Road Rage

I felt pure rage. I had been sitting on a razor's edge ever since my mother passed away and now I discovered what he had been doing when I wasn't home. I broke inside and burned within. I grabbed my laptop, got in my car and drove. It was my last resort.

I had to work that morning, even though it was a Saturday. It was easy money tutoring the groups of groggy students that came to Curtis High School for Regents review, and, on that particular morning, it was the escape I needed from a home that felt like it was crumbling around me. With my seatbelt on and radio blaring I peeled away from the front of my house hoping that the screeching tires would wake the one who rested within not knowing that I had discovered his indiscretions. I was grateful for the empty highway as my fiery tears filled my eyes, but not nearly as grateful as I was to the deejay who selected the next song: Papa Roach's Last Resort. I cranked the volume until I felt my speakers shake and pressed my foot even further into the gas pedal.

CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES
THIS IS MY LAST RESORT!

I screamed as I reached one hand up to open my sunroof.

 SUF-FO-CA-TION!
NO BREATHING!
DON'T GIVE A F-- IF I CUT MY ARM BLEEDING!

Next, I opened all of the windows with their automatic buttons as I pulled off the highway, feeling vindicated, feeling heard. I was letting the world know how hurt I was. The lyrics repeated, and so did I, not caring about all of the quiet homes I passed on the beautiful street where I once found such peace during my college years - in another life, another time, when she was alive and the world still made sense. 

The song talks of suicide and I think, Will it get that bad? and vehemently deny this possibility. I deserve better than this. Life will get better, but right now I'm

 ...losing my sight
Losing my mind
Wish somebody would tell me I'm fine
Losing my sight
Losing my mind
Wish somebody would tell me I'm fine 

  

Even though the truth was, I only wanted one person to tell me I was fine. The one who couldn't tell me. Not then, not ever, because she was gone.

I never realized I was spread too thin
Till it was too late
And I was empty within 

My mind wandered as I raced through the streets, paying little attention to stop signs, lights, or any of the niceties of driving etiquette. I sang along in a daze of rage, angry with him, angry with God, angry with myself, wondering how I got here, when, suddenly, I sang a line I never truly heard until that moment:

It all started when I lost my mother...

It did all start when I lost my mother. I wouldn't be left alone in that home we shared if I hadn't lost her, if he hadn't lost her, if we hadn't lost her. I wouldn't be left with awkward silences or situations that only I could clean up. At the very least, he wouldn't have done what he did if she were alive, she wouldn't have let him.

I wound through the ancient streets lining the neighborhood of the high school, still blaring the music, pushing a bunch of buttons to close all windows as I pulled in next to the building.

Nothing's alright
Nothing is fine
I'm running and I'm crying
I'm crying
I'm cryi--

I slammed my fist into the radio's power and swept out of my car all in one motion. 

I needed to get inside. 

I needed to get to where the world still made sense.

I needed my classroom.

It's wasn't until hours later, after I had washed away my rage with sanity of adolescent nonsense that I arrived back at my car finding the window open, the keys in the ignition and the car still running. I stood there, overwhelmed with emotional exhaustion, and began to cry.

Finally. Tears. That's all I needed. No more suffocation. I'm breathing.  

It was time to face the music. I drove back home and faced him.
 

 This post was written in response to a prompt provided by The Scintilla Project. The prompt I chose to use today was:

Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road?




I really love this song.

My Room

Back in business with the Scintilla Project. Here are the prompts for today:  
Day 4: Monday, March 19, 2012

• Prompt A: Talk about your childhood bedroom. Did you share? Slam the door? Let someone in you shouldn't have? Where did you hide things?
• Prompt B: What does your everyday look like? Describe the scene of your happiest moment of every day.

I truly enjoyed journeying back in my memory to tackle Prompt A. 

The centerpiece of a my magical childhood private palace was a four post full sized bed with room below for my Wheaton terrier to sleep and hide. The wallpaper was peach with tiny flowers and the blankets were frilly with peach ribbons woven through in design. The furniture was a rich dark wood, Victorian in style, which didn't seem strange to me since we spent most weekends browsing through antique stores in quiet towns so unlike the place where we lived.

I would lay diagonally across the bed as I was swept away from island to island on the words of the books my father brought home for me to read. I would spread out across the hardwood floor pouring over thousands of bits of cardboard with pieces of pictures on their backs as I painstakingly worked on jigsaw puzzles night after night, sliding them under my bed until I was finished. I would take a running jump from the door on to the bed when I came home with a new cassette I would play incessantly in my stereo while reading the lyrics to every song in their tiny print on the folded inserts.

I would tell my little brother stories in that room and from that room. His room was beside mine and when it was time to go to bed, oftentimes we would lay awake whispering from room to room. He, laying normally in his bed since the head was near the door, and I, flipped upside down, with my head at the foot of my bed so I could squint in his direction. Oh how I wish those conversations could be recorded! If words could become realities, I promise with those bedtime chats we two created kingdoms, creatures, space adventures and hilarity we would still enjoy until this day. We were imagineers, inventors and innocent.

I slept soundly in that room. It was safe. It was comfortable. It was certain in both day and night. When the sun rose,  my window to the world didn't see too far, but it was enough to fill my days with happiness. My bedroom window faced an enormous crab apple tree over my bed of strawberries in our backyard. Whatever the season, I felt connected not only to the world within my room, but that which I could see beyond it.

It was my home, it was my room and I pray that every child has one just as magical.

My Overdue Thank You Note

It's day 2 of the Scintilla Project. Here are the prompt offered up: 

Day 2: Thursday, March 15, 2012

• Prompt A: When did you realise you were a grown up? What did this mean for you? Shock to the system? Mourning of halcyon younger days? Or the embracing of the knowledge that you can do all the cool stuff adults do: drink wine, go on parent-free vacations, eat chocolate without reprimand?
• Prompt B: No one does it alone. Write a letter to your rescuer or mentor (be it a person, book, film, record, anything). Share the way they lit up your path.

I went for Prompt B this time.

To the Song that Saved my Sanity,

I was 29 years old and there was a day when I lost myself completely... I stood in the shower and all I knew was that my hope was all gone. I just had to keep strong. For my mother, for my brother, for everyone... for me.

I was hysterical. I had hoped the water would mask the tracks of my tears and the sounds of my sobs. I prayed for something to grab onto, something to believe in. Then, above it all I heard you. My shower radio had been playing all along, but it hadn't truly sung to me until that moment. I never heard you before that moment.

You sang to me and you saved me. You told me to move along. You said that even when my hope was gone, and all that I needed was to keep strong that what I should do was move along. It was only two words, but it was as much as I could handle. I moved along.

I don't think I would have made it without that instruction. So, I thank you. I did not come out of the drama unscathed, but I came out. You rescued me from hopelessness, from my own despair. I was able to emerge from the shower and face my dying mother again. For the rest of the week I had her I moved along.

Thank you for finding me.

Forever Grateful,
Nicole

The Scintilla Project Begins... With Me

This post is my first step in my participation in the Scintilla Project which begins today. Each day, for the next two weeks there will be a prompt provided by the project which I will respond to here on Rivera Runs Through It.

Here's what I found at the Scintilla Project Prompt page today...

Day 1: Wednesday, March 14, 2012

• Prompt A: Who are you? Come out from behind that curtain and show yourself.

• Prompt B: Life is a series of firsts. Talk about one of your most important firsts. What did you learn? Was it something you incorporated into your life as a result?

I decided to go for Prompt A.

 Who am I?

I'm the one the entire neighborhood saw this morning on a quest for her beagle, Buffy.

I'm the one who, upon returning, needs a nap, a meal and her medicine.

I'm the one who is receiving text and facebook messages about how this day, Pi Day, always reminds people of me.

I'm the one who will always be reading and writing stories, no matter the topic.

I'm the one who is conflicted about her husband forgetting his homemade lunch at home again - for one, who knows what he ate instead, on the other hand, I don't have to go crazy developing another safe gluten-free, dairy-free lunch for myself to get through until I do the same for dinner.

I'm the one who dreams of living like the Doctor, traveling through space and time, forever on an adventure discovering new things, new people, new places; but instead, lives like Boo Radley, trapped in her home due to old, wearisome symptoms, conditions and fading finances.

I'm the one who reads children's books, anticipates the release of The Muppets on DVD and is surrounded by her husband's action figures, but has not found a path to bringing our own children into our life.

I'm the one who always earned and saved money from when I was a child selling goods out of a greeting cards catalog door to door in this exact neighborhood that I still dwell, who is now doing nothing but spending to survive watching every single penny of a lifetime of savings disappear into the vapor of nothingness.

I'm the one who fears she will lose the house she grew up in because she got sick.

And yet...

I'm the one who believes everything happens for a reason. And if I could believe that about the death of my father when I was twelve and of my mother when I was 29, then these little bumps in my road should just be added scenery, not the show-stopping events I am building them up to be in my mind.

I'm the one who has faith.

I am an optimist.

So, I guess, I should sum it up:

Who am I?

I'm a girl woman, who has been through a lot of crap (who hasn't). Who's going to make it through. I can't see how right now (probably because of my crummy eyesight), but that doesn't matter. I'm the one you'll read about someday. They'll be saying what an amazing success I am and someone, maybe not you, will think, Damn, she was so lucky! because, by then all of the stings, the burns and the pains of the present will be long scarred over and some may even be forgotten.

I am Nicole Rivera and, if you stick around long enough, you might just figure out how cool that can be.