The Endless Pool of Tears.
That may not be a direct quote, but it's at least close to a line I read in Mary Edwards (I wanted to write Ellen, that must be a Catholic upbringing hangover, unwelcome) Wertsch's book, Military Brats, a book my father gave me (fraught) that I used in therapy some fifteen years ago. Among other things - but that's a whole big-ass episode in my life about which I may address or not.
But that endless pool. While my violent, controlling, rage-aholic father, who started out as military, somewhere getting scooped up into covert activity under the aegis of National Security (NSA today), wrecking havoc on my childhood - and my Irish twin brother's (although I expect he is still less likely to admit as much) prevailed upon me to become adult before experiencing my own childhood, here I fucking am.
I've been clean for a long while. It used to be that I would break down in these uncontrollable periods of tears, sobbing racks, animal howls, torrents of tears, most often thudding my head again the steering wheel of my car, after a night out with friends, one drink too many, in the back of my mind grateful that no cop car caught me, parked, and free to let loose all the pent-up pain, rage, and fear in a flood of salt water.
It happened tonight. And I let it. I was present in my pain. I allowed all those tentacles of tangled pain wrap right around the firmament of my psyche.
All I could think of was my sister, when she was maybe three or four years old. I was pushing her on a swing. We were living in Germany. I think I remember that she wanted to go higher - something about which my mother warned me - but my little sister was never very fond of me (preferring my brother), and I wanted to please her. I think. I pushed harder.
(What the fuck is that weird feeling I get in my hands when I write that, godammit?)
I pushed her higher.
And she fell. On her face, Her bottom teeth almost perforated the place right below her bottom lip. Panicked, I picked her up, I know she was crying, screaming, and hauled her back to our house. I don't remember much after that. I I'm sure my mother took her to the dispensary, where she was stitched up, injected with penicillin or tetanus or something, and that was that.
To this day, I feel culpable. There's no getting around it.
My sister is dead.
Every so often, these sharp images come at me, so fearsome. That endless pool of tears wells up to the point where I can barely see through the windshield of the car as I drive home.
These days, I am less inchoate. These days, I say "I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."
Not that it makes one lick of difference.
I get out of the car, eyes swollen, and I look up at the crystal clear night, the stars so clear out here in the country. I can see all the way back in time, universes ago.
I know that it's just a roll of the dice. This consciousness, this fucking self-awareness, in all its glory, in all its agonizing responsibility, drives home the intrinsic thing: There is no god.
But it's hard.