Will You Visit?

She saw a ghost, she tells me, a gray form which moved across my room, while she watched so plainly, so clearly. After, she turned all the lights on in the apartment and kept them on until morning. She asked when I’d come home, I didn’t think much of it. She has said these things before; we have a bathroom light switch that decides when it wants to shine, our hand towels are always on the floor, balls of yarn make trips across the apartment. So I didn’t think much of it, or of how scared she was until I came back and went to pull a sisterly prank, sneaking up on her with one of my masks. (This activity is common, a push and pull of sisterhood, who can terrorize who more.) Instead of the playful leap, the yell of surprise, followed by swears and attack, she screamed in terror, jumping away, and my heart fell deep down in. She was so scared. There was no play, and I realized how shaken up she really was from being here alone and seeing what she thinks she saw.

Come May, I’ll live here alone and while I am use to solitude, work fairly well, very productively in solitude, I rather conversation, I rather someone to share wine with, someone to make food with, to wind down with. I’ve never had many friends and that has never particularly bothered me. I became accustomed to giving all my trust and energy to few and specific people, early in life. Girls were always backstabbers, they’d gossip and make fun of you to other girls and they’d ruin your friendship for a boy and suffer no guilt for it. And boys, they were heartbreakers, friends and never boyfriends. I always strived for their love and they took advantage of that for years.

I remember his mouth behind my ear, and I was reading in bed next to him. His hands fumbled across me and I could feel him growing against me. I told him I wasn’t feeling it, I didn’t want it. He didn’t stop. His hands pushed clothing aside, I struggled against him and repeated. He didn’t stop. Then, violently he moved inside me, holding me to him with hand on my chin and waist. I squeezed my eyes shut, I bit my lips, I cried out, and all it did was hurt. It just hurt. After, he told me that it was my fault and that I shouldn’t have turned him on so much if I didn’t want it. I remember crying on the stairs, waiting for my mum to come pick me up. It was the first time I was ever in love. The first man who said he loved me.

How well removed, how safe and happy I am in this place I call my little home. I have my family and those I would lovingly allow into my family. And that has been the most rewarding part, adding new family members as I’ve aged, people with who I do not share blood but would freely give it. They can not fill this space with me, but they are here, they are thoughtful messages, packages in the mail, holiday dinners. And to see them, to be with them, causes me to come alive beside them.

More and more we separate, with distances and significant others, jobs and debts, tired bones and aching egos, we can’t make it to visit, we don’t try to connect. We settle in the thought that they are there, down some road, across some space, they sit and if we needed them, they would be there. We’d know they’d come. But I’d rather share of cup of coffee and a smile. I rather know faces and see the people who have the ability to make my body hum. Sitting, well removed and safe, in this place I call my little home. Come May, I’ll live here alone.
Will anyone visit?
Will he listen if I say no?
Will I sleep with all the lights on?