IGOR, FL \\Places I Hardly Know\\

Written May 2017 - Asheville, North Carolina
I G O R,  F L is a place I thought I would hate.

     I did hate it.

     The crowd I was with could have been a part of that sensation. I was driving a load of British and Scottish camp counselors around Florida and I was grumpy, sick – and even more sick of driving. I had spent an afternoon at the Tampa Aquarium, staring mindlessly into tanks and sidestepping around many erratic children.

     “Igor is a MUST SEE,” my friend Kat said.

     I had torn myself away from Jellyfish and Stingrays for Igor. I had once again braved the onslaught of Tampa’s rush hour traffic for Igor. I was enduring the incessant whining of French pop music for Igor.

     And we finally got there, and . . .

     What a disappointment.

     The cobblestones did not make this town feel quaint and historic – no. It felt trapped, suffocated by the past. Some type of Eastern European music trailed out of tin speakers as we trudged down the sidewalks searching for the rest of our crew.

     Bars on windows added to the oppressive feel. Most buildings stood abandoned. Rusty fire escapes hung low over the sidewalks, making the streets feel like cages. What was most distressing, however, was the people of Igor. They were few and far between, as most of the people walking these streets were decidedly not natives – women in heels clinging to the arms of their dinner dates, teens running in packs with their polaroids, tiny groups of middle-aged women pointing at falling down storefronts and frowning – these were not the people of Igor. These were the tourists of Igor, which for a few brief minutes, was a club I was a part of.

     No – the people of Igor were distinct. I saw them sitting on the tops of fire escapes, shopping in the corner markets and the curb shops, working behind the counters at the dark and dingy bars. An elderly man limped by us on our promenade down main street – pushing a baby in a faded red stroller – a baby not more than two months old, wrapped in a large t-shirt and loosely bouncing back and forth in her grubby chariot, her head heavily dangling on the top of her tiny body, her eyes open and wandering.

     I felt sick to my stomach as the old man continued on past us. There were a million questions present in my mind, but I felt I had no right to ask them, and so I silenced my discomfort and followed my group up to the edge of a tattoo parlor, stinging my eyes with all its neon signs, where the rest of our friends were waiting for us in a cloud of excited conversation.

     “Let’s get our ears pierced like Kat has hers done!” One of the Irish girls yelled.

     Somehow, with the town decaying around us, and my spirits deteriorating even faster, I agreed. We all crammed into the parlor. I paid my bill before taking a seat in the chair; unsure of what to tip for services I had not yet received.

     The needle was large and dull and I watched in wide-eyed horror in the mirror as it dove into my sunburnt earlobe and the blood slowly pooled. I thought my small silver hoop was beautiful, but the hole got infected and ached for weeks and weeks, burning hotly through the rest of our Florida nights, keeping me awake and tossing irritably between the dull bodies of my sleeping companions.

     Eventually, I took it out, but still to this day there is a miserable little lump in my ear, and when I feel my broken cartilage I think, “Igor! What a terrible place.”

A Response to (There Was Love.)

Two years ago - almost to the day - I posted this poem.

He was punching holes in walls and I was making 911 calls.

(We were holding hands and making jokes and cooking casseroles.)

     He swerved off the road screaming "I oughtta kill us both!"

(He massaged my aching neck when we got home.)

     There was cursing.

           (There was loving.)

                  There was abusing. 

                       

                       (There was loving.)

   

                             There was hurting.

                                  (THERE WAS LOVING.)

          There was choosing.

               (And I know he chose wrong.)

          But it's so confusing.

               (My enemy held me all night long.)

     

          And I'm still losing...

              (I'm still fighting a war that can never be won.)

               But I still love love.

               And love is never done.

Reading those words today sends a gross wave of nausea over me.

And also, relief.

Because HOLY CRAP have my feelings changed!

I don't want to invalidate all the heartbreak that 2016 Sarah was feeling in the immediate aftermath of abuse. I don't want to disagree with the fact that she DID feel love for this person who wrecked her life. But, having two years time and the Blue Ridge mountains in between he and I, my approach to the past has changed.

I want to throw up anytime I see the word "love" remotely close to his name.

That was not love.

No matter how many tender moments existed within the chaos - that was not love. He did not love me.

Did I love him?

The answer to that question no longer matters at all. Because I no longer have room in my heart and mind for that question to nestle, like a little bug chewing on a leaf.

These Nights and the Snow and the Books

This time last year, I was in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. 

It was already beginning to snow - and frequently - with white blankets of storms swirling in one day and blown away by sunshine the next. It was a strange and tender time in my heart. I went there to dwell on my life and to write, but I hardly did. I never really spoke while I was there - mostly I just listened. 

There is a certain kind of meditation that happened for me out there. It was not intentional, by any means. It was, in a way, forced on me by factors beyond my control. 

One, there was no cell service. That alone forced me to forget about scrolling through Instagram as a mindless hobby. I carried books around. I read so many books. And while I wasn't really writing, at least I was reading. I was soaking up the beauty of my beloved craft, even if I wasn't actively creating it. Reading books might not seem so different from reading off a screen, but it really is. Somehow, it's quieter. I go deeper into myself, while at the same time, farther away than I ever get when I'm scrolling on social media. Reading took me beyond myself, beyond the rickety twin bed and the screeching porch rocker, beyond the Rockies. 

This was a form of meditation for me, losing myself (the shallow, contrived, play-acting part of myself) to find that part of myself that does not babble mindlessly but that listens, and watches. 

There is a me within me. She is my core, and she is nothing that you see. She is not funny, or tragic, or dramatic, or angry, or sorrowful, or idealistic, or anything, really. She is beyond all that, further back than all that. She is quiet. She is eyes and ears who aren't looking for anything in particular. She is a pure drop of me-ness in a sea of world-ness.

And she is who I became when I read my books.

And what else brought me down to her? The snow brought me to her. I liked watching it fall like dust blown off a windowsill down on onto my life. My life was suddenly fully contained between Long's Peak and Big Thompson Canyon. There was little else. There was no downtown Atlanta, there was no Veritas Christian Academy, there was no ex-boyfriend, no childhood home, no bible studies with girls I "kinda sorta know" and no one that knew me. 

That was all gone, and with it, gone was the Sarah that was concocted to survive in those worlds.

I was now somehow different.

That's not to say the same petty worries and lingering character flaws didn't follow me, because they did. But, thrust out of my normal environment into this strange and beautiful world, I had less time to exercise them.

It was a tender time, a raw time, and I was busy doing not much of anything. I spent nights either alone, in my small and quiet twin bed beside a drafty window, or with Jon. His cabin was sweet and small and in need of a woman. We spent many nights together, on our sides, gazing up at the window to our right, outside of which some sort of moon was always hanging. I liked to listen to his voice as I was falling asleep. 

I was unable to write. And most of the time, I was unable to speak. But lying here, in the safe blanket of darkness, I could begin to whisper fragments of thoughts to him. It was different - he didn't try and make sense of anything I said. Some boys before had tried to "understand" me, and I never felt like he tried to. He just held my hand, squeezed it maybe, and said very little.

This brought me down to myself, to my core of "me-ness". These nights, and the snow, and the books, and many other things which I long to write about as well. 

sk