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A prompt from The Isolation Journals
All summer I walk the path between my parents’ condo and the ocean. I leave my cellphone on the kitchen table to take breaks from the noise. Orange dirt stains my toes and squirrels freeze in cracks on the sandstone cliffs, their missions briefly interrupted. All summer I sort through the tunnels in my head. Crossing out certain things with a sharp blue pen and highlighting others.
All summer I listen to feminist podcasts and learn about leaning in and investing. I take notes and respond to emails and write thank you for your consideration and I understand and I appreciate your time. In the bathroom mirror I whisper:
I am strong.
I am confident.
I am intelligent.
And soon I started to believe it. I am angry about the time I’ve lost. I am angry about all the nos I never said and the laughs I gave away like blankets in a storm. I am angry at myself. I write down lists of things I wish I’d known at 17 and letters to my younger selves. All summer I have arguments with strangers in my head and I say the perfect things. Sometimes in Spanish, but mostly in English because my words are sharper.
All summer I remind myself to be nice to my mom. I’m thirty-years-old, not a teenager anymore. I fail. I apologize. I keep my distance and hide in romance novels. All summer I drink Diet Cokes instead of wine and sit on the back patio with a paintbrush and a set of rainbow colors. I think of things I want to say, words that could bring us healing after all this time. But all summer my mouth is a straight line. I paint trees and rain and a couple with an umbrella that doesn’t quite work.
All summer I sit up gasping for air in that moment before sleep. Like slipping off the ledge of a building. All summer something inside me is trying to get out. It crawls towards the surface when I’m most vulnerable. I put on Headspace and try to fall asleep to soothing voices and deep breathing patterns, but my chest is a rope pulling taut. All summer I swallow what ifs and how tos and a dream that keeps recurring. I sit down to write and stare at pages of cliché, trite, dull blue. The backspace key stains darker than the rest with oil from my fingers.
All summer I trace the paths that led me back here to the start. The decisions I made by not making any at all. The lines like blue rivers in my skin that point from east to west. The pain in my chest pushing me to look inside and ask the questions no one else can answer.