Dear Mall Kiosk Workers:

The answer is “no.”  No, you may not ask me a question.  I only dare to visit the mall within 6 weeks of Christmas to pick up a few gifts, so I’ll save you the trouble and answer all of your questions before you have the chance to annoythepiss outta me.  Yes, I have “natural nails.”  No, you may not see them.  You may not buff them, and you may not file them.  I don’t want your shitty overpriced collection of nail buffers that will make my nails as thin as paper and will take me 2 hours to buff at home.  And save your crappy botanical oil.  It’s a lot easier and cheaper for me to slap a coat of clear polish on my nails and call it a day.  It’ll also save me about $24.50.

And no, I don’t want information on siding my home.  I rent.  I’m poorasfuck and can’t afford a “home,”  so thanks for the reminder, asshole.

And you, yeah you, with that…that thing?  That head-scratcher thing that looks like a device that would perform 7 abortions simultaneously?  If you touch my head with that thing, especially after you just put it on the head of that dandruff-monger of a woman wearing the airbrushed kitty sweatshirt that she won at the county fair in 1983 – ya know, about the same time that she last washed her hair?  Yeah.  Touch me with that and I’ll punch you in the babymaker so hard that your as-yet-to-be-conceived children will feel it.

And to the Asian lady with the hair things – my admiring of your $45 sparkly bobby pin is NOT an invitation to touch my hair.  BACK OFF before I call the I.N.S.!

I know you’re just trying to make a living, but this is not the American dream.  Someone lied to you.

I’m not sure what about my death stare makes you think I’m calling you over to chat.  You’re not doing me any favors by offering me your “free sample” of Now-I-Smell-Like-A-French-Brothel hand cream.  I’m here for a webkins, a Forever 21 gift card, a pair of wool socks from Dick’s and a personalized ornament.  So unless you can give me one-stop shopping for those things, leave me alone.

Thankyouverymuch,

Ms.Terri, or StopCallingMe”ExcuseMeMiss”BeforeICutYou

It’s been tough to revisit this.  I was exhausted after the first chapter, but felt so cleansed.  So here goes:

After that fight, things were never the same, nor should they have been.  The adult me, visiting the memories, is screaming at her – yelling for her: ”Can’t you hear the sound?  Can’t you see the light in the distance??  GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

But hindsight is always 20/20.  And the old me wouldn’t hear about it.  I was in love.  Nobody loves me like he does!  We’re going to start a new life together in Florda!  If I didn’t love him so much, I wouldn’t get so frustrated, and I wouldn’t pound my head against the wall in frustration.  I wouldn’t give myself bruises just to prove to him how much I love him.

I “loved” him.  And he “loved” me.  We were moving to Florida.  Everything would be fine there.  We packed up and got ready to roll.  My family threw us a going away party.  It’s vague, as many of these memories are, but I remember it was at my sister’s house, and all my parent’s friends were there.  Very few of mine were there.  I didn’t have any left.  I’d pushed all that “trouble” out of my life by that time. 

I remember milling around, opening gifts that I didn’t deserve.  I remember feeling very dizzy and light-headed.  Must’ve been the stress of it all.  Or maybe it was a combination of the stress and my weight, which hovered around 99 pounds at that time.  Whichever.  I made myself a drink to calm down.  I don’t remember anything else, but pictures from that night say I was crying. 

A few days later, in my Hyundai Excel that was packed up with our entire life, we set out southward.   The trip took three days.  We were happy during those three days. 

We ended up in a temporary apartment that my aunt had gotten us through the real estate agency she worked at.  It was in a horrible neighborhood, and was infested with roaches, but this was “home” for now.  I missed my “old” home already.

I have three clear memories from that house in Lakeworth.  One is a memory of a cockroach dying in a pile of Raid that I’d sprayed on a baby roach the night before.  The second was worrying a bit about being “late.”  No biggie.  My weight had been slightly higher than this before, and I didn’t ovulate then, so it made sense that I wouldn’t ovulate now, five pounds lighter.  We hadn’t exactly been careful, but I was counting on my low weight to protect me.  Besides, now a daily pot-smoker, there was no way Jim had the swimmers for that journey!  And I did get a hint of a period in that house.  It was in the morning, gone by lunchtime, but given the eating disorder, it was better than nothing.  And it counted.  Right?  RIGHT??

The third memory is a dark one.  It’s odd – all of my memories from that house, where we lived for one week, are “dark.”  And I mean literally dark.  I remember the dark wood of the cabinets, watching tv in the dark, and this, which happened at night.

I’d made a tape.  I’d recorded my dear baby sister, Lacy’s voice when she was about 18-months old.  She was asking my dad for money.  Already!  Ha!  It was so sweet, and such a dear memory.  I shared it with Jim, even though my ex-boyfriend’s voice was also on that tape.  He was ok with it though, since I’d clearly mentioned the date when I’d started the recording. 

Then I recorded her again, in February, a month after I started seeing Jim.  I remember making that recording in my room, hanging out with my baby sister and my brother, a teenager at the time.  Jim insisted it was Fred, my ex.  He freaked the fuck out.  He threatened to leave me – alone.  In Florida where I didn’t have a friend in the world.  It was happening again – I panicked.  I begged and cried and yelled.  I probably banged my head.  I couldn’t face the terror of being left on my own in a place where I had no one and nothing.  So I played the tape again, and insisted that he “just listen!”  He warned me.  He told me not to play it again or he’d break it.  I should’ve turned it off.  I should’ve put it back away in a safe place and left it alone.  It was my fault for making him mad.  It was my fault for forcing him to listen.  It was my fault that he grabbed the tape from my hand and broke it in half – broke it and threw it away.  He threw away that sweet voice and then walked away from me. 

I should’ve let him keep walking.  

to be continued…