Things My Wine Tells Me

Nothing was there for me like my Wine. Wine stained my lips.

I had no friends, but I had Wine.

Wine was my friend when I was sad. She was there to comfort me when I had no one else to just listen to me. I would reach my hand out for a friend, a listener, I would cry out for help. And the only thing that reached back was my own empty echo.

But when I called out for Wine, Wine answered. Wine answered without fail.

Many people don't "care" for wine. They don't "like" the way wine "tastes." But that's just because they don't know Wine. They know wine.

They don't realize that Wine is not like a fruity cocktail or a colorful meal. It's not about how your taste buds initially react when they come in contact with Wine. It's supposed to be bitter. It's supposed to be warm. Does anyone really think Ernest and Julio tasted the Wine and said, "Sweet as sugar! Just how the taste buds like it!" and that they are just clueless to how it really actually tastes?

Because it's not about the taste, or at least not the taste alone. It's about the feeling. How does Wine make you feel? It's about the relaxation of the smell. The way your body settles into the warm inviting smell of the Wine. It's about what Wine makes you see. How does the world look to you when the Wine glides in between your lips and trickles past your tongue into your body? Wine is so much more than a food, or a drink. Wine is something that pleasantly effects all of your senses, if you can be in tune enough with your Wine to let it.

My Wine was so good, it made me feel light when the world had its anchors wrapped around my knees. She made me feel freedom and helped me to see clearly when the world was trying to suffocate me under its cold dark cages.

And Wine told me things.

Wine told me that everything was always sure to turn out wonderfully.
She told me that everything I ate, no matter what it was, was spectacular.
Wine said that there was nothing to worry about.
Wine said "Write!"
Wine whispered things in other languages and told me to say them out loud.

Wine assured me that I was funny. I was smart. I could write.
Wine told me things I didn't believe unless she told me it was so.

Wine also pointed out how ugly I could be. Every time I met eyes with a mirror, Wine stood behind me, and pointed out every line, every mark, every wrinkle on my face. She screamed furiously about the dark circles under my eyes, the crooked way my mouth hung open, or the huge difference in size between my right eye and my left. There was never once a doubt about it, Wine was the beautiful one, I was the ugly.

As a waitress in a fine dining restaurant, I was able to witness firsthand plenty of the public having their conversations with Wine. It was an interesting to show to watch. Wine was a woman of many secrets, many lies, and many things to say.

She told some people that they were important.
Some were told they were beautiful, or that others around them were beautiful.
Some people were reminded of their disgraceful skeletons.
She told some people that they were brave and brilliant, and she made a lot of people
think that they were using their inside voices.

Many times I would snarl inside at Wine as I watched all the lies she told people.
Not because it was wrong to tell people lies, but because the lies people were told
made them annoying.

It made them loud, sad, blunt, excited, sleepy, woozy, unaware of the time, and just
plainly difficult to be around. I wonder if this is how people saw me when I would have
conversations with My Wine.

It seems to me that Wine is filled with truth, but full of lies. Wine makes your vision and your perception so fuzzy, but in a way, you have never felt more balanced or more clear. Wine can allow you to sink deeply into any thought, any idea, any conversation at any place. Wine allows you to be present in the moment you are in. It stops you from wandering into the future or drowning in the past and just lets you be. Wine is your escape. Wine is your sanctuary. Wine is your refuge, your friend, your writing buddy, your teacher, your clarity. And sometimes Wine is just there to sing you a lullaby and rock you to sleep.

Writer's Block

I sat at the dining room table across from a heaping pile of papers I had been pledging to go through for the last 3 weeks and next to a half empty glass of white zin. Some Zombie horror TV show that Shawn was entranced by was blaring in the background. It wasn’t a comfortable place for me to sit down and write out my thoughts, but I had to get some of it out.

I kept getting distracted by little things around me. My legs itched relentlessly. I kept adjusting and fidgeting, but couldn’t get in a comfortable place. I played with my newly cut hair and brooded in little ounces of regret, trying to remind myself that I had to get rid of those dead ends or it never would have grown like I wanted. Still, I missed my length.

I would pause every two sentences or so, look around, scratch my legs, stare at Shawn staring at the TV, and then stare at the carpet for a while. I felt like I was stuck at that table, like a child being forced to do his homework and couldn’t get up until it was done.

Every time I got stuck on a word or started to get Presque vu (which was often), I would end up staring at a scab on my arm for more than a minute if I were to guess, unable to hear anything in my mind because the words being said from the TV screen suddenly became vastly audible and jumped in front of the words I was searching for, making it impossible for me to leap to that perfect word or expression.

This was all my fault.. My brain was in a very lazy, unintelligible state, having not read or written in what might as well have been ages.

I pictured my mind to look like an old forgotten-about plant. It was something beautiful, probably with interesting colors and shapes, but right now it was nearing death. It was dried out, thirsty, wilting from all sides and losing color and life. It was obvious that no one had visited this plant for a very long time. It wasn’t necessarily forgotten, it was just that its caretaker had no idea how much life it was losing and didn’t have the time or enthusiasm to take care of it.

I shuddered, lost in silent hysteria at the image I created in my brain, of my brain and panicked quietly. I had to save it before it died.

I stared momentously at the wine next to me and communicated with it telepathically.  “We can do this.” I imagined the wine glass, my companion, to nod at me supportively.

And then after about 10 more minutes of no brilliance, no bright ideas, no magical writing dust, I surrendered to my wilting mind, closed the word document  and got on Facebook.

Jason's Wrath

       I cowered quietly as I waited for Jason’s wrath to decompose, the way a tree bends during the eye of a bad storm. He was a hellacious force to be reckoned with during his streaks of anger. He was big, very big, which made for a leaping head start in the intimidation race. He towered at a neck-breaking six feet and six inches (nearly a foot and a half taller than I), with fists like bowling balls, legs like thick, unbreakable tree trunks  firmly planted in their place. His voice was thundering, eyes piercing. He was a truly frightening presence, angry or not.

I let him yell, hearing in slow, amplified sound every cutting, spiteful word he’d spit at me and hearing nothing at the same time, except my own prayers being whispered anxiously in my mind, begging for the end. I’d close my eyes, partially wincing in fear of the objects flying past my face and partially to shield my young eyes from the terror that stood before me. My boyfriend.

Unable to hold back my cries any further, I let out accidentally a coughing, guttural gasp followed by a cascade of burning tears that I was unable to stop, like a dam that had been broken, letting free a powerful monsoon. In my mind, I panicked, knowing what this meant. His shadow covered me like the moon standing in front of the sun in a full solar eclipse. The shadow was cold. I felt chilled to my bones and shivered, waiting  for what would come.

Words that I had practically memorized started slithering out from between his gritted teeth in a nearly inaudible, but ever-frightening whisper only millimeters from my face. Words about how I needed to stop crying unless I wanted something to cry about. Words about how I would walk home if I didn’t shut the fuck up. Words about my pathetic panic disorder and words about this being my final warning before I paid for my sounds.

I did everything in my power to keep the cries to a minimum, to make them stop if I were to be blessed with a miracle. They didn’t stop. They didn’t even hush. They got worse. The tears stabbed at my throat and screamed to come out, and like vomit, I couldn’t hold it back. It was involuntary, and irritated sorely by my condition. So it got louder, thus worsening my punishment.

In a quick, seamless motion, my tiny shoulders were trapped in between his monstrous inviolable grip and I was trapped, not to say I wasn’t already at the moment I was lost in his cold, dark shadow. I felt my heart, stomach, and mind all sink at the same second. Everything in my head disappeared and black, liquid fear replaced all the blood that was rushing furiously through my veins.

I did not put up even a hint of struggle as he rattled my body back and forth vigorously, my neck flopping frontwards and backwards noodle-ishly like a ragdoll. My head was an earthquake, all the words inside of it now jumbled around like the pieces in a Scrabble™ game. But I didn’t resist, certainly didn’t fight back, and didn’t try to pull my shoulders free. I knew better by now. I knew better.

I waited in throbbing agony for the cyclone to be over. It ended with a hard shove sending my back and head barreling into the wooden bureau behind me. It hurt but it was a relief that the rattling had stopped. Thank God (which was what I did every time I saw the end and still had my senses about me).

I involuntarily clutched the back of my head as the ache came pounding on my skull like an angry burglar at the door, doing everything in its power to come in. I let it in. Swirling in a dizzy haze, I saw Jason's sideways body walking towards me. I felt a mild kick to the cushy part of my waist, thankful that it wasn’t as hard as I knew it could have been, (more of a “Is-the-pathetic-thing-dead-yet?” kind of kick) accompanied by some group of demoralizing words.

And then he left the room, probably to fetch himself a Gatorade.

Author's Note

I'm staring at my blog page, reading through old posts and sheepishly realizing that I haven't posted anything since October. I hope you all don't think that means I haven't written  since then, but if you do, you wouldn't be too far off base. I write still (of course, I write), but it's nothing to boast of. It's usually in small, broken almost-paragraphs, and typically after about 3 or 4 glasses of wine (wine I enjoy, not wine I drink to just to get my head to shut up).  Consequently, this ends up leaving me with some of the most senseless and poorly punctuated pieces since, probably, my lunchbox days.

For those of you who don't already know this, I've also had a very struggle-some past year. It's been a very rough, bumpy road (sorry for the amateurish vocab, haven't written recently!) with a lot of work and little to no play...definitely not the story I want to be writing for my life. I've recently lived in a world of very low creativity, very little inspiration, and a lot of wasted time.

The Deadly Sin of the Year Award goes to.......Sloth!!

That being acknowledged, I'm ready (I think) to get out of this funk and back into my life! I have a lot of upcoming changes that are going to be difficult and highly beneficial. I'm going to be dipping into a lot of new things, some of which may blow your mind, and/or some of which may bore you completely. All of them, however, will be stimulating to me (the point, I think, of this big endeavor called 'Life') and they will boost my imagination, my creativity and my inner fire in ways that have yet to be roused previously.

I wrote a piece a few months ago that I've been hiding away from all of you people in the dark, dusty unknown depths of the 'Documents' folder of my desktop. The piece is written from my perspective of an abusive relationship. This is not to say that any of the incidents that are written did or did not happen exactly, vaguely or at all how they are described. Some of it may be true, some of it may be totally fictional. I find it extremely therapeutic for me to write off this angle. It leaves a lot of room for plenty of descriptive use, and it's easy for me to paint you a picture, my favorite thing to do when I'm writing!

The villain (er, boyfriend) of these pieces will have been inspired by a guy (or multiple guys) I used to date. Let's call him Jason. Whether or not you feel as though you know specifically who may have inspired this character, keep it to yourself please. I didn't write these stories to be questioned or to raise any eyebrows or concerns. They are solely written for the purpose of me to exercise my writing and do not, I repeat, DO NOT in any way, shape, form, matter, case, time (et cetera) represent the relationship I am currently in.

My current boyfriend's name is Shawn. That's his real name. He's an amazing man for those of you who don't know this (which may be many as Shawn is a very private person), who is extremely strong-willed and rarely to never swayed. His mind is the most firm and untainted mind I have ever had the priviledge of exploring. He is never trying to meet the standards of society and is never pressured into doing the things he doesn't wish to do. This can make for a sometimes frustrating relationship as you might imagine ;) but it's benefitted me and matured me in ways that I never thought could be possible. He can be very rough around the edges, but his heart is always in the right place. He's just incredible, and has never ever even come close to laying a hand on me. And you can take that to the bank. It's not about him.

Back to what I was saying, these pieces are inspired from true pain, but not necessarily from actual events. The point, in closing, is for me to get some exercise.

Thank you for taking the time to read my note. It's been a long delayed pleasure to write again for an audience. Be on the look out soon for a never-before-read very raw, very graphic prose about my personal views of a very bad, heart-breakingly unhealthy but in the end, highly self-strengthening relationship.

Namaste, folks.