life line
On January 5th, 2005, exactly a minute after midnight, a baby girl was born. Tragically she was dead, but sometimes these things can be fixed. 10% of newborns require resuscitation, 48% survive with none to moderate disability.
So there I was, choked by an umbilical cord— now I find it almost ironic that my mother’s body killed the thing it was trying so hard to grow— and so blue that my grandmother thought I was a demon.
Blue was always my mother’s favorite color. She held me for so long, all through the night.
Age 1
I was a strange child, apparently. ‘Solemn’ is a commonly used, along with ‘mischevious’ and ‘quiet’. I was the complete opposite of my older sibling— they had pin-straight dark hair and brown eyes, always eager to start a conversation, an easy crier. I was white-blonde and blue-eyed, sitting in my stroller and staring icily at the people who would coo over me.
We moved into our house when I was a year and two days old. My parents watched, horrified, as I took my first steps towards something nobody else could see, gurgling with laughter. My sibling held conversations with what they dubbed ‘the corner people’.
We started spending more and more time out of the house. I slept better in the van than in my bed.
Age 2
I got carsick easily and was unable to do much to keep me occupied, since you can only play so many rounds of I Spy until you want to hit something. This was how I learned how to read. I would ask what something said— a sign, a map, a passage from the Bible in every motel nightstand— and someone would tell me, and it became my own little game of I Spy.
I spy a “P” on the sign reading Palm Springs, “p” as in prayer and serpent. I followed the patterns all across the country, wide-eyed out the window.
Age 3
Entry dated 5/31/2008, written by my mother. Unedited except for appropriate pronouns for my sibling and removed/changed names and locations.
Holly is so fantastic. We could not be more blessed having two amazing children.
Holly is very different from her sibling— truly her own person. We are really happy about the sense if it will allows each of our kids to be individuals.
Holly is in pre-school 3 days a week and loves it. Her teacher is fantastic & adores Holly’s funny personality and ability to focus. Her teacher’s husband likes to tell a story about how amazing it was watching Holly learn to climb on top of the little playhouse in their yard. He said “she must have done it 40 times in a row and even if she fell she would get back up and try a new way until she learned exactly where to put her hands & feet.”
This is a perfect example of who Holly is at 3 years old. She loves her bears & chooses one at a time to go everywhere w/ her. She rotates Snow Bear, Pink Bear, and Cocoa Bear. She also tucks all her “friends” in every night after she is put to bed. You can hear her rustling around in her bed & when we tuck her in before we go to bed we find her turned all around and her stuffed animals have all been organized. When we go camping she gave herself the limit of 5 stuffies because she can’t fit any more in her bag which makes her very sad. She would love to travel with all her “friends” if she could.
Holly does not like crazy environments & often wants to leave early when we are at friends if there are a lot of people & kids. She does better when we are outside and she has an escape route but she needs a little space. I am a bit worried about how much she likes being alone but she does well in social situations so I think she is okay.
My husband was putting Holly to bed one night & she said she liked his wedding ring. He told her it was very special and Mama gave it to him. She said she wanted a ring too. “Pink with one of those white things right in the middle.” Already a diamond fan :)
Holly is very daring & tries things all the time that freak me out. She loves climbing trees and can slide down the “fireman pole” at her sibling’s school. She loves hanging off of the trapeze that Melissa hooks up to branches whenever we see her.
Holly asks all the time to go dance. She likes clothing and anything that means she is going to be moving around. She is a lot like me in that way. I want to take her to New York someday.
Age 4
Entry dated 6/24/2009, written by my mother. Unedited except for appropriate pronouns for my sibling and removed/changed names.
Both of the kids are very creative but in different ways. Holly likes to write and her sibling likes to draw but Holly is also very crafty and loves making things out of anything available. She also loves to take things apart and put them back together. She took apart a motel clock the other day but put it back together so we did not have to pay for a new clock.
I am a little bit worried that she has gotten used to traveling all the time and meeting new people. She is very drawn to the writers and musicians that we sometimes travel with. I took both kids to a coffee shop in Portland for a slam poetry night and her sibling fell asleep halfway through but Holly was awake for the entire thing. She went by herself to tell her favorite poet that she liked one of his poems.
Holly is very independent and I do not know if that is because of all the traveling or if it is just how she is. I know I was a very independent kid but I was in a small town around people I knew all the time. Holly has no problem talking to strangers as long as she can take a nap or be alone after :)
Holly is a lot like her father and that includes music taste. One time her teacher called me because she did not think someone Holly’s age should be listening to Neurosis. There is not much I can do about that.
Holly is a great reader and ahead of the curve for her age. She will read the books in lobbies and rarely needs to ask us what words mean any more. We are trying to find books for kids but it is hard on the road so we are giving her poetry and plays to read instead. I think she could be a very good writer when she grows up.
I am suprised at how quickly she is writing. I hope we do not have to send her to a gifted school or something.
Age 5
Undated entry.
I am keping a diry evry day so I can now wat I am doing wen I get old!!!!!! I want too be a writer!!!! I relly like exclimashun points!!!!!! It is a secrit diry becuse then I can say fuck and Mommy wont now!!!!! Mommy sais fuck all the time and she is the pretiest persun EVER!!!!! I want too be prety!!!! I want a wite whale like Ahab!!!!!
Age 6
Entry dated 03/02/2011.
Today my teacher asked the class what they want too be when we all grow up and too write it down. Every one wrote down nice things like doctor and fireman and actor but she got mad at me for saying that I wanted too be alive. I do not know why because she also said that we should always tell the truth and I was telling the truth.
Age 7
Entry dated 10/14/2012.
My teacher is making me learn cursive because I am the only one in my class who knows how to write already. When everybody else is spelling I sit in the back of the room and work on my cursive. I think everyone thinks I am weird because I am gone so much and already know all of the math and spellings. Yesterday a girl cried when I told her that babies some from sex and not a stork. It is not my fault her parents are wrong but I still got yelled at anyways. I get yelled at a lot for being right.
Age 8
Entry dated 04/18/2013.
I do not like school very much. I do not think that I am above the other kids, because we are all equal in the eyes of God, but I do know that I am very different from them and they do not like that I am different. The boys don’t want to hang out with me because I am a girl and the girls do not like me. I do not like them either so that is good!
Age 9
Entry dated 09/05/2014.
I met a very nice girl today! We are best friends now. She likes that I don’t care about what other people think and the stories I tell, and I like her in general. Her birthday is in a week. It is so cool to have a best friend!
Age 10
Dated 08/22/2015.
Mom is mad at me because I pierced my ears. I took her star studs and pushed them into my ears until the skin broke on both sides. They aren’t bleeding anymore, thankfully but she is not happy. She says that at least I got the ocean to help me keep them steril.
Age 11
Dated 11/03/2016.
We had to write stories in English yesterday and my teacher made me go see a psychiatrist (google it!) because my story scared her. It was about a world where babies ate their way out of the wombs to get the final necesary nutrients to be healthy but it killed the mothers. The psychiatrist thought I was weird but fine after we talked for a bit, but he told me I probably shouldn’t have given that story to my teacher because she’s pregnant. Middle school sucks!!!!!!
Age 12
Dated 02/16/2017.
I met a girl in class today! My history teacher quoted Julius Caesar and we both gasped. She gasped because it was a John Green book (The Fault In Our Stars) though, not because it was Shakespeare. I checked it out from the library so I can have read it by the time I go back to school— we’re going to California for Spring Break and a little longer, but I want to know what she’s talking about when I come back!!!
Age 13
Entry dated 06/07/2018. Names removed.
I need to break up with her.
I think I might have been stupid to think we could work out with my lifestyle. It doesn’t feel right anymore— it never really did. It’s a diffcult decision to make though, because we are part of the same friend group and I don’t want to lose my only ties to normal people.
It’s kind of like Common People by Pulp. She lives in the suburbs in an expensive house and plays soccer. Yesterday, I pickpocketed chips for dinner because I was in the middle of nowhere in Nevada and couldn’t find my parents or money. We couldn’t be more different Besides, she makes me the guy in the relationship because she doesn’t really understand that nobody’s the man in a gay relationship. Unless it’s gay men, I guess, but then they’re both men, or an unlabeled person could be the man if they wanna.
Whatever, it doesn’t matter. What matter is that this can’t continue. I need someone that understands me more. So I guess I’m leaving again. Way to go, buddy.
Age 14
Entry dated 02/13/2019.
I think my favorite kinds of mornings are in the winter, when the sun hasn’t risen and the stars look like sugar on blue velvet. (That’s a good song. I like the Bobby Vinton version better, but Lana Del Rey’s is pretty good. I also like the movie. I think creepy things are more reflective of life than any other genre.) Sometimes it’ll have rained through the night, but all the clouds will have cleared except for a breath of mist clinging to the sidewalks and the street lamp light. It’s like this almost everywhere we go.
I like the mornings quiet, solitary, and candlelit with music older than my grandmother playing somewhere. I don’t get a lot of alone time in motels, so sometimes I go sit outside in the parking lot or something with my Walkman, listening to my oldies tape and looking at the stars. I do enjoy the company of other people, but I’m like a tree in the sense that I need space to grow. I would like to be a tree, I think, or a dryad. I could put down roots somewhere and be still for a while, no problems, no worries, no societal pressure. And so, tree time.
My tree time is when the rest of the world isn’t awake. I dare not wish that they never do wake, because God has a sick sense of humor and even though I don’t think He’d do that, He still could. So instead I just pretend I’m a tree and wish for more time alone.
Age 15
Entry dated 01/05/2020, 12:15 a.m.
I don’t think growing up with just the other travelling kids as peers was very good for me, if I’m being honest, but I like it a lot. Is it good for me? Not at all, but I’m out in the world, having fun. It’s at least a learning situation, even if I’m estranged from society. It’s my birthday today and nothing changed except for my legal age, and I was going to say hopefully nothing else would, but that’s not going to happen. First of all, I think living like this will kill me eventually. Secondly, change is a good thing when it’s not forced.
I’m going to make 15 a good year— I’m going to be in the driver’s seat of my own life in every way except for literal. I think I’ll always like the passenger seat more and I also can’t drive.
I’m going to be good, though. I want to be good. Am I never going to be good? If I want it, can’t I have it if I try? I want to be good. Let me be good.
Age 16
Entry titled “Eldritch Horror”, dated 06/03/2021. Formatting is as accurate as posible.
An ant, while navigating a circuit board, is lifted by an unseen hand and views the entire board, then is put down and goes back to navigating, now with this new knowledge.
Nobody will believe you and you alone must live with this knowledge.
You will never feel safe again.
You were never safe before.
Everything that was familiar is now strange and repulsive to the point that everything that seems normal is now suspect.
Having this disturbing knowledge will open doors that will continually reveal new and equally disturbing knowledge to no end.
Death and insanity are no longer escapes.
LOSS OF INNOCENCE, FUTILITY, EPIPHANY
You meet God, He tells you everything about the world— His plans, why certain things did/didn’t happen, the point of life— and you realize that God simply does not give a shit about any of it. Then, he sends you back to your cubicle job, and you’re forced to live with what you’ve learned forever.
Matter and energy cannot be created or desstroyed and the universe operates on recycling.
No matter what you do, you cannot leave the universe. You are unable to not exist in this place.
Insanity → still here → death → still here
You are a peon. You don’t matter. There is nothing you can do that will matter. You are collateral damage. Everything you thought had meaning doesn’t. You cannot be saved, or helped, or given shelter. It is inescapable, unavoidable, everlasting, and cannot be defeated. You have been deeply wrong about a matter of central import. This isn’t about you, or anyone, or anything.
Nobody will notice
Nobody will care
It doesn’t matter, you’re already dead
It changes nothing
You will always remain
There’s no room in this hell
There’s no room in the next
Nobody noticed that we’re all just corpses in beds
Age 17
Untitled Substack draft, dated 12/03/2022.
Oh, the silence point— it’s something born out of familiarity, hard to describe and harder to know when you’ll hit it. Language evolves into something more than arbitrary signifiers; things are understood through an intimate knowledge of the person you’re with, not characterization. You learn to become them— you begin to blur, you hold the hand inside them, you take a walk in each other’s shoes. Understanding is such a funny thing, really, it is. It’s what makes me pass Jack the palate of blue eyeshadow that I have on, and it’s what makes him take it and put it on.
We stand next to each other in the mirror like that— me in my long sheepskin coat and short skirt, him in his denim jacket and duct taped-together jeans, our blue eyeshadow and chipped nail polish. Rocky Horror rejects. Symbiosis, mutualism, self recognition through the other. All that jazz. He knows. I know. Isn’t that the point? Under God, indivisible.
I have our silence. Fuck the rest. And when I finally die, I’m going to become a tree.
Age 18
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Oooohhhh this is so beautiful
i do not know when i subscribed to this but by god i am so glad i did. your writing is so so beautiful and it’s also so cool to see someone a similarish age (im 16 but, like) who’s so just like. good. something about this really hit home with me lol. happy birthday!! :)