Once a year or so, I pull up a saved Facebook post from a lady who I barely knew growing up and read her 216 words she wrote the week my stepmother, Louise, died. It always makes me cry, and I can’t figure out why. But I need tears more than I need answers, so I give those words to my heart whenever I feel it.
Louise was a real character. She was a rough and tumble biker chick who knew how to not take any shit from anyone. Before she shacked up with my dad, she used to hang out with the Hell’s Angels and was known to even be seen on the back of Sonny Berger’s bike from time to time. Now I am not saying that makes me Jax Teller or anything, but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel cooler sometimes knowing I was in part raised by someone who knew she was part of such infamous legendry.
Sometime in her late teens, she and a few other ladies in her sisterhood got into a terrible accident resulting in oil burns across their bodies. I knew these scars well, both on my stepmom and some of her sisters, for we frequented swimming holes as a kid, and those splashes of terribly warped flesh were there for all to see in their swimsuits. They were all broken people, sure, but they had started with some kind of deep inner strength that kept them proud even having been torn from the ranks of “beautiful young women” far too early. Something in them was so unyielding they knew they were still sexy even though there was evidence to the contrary.
And the men around them, broken and strong too, the men such as my dad, preferred their women like this. Someone who could take a beating and still show up for the party. Someone who could look trauma in the eye and give it a coke-trembling grin while they tried to choke something worth having from the tyranny of tragedy that was their life. A life that hunted them like a beast, and took everything it could from them the moment they let their guard down.
I hear she died still devoted to her excess, still trying to find the party in the war. I remember the last few times I spent with her, years before she passed, before she and my dad broke it off for the last time. As a kid, it was just do my chores , go play, and leave her alone to read the day away. But eventually, I was a young adult, and she and I could talk about the books we had in common. We’d talk about riding dragons with Anne McCaffrey and being vampires with Anne Rice. She had a wall of fantasy books that I could draw from. Something I will always be grateful for.
I remember one time when she and my dad were fighting, which was the usual, she said something awful about my dad to me, something I don’t quite recall but certainly was aimed at reducing his manhood to nothing. It didn’t phase me because I guess I don’t care what others think of my dad (he doesn’t seem to either). But I cared about Louise, and so I said gently, “if ever it would help for you to talk about it, just let me know.” She didn’t seem to care at the moment, rightly so, so I turned to go, but then, “hey,” she said, so I turned back. “You’re a good one Gabe.” I said thanks, and meant it, but was sad because I knew this meant we would never talk about what was really going on.
And she faded from my life like that. She gave me so much. She showed me how to be proud and strong, even with a mangled body. She once told me she was proud of me because I was the only one of “her kids” to make it into college. She had been a part of raising quite a few kids from different men. I didn’t have the heart to tell her when I had dropped out.
And so I read those 216 words, and I cry. But today, I finally know why I cry. I cry because while I told Louise, “I love you” all the time, I never told her what I really wanted to. What I meant to say was thank you, Louise, for being one of the few who could ever understand me. For showing me that broken and strong is possible.
The broken and strong don’t tell each other with words how to do it, we stand up and show you.

     I see him every afternoon. Muscled calves flexing in the sun as he lunges across the court. Return the ball or flash a smile. It’s all blinding. The allure. Concentration of effort. Pure and pinpointed. Crushing.
    Unaware of my gaze. Maybe.
    Now that I think of it, he could be watching me, too.
    It gets so I don’t have to use my eyes.  I can feel his movements; taste the sweat trickling through golden hairs on the side of his neck. Back and forth. Baiting the hook. Tracking. Tracking. I stay focused on the game, engaged and tracking. As my pulse races and my undershorts grow damp.
    The perfect L of the vastus intermedius (times 2!), and the one, crooked incisor – they’re like catnip. I want to roll on my back and wriggle; purr and claw and bite. …Which only hones my resolve.
    Oblivious to females at first glance. At least he’s curious. The females watch him, and feel the catnip. It make their hips wiggle, too.  I see it. The males write him off as a dreamer, a dork. There is no place for such beauty in their pantheon – or for such remove.
    Hard to pin down. Hard to define. A hard man is good to fine. And enjoy.
    I walk to the net and stand. The sun bright and brassy, like every other mid-valley afternoon. Distant sounds of splashing in the pool and birds chirping in the parched trees. His white clothes stretching delicious over tanned skin, and balls scattered at court edges.
    My undershorts need a tug. Shoelaces need a pull. I feel my heart beat, steady, and my eyes take in everything, without moving. I stand, transfixed. Motionless. Love swelling in my breast. Like a bird, pinned in the crosshairs, knowing its goose is cooked.
He’s somewhere beyond my peripheral vision. He’s not all the way grown yet. But he’s big. And strong enough to take down. His father. Or me.  Lion cub with lethal paws, innocent, kills without intending. Trying to figure it out.
I turn my head and smile. Not aware until it’s too late. That I’m the one who’s been hunted, and bagged.

I am lost to this world. All is spinning around, I’m disoriented and falling backwards in the
abyss. Nothing to hold on to, all is slipping and sliding through my fingers like sand. Sinking
in the vortex, sick in what I think is my stomach, the whirlwinds are swallowing me whole.
The last thing I remember, I had my hands on the ridge, hanging from the big flat rock, my
fingerprints must still be on the stone. I don’t know what happened. Now wind blowing in my
ears, going on and on. Stark smell of metal or blood and a roaring I’ve never heard before.
And it is dark all around.
Is this the belly of the beast? The end of times? The new world?
There is nothing and nothingness. Just darkness and falling and roaring. I strain to curl my
body into a fetus, my head in my arms. I still have a body, a body that is moving with
unbelievable speed.
Where am I? Who am I? What the fuck! How long has this been going on? How is this going
to end? I try and stretch my body, spread my arms and legs like I am flying.
I am flying in a way, just dropping with enormous speed too. I move my arms back and
stretch my legs and I seem to be moving forward somewhat. It’s hard to tell, because of the
vast darkness. Then I realise my eyes are shut hard. When I try to open them just a tiny bit, I
understand why. The wind of the speed is cutting in them so painfully, that it’s impossible to
open them.
Fuck me! What the fuck is happening? The dizziness is overwhelming and I feel nauseated.
Then the light flashes start, violent luminescent blue, like lightning in my eyes. My brain feels
like it’s splitting open. Unbearable pain everywhere.
Then all of a sudden all is still. Like I slashed through a veil into another world. Whiteness
everywhere and divine silence. All sound has stopped in this instant.
It’s like I’m in a world made of snow, all white and silent, but not cold. It’s like there is no
temperature. If anything it is pleasant. I’m not falling anymore. If I even still have a body, it is
floating like mist.
There is clarity, so much clarity about what is. I am this.

I want my mind back! What did I think about before this hideous pandemic? It's kind of like when I was pregnant, all I could think about was wow there is a baby in my womb. And all day long I'd be in baby land. Or when I had breast cancer and all I could think about was how can I heal, I want to live. Or when I had fantastic sex after a long dry spell and all my mind would do all day long is go back to particular moments; the hair pulling , the strategic bite, the breathing, on and on.
In the past the baby was born, the cancer was cured and the lover faded away. I want my mind back!
But this pandemic seems to change everything. I wake up heart pounding and all day it's there. I meditate and pray and exercise but it's still there. I try to be vigilant at night but it is still looming.
God help our planet, God help us please. I want my mind back!
It's so frustrating how unprepared out country is. The USA had time to start to prepare. To recommend social distancing in January not March. To give incentives to companies to make masks and protecting clothing for hospital workers, and even get the public prepared for closures. But human nature seems to prefer denial. It won't come to America. We are invincible. But it came and it's bloody scary and it isn't going away any time soon. WE are all vulnerable. We could be carriers, we could get sick, we could die .
I want my mind back! I want to think happy thoughts, see friends smile and do kind things for each other in person. I want to think about what to bring to the next pot luck, or how I can help a friend in need or maybe even fantasize about seeing that lover again.
I want my mind back! So please everyone wear a mask, do social distancing, stay home as much as possible, take vitamin C and D and immune boosters. Thank you everyone for all the fun things you post and the information on how to stay safe. I want this pandemic to be over sooner than later I love everyone and want you to be safe. Then I can have my mind back.