New construction

A few months ago I watched the film adaptation of David Auburn’s Proof starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal. Without going into too much detail, because you should watch the movie yourself,  Paltrow’s character Claire is simultaneously unnaturally gifted and terrified that she has inherited her father’s mental illness. At the end of the story she says the following:

“How many days have I lost? How can I get back to the place where I started? I’m outside a house, trying to find my way in. But it is locked and the blinds are down, and I’ve lost the key, and I can’t remember what the rooms look like or where I put anything. And if I dare go in inside, I wonder… will I ever be able to find my way out?”

I’m sure there are multiple analyses of this text, because Auburn’s play won both a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize, and online study guides for it abound on the internet. But I have my own interpretation of Claire’s house analogy, and because none of those online study guides are free, I don’t know if my version matches Auburn’s intended meaning or not. I only know how personal that house is to me.

My last published work on this blog is from August 2009. I had stopped writing regularly long before that, but there was never a time when I stopped having something to say. I just couldn’t…say it. I tried to explain it to people. I tried to explain it to myself. I tried to ignore it, hoping my normal cadence would return, that natural feeling of having an idea spring into my mind and sitting down and forming it into phrases and sentences and paragraphs. But nothing came of any of this. I was frozen. I ceased to be a writer. And then I watched Proof. There are a lot of themes in Auburn’s work that someone with a gift, any gift, could relate to and understand, but nothing is so poignant to me as Claire’s fear, which is, to me, the crux of the house analogy.

In my own version of the metaphor, I am not trying to find my way into the house; I have locked myself inside. The blinds are pulled, and I can’t remember where I put anything, but I have not lost the key, I am just not sure how to use it. I walk up and down the hallway, and I can hear activity behind the closed doors, but I’m afraid to open them. Occasionally I peer through the blinds and see someone on the front step, but the thought of letting them in is terrifying. It is safe here in the hallway, but it is oppressive, too, because somehow, the contents of the rooms behind the securely closed doors continue to multiply as I pace. I try to occupy myself with other tasks, but I continue to be pulled toward the doorknobs, pressed to turn them. They are warm, vibrating with energy. I am afraid of my own reaction to the reveal. I have become weak in the putting-off, the inaction. In this way, like Claire, I wonder daily how much time I’ve lost, how I can ever get back to where I started.

I have said before that I stopped writing when my grandmother died. This is a lie. The archives of this website are proof of my own dishonesty. I was fairly prolific for over a year after her death, writing at least weekly, and most of the time more than weekly, and some of what I wrote was decent. As a matter of fact, a post I wrote about trying tofu with my almost-2-year old won me the recognition of an editor from Wondtertime. She wanted me to write something for the magazine. We traded several emails. She told me I had “the chops” for publication. And then Wondertime got the boot from the Disney Corporation. Around that same time, my new job started resembling the first trimester of a horror film pregnancy (wherein you suffer from severe morning sickness and lose a ton of weight, yet continue dragging around an immense mass that is not a cute, cuddly little baby, but is, in fact, some kind of demon spawn that fills you with perpetual despair and speaks to you angrily from inside your own head). I went on to suffer the worst depression I’ve encountered since my senior year of college, complete with panic attacks and nearly perpetual anxiety, a state that drove me to seek a prescription for antidepressants from my OB-GYN.

I wanted that little blue pill to restore me to my former self. It didn’t, of course. But it helped me begin the process, and I can honestly say as I look out my window at the fruits of March, I feel like I’m wearing my own skin again. Of course, another year has passed since then, and my typical mid-winter low has come and gone once more, and this time it wasn’t nearly as devastating to me as last year’s bout. Maybe I can thank Zoloft for that, but I can’t discount the blessings of real life, of the world that spins madly on whether or not I am feeling like myself or not: my beautiful, brilliant daughter; my mother and sisters; my friends, a few in particular who get what it’s like to be me; my health and home and humanity. It is a good life I have.

And yet, even on my very best days I seem unable to put the goodness into words. I find an excuse at every attempt: it has been too long, no one wants to read that, you should be doing something else, this is a waste of time. Even now, with my hand on the doorknob, the door slightly open, my heart braced for the mass exodus that is inevitable if only I can maintain my momentum and swing the door wide, I find myself hesitating, and I don’t really know why. I have been trying for some time to find the answer, but so far, nothing, and it’s becoming clear to me that maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for behind one of these locked doors, or maybe there is no answer at all. Maybe there are only questions, rows and rows of closed doors that need to be thrown open and rooms that need to be explored. Maybe.

I’ve been thinking a lot about house metaphors, obviously, and I’ve decided that this space needs some updating. I need a fresh start, a new coat of paint, and more than just  a small corner if it’s going to contain everything I’ve got crammed into these cluttered rooms. This is the end, and the beginning. Today I raise the roof over a new house.

House (2001)

My life is like this house.

They sold my grandparents’ house last year.
Someone else’s bare feet walk
on the chocolate brown carpet.
Another pair of hands rummage
through the sticky kitchen drawer
in search of pencils and rubber bands.
I looked around the yard one last time,
picked through boxes in the garage,
clinging to metal and wood, knowing
all along what I most wanted to keep
was gone long before some stranger planted
the FOR SALE sign by the gate.

My life is like this house.

I drove past your old house last week.
We used to walk your dog–now dead–
on those streets, fix wine-and-omelet
dinners in that kitchen, and once, we rocked
back and forth, back and forth on the foyer steps:
you cried and I held your head, your damp red
hair against my sweatshirt while your tears
soaked my shoulder. Now you live
in someone else’s house, eat gourmet meals
and cry only when you think no one hears
you, and I wonder still after all this time
if I could have somehow repaired you.

My life is like this house.

I sit in my own house tonight,
at the table I salvaged before new owners
signed the deed, sipping wine we once toasted
over eggs and cheese and so much sorrow. My life
is like this house, settling, sighing in the night,
holding promise and regret and history–
mine and every life that’s crossed mine.
There is new paint and new furniture,
but underneath there are still cells
and slivers of what came before me, and what went,
and always there is more to come: stories,
sticky drawers, bare feet on carpet, firm foundation, strong roof:

my life is like this house.

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