twenty

I am making cookies, which is something I did on January 13th, 1997. That day they were chocolate chip cookies, big and heavy. I gave one to the mail man, and stood outside. It was snowing. I remember the peculiar sensation of falling upwards, into the grey sky as the snow came down. As if my tether to gravity was fraying.

Then I went inside and tried to kill myself.

For years I made morbid or maudlin or indifferent note of this day. Some years I referred to it as a second birthday. Once a boyfriend gave me a Russian translation of Alice in Wonderland to mark the occaision.

But here it seems, two decades is a significant amount of time.

I think a lot about it, about that fragile thread of chance and luck. About the darkness that gave no sign of a god or another life beyond this one. About waking up in a hospital bed, delirious conversations, the rage and betrayal of being shut in a mental hospital where the jigsaw puzzles were missing pieces and I had no schoolwork. About how I've always felt very, very different from the person I was before, as if a certain part of me had died. (I used to wonder a lot about what would have happened to that kid, if things had been different)

But here I am. If it was a waste or not, I couldn't say. I have lived a lot in twenty years. I am at times appallingly, painfully grateful to have them. I think about how different the world is now, in ways big and small. (And how some things seemed determined to warp right back into the bad old days.)

I am making chocolate crinkle cookies, the powdered sugar surface cracked and uneven. I had the air conditioner on today. It rained this morning. I don't know what any of it means, but I want to be alive.