Swimming pools, telephones, and serial killers

I'm afraid to go to sleep tonight. My dreams last night were disturbing; I wasn't always afraid, but I woke intermittently with a start after segments passed. There is a house in my recurring dream that belongs to my mother, but it isn't my mother's house, and there are steps going down in the back out of the kitchen that is too white. The house seems to be an old one and is in a town with sidewalks and where buildings are too close together for my taste. My mother is never there, in the house in the dream. In the same dream there is a swimming pool with a number of women who are trying on swimming suits and diving into the pool.  They don't see to want to wear the suits and some of them remove them in the water. A small girl comes to the side of the pool and yells at me that I am in the wrong place; yes, certainly I know this but the water is nice and I love swimming. The third part of the dream I become separated from myself and watch myself as if on TV. I am doing everything to save the little girl in the next room, even if it means sacrificing myself to the killer. The telephone rings and it is my brother telling me that this has gone on long enough and we should do something, I say something to him but he's put me on hold. He comes back on the line with my other brother who says, "Hi Anne." I say, are all three of you there? The first brother says yes. They say that they know the truth and I tell them that they are wrong; they don't know anything about what is true. They want to know what I mean by that, was I calling them liars? One slams down the phone and I scream at the other something so loud that I cannot understand or hear it myself.

Pomegranates

My mother found pomegranates

in Kansas

for us to eat. She separated the blood-red

seeds out and placed them in bowls.

We sat with our short legs outstretched

on the floor in front of the TV

with towels tucked into our t-shirts.

Pomegranate juice stains.

We ate the hard and cold seeds

with spoons, my sister and I, while

Mom told the story of Persephone

and her mother, Ceres; how

the seasons are because Ceres

loved her daughter so much that

she could not bear to be without her

so let nothing grow or produce.

I was careful not to let the seeds

fall; I swallowed the seeds after

sucking the juice;

I wondered what Persephone’s

life was like in the Underworld

and if she missed her mother.

It's over

I have to finally admit that it's over. I am not a poet and will not publish anything of significance. I will not ever be a poetry professor or be a poet in residence. I'm 50 and only have rejections and cannot get published in any significant publications. It's too hard to do this. It's just too hard.

Rejection-stance

It gets harder as I get closer to death. Each rejection of my work is yet another chance gone. I don't have the writing life that I want, and I know all of the rugged individualists say that is my fault, but it really isn't, and here is why. Life takes us places without our knowing it. Each decision, even if you think it is what you want and will lead you toward your goals, may not do that because other people are involved. I'm not the only one making decisions and now my decisions affect people, those I know and love, those I've created, those I work with and may not know very well at all.

Talia likes to say "it's a curious random happenstance." That is it. She's got it; the meaning of life.

And Beyond

Now in my 51st year, and I always seem to have to explain the math of that to someone. I'm not going to again. I want to change the title of this blog to "My 50th Year...and Beyond." It sounds lofty, I know, but I need a place to write the crap out of my head, to spill the blood and guts all over a page, a screen. It feels more like spilling when you use a pen and paper, but I think I can manage to spill here.

Saturday was two days ago, and it was a particularly crappy day, and I should have written here on that day, to get all of it out of me and onto or into something else. When priests exorcise demons and the bad spirits depart; that is what writing is: an exorcism. Driving out the demons that make me feel bad, that give me my biting sarcasm aimed at people I love. The demons must go, and yet I know that they will be back. Does the writing really help?

I knew Saturday was going to be bad when I woke up and still had 14 papers to grade. I am teaching online again after taking a break, and I would really love to have my break back please. The day was dark (the typical bad beginning to a bad story) and stormy, tornado watches and warnings in New York. Later in the day two tornadoes would touch down, one in Queens, one in Brooklyn. Crazy.

So I knew it would be bad. I had a pain in my chest. I get them regularly now, about two or three times a week. I've also had a few dizzy spells since the whole PE fiasco and I had one on Saturday. That coming up the stairs and even if I stop my head keeps moving feeling. It's awful and scary and I think, ok, now I'm going to die and what goes through my mind? Where are my children and will I get to say something to them before I go and then, "But I'm not finished!"

I hate thinking of dying so much, and I never did think of it much before nearly doing so. Even after the anaphylactic bee sting event, I didn't think I would die until I was very very old. Now, I know I could have died and I was lucky as so many people keep telling me right after they tell me they know someone who died with a PE. I'm lucky, and I'm unlucky.

That's what the pulmonologist said. I didn't even know that there were doctors who specialized so specifically, but it makes sense I guess. He said, "You're lucky, and you're unlucky." Lucky because I didn't die and unlucky because, well, it could happen again, although unlucky since I'm taking blood thinners. But it could happen again and yes, I was smart not to go on the long trip to Cyprus with Andreas and the kids, that very long two weeks. I'm lucky.

I am lucky, but I don't feel lucky. PE recovery is a wicked little thing, a reminder that it happened and that my lungs are damaged by having blood clots in them at all, where they should never have been, and at the cellular level, the doctor said. Of course there will be pain, and I should just toughen up and know that while I'm taking blood thinners my blood cannot clot and I won't die.

I have to buck up and remember that I am lucky. The hardest part is the not dying. The nearly dying. The part that I remember when I have a pain or when I forget to bring my pills with me at the time I'm supposed to take them. I forget to remember that I am lucky.