The Value of Narcolepsy
an excerpt

Thinking about her is torture. I have been operating in anger toward God for what he has done. I think it in the most acute corners of my being, where I believe it is safe for such things. There, in those hidden spaces of myself, is where I spend most of my time now- squatting cramped, aching and after bending in that manner for some while, the spasms pass and it becomes natural, comfortable. Bones are transfigured- lose their straightness, their length, hardness and mass. They become soft and pliable, easily curved. I become a ball and learn to live in deftly this shape.

I function.

I sit at the table with the remainder, what is left after her- all that is tattered and exhausted. I look at it and it has all become flat drawings on paper; the image of these things sits weightless on the surface of my eyes. I do not know them anymore.

Mornings are filled with the mad sound of geese. I consider their flight- wild at first; they are but brown and black smudges against the pink eastern distance but slowly, some fall back, one comes ahead. This is life. Some fall into the pattern behind a one that leads. I no longer understand that type of trust. I am a bird of solitude. Geese scare me.

A hard sunrise, with its stingy and misleading radiance and clarity, sends out a cold light that washes out every shadow, removing depth and dimension from every earthly thing. Looking out at it, from our bedroom window, my head feels heavy at the nape, hollow behind the eyes, everything between like a mudslide down a hill.

I hate the mirror. I love the mirror. For the same reason I know and hold both those ideas at once. To most, that cannot happen, not truly. It is an absurd concept. Still, the mirror is brutally honest. I look on it and see into my own eyes. Little black holes, little thieves that take what is around, what is valuable, but give nothing. I have no honor.

Feelings have been put away, folded or wrapped carefully in paper and placed in boxes; stacked to the rafters somewhere separate from myself, some where outside so I will be uncluttered, tidy. I do not need them anymore. I now operate on ideas. There is my idea of love, and on it, I construct plans of action. I do not lose or extend myself in it because love is no longer a feeling, but the thoughtful movement of limbs and words. Because there is the idea of love concerning John, my hands move to his hands, my mouth filters certain utterances that may cause strife and my thoughts stay inside me. Love is in the moving of my hands, the closing of my mouth, the silence of my thoughts. It does not matter anymore that she is dead for as far as I am aware, I have no idea regarding that. There is no love for her anymore, just memory, a hard pebble due to the fact that my hands can do nothing for her, she cannot hear my words and I crush all thoughts of her.

I sit in a cold metal chair with other people in cold metal chairs. We are in a circle. I look at each face, puffed with emotion. The idea of sorrow is not one I indulge in. I see their sorrow has gripped them, like heroin coursing through blood and brain. I am sitting with junkies. They need, are looking for, a fix through the calling up of memories. They say it helps but they are fooling themselves; it is a perjury of the worst kind, keeping them from having to think, to be responsible for their actions and move on. It is a lie, damming up the guilt of wanting to live.

The subject of heaven and eternal life come up in the murmuring. Again. An older woman, wire thin and taut, speaks about her dear husband. Her heart is at peace because, she claims, he is in heaven- and she gives various explanations on how this is true, standard and thoughtless. I understand the idea of sorrow and how it would form certain thoughts regarding life after death, eternity, heaven, God. It is hard for me to accept. It is all too selfish to be associated with what I consider the idea of godliness or faith to be. I am unable to unpack my sorrow for this woman, or any of these people whom I do not know. It is asking too much of me to understand. Even for John, it is too much to expect; he doesn’t.
I have considered heaven. I have not found much information on it aside from opinion and hope. But I am thinking, while the woman prattles on about peace and meeting certain dead celebrities, that sleep is my heaven. Sleep is where we meet, her and me, and it is safe. I can spend hours with her. Though she changes, sometimes she is a bird, other times a person I have never seen before, the idea of her is so strong, and everything around so lucid, that I know it is she; it is my child- Agnes.

The others comment on my silence. One says I am judgmental. Another says I am in denial. I do not become angry because I am not a goose. I contemplate John’s non-action on my behalf but allow it. He is drowning in his feelings and because the idea of love still exists between us, though it has not acted upon other than in shallow ways since she died, I accept it.

It is because we see her in each other; I see her too much in his eyes.

So they go on and on about me. I let them because it stops them from wallowing, helps them to think about someone other than themselves. What they say is probably the truth but the thing is- I do not care.

I do not sleep well at night. John and I face away from each other. Our backs touch and nothing else. His are busy searching for her while mine are no longer capable of doing so. I am aware of his warmth and often wish to huddle within in it instead of outside of it, but I do not move. I would fall apart if he moved away from me. What I have come to know about me is that there is nothing left but empty and dusty nothingness. Whatever was meaningful of me and not cleaved from me to be buried in the ground with her, I diligently stored away. Even now, nothing is too much to lose; I would implode, cease.

I stare at the wall, trying, but failing not to think, relishing the darkness, hiding in it. All my thoughts begin with I. I am the only thought that does not threaten to destroy all of my careful work. I feel myself slipping into dreams. It is a tight, painful birth from the womb of our dark room into the bright and false world of dreams. Agnes is always there in that world but I can never get a hold of her. She becomes wisps of smoke in my open hand, the object of my chase, a sinking box. She has no substance; her smell of soap and faint traces of dirt do not exist here. In my dreams, in heaven, she has been reduced to presence; I wrap it up in tight curls and the soft brown jaw I remember her in.

At first, hearing her call from her room, I would crash out of bed amazed that it was all just a terrible, terrible nightmare. I would throw her door open, fully expecting to see her body lumped under the covers. I could not wait to get my hands on her, to cover her with kisses, to touch and trace her to keep her here with me. But I would throw open the door and there was the bed, made up tight, the stuffed animals looking at me with pity in their stitched eyes and the heartless sun spilling onto it all, ensuring every detail of this empty room would be seen. She is not here, it all screamed at me.

John would hold me then. That is when I still cried, when I thought it all could still be a dream- a dream within a dream, within a dream. I heard her I would tell him, but he did not believe me, or perhaps he believed that I believed…

Before Agnes died, I thought the day she was born was one of the greatest days of my life, the other being the day I said yes to John’s proposal of marriage. She was a round, sturdy baby with John’s eyes, quiet and solemn, buried in her face. She slipped silently from my body and I was terrified of her potential to hurt me. When they put her in my arms, I fell in love immediately, fearlessly and ferociously.

Then, after she was dead, I thought her birth to be one the worst things ever to happen to me, the other watching the small lacquered box containing her plump little hands like mine, her soft frizzy curls and smooth brown cheeks sink slowly down into the earth. Now, there are no best and worst days; they are all just days- one like the other- and in them, Agnes does not exist anymore.

And I doubt the existence of everything except her absence.