Ramblings of a Survivor

I’ve written emotively, passionately, vulnerably for several posts now; mostly not even knowing what words would stream from my fingers. In this process of writing vulnerably, I’ve started to remember how I got to this place. How I got to a point in my life that I can write and express without focusing specifically on the words coming out.

I’m writing this particular post because I’ve been sent many messages of “You’re writing…dang. You can write.” And I just can’t help but remember my Anne.

Anne Kiley was…well…Anne. You all don’t know her, and she’s gone now – in body, but her personage lives on in her students, in her literary legacy, at Whittier College……and in me.

I miss her. I miss her so so so completely. I miss her handwritten letters; her scrawling script, jagged and harsh. I miss her stutter; the “uuuhhhhhhs” that interrupted her words and sometimes distracted from her genius. I miss her big chest, her cold-feeling yet lifeline hugs; I miss her frank statements that were sometimes offensive. I miss her genius way of using totally uncomfortable, unexpected, hilarious and often inappropriate jabs – the ones that often totally missed their mark. I miss her heartfelt, openly loving, sarcastically cutting, constructive, awkward truth.

Her hands pressed against her thighs, leaning forward from the chair, she lifted her body to a stand in a gracefully, awkward movement. She turned her back to me, making her way to the desk across the room.

“Listen, I know that you think that “cuts like a knife” creates an image. It does….but how many times have you read that? Think about what is ACTUALLY happening. What is the ACTUAL pain you are having? WHERE does it hurt? If it’s in your chest, well, maybe it’s more like ‘stifling’ or ‘suffocating’ or….maybe…maybe it’s —-oooooh!!!!—-” She let out a gasp, and turned her eyes to mine, her face dancing with some sort of excitement:

Asphyxiating!!!

I mean…there’s a pleasure part to that word – right? It brings pain AND pleasure….is there any pleasure in your pain? You may be talking about the deepest kind of struggle, but is there any part of you that feels pleasure or joy there? THAT is what you have to find: what is the uncomfortable, what is the single word that sums up ALL of those feelings?”

I stared at her; am I seriously going to talk about asphyxiation with this woman who specializes in Victorian poetry????

Weren’t we just meeting to talk about a paper I was writing on Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”? I don’t remember signing up to talk about my deepest, darkest sexual pleasures. WHAT THE HELL was this lady saying?

My entire body paused…

What?

And hold on…her words started to sink in. I sat with myself for a moment: “Was there any pleasure in the pain I was writing about? Had I actually been trying to express some unidentified pain that was emoted by my reading of this poem???”

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Nope. No. No. It’s annoying Victorian poetry. It’s Byron. The Romantic poet – not some porno writer. I mean, as she always said, “REALLY?”

And yet, I did like the pressure it was putting on my heart – and my brain. This was weird. Invigorating. Something was moving in those spaces between heart and body and mind. Those places that you feel when you know how well you slept – or didn’t – the knowing of the unknown.

The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

“Look. We know you’re gonna pass this class easily. I could right now give you a B, a B+ even. That being said, you brought me this paper three weeks in advance of the deadline for feedback, but I kinda think you were hoping I’d say that it was fine and impressive that you’d done the work before you needed to, so i’d give you extra points. I assume that you think that by doing this, I will see you as a really committed student, and then…then you can judge where you’re at in the class so you can maybe focus on other classes. Melissa, I’m not here to grade you, I’m here to teach you. You’re not paying all this money for me to give you a degree. You’re paying me to push you, to show you new ways….to push you to be who you are, and I’m not settling for f’ing ‘cuts-me-like-a-knife.’”

Her deep signature chuckle filled the space around me. A jovial perforation of the bubble I was working so hard to keep.

“You’ll figure it out.”

She started gathering up papers, seemingly disconnected.

“Well, I thought maybe, um…well…I thought…..”

A groan escaped from her deep chest.

“Nope. Nope. Nope.”

She turned to me with her quirky smile that stretched her saggy cheeks:

“I’m not playing the game.”

She reached for her gray leather purse – a bag really – and stuffed a few items into it. “Office hours are over, my dear. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

“Come on,” feigning an English accent as she sorted through her collection of keys. “Office hours are over.”

She turned off the light. I still sat on her decrepit couch, pillows piled behind me. She walked to the rickety door of her office. “Like I said, my dear: Office hours are over. dP and the crew are waiting – Taco Tuesday with the rest of the group!” She’d found the key to lock her door.

I scrounged to gather my things in the dark, reaching hesitantly for my paper that lay where she had placed it on her chair when she stood up.

“But…I thought….”

“Literary Taco Tuesday calls. You’ll figure it out. Time for a beer together.”