emerald hope medrano

I could say the worst thing that's ever happened to me with a straight face. I've done it before. Enough times for my voice to stop shaking. I could say it wasn't just one instance but many. Again. and again, over half my life. I could specify the abuse. I could write a million pages on it. I could pretend it doesn't still feel like my soul is being shredded apart when I read it back. But I won't. Instead, I’ll think about September. The month all the poets on my Instagram feed write about as the end of light and warmth and I can feel it too. The trees can feel it too, shriveling in on themselves. I like to think of myself as a tree in September. My burning hot summer over. Too much too soon, I must leave. I write the way I socialize. Giving everything up, all my words exposed.

Yet could we turn the years again, / And call those exiles as they were - W.B Yeats, September 1913

Last week I sat in an empty college classroom with new friends. There was rolly chairs and lack of attention spans. My chair had a drift, it would take me away from our uno game. I had to stick my foot under the wheel to stop it. And there in this silly moment I shared about my childhood. Where I should have stuck my foot in my mouth to stop it. A wholesome story, I thought, was met with horrified looks. A "thank you for sharing that". The joy sucked out of the room, and I was the vacuum. I was possessed by the past again. When we first came to this classroom my friends were afraid there was ghost. I guess they didn't notice they were walking with one. They didn't turn to see how the setting sun flickered straight through me.

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… September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. - Stephen King 

PTSD is a jerk. An undoable jerk I didn't ever want to know. I grew up afraid of everything. Dancing in public, small talk, spiders, tall buildings, demons. All things except for the ones I couldn't know to be scared of. Like how one moment, or a series of moments could brand me like a cow. Stitch fear into my nerves, my brain. Make me belong to a memory instead of myself. The kid I miss. The kid who was a mystery. A liar. A sweetheart. An anti-hero. Unlike me who understands what it means to be haunted. How fast this road I'm on can trick me into being Bad. I can't be morally grey because that's Bad. I can't say no because that's Bad. This PTSD jerk can turn me poltergeist fast. Take me over and shut everyone out. Send them accusatory text messages. Never speak to them again. Teeter on the edge of my mind into that dark pit of giving in. I can't even ask for help because struggling with being human is Bad. How I must fall to my knees and beg a God to make me pure and white and new. How I smile and nod and agree and don't talk from myself but from The Ideal I think everyone else wants. An angel who doesn't laugh at jokes. Who never tells a lie except when I probably shouldn't. There goes that Bad again. I can't ever unknow the handprints on my body. I can't ever experience what it's like to grow up with trust intact. To feel the solid ground of it under my feet. The roots deep below the surface. Unplucked.

There is a time in late September when the leaves are still green, and the days are still warm, but somehow you know that it is all about to end, - Sharyn McCrumb

Yesterday I sat in the aftermath of leaking. Showing too much of my soul to those friends. Who I don't even know if we're actually friends. Or if I am just interesting because of my scars, the way I'm barely human because of them. I sat in my bed wrapped in my blankets like a burrito. I debated staying there forever like a commemorative statue. Afraid these people only saw me as a caricature. Afraid I'll keep letting them open me like a history book and annotate over the torn and burn and crumpled up pages. Adding commentary to already broken pieces of me. I wrapped my arms around myself and felt the chasm in my heart. The place deep in me that whispers, you'll never be more than where you've been. The part the summer never reaches screaming at me to take back a moment that's already passed, aching for an impossibility. On the 3rd to last day of September when everything is ending, I realized what it means to be permanently damaged.