I’m not sure that my parents or my sister have noticed that I have been wearing the same clothes since my father’s hospital event in August, the “bad bad day” that marked the cancelation of their trip. Even the rip up the back of the left leg of my $3 worn out Wal-Mart cargo jeans is the same, the extension of the tear between the seam and leg.
It’s not that the two shirts and jeans are really dirty. I have to do a wash almost everyday to clean the urine soaked clothing of my parents, especially my mother who soaks through her pads to wet the towels on her recliner. I spray for cooking stains and alternate blue polo shirts, both about twelve years old; one has the crest of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 embroidered on the chest.
I am, in so many ways, invisible. I am worn out, like the clothes on the rack at Goodwill, just hanging there one step away from a rag bin, shredded for disposal. Wind blows through me.
I am invisible through sheer will. Not my own will, though that is estimable, but through the will of others who just don’t have the time, the energy, the fortitude, the openness to deal.
This is a tough time for the country, for the world. People whose job it is to take care of other people’s money, to believe in getting rich slow, risked other people’s money for a quick hit of getting rick, and now the costs spread out over the whole world. I’m not doing anything to change the world, I am just being invisible to make two challenged old people’s life more comfortable.
That’s why I often, often, often, end up hitting myself in the head. In fact, more often than that I have to stop myself from thumping the melon in deep frustration and anger. But the nice thing about my suicidal ideation is how fun it is; I sing cute little made-up songs about dying, or figure out how much I would pay to have someone kill me, the price varying according to the amount of pain I am in. I can’t even think anymore, let alone write, and it gets worse.
I show that, of course, in things like wearing the same clothes day after day after day after day, but those signs are invisible to those around me, just like so much of me is. What I really want, of course, is to become visible, to be seen and valued in the world, but that doesn’t seem ever possible; the best I can hope is to play some prettier part, because my complexity, nuance and ambiguity will always be too queer, or at least that is what I believe. “Too hip for the room” is my lifemyth.
I am worn and weathered, torn and tattered.
And well, I wait until after midnight thirty to take her to the tolet.
Bang my head and make it stop.
Too bad I still have strength to bang again.
