Talkie Walkie

My stomach always too full, my mind always hungering for more.

Always in my green dress, hide those thighs, even if they stick to the leather seats of the car.

Out of sight, out of mind.

All kinds of crazy. All colors.

The warm wind, the grey skies, the Coromandel hills, big and green.

Breath at certain intervals, touch only certain people, eat and drink only certain things - don't want to be triggered into a binge and then the angry purge.

Don't want to feel this endless anger, this hopelessness, this desire to die.

All kinds of crazy.

I feel sad knowledge when I remember this.

My seventeenth summer.

Caught, trapped, too terrified to come up for air -

but longing for something out of reach,

watching the light on the water above me,

and I'm not myself,

swimming away,

relieved to be leaving that version of me behind.

The car rides, the pain of the hunger in the early hours of the morning.

Gnawing nausea, deprivation, the sinking feeling.

What is that feeling?

Staring up through the window, the clear sky lightening, and the dark leaving me with a moon so full and bright, my fluids are pulled inexorably towards it.

I am levitated, eyes open and closed and captivated, in prayer.

Get me away, keep me safe.

I don't really know what I was praying for.

 I had been in love, not the previous summer but the one before, with an unassuming gentleman. I think I startled him more than anything. My full female body, my youthful immature mind. I don't think he knew what to think.

Possibly he found it funny, or flattering. A little inappropriate.

Now, two summers later, I found myself walking in the long, wet grass while he set up his stall beside my parents', again and again at the same summer fairs.

I didn't feel much for him anymore, but the template of him was lodged somewhere deep inside me.

And now, and now... here...

A man of him, the shadow of his face in this face.

I shudder at my reaction, to him.

Harder to breathe, harder to stay still, the light a little too bright.

My body confused, my mind angry.

Who is he? How dare he come back to haunt me now!

In broad daylight.

Why is he interested in someone like me? I both want and don't want him to look me full in the face and smile.

I both want him and don't want him.

The harrowing weight of this.

Telling my husband, because I need to be entirely honest.

My husband nods, a mystery.

He is calm, and sad, and sits and waits till the tide of catastrophizing and attraction ebbs away.

What else is he to do?

What else am I to do?

Sit on my hands, and just accept that these things happen.

My therapist said that this would happen.

I would be pursued, I would be tempted.

But I have a choice.

And in my deepest, most beaten and broken of hearts,

I know that my love for husband is huge, compact, real and unbelievable.

A visitation from my past will be just that, a visit - brief - and then the veneer of this person and this situation will peel away.

And I will see this with such clarity that I will draw a sharp intake of breath, and then let go of the pain.

I hope.

As I swim away from her again, the old me, left floating in the waters.

I circled her once, twice.

I let her have some peace, let her sink to the bottom, in her green dress, with her long hair.

I swim away, and instead of tearing my chest open in an attempt to rid my body of the men of my past, I let my body absorb them, and release them in exhale when I reach the surface.

I feel sad knowledge when I accept this.

An attractive person that represents so much more than just attraction.

A knot in my stomach that will loosen with the passing of time.

And a breath for patience, a tightening grip on my husband's hand as he smiles at me, understanding.

And just this. Remembering. This. 

Air are Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel. This french duo stole my sisters heart the summer that I just wrote about, and I would hear these strange, subtle melodies through the thin walls of our home.

These songs threaded together the long car rides around New Zealand that summer, ticking down the minutes of my life, stifling my breath from festivals to fair grounds.

I can't listen to this music without thinking of that time of my life.

These soothing sounds help me to remember that all things come to pass, even the tough times.

These soothing sounds now make me smile, and lull my screaming brainwaves to a calmer level.

I hope that you enjoy these sounds, these songs, this music.

I hope that you might possibly understand what I wrote today.