Balloon Ride

It is one week later, two weeks later, and you are still doing this. Letting Bob come over. Getting drunk. Screwing. Waking up mornings hanging on to some small corner of the bed. Feeling a headache like a personal percussion instrument inside. You’re not 17 anymore. You don’t know how much more of this your body can take. Some days, like this morning, you feel so bad that you throw up, and then you stand over the toilet and think, Oh God, I’ve got to stop this. Bob sleeps in, goes to work when he wants. He tells you that he thinks he’s getting a promotion, that you’ve been good for him. That you should loosen up. Maybe we can move in together, he suggests one night, and this makes you happy. I don’t know what I was thinking, he says another night, and this makes you sad. You feel like he is jerking you around on a string. I talked to Breanna yesterday, he told you, while you were drinking beer. God, that’s so rude, you thought in a moment of clarity, for him to bring her up to you. This made you get drunk and act slightly bitchy. You’re so cute when you’re mad, he said. Go screw her, if she’s so great, you said. I would if I could, he said. You’re an asshole, you said. Hey, hey, watch it, he said. You watch it. I don’t need you, you said, and as soon as you said it, you knew it was a lie. You love him even though he doesn’t deserve it, even though he will never love you the way he should. You see this in rare flashes of insight, but, in the moments in between, you try to convince yourself that you are wrong.

Today, after you spend fifteen minutes throwing up, fifteen minutes showering, fifteen minutes drinking some juice, which is supposed to contain a high dose of antioxidants to counteract the alcohol you downed last night, you walk, head pounding, to the bus stop. You look down at your watch. Both relieved and annoyed, you realize that you will be on time. Because you are always on time, always dependable. You remember that children’s tale about Chicken Little where the sky was falling. If the sky was falling, asked your mother, the flaky artist, what would you do? How would you express your emotions? And you said, I wouldn’t do anything different. I’d lead my life just the same because what if it was a rumor and then it really didn’t fall? Wouldn’t you feel bad for acting like a crazy chicken, acting like a fool? Oh, she’d sighed and tried to hug you. Oh, she’d said, you are too responsible for your own good. I hope you find someone who appreciates you for what you are. But I fear for you, I fear for you. Sometimes I think you’re too pure a spirit to make it in this world. You’d sighed, rolled your eyes. Your mother, the flaky artist. You’d discounted that advice along with everything else she’d said, but now, walking outside in the just-about-to-rain weather with a slicker and an umbrella, like the Girl Scout that you were and you are, always prepared, you revisit her words. You can’t ask her what she meant. Your mother is dead, has long been. Cancer killed her the summer you turned sixteen, and, since then, all those mother-daughter banquets, all those rosy red cards, have been something that is outside of you, something that exists for other people, something that has no connection to who you are.