In the desert/1990

I lay down on the desert floor, desperately hoping to heal, praying with tears. There were fresh wounds on my arm, as I had cut just a few hours ago, a myriad of straight lines across my left arm. Open gashes, like disturbed mouths, asking me “Why?”

I had no answer, my petite body lay crushed against the dirt, as I myself asked The Lord, "WHY?

There was the moon, lighting the dark sky, the only light, and my wounds once again searching for my God. I sat across the street from the apartment, telling my family I went to buy a diet Pepsi at the mini mart, “Casa de Gasa”, as I had often done back home at night. There was the realization that no one would miss me if I were gone. I wanted to die because Brouwer didn’t love me, as he had gone to Europe with his wife.

He told me he loved me before he left, at the motel. That was right before he wanted to leave me at the bus stop, as he had to rush home. We had an huge argument I wasn’t going to be discarded on the curb, like trash, even though it was exactly what I had felt like.

This time I whispered to myself, in the loneliness of rejection, that I would not go back to see him when he returned. The dried blood on my arms reaffirmed the decision that I didn’t want to see him again. It was at this time that my wounds begin to hurt, the throbbing and pulsating of cuts kissing my arms. The lips of the razor had opened the skin so profoundly this time.

I felt I couldn’t stay on the cold ground the whole night, but I embraced the camouflage of night as long as I could. As loneliness had always been my deepest relationship, I looked to it for a pity I knew I would not get. Despair had crushed my lover’s initials deep into my numb skin. Without a proper burial, I buried myself, in the earth.

I couldn’t imagine, making it beyond this night, my spirit had run away from me again, I didn’t even want to bother to look for it again. I wanted to be compassionate at least to myself, and let it go. I wanted to set my pain free. I couldn’t have bled to death, but the anger and frustration and deep despair of giving myself to a nearly 60 year old man who was now in Paris with his wife, was the knife twisted deep in my heart.

I was beginning to cut myself as a habit. Whenever I felt angry, or empty, the zombie like feelings crawled into my heart. It was easy then for the devil to lie to me. Without shame but with cruelty like a shard, he harassed me with his ignoble words, and told me how utterly worthless I was, and yes he hounded me to saw across my flesh with that other silver devil, to pay for the sins of my flesh. Yes, I believed in Jesus, at least I had that glorious revelation when I was 20, the wonderful month I read the entire bible, and left the Catholic Church. It was a victory, or so it seemed at the time. I knew, I absolutely knew, Jesus was real. I knew He was there, but drowning in the debris of my sins overwhelmed me as a tsunami.

The desert with its exotic sounds, coyote howls, crickets, and an owl convinced me that I belonged in the dirt, cold, and my own self loathing. It was what I deserved.

Time clicked off like a stopwatch, as if I was the only person conscious, and the entire planet was in a coma. I carried the burden of being the only person who was awake with the truth, that there was “a darkness” so real, it was tangible, and alive, and it sat with me.

Brouwer, why did I let myself get involved with him? Then I remembered it was to escape another horrible love affair the year before, the one that cost me my virginity. Losing my virginity to a man who didn’t love me was a wound. Making love to a man who didn’t love me, dissected me, it was a form of dissociation. I felt estranged from myself, a stranger to my own body.

45 minutes passed I knew my brother would worry if I wasn't back soon. Yet, I felt chained to this place. I could see the apartment, but I wasn’t ready to go back. My trauma embraced me like a lover.

A white sheet of my breath escaped my chapped lips. My soul wanted to mourn in the desert. Tonight I could wait for Jesus in the desert if He would return to me.

Then I heard a small still voice, "Go home to your brother’s house".

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“O’God, You are my God; Early I will seek You; My soul thirsts for You My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land Where there is no water.

So I have looked for You in the sanctuary To see Your power and Your glory.

Because Your loving kindness is better than life My lips shall praise You." (Psalm 63:1-3)