by Trisha Cull
The mean vet is said to shoot neighbourhood cats.
Did my kitten somehow crawl back home and settle into some place soft and warm, or did he place her on our back porch as a warning? How many times have I told you? Keep those damn cats out of my garden.
I look through the back porch window, to Grandma’s woodshed that always smells of newborn puppies, of pinkness and milk, then to the back alley beyond the shed, the whole visage altered, askew.
The alleyway has become infinite.
This is what they mean when they say, “Wait till you get older, life is hard.”
Clinical Note:
Cognition better since decline of ECT. She is, however, repeating some vignettes once or twice (i.e. told a week ago and then repeated later), which isn’t unusual for someone recovering from ECT. She recently lost her cellphone and nearly lost her job because she forgot to show up two shifts in a row.
I press my fingers into the kitten’s flank, find the pellet with my thumb, roll it around. My throat closes—a softened gag, a tiny choke.
Is it God or Jesus or St. Peter who tells me now to close my eyes and face the light?
Flesh closes around a wound.
Cool air and the scent of chimney smoke drift in through cracks and crevices in the back porch door. The sky is blue, violet, pink.
I lift the kitten into the light.
Close your eyes.
Blotches swirl on the undersides of my eyelids. I follow the blotches from the middle to away, and away into that morphing inexactness.
Death is not big; it’s small, and getting smaller. It is the ultimate transformation, or perhaps an ascent.
A river, a ripple, a rivulet.
Her jaw slackens. Her neck falls limp.
I think, live… live… live.
“This, this shouldn’t still be happening,” Caroline says, pinching the flesh on the underside of her outstretched arm. “I’ve been going to hot yoga every single day for months now. This simply shouldn’t be!”
I think of all the millions of times I spent pinching my flesh, every part of me, upon first waking, before my eyes were even open—the undersides of my arms, my thighs, hips, stomach, breasts, under my chin, my cheeks. How I have crucified myself for more than two decades. I still do these things now.
Caroline’s speech is eloquent, coloured with a degree of snobbery, but lovely nonetheless. She has long, beautiful black hair, porcelain skin and soft brown eyes. She is like Mona Lisa, only more beautiful. But unlike Mona Lisa, Caroline keeps no secrets. What you see is what you get. She holds nothing back. Vivacious and brilliant, she is the life of any gathering, talks a mile a minute, stands up just now to do a yoga pose the name of which escapes me.
“You see, you stretch all the way back with your arms overhead and behind you, elbows touching, hands clasped together, your feet planted firmly on the ground.” I watch in amazement as she flexes into an impossible pose, her back curved over and into itself like a bow.
I remember when I used to practise hot yoga, when I became the half-moon, the eagle, the tree, and marvel at how much has happened in such a relatively short period of time, how much my life has changed.
Just a little farther, Wendy said. Wherever you are is where you’re meant to be.
“How do you do that?” I say. “You look like you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“It’s supposed to hurt,” she says, and I think, Yes, it’s supposed to hurt, a little.
Anna sits quietly, surveying the room, contemplative. Her wit and humour make me laugh to no end some nights. She tells silly jokes that make me buckle.
“This guy walks into a bar carrying a crab, asks the bartender, ‘Do you sell crab cakes?’ The bartender says, ‘Yes, sure we do,’ and the guy says, ‘Good! Cuz it’s this guy’s birthday!’”
I have been laughing again. For years I’ve been trying to survive, had completely lost sight of the possibility of laughter. At best, I thought I might become complacent, maybe content. But happiness? Laughter? Really?
For the first time in my life, I have good female friends. They are my girls. They hold me up and tell me I can make it on my own now, that I am ready to love again.
Clinical Note:
Work on erotic transference: she still hopes the future will see us “together” in her sense of the word, rather than as the more likely outcome. She continues to present reasons for why I should consider a life with her. But since her self-esteem is so firmly anchored to being loved, it is a challenge to present the “why nots” without being overly rejecting.
Grandma is humming in the kitchen. She is always humming in the kitchen.
“The kitten,” I say, holding her out.
Grandma says, “Oh”—another oh that crosses a breadth of time, another oh that is love. “Give her to me,” she says.
She peers over her glasses, reaches out her hands.
But I do not want to concede what belongs to me: this life, this death, this creature I have named. In doing so, will I not be relinquishing control over my own fate that I have only recently come to understand is my own?
I am seven years old. My life is a glint in my eye. The sky is blue and I have only just begun to understand why.
Where do we go when we die? Where were we before we were born? I long to first know the answers to these questions then to understand them, but there is only this kernel of anxiety in my gut blossoming into what will one day become crippling.
There is only this question: why?
I think, no. I say no to death, yes to resurrection, yes to heaven where all good creatures go to live. “I will see you again one day,” I say. Then whisper, “I hope I will see you again one day.”
Thirteen
Windmills in the Fog (February 2012)
Clinical Note:
We work a little on her need for me to love her and how that is dependent on her denial. Denial is one of her central defences. (Bulimia, drug use, alcohol, etc.) She is, however, doing well. Obsession has decreased.
I email Richard.
February 16, 2012
Hi Richard,
I haven’t talked to you in a long time and was just thinking about you the other day, so thought I would say hello. How are you doing?
I’m working weekends at the university, going to therapy twice a week, living in a great apartment two blocks from the ocean, getting lots of exercise walking along the ocean.
I was in hospital (in-patient psychiatric ward) for all of December. My rabbit Caravaggio died in mid-December as well. But my other bunny, Marcello, is doing well. I no longer drink or use substances of any kind, living the clean life. My psychiatrist is amazing, and he has helped me a lot.
If you feel up to it, drop me a line to let me know how you are.
I think of you fondly and always hope the best for you.
Trish
February 17, 2012
Hi Trisha,
I’m glad to hear from you and that things are going well again. I’m so sorry to read about Caravaggio.
I’m sorry to have to report the boring fact that—externally at least—not much has changed in the two and a half years since I last saw you. I am still living on Bainbridge Island in the same place. I am not any happier than I was, but I don’t regret my decision to stay.
I certainly don’t have to tell you: it takes a long time to really, meaningfully change things. It’s a small thing every day and you have to fix things when there are setbacks. I have been painting maps every month or so and catering and the rest of the time making my own things and just generally laying the groundwork for better things. That and my crude gardening sustains me. Also, the boys are definitely old enough now. I still feel optimistic.
I still think of you all the time. I love that your life is working for you again. I know I came in briefly and at a strange ti
me, but I understood and appreciated you then and still understand and appreciate you now for the keenly beautiful soul you are.
Also, you’re sexy as hell.
Love,
Richard
I wake up late, walk in the early afternoon and into the evening, along McNeill Bay, up to the lookout again to survey all of Victoria, the tops of trees brimming green, mountains in the distance, the ocean all around, slicks of silver glittering on the horizon, the sun setting orange behind clouds in the distance.
I paint.
I set up my easel, canvas and oil paints in my living room, paint a vivid scene of blue ocean and a red cobblestone boardwalk. The lip of the boardwalk begins on an angle from the top left corner of the canvas and extends to the bottom right. It separates ocean from boardwalk on an angle. A black crow sits perched on the boardwalk in the middle of the frame; she is the focal point. A city in light blue is painted on the top portion of the canvas, so that if you were standing upon the boardwalk you would be looking out upon the sea, to the city on the horizon. Windows glow yellow from windows in the buildings and are reflected in the water.
I want to cross that ocean, walk through that city gate and disappear inside, to look out one of the glowing yellow windows to the ocean, stretch my gaze across to the boardwalk, to that crow on the other side.
This is the inversion taking place. I am standing outside myself. Not unlike those nights I looked upon myself in the bathroom mirror, my heart pounding, shocked into a state of horrific grief, proclaiming, “I’m going to die, oh my god, I’m going to die.” Now I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, in a state of peace, proclaiming, “Oh my god, I’m here, this is me. Thank god. Thank god. Thank god.”
Richard and I continue our online correspondence.
I move into a suite in an old heritage house in Fairfield, love my new kitchen, my wasabi-green walls, built-in glass cabinets, black chalkboard wall upon which I have written various quotes and comments.
I shower with the bathroom window open because I’ve come to enjoy the breeze on my naked body, because with my new sense of an identity and cleanliness of soul, I have this strange desire to be seen in my most natural form.
I want to share myself with the world.
One afternoon the neighbour, a nice lady who also sunbathes nude from time to time, sees me and we both smile.
I write on my chalkboard wall:
Saudades: a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. It’s related to the feelings of longing, yearning.
Carpe diem: seize the day.
Pay taxes
I love my little kitchen window that looks out onto the neighbour’s yard, her apple vines that climb the wall of her house, apples that will soon be shining throughout, wood patio with wood chairs, two golden retrievers that lounge in the grass all day. I love the green checkered curtains that hang from my kitchen window and billow gently in the ocean breeze, the ocean only a few blocks away. I love my large black and white ink Audrey Hepburn print that hangs on the wall above my fridge—she is in profile, she is smoking a cigarette.
She is what I aspire to, her beauty and grace, the curve of her delicate shoulder, the way she gazes off knowingly into the blank white canvas, into the future.
Clinical Note:
There is a lack of understanding the boundaries between us. We review how therapy is like other relationships (talking, getting to know someone, being supportive and understanding), however, the distinctions between love and therapy are what permit the therapy to succeed.
Richard and I pick up again, it seems, from where we left off three years ago. The connection between us is so strong it’s like no time has passed at all. Only this time it all becomes amplified. It happens quickly and without interruption. I’m ready now. He’s ready now. I am ready to love again, or perhaps for the first time.
We email each other daily, sometimes several times a day. We talk on the phone and Gmail chat. We text.
It becomes a full-blown distance relationship.
Clinical Note:
We reviewed the boundaries of our work. She pushes against the boundaries every session but accepts my request not to persist.
In early spring, Richard and I decide to meet in Seattle and stay at a hotel.
The border crossing guard asks me a litany of questions: Where are you going? Where do you live? Who are you going to see? What do you do for a living? When was the last time you travelled?
“In the US?” I reply.
“Yes,” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say. He cocks an eyebrow.
I think about the nature of these questions, the who, what, where, when and why, consider the distance I have travelled over the past three years. Addiction. The psychiatric ward, twice. Torn from the life I had known for ten years. The end of my marriage. The poverty that followed. The lines at the welfare office on Pandora Street, surrounded by crackheads and homeless people, people, I was learning, not so unlike myself. Onward into abstinence, from alcohol and NeoCitran. Then relapse. Again and again. Self-injury. Wellbutrin. Clogged sinuses. Burning sinuses. The forever dripping nose. Onward into a series of dwellings, beginning in squalor—the rabbit den in the basement of my husband’s house, surrounded by shit and piss and the bunnies I love—moving to progressively better places, the one in the gut of my sister’s basement where I cooked my food on a hotplate and did my dishes in the bathtub, to the tiny apartment next to the pub on Fort Street, to the more upscale apartment two blocks from the ocean on St. Patrick Street, two blocks from McNeill Bay, the Pacific Ocean, sea salt on my skin and in my hair. And at last to my present abode, the main floor of a suite in a heritage house in Fairfield.
Now I have a fireplace, hardwood floors, a big bay window with little twinkle lights around it, a garden, a quiet street lined with cherry blossom trees, and a backyard where my one remaining rabbit, Marcello, can roam and play in the sunshine and wind.
“When was the last time you travelled?” the border guard asks me.
I want to tell him I have travelled a great distance, from despair to contentment, more or less, from heartache to freedom, more or less, into the cradle of my existence.
Who am I? What is my name? Where am I going?
I am Trisha Cull. I am going further. I am going further still. I will not stop until I get there.
Richard is waiting for me when I get off The Clipper. I am walking the plank off the boat, hauling my little suitcase on rollers behind me, when I see him standing on the rampart above, waving to me from the other side of a chain-link fence. He is dressed in dark clothing—black pants, a black blazer and a dark green T-shirt—and he is as tall and slender as I remember him being.
He is smiling. I wave and smile back. He walks alongside the chain-link fence until I enter into the customs office and we disappear from each other’s view, momentarily, until I emerge again on the other side and he is there waiting for me.
“Hi sweetheart,” he says, and his grasp of me is tender and wholesome. “I missed you.”
I look up at him. “I missed you too,” I say.
Clinical Note:
We work on transference material together to have her accept that simply moving her attention from me to the next man without understanding the nature of her fixations is not a very good approach to love and life. She is able to see how she is doing this, but believes she “really loves Richard,” and needs this “fixation” right now.
“I miss you,” I say. “I miss the old days of enchantment.”
“And yet you see me twice a week,” Dr. P says.
“It’s not the same. When we saw each other before, there seemed to be a real distinct chance that we might one day be together, romantically.”
“But I�
�ll always be here,” he says. He is wearing dark baggy trousers and a blue and white checkered shirt. The shirt is new, crisp, something his wife bought him for the hot summer months perhaps. He leaves his top three shirt buttons undone, exposing a bit of chest hair. I have long since wondered if this is something he does for my benefit. Perhaps this is hopeful thinking, perhaps not. Does he get up in the mornings on days he knows he’s going to see me and prim and proper himself with extra care? Does he shave extra close and comb his hair more carefully? Does he put on the cologne I only sometimes smell on his skin? Does he do these things in anticipation of seeing me, the way I shower and scrub myself on days I know I’m going to see him?
I get up early, stumble to the coffee machine, make a cup of coffee, carry it with me into the shower, place the cup on the wood window ledge that opens onto the neighbour’s garden and sprawling apple tree, so I can sip coffee as I shower. Then I lather my hair with expensive shampoo. I slather it in expensive conditioner, letting the conditioner soak into my hair as I shave my legs with raspberry shaving gel. Then I scrub my body with one of those buff puff things, the little shower scrunchies that come in many colours, using my organic lavender and mint shower gel in the scrunchie to make it soap and foam all over my body. I press my face into the hot stream of shower, wash my face with facial wash, keep my eyes shut tight and I think of him, all the years I’ve spent lusting after him, wanting him to love me and rescue me from my pain and addictions, and I realize I can love him without wanting to possess him, and that he was right not to take me up on my offers.
