Greenbush house.
The Valley Avenue house got us halfway where we wanted to be and halfway to being ghosts ourselves.
Neither house was a home. I wrote a lot about gardening while we lived there. Because in the garden in the sun, smelling of dirt and chamomile, was the only time I didn’t want to die. I think it was the same for you.
Citronella, cigarettes, late-night liquor.
Both houses felt haunted. But to say they were truly haunted would be to deny how sad we were. Mysterious noises the manifestation of stress. The paranoia of being watched no more than an indication of our anxiety. Hallucinations, sleepless nights, the unraveling of our willpower. Loving each other was nearly not enough.
It is hard to describe what it feels like to be so isolated. Trapped in a house that I could not call home. Landlocked by a driveway that stretched further than what should be possible. The forest edged closer, surrounded by brambles and blackberries, and creeping darkness.
Oh yes, haunted by our minds, in bodies that did not feel like our own.
Everything that could go wrong, did.
If anyone ever tells you that changing scenery won’t help, they’re wrong. Moving from that place saved our lives.
Recovery has been a long time coming.
The fight against the pull of poverty, the down current of trauma, and the sodden darkness of depression were longer and more exhausting than I could have ever imagined. But to know that it has gotten us here, that it has gotten us home, together, is more than I ever felt I could ask for.
The last time it rained, which was before winter settled, was the first time I wasn’t afraid of the sound of it. Memories of many a leaking roof recurring and more powerful than I’d like to admit.
Certain memories have finally become reticent and soft.
I remembered how to breathe again recently. Though I still recoil at the smell of isopropyl alcohol.
Hallucinations no longer wake me in the middle of the night. I do not see phantoms, nor do I hear the sounds of pounding on the walls while I try to sleep. Spiders do not prevent me from sleeping. I do not hear yelling during the day, but instead a soft mumble, much like the low flickering of a radio changing stations.
We are finally home. Many miles from homelessness at years nineteen and twenty. I don’t know about you but I hardly consider the boundaries I had to set. I miss little from our lives before, other than our boy Devin. The way he’d wait in the window for you to get home. His weight on my chest. The way sunlight captured him a golden, creamy orange as he napped by the light of an open window.
I only wish he’d made it here with us.
I only wished he’d got to see us make it home.
He was with us from the beginning, and I only wish he’d gotten to see the end. Imagine if he’d been able to see us happy. Imagine if his wait by the window for you was only ten minutes as it is now, and not as it was then.
I only wished he’d been able to have a home, here, with us, now, in this place. He would like it here. It’s beautiful, warm, and full of sun. Every autumn I’ll think of him, and I will honor his memory with the trees awash in striking color in October. Autumn will never be without his memory. Like November harbors its own memories, for me, for us. Time moves on though, and we go with it.
I can only imagine he is happy for us.
I’m happy for us.
After everything that happened, we made it. It’s been a long journey home. But we’ve finally arrived. I half expected us to never reach this place. But I was wrong, and for that, I am grateful.
Go on, we were not meant to be haunted houses. We are more than boney bodies. More than memories, more than grief, more than trauma, though we are informed by these, we are also meant to heal.
Strong is the heart that heals itself.
