Small Spaces

When I first met you, I showed you the Pleiades and back then I knew the name of each of the seven sisters. We decided not to stay awake and roll around in the horse stables and hay or lay in the back of your car, listening to classic jazz all night. You told me that night was perfect because we left it mysterious and I think what you meant is that you didn’t use me and throw me away.

In the dark of that November, I ran across the park, chasing the tail of my own thoughts, and wound up institutionalized. I disappeared and you didn’t know where I went. We were always kind of apart, even when we were together. 

Ten days after I got home, you, in a sweaty push of passion, kissed me while David Bowie’s “Five Years” played on your record player and nowadays I wonder how many women you’ve used that move on before. Me, manic and riding high, tell you that I was locked up but that it was nothing. You believe me. My mental illness was never something we really talked about anyway. 

After I met you, you went away for a month and at night we would meet outside to talk on the phone while we both stared at Cassiopeia. I always secretly knew you could never find it. There were too many stars just like there was too much of me. 

When you got back you went straight from the airport and let me into your apartment and we made love, or whatever it was we did because I hate the term “making love.” But it was electric. It was messy and manic and violent and afterward, we took a picture of ourselves because the moment hung so heavy in the air. Sitting in your apartment around 1 pm on New Year’s Day, we rested, bodies intermingled like the stars. Like Cassiopeia meandering through the night sky. 

In just a few short weeks you would tell me you loved me. 

Matching my mania, we continued on a high with a candle that never seemed to extinguish. We’d stay up drinking all night and I’d kiss your mouth, laced with the hot taste of marijuana and beer and I wouldn’t complain because I still smoked cigarettes and drank red wine. The winter turned to spring and life began to sink in and the mania began to dwindle. The stars weren’t so visible at night anymore. The brilliant winter for stargazing was gone and we were now met with thick overcast clouds of self-doubt.

How did we get here? 

My once tiny body was growing in size due to the antipsychotics and you were growing resentful of it. But my mental illness was never really something we talked about anyway. I began to depend on you for nearly everything. Your wallet was shrinking because my needs were growing and everywhere we looked our lives had flip-flopped. 

Deep into summer, a week after the heatwave, the comedown finally happened. I could no longer fit into the small spaces our bodies created in the cold of winter. I imagined the squirrels outside my apartment, burrowing and burrowing for food, only to find themselves empty-handed. 

In the fall, we find ourselves back into habits. My dad is diagnosed with stage IV cancer and you become my support system by asking to kiss me again after a long string of illegible texts from me. You leave your beer can on the table in my bedroom and I keep it there for months as proof that a little part of you still loves me.

We go to a Halloween party together. It was the first time I ever tried shrooms. They make me emotional. I sit in the grass, mud staining my pure white dress, pleading with you: “You don’t love me!” To which you have no answer.

Winter approaches and I search for those small spaces we created just a year before. At the new year, we go camping by the ocean and sleep, crowded in a one-person tent. We get drunk and I teach you Tae Kwon Do moves and we pretend to fight each other, with video game sound effects, until our fighting turns into kissing. 

But I haven’t even written about the bad stuff. That stuff can’t fit into those small spaces. My mental health was deteriorating and it was clear that you never believed me but my mental illness was something we never really talked about anyway. The night sky was no longer visible, except for Sirius on occasion. I hold onto that and point it out to you every chance that I have, hoping you might remember the nights that we stared at Cassiopeia. Yet, then I remember that, secretly, I knew you could never find it anyway.