4:28 PM .:. I resolved to do this EVERYDAY, so here we go for day number two (officially day three of the new year, but I wrote on that day at home and couldn't come into work so couldn't post an entry...aha!).

I remember / I don't remember

I don't remember being Sally with argyle socks but I remember wishing I could hold her hand and pat her head when she was scared while walking home. I remember wishing only yesterday that love was tangible and understandable so problems with it were fixed with glue and newspaper and paste. I remember loving fruity pebbles and never noticing that sickening sweetness sitting like a log in my stomache. I remember huddling down into the couch away from the sun and knowing that moments exist in which there is no world but my own. I don't remember how that felt.

I don't remember living in a house attached to a tree through which I could climb to get to the upper floors where there existed a labyrinth of scary tunnels. I could only go so far before I was somehow called back to reality and had to turn, run, wake up. On some floors, I remember tapestried furniture, covered in silken colors on heavy fabric, reminding me of small dresses with corded buttons and shimmering dragons, incense and lovely music that nobody feels ashamed to dance to. I remember feeling like music, swaying continuously from one moment to the next, never wondering when I'd be pushed up right, propped on the world and all its "properness." I remember all the wonderful things that are, for some reason, bad to say out loud for they lay blame and in blame, there lies guilt, and in guilt there lies no place to rest it except back on me, only you love me too much and don't realize it.

I remember wondering if I love you too much and do not realize it.

I remember being an old woman in Berlin with a small black dog, walking together down familiar streets and waving in windows of famliiar houses covered in lace curtains and yellow paint, the street smooth before us. I remember no children, nor husband, nor happiness, but a contentedness that seems foreign and strange, for can't you only have happiness with love and a husband and maybe even children? From your womb or not?

I remember my dream at twelve years old, the baby I was going to have as a virgin and couldn't understand. I fought with the men in white coats wearing spectacles and looking skeptical. I told them it couldn't be and they calmed me. They said, "Don't worry," until slowly their lips left their words behind and when they walked away, I heard them still "Don't worry" and then suddenly, like a scream beside you in the middle of the night, building in motionless fear in sleep, "We're taking it away from you!" I remember waking, crying, shivering: I will never have children.

I remember that I am not depressed. I don't remember being happy. I do remember being happy. And I remember that people come out of things like this and snuggle in their beds, in the couch, swaying to a music pleasant to hear, that you aren't embarrassed to dance to.

Someday, I'll remember how it felt the day before and compare it to that day, then, now, presently. When you say yes in all the ways yes feels good.