Letters with bruises
Article by Emma Langas Art by Jill Coleman
Dear Mom,
Last weekend I climbed over a fence in what I thought was a Great Escape. The gate was waist high and just too tall to step over. I like to think the experience involved an incredible feat of acrobatics, because, in my addled state, my legs seemed to stretch infinitely. Anyways, I was proud to have stayed upright, but I guess I wasn’t as agile as I thought because I have a deep bruise on my butt that hurts every time I sit.
I have other bruises, too, and they are just as embarrassing, but for a different reason. I’ve never been one to have marks from the night before, and I can only believe it's punishment for the way I exited this guy’s house. It’s really too humiliating to say. Times like this, I’m glad I live far enough away from you in a place where hiding is just moving.
I’m not really sure if he saw my circus audition, but the possibility is very real considering the fact he caught me at the door and helped me figure out the locks. Clearly, this is my fatal flaw, because if I could have just attempted the gate lock I wouldn’t be here writing this with a sore butt. I hate to say this, to ruin this picture of me you have in your head, but this isn’t one of my worst moments. Maybe top five, but definitely not number one.
You asked me in Copenhagen if I was a slut. I laughed at the time, in shock mostly, and said no, but I guess I kind of am. It’s not that I invite this into my life, I kind of just find myself thrust with opportunities that I don’t remember encouraging. In Athens, a guy told me it was my fault, that I was akin to a succubus or siren, and he was at least five years older than me so he must have been right.
We are so similar because when we are drunk, we spill questions, and we spill our guts. Remember this summer? One too many High Noons and you started your interrogation, stumbling over questions about my ex-girlfriend before getting to what you really wanted to know: Have you ever had a boyfriend? I let you read between the lines, because you did not want to know the dirty details. You thought you did, but you definitely did not.
I have a confession: I read your diary once in high school. The one that has different prompts for each day of the year. I don’t like to repeat your bad habits, but I think snooping must be genetic. There was a lot about your parents, a lot about Mary, but nothing particularly new. That was, until I stumbled on the age-old question: When did you lose your virginity? Your response: “I will never put it into writing, but it was at a very respectable age.”
If it will assuage your worries, I was a late bloomer. I think the issue is I jumped right into making up for lost time. You know me well enough to understand. Sometimes I’m scared to take the leap, but once I do, I can’t stop. I need to work on my form, though. If I could have gone a little higher off the ground maybe I’d minimize the bruises.
Dear Mom,
I lost my virginity on a Wednesday night. At that point, I had lost all romanticization of the act; the desire for love and candles and sweet nothings. I had spent the previous two summers driving around the Chicago suburbs, kissing girls in the trunk of my car and backing out at the edge of relationships. I read romance novels voraciously and yet the only moment I could sit in was the liminal space between friend and partner.
It's so strange, to be so enamored with the idea of love and yet so afraid of anything beyond attraction. Dad buys tulips for you every week. Yellow, orange, pink, a reminder he is always around. That seems to be the crux of your relationship. You teased him at bars until one summer, when he stayed, and he kept staying. The idea of this is terrifying to me. Is this what love is? A commitment to give a half of yourself forever? Some sick antidote to loneliness? I’m not good at sharing myself the way romance requires. And yet, I yearn.
That Wednesday night, despite swearing virginity was nothing but a social construct, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. He made me listen to him mediocrely play guitar before taking me up to his room, and we had a mid-sex intermission to walk to 7/11 to buy condoms. It’s not that I expected romance from a guy I met that night, but it seemed so incredibly in-between. Nothing began and there was nothing to end. I left to sleep in my own bed. I felt gross.
I can’t quite tell if I am ashamed. I don’t know if that’s the right word. Maybe embarrassed? Maybe a little proud? After that first night, it became a thrill. How fast could I leave, how much of myself could I keep in the process. And fuck, it feels good. To be touched and heard. To know I can leave. The walk home in the dead of night has become sacred to me. I race the stars and the moon and try not to be consumed by the things I leave behind, but the bruises linger.
But if I really think about it, I am a little bit ashamed. It’s why I don’t talk to you about any of this. How do I explain this festering need to be alone to someone who fears it more than anything? I’m scared of you thinking I’m dirty, but beyond just the religious sense. I’m afraid you will see me as defective. So all I can do is make myself as filthy as possible when you are nowhere to see it.
I don’t want to bother you. I hope you never read this. What color tulips did Dad buy you this week? Have you taken a moment for yourself?
Dear Mom,
You would be happy to know I found myself in a bit of a rut. I always thought I was bad at leaving, but I think I am just bad at endings. I flee and I hide, and I sit with guilt and loss from all the places I have occupied and all the people I have met, but I cannot ever seem to feel settled in my own body. So I give it to someone else to hold for a while.
I seem to come alive in Europe. In Prague, I met a man in a bar, and we spent a night together. He was German and Italian, working in cars or something. I barely slept to catch my flight the next day. For the first time, I left and didn’t look back, besides reminiscing about the way he pronounced Mercedes and BMW. My fingerprints remained my own. And still, I wanted more of the same. Not from him, just chasing these few good experiences in general. I don’t think this is flawed. I wish I didn’t feel gluttonous for wanting respectful experiences. The problem is I don’t have expectations — I have hopes that turn into worries, and I seek out experiences to confirm my deepest fears because I don’t know how to do anything else.
I honestly don’t know if I can ever have a real relationship. I don’t know how to stay in one place and have that feel comfortable. I don’t know how to voice my thoughts about myself without considering how someone will respond. There are a million different versions of me, curated for a million different people, and yet it’s like I am putting together puzzle pieces that do not fit. The problem is, I know I can’t operate romantically by molding myself into a caricature to satisfy someone’s desires. I know this is why I leave so often, that this triggers an itch to come into myself once more in the only way I know how: alone. The sadder part of this is that even when I feel I made myself perfect for someone, it never quite fits. I am left with all these pieces of myself that I am gripping through my fingers and watching slip through the cracks.
I want you to understand the parts of me that are unclean. I want you to know who I am beyond an extension of you. I want to exist beyond brief moments of pleasure, abruptly ending before becoming something more. You know Homeric similes? Instead of a one-sentence comparison, they are paragraphs long, so lyrical and descriptive they almost become tangible. And yet the true power of the simile is not in the comparison at all, but the contingency of “like” and “as.” The object of the sentence is doomed to a Sisyphus-like fate of never reaching what they are compared to. I am stuck in this space, in the like and as. Yearning to become.