I leaned against a wall because I was tired.
*gasp*
I AM IN DEPENDENCE.
I asked a friend for twenty dollars so I could trade him back twenty dollars.
*gasp*
I AM IN DEPENDENCE.
I forgot my left and right and asked my dog to tie my shoes for me.
*gasp*
I AM IN DEPENDENCE.
I asked my college teacher to write an essay for me by bribing him with a twenty dollar bill I got from a friend.
*gasp*
I AM IN DEPENDENCE.
i wAKe uP To tHe sOUnD oF eAGleS sQuAwkInG. aMeRIcA tHE fReE.
*gasp*
I AM INDEPENDENCE.
Needed
I was never the person that needed to be helped. I never asked for money. I never asked someone to drive me to work when my car didn't start. I never needed help moving a couch or dresser. I was always the independent person. Now, I am the complete opposite. I depend on my family and friends. I need help. It kills me to need them. It would have been better to have been killed. I would prefer it. Death is a better alternative to the burdensome shell I have become. I am a dependent, a nice word for burden.
Attempted
Thank God whatever you tried didn’t work. For now, your cheek is warm against my neck. I won’t get up until I‘m sure you can sleep tonight. You say you don’t have any faith. Please let me have it for you. It’s not as heavy for me. Your darkness, to me, is weightless.
“I hear you,” I whisper through your sobs, rocking your trembling body like a baby in a cradle. “You will be okay, I promise.”
Because the feeling is returning to your fingertips, tracing my shoulder blades— something like desire, and now, desire looks a lot like hope.
Declaration of Co-Dependence
When in the Course of human events, our wedding being a big, expensive one, it becomes necessary to dissolve our wedding bands connecting us, and to assume the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and God entitle me, I should declare the causes which impel us to the separation.
That whenever any Form of Relationship becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Partners to alter or to abolish it, to institute in such form, as to them shall effect most likely their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Marriage long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, such as leaving the toilet seat up or refusing to talk all lovey-dovey on the phone in front of Others. And accordingly, two inalienable wrongs don't make an inalienable right. Whether the aliens are right or doubly wrong, inalienably.
And all experience hath shewn, that men are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed when make-up sex is such a great way to pursue Happiness. And as such, all men are created Pussies.
When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably a design to reduce him under absolute Despotism, it is my right, my duty, to throw off one's Vows, to provide Greener Grass for future security.
The history of our present Relationship is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over me.
The seat stays up!
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:
You have called together copulative conjunctions (not ands or ifs, but butts) at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their pubic Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing me into compliance with your positions.
I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created selfish and self-serving. And that all men are created uneasy and unintelligible, and some are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. With or without you.
But I just can't.
Blind-Sided
"The Kid."
His reputation preceded him. Nefarious train robberies, bank heists, and gunslinger shootouts put him on posters throughout the West in the summer of 1822.
That's why he drank alone at the Blindspot Saloon in Brown's Hole, Wyoming, a dustbowl town perched atop nothing but hot dirt. The place was emptied of its cowards, yellow-bellies, backstabbers, and reprobates an hour after the Kid's sighting at the pass. Only the bartender, "Ol' Jim," remained.
The kid was parched when he burst through the swinging doors of the barroom.
"What'll it be?" the bartender barked.
"Whiskey!" the Kid barked back. "Your finest." The bartender slid over a full glass.
"Our finest--and our only," he said. The Kid looked at him and thought something about him strange; he gulped it down and winced. "Gets better by the fifth one," the bartender added.
"Where's everybody?" the Kid asked.
"You're the Kid," Ol' Jim replied. "Killers and liquor don't mix for folks lookin' to stay livin'.
"What about you?"
"Me? Been dyin' for years."
Ol' Jim was right. The sixth one was toothsome. By the ninth, the Kid, blind drunk, stumbled upstairs to a brothel room to sleep it off.
Twenty-two hours later, the Kid stumbled back down. Ol' Jim was there to greet him: "Hey, Kid!"
"What!"
"There's a posse outside waitin' for ya. Good reward money, y'know." Now the Kid knew what was wrong with Ol' Jim. Ol' Jim couldn't look him in the eye.
"Look at me! Don't trust a man who can't look me in the eye."
Jim laughed. "I'm blind, kid." The Kid reassessed and understood. "In fact, the whole town's blind. Here, have another shot."
The Kid wolfed it down.
"A whole town gone blind ? That's peculiar. Well, time to kill me a whole posse," he said. "Oughta be easy, everybody'd bein' blind."
Twenty-seven men, each with a pistol in one hand and a cane in the other, stood a hundred feet from the Kid in the main road of Brown's Hole. All blind, they had other skills honed all these years.
They had no trouble putting 27 bullets into the Kid, himself newly blind from the methanol, the finest--and only--drink in town, a town full of drinkers.
How deep is your love?
Love conquers all. Love will find a way. Love will set you free. That's what we grow up with. Read in stories, and watch in movies. The one that stayed with me is the freedom-giving aspect.
What is this freedom that love brings, and how does it set us free? Doesn't it bind one heart with another instead? Sounds ironic.
So, I decide to research 'freedom'. Freedom of expression. Freedom of opinion. Freedom of thought. Then, I look for synonyms and find that freedom also manifests as independence: In deep and dense.
Anyone who has been in love knows that!
Says It (What?) All?”
Depending on what she meant, he was either all in or on the way out. As always, he hung on her every word. But this word, in particular, was challenging, if not terrifying.
The word wasn't easy or hard. It wasn't a long word or too short to take seriously. No, the word she used was, well, undecipherable. Yet, it would determine whether he would be in or out. Over or under. Above or below. Invited, again, or dismissed.
This word she used was the one that strikes fear in all men. It's a word demanding remedy or shame:
"Unsatisfied."
Bittersweet
The coffee was too strong, even for my liking. I sliced a sliver of the tin fouled wrapped banana loaf and grimaced at the texture.
It felt like a rectangular sponge, ready to suck the moisture from my lips. I took a tentative bite, using the glass of water to force it down. It also gave the sponge-like cake satisfaction of ripping away moisture that wasn't mine.
I remember my mother's morning coffee in bed, and grandmothers homemade banana loaf. It tastes bitter without their touch, but with their memory, I add a dash of something indescribably perfect. Sweet. Love.
She lies awake, staring at the ceiling. Her motionless figure can be easily mistaken for a corpse. A sudden spasm jolts her body into the nearby cabinet and clothes cascade into her tightly clenched hands. She does not move, but her mind is traveling light years. Delivering a forceful blow to her face, her fists relax but can’t quite open. She tries to slap her hands flat but to no avail; her muscles recoil to tense hooks on tenterhooks. She keels over, face flat on the floor and captures a pill with her darting tongue. She gets up to write.
It Depends
“It depends,” the teacher said using actions alone, no words were spoken.
You see, Jessie was learning to sign and her teacher was Deaf.
Her heart squeezed with a curious coupling of anxiety and relief. It certainly wasn’t the answer she expected.
Jessie hated depending on anyone and everything due to the guaranteed outcome of disappointment.
In that moment, however, she realized how dependent everything in life was on something else.
Even the sign “Depends”demonstrates how one finger depends on the other to keep it suspended.
The answer Jessie sought to gain greater knowledge truly depended upon nothing and everything.