nostalgictide

[nostalgictide]

Honeybee, I’m Sorry

Trigger Warning 'I think that you deserve some form of apology. So here I am, and here it is. I'm sorry.'

It Runs in the Family

“You know, everyone thought that she drank antifreeze that day?”

“What?”

“Yeah, your aunt wanted an autopsy done. But your mother and I, we just thought ‘What’s the point?’”

Some people need that closure, I thought. It didn’t matter that she tried so many times before, or that she used drugs and alcohol as crutches to trudge on through life. Sometimes, all a daughter needs is closure. She didn’t leave behind a reason. No note, no letter, just an undying need to find peace. Wouldn’t anyone want to know more? I’ve always imagined that it must be hard for people to understand why someone would want to take their own life. 

But sometimes I think it might be harder understanding exactly why someone would want to. 

“Doesn’t it make you wonder how fucked in the head your mother must be? I mean, we know you’re fucked in the head.”

It felt like a punch to the chest, a blow to the throat, and having all of my teeth knocked out—but all I could do was smile while all the air in my lungs was forced out in a sharp exhale that passed as a laugh. It didn’t matter, he wasn’t even looking at me anymore. He was too busy sucking down the last of his beer and jumping to the next topic like the weight of the world hadn’t just unearthed my grandmother. 

Sometimes she feels like an angel and others, a parasite. They say things like that are hereditary. I believe it might be. Mine blossoms when winter takes its place in the air—cold, bitter, dark, and long. It’s not even that I miss the sun. I just miss the warm safety of knowing that it’s easier to crawl out of rain-softened dirt than frozen and snow-laden. 

And It’s All Around Me

“Is it fucked in the head, to feel like you’ve never understood life no matter how hard you’ve tried? I mean, does anyone get it? Truly? I’ve never known peace…” 

“I get it.” His stare is soft, but it doesn’t settle on me as often as I’d like. If I allowed him, he could unravel my chest and rip me apart until I’m his very own black hole, I think. However, I can’t sit still long enough for him to catch me. I’m always too busy busying myself with this and that. Not even his untimely pleasantries can catch me off guard. “You can talk to me. I hope you know that.”

But I don’t, frankly, I wanted to say. Instead there was a long pause, peppered by birdsong. 

You told me that you get it, but how often have you threatened me with your life when things have gotten too hard? 

‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you,” You sobbed. “I-... I even thought about the gun in the closet.” So I took you back the very next day. 

“I feel like a loser, like you deserve better. I’m just a fucking loser. I think about hanging myself everyday, but I just try to pretend like everything is okay.” Ten minutes later you told me not to worry about it. That it’s not that serious, but it’s all I could think about. How much truth is in your words when you speak them? Don’t you see the way it cracks my every bone and swallows me whole? 

“Don’t worry about it. Forget it. I don’t want you to worry.”

And so I’m wearing the ring, aren’t I?

I Can’t Outrun It

I'm a woman, sometimes. Less than a person, most of the time. A creature of habit, nonetheless. And a human longing to be a better one—one who understands their inner turmoil, where it starts, and how to stop the maelstroms. I want to convalesce and work to ameliorate myself from the inside out, but it's hard to stop the spinning and to keep from getting dizzy.

Often, I dream that I am made of wax so that I can chew, soften, and remold the parts of myself that are not good enough. I’ve always believed that I must work hard to find my purpose, but that no matter what I do, it's not enough. Frequently, I wonder if I was born in the wrong body because of how much I hate the way my own skin crawls from me when I look at myself in the mirror for too long.

I dream of speaking honestly with my mother, ‘I understand why you abused me. It was because you endured worse. I think, maybe I forgive you. I think I forgive you. I’ll forgive you when you stop crossing boundaries I don’t know how to set in place.’

There was a crystal ashtray that my grandmother would grab, full of more than old cigarettes. Her fingertips would dig into the ashen remnants of her habits to grip the heavy crystal with white knuckles to hurl it at my mother from across the room. She would blame her daughter for everything wrong inside her head because there was no way for her to make sense of the chemical imbalance. Why do our own brains sabotage us like that? So she consumed and inhaled more chemicals to try to make sense of such an unsound mind, but the scales toppled over a long time ago, and its incessant echo never stopped, until she made them. 

There was no balance to be had when her face was already down in the mud in the middle of a battlefield.

She didn't care about breaking her daughter because it served as a reminder of something fragile. It only fueled her anger, I believe, as it highlighted the delicate yet resilient nature of life, something she wanted to escape. Her daughter witnessed her gradual decline and even uttered, "I wish you were dead," but regretted those words when they became reality. When she had to make the heart-wrenching decision to disconnect her mother's body from life support, her mind already gone, my mother lacked the strength to offer an apology for all those moments she yearned for her mother's life to end, just to be liberated from her.

Were you freed, though? 

'Cause I lost faith in myself, when I turned away from the one with the longest stretch of embracing arms to hold, to hold, to hold me. So now I'm all alone.’

The generational guilt riddled through my bones buzzes like a wasp nest, but at night, when the sun can’t see my face, I tuck myself away into blankets and try to convince myself that I am surrounded by the soft bellies of bees. Instead of the meaty, rich crunch of an exoskeleton as I reflexively clench my jaw and grind my teeth, I try to imagine the evaporation of nectar with every shallow breath until my mouth is full of honey instead of blood. Sometimes, I find sleep, and even though I'm usually dreamless, my body feels beaten every morning.

I drove a hammer through my alarm clock a few years ago. Now I have the gentle vibrations of a watch latched around my wrist. It doesn’t make getting out of bed any easier, but I don’t come to with a heartbeat on the fritz. I still hit snooze and bury my face back into my pillow, no matter how sweet the idea of coffee sounds in the back of my head. No matter how the scent of an old coffee pot dripping fresh brew reminds me of the best days of my youth, the start of something new every morning after a night of wishing my life away. Now that I'm here, older than yesterday, I find myself wanting to reset the clock, thinking about all of the things I could have done differently, said better in a time in my life that shouldn't even be swimming across the forefront of my mind. The times I drove home drunk in high school. The days I was cruel to people who didn't deserve it. The hours I would eat until I couldn't breathe, only to rid myself of my shame in the shower down the drain.

Do you think I didn’t hear you? Do you think I didn’t see you? All I ever wanted to do was look up to you without having to question my own moral compass. I don’t remember a time I was ever allowed to be a child unless I was alone. And oh, was I lonely.

I often don’t remember how I manage to get out of bed everyday. "Good morning," I greet myself with a contemptuous smile in the mirror.

'Cause God grew too tired to fix the mistakes he made with Love. I think his biggest mistake was making me.'

[nostalgictide]

Immortal as Art

The humidity of summer has embraced me in an airless hug and this linen button-down sticks to my skin that’s drenched with sweat. The saltiness from the ocean’s breeze has invaded my senses entirely. It has curled my starless locks into natural waves, faded and unruly—I am becoming one with the sea and the salt is making its claim of me. I wonder how long it would take for me to crystallize and step into the frozen state of the running man statue, forgotten on the shore of a private beach. 

Tourists and masters of the arts will come from all over. ‘What was he running from?’ they’ll ask and I will live forever in this world, until I crumble... 

Bare feet collide with the shore’s wet sand, and just as they begin to sink, I drive myself forward to beat on, running despite what feels like a lack of oxygen to breathe even at dawn’s earliest hour. Occasionally, the tide will swell high enough to wrap around my ankles, drawing me back to determination—a moment’s cool reminder that I can remain in motion for as long as I have the will. And I will find my way.

So I run, and I run. Until I can’t. How long can you keep running until everything you’ve been running from catches up to you, anyway? The clichés never end. The inevitable always triumphs and drops its weight into your chest until you can’t anymore—until you can’t breathe unless you turn around and face the truth. It’s always reaching for my shoulder, beckoning me to listen, and pulling stress taut across my neck as a form of torture.

The pain I fail to harbor always has its way with me eventually. I heave, hinging at the waist to face seafoam and broken shells that have been washed ashore. “Hell,” I mouth around an excruciating exhale of hotter air than I’ve been inhaling. Bile surges upward at full speed, from the depths of my stomach to the back of my throat where I try to fight it—the inevitable—but my body’s determination to purge prevails and its contents greet the tide. It seems metaphorical, for the ocean to be washing away my regrets of last night and remnants of pungent booze, but it feels shameful. It is shameful. 

I jog forward, away from my misgivings, until I start to cramp and have to turn, stumbling knee-deep into my only friend to gather water into cupped palms. Against my reddened skin, nothing has ever felt so reviving. Like a baptism to wash away my sins and start anew, the water greets my face and I lean back, allowing it to form streams and rivers down my structure and into my hair, mingling with the sweat. Perhaps the salt has crystallized me—from the sweat, the ocean, and my tears of defeat—and now I am encased in a nightmare of necessity. Without the salt, I would have nothing of him left, other than dreams where he still breathes.

“River, honey, go to your room,” My mother could barely contain the tears that threatened to shake her voice, but I didn’t know any better. At nine years old I could only assume I upset my mother and she needed space. “I’m sorry, mom,” I mumbled into my chin, clutching our wet cat to my chest. I had this bright idea to bring Pippin, our stray rescue, to the beach to see if she would morph into a catfish. She didn’t, and I should thank my lucky stars for having such a tolerant companion that never clawed my eyes out despite the ridiculous adventures I took her on. She was always at my side, ready to wrap her tail around my legs in a comforting hug. 

“River, please just go to your room before your father sees the wet cat,” She moved behind me, to nudge me along into my bedroom where she closed the two of us in with a heavy sigh. The touch of her hands on my shoulders lingered like broken wings on a fallen angel, and I knew then that I wasn’t in trouble with her, but that she was relieving me from my father’s wrath. 

“Evelyn, Get the fuck in here!” My father’s voice bellowed through the house, right on time, from the threshold of the front door the very second it flew open. My mother stood in his way like a war hero, hardly made a sound… The deep echo of his unwarranted anger washed away with the sound of the ocean outside my window.

What is it about broken that attracts broken? We want life to be far more enchanting than it really is, to the point where we have convinced ourselves that overcoming pain makes us beautiful. We convince ourselves it will somehow aid us in contributing to society artistically, aesthetically, and through every other inspiring adjective. We submerge ourselves into fabulist stories because we want to be a fairytale. Is escapism a coping method or an addiction? Are we nostalgic for lives we’ve never lived because we’ve fabricated truths and have woven them into our memories? The grass is always greener.

The tide is gentle this morning, waves swelling and crashing over me with hardly any force as I kneel within the shore in silent prayer, still desperate for a breath of air despite finding stillness for minutes that have felt like hours. I ebb and flow, digging my fingers into the sand and feeling for the broken shells, the ones that will gradually break down into granulates and soon become one of the quadrillions. Particles.

“It's been like a year since I've been home, flirting with an addiction I can't shake off.”

This is my reality, where tears always escape from the ocean within my seabound gaze. Are we nostalgic for pain when there is nothing left to feel, or are we afraid to face the reality of pain’s war to find an end?

“Like a year or two ago. I forget... Maybe it’s been three now. I wish I kept our tape recordings, you know the ones… I think you’d be mad at me if you knew I burned them, and your sweatshirt, our records. God, Dylan, I wish I kept your sweatshirt.”

We were the same, him and me. Both with our love for one another just out of reach. The difference was, his saving grace lied just beyond the line that divides life and death—time—the day between the sand and the sky. Depression held him down until he couldn’t breathe, and that was the difference between him and me. His head was in the sand and mine was beneath the waves, still catching air when I was strong enough to surface.

“What are you doing?” I couldn’t begin to understand his random tangent about life, where it came from, or how it started. The universe plucked it free from his head while we were on our way to visit his family for the holiday weekend, and only a moment before we were talking about how beautiful the sunset was. The bright orange and silky yellow blended into the bay waters and dusk’s first breeze mingled cooler with the salty air. Our drive began to stretch out onto the bridge and everything felt right, like the perfect melody, but, “We could just end this life and move onto the next together, right now, River. We can just be happy, I think we’d make it to Paradise together.”

The top of his ivory 1980 Mercedes-Benz 450SL convertible—his baby—was down and I could taste the air when my mouth fell agape with confusion, my words consumed by the wind.

“We don’t have to keep living like this anymore. We deserve to be happy, you and I,” His blue-green eyes were thrown in frantic glances at me. The setting sun reflected off of them like they were their own pools of water each time. His right hand moved from the steering wheel to snatch a hold of my wrist, coaxing a breathless, skeptic laugh out of me.

“What are you talking about?” I leaned away as if I could find a better view of the chaos that was oozing from his mind, catapulting off his tongue to splash haphazard nonsense. Asphalt burned beneath skidding tires as a heavy foot was floored into the gas pedal, accelerating us head-on into the sharp bend that would lead us onto the bay bridge, or over it at our hastening speed. 

I braced the dashboard in an attempt to shove the truth away from me. “Slow down, Dylan! What the fu—...”

To say we flew into the night was an understatement, and maybe he made it to Paradise, but I didn’t. 

That is my reality. Now I dream of metal colliding and overpowering the concrete barrier that stood in the way of us and the descent into still waters. My eyes well at thought of the surge that encompassed us and the convertible into a deep embrace, pulling us into its kingdom of sand.

Another breath and my eyes open to greet the rising sun, mustering a meek smile and a winding roll of my shoulders in an attempt to shrug into a melody of avoidance, suppressing my emotions, 

“I’ll get there someday.” 

[nostalgictide]

Dream Sweet in My Sea Haven

“Believe me, darling. The stars were made for falling. Like melting obelisks as tall as another realm.”

Drenched in water that twinkles like the stars beneath the moon, my pale skin shimmers like a creature from folklore tales even in a state of mundanity. The breeze rolls in cold across the water, its melodic whistling warning of winter ahead. These chilly September nights always remind me of my mother when she and I would discuss the celestial possibilities and the vastness of our universe. “Nessie, darling, do you see those clusters of stars?” Her voice once echoed across the lake and carried into the woodland that surrounded us, disturbing a loon bird that called back hauntingly to voice her distress. Mother’s alike, I think to myself now, protecting their babies. 

“Yes, I see it,” My gaze had followed along her slender arm to the finger that had extended out to a constellation in the north. The cluster of twinkling lights was shaped much like a W, easy for my youthful eyes to find with my mother’s careful tracings. 

“Cassiopeia,” She uttered as she gathered my small frame into her lap, enwrapping me within her arms, her skin cool to touch—we were both shivery on that late autumn night. “As the story goes, she was a queen that boasted that her beauty was greater than that of the sea nymphs. This was quite the offense, and she was banished to the sky for all to gawk at, and for the nymphs to laugh. Her very own celestial ocean, but never a true siren, nor nearly as beautiful.” 

I laugh now, an ethereal laugh that hardly reaches the depths of my heart. It’s too early in the year to see Cassiopeia now, so my green eyes have fixated on the full moon in all its glory that reflects off of the water in ripples—ripples casting moonbeams haphazardly across the horizon. “I miss you, mother,” I speak to the water as my feet stir idly within the murky abyss below, hung off the dock that occasionally creaks with aging resistance. 

“So, she was sent to the stars for saying she was more beautiful than the mermaids? That doesn’t make sense,” I challenged my mother, even at seven years old, and she laughed with her whole heart. 

“I wasn’t finished, Starling, listen closely,” She swept her fingers through my hair, tucking fine, ashen locks behind my ears as she always did and I think she still would if she were alive today. “Her boast angered Poseidon, God of the sea, he hated that she spoke so poorly of his sea angels. So...he sent a sea monster, Cetus the Whale, to ravage her kingdom. To quell the monster’s anger, Cassiopeia’s daughter—Princess Andromeda—she was left tied to a rock by the sea as a sacrifice to save the kingdom from being destroyed.”

“Her own daughter? That’s terrible,” I quietly interjected but never disturbed my mother’s cadence with my commentary. 

She had nodded, nuzzling my crownless head. “Cetus was just about to devour the beautiful princess, when suddenly, Perseus the Hero happened upon her while riding Pegasus, the Flying Horse. He saw the innocent princess in distress, near death, and saved her. I’m sure to be chivalrous, for she was beautiful. But the Gods were so pleased by his act of heroism, that they elevated all of these characters to the heavens as stars, even the queen,” My mother tutted softly. “They loved the story.” 

“Oh,” I breathed in astonishment, as I did in response to all of her tales about the stars, forests, oceans, and otherworldly ventures. 

“Anyway,” She continued, “You can see her throne is upside down,” My mother had reached for the sky again, “That’s why it looks like a W. Cassiopeia must hang on for dear life, else she will drop from her chair and into the ocean, where the Nereids are still waiting to seek their vengeance on the vain Queen of Ethiopia.” 

Another happy ending. I miss her happy endings. “If only she would fall,” I smile, a kind of smile that’s drawn at nostalgia’s will.

 The sound of oars paddling by in varying degrees and the strained breath of a worn-out fisherman causes the hairs on the nape of my neck to rise and for my ears to perk with interest, eager to hear from which direction. Spotted, only half a mile west. On cue, my pale lips part to allow my song of hymns and sweet notes to expel and carry across the water. As sound does and in an aberration of beauty to the man’s surprise, his gasp mingles with my lyrics but his rowing never ceases. 

“. . .And in-store are dreams so daring that the night can't stop from staring

And I'll swim sweetly as a herring, through the ether, not despairing.

Go to sleep, you stunning sky; 

Gently creep cunning by, 

a quiet hum is amplified by your thumb, that you suck dry. . .”

Before he can glide across the calm waters any closer, I rise with grace to stand up, the panels of the dock creaking beneath me nonetheless. The arches of my feet sit at the very edge of the ghostly moribund pine and I outstretch my hands to the moon for a moment to share a dance. 

“. . .Hundred raging waters snare the lonely sigh.

Hold your breath and clasp at Cassiopeia.

Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia.

Oh oh, Cassiopeia. . .”

I lose my voice to an eldritch hum, my fingers descending to skim the surface of the robe that sheaths my naked body from the night. Lazily loosening the bow free, I shed the fabric that sheens like opal stone to reveal all of my nude skin that scintillates just as vibrantly. No utterance has fallen from the lips of my bystander, but all have fallen silent, paddles have been halted and his boat merely glides in the direction that it’s been veered, toward my dock as a black silhouette in the moonlight. 

In an instance, as quickly as a shooting star leaves her trail across the sky, I dive into the lake’s abyss that’s been waiting patiently with me since dusk. At will, I shed my layer of humanity and embrace the inner song of my Nereidian heritage. My thighs meet first where a webbing of flesh reaches outward to intertwine and pull my legs into one; bones shift into place as my spine extends down the length of the tail as it forms into its elegance. My heels meet and my feet shift into fins that span twice the width of my hips—what was once skin, is now like a translucent fabric that floats angelically in the water. The transformation used to be painful, like my bones were shattering beneath the pressure of the earth’s ocean in its entirety. Now, it all happens quickly—as quickly as a blink and my eyes reopen to a veil of membranes that protect and enhance my sight underwater. 

Meanwhile, my diaphragm hollows until my ribs can individually pierce through my hardening flesh to make way for the filaments within each aperture between, forming gills that waver fluidly as I find my stride deeper into the cool depths of the lake’s water. 

I ease my way to the surface after a few leisure rounds beneath the boat to familiarize myself, like meeting with an old friend. My nails that have formed into thick claws, like a vulture’s, tap the wooden structure as my fingers, webbed at their base, curl around the ledge of the fisherman’s boat. No scales extend past my waist, but my skin is luminescent like the sea’s Noctiluca Scintillans and my face remains just as beautiful, if not even more radiant. In one swift heave, I rise to the height of my arms, steadying myself at the edge with my palms as the boat sways like a rocking chair. “Evening,” I set my jaw, allowing my gaze to find brown eyes darker than this night.

“Wh-... Who are you?” The man had risen to stand—I imagine looking to ensure I hadn’t drowned for how long I was submerged—desperate to help a deranged, sad girl. “Do you need help, Miss?” He crouches down closer to the edge, inspecting my face with a furrowed brow and a panicked hitch to his breathing.

“Do you believe Poseidon’s son could drown?” I bare my teeth in a wide grin. My incisors don’t grow in length, but their edges sharpen like my kindred upir darlings that are bound to the night just the same. As far as this man can tell, there isn’t a tail swaying to the water’s tune below the surface.

Confusion has sunken in deep and he shakes his head, ceasing to stammer, “I don’t know much about those mystical tales, Miss.” 

“Pity. The stars know more about what’s true than we ever could. They’ve watched over us even in their death. Come,” I whisper closely as my hand finds his bearded cheek, then seeking a hold on the back of his neck, “Let’s go for a dip.”