…
People do strange things. For instance, I couldn’t possibly explain to anyone passing me by at Barnes & Noble in Lexington why my feet are up in a chair, in a shorter-than-should-be dress, with a giant bruise on my arm, or why I’m eating a tomato caprese sandwich while watching the Gilmore Girls (I’m taking a break to type this). I couldn’t explain how I visited my father today to do some research for an essay on addiction I’m writing in my thesis and, because, I can’t seem to quit him. Because we used to be so close that I wouldn’t let him put a new roof on our house without going up with him, and he had to tie me to the chimney so I’d be near him (that’s in my thesis, too). I couldn’t possibly explain in one breath how I realized today that my father is one of those liars who tells you part of the truth and then, based upon your acceptance of that moral gray area, tells you the whole truth. Or how destructive he is, how he takes one bad thing and makes it worse. Or how I still love him and yet feel absolutely afraid of the parts of me that seem like him. And I also couldn’t explain that I wrote for three hours earlier today and now I am tired but my thesis is so very behind schedule (also cue my father’s arrest, and my sickness this semester) that I have to write right now, too. And I’m behind on grading. And it’s all just pretty damn hard, so I have put my feet up in this chair and I am watching the Gilmore Girls until I can make myself write again.
And I’d also like to note that several people reblogged something I posted from MSNBC about Kentucky being second on the list of “Most Miserable States” and said “bye” or something about staying to make things better. And I feel this pull towards Kentucky, feel it deep down in my bones that they’d like to decompose and become part of the ground that has always nourished and then contained my family for generations and generations, like a cycle—and fuck if this is not well written at all, not how I mean it to be. But I can’t stay here, can’t watch my whole family self-destruct, too. Because I’d be not too far behind. So yes, I’m not returning to Kentucky. I can’t.
