bust your windows.

Someone told me that for every negative word you hear, it takes seven positive words to combat it.

I wonder if that works for memories.

If so, I’m gonna need some great ones. I’m talking a trip to New Zealand. No, better make that Narnia. Complete with talking animals. And they better say some really nice things to me. Maybe even listen to some of my songs, clap real hard after each one, too.

Because there are some things that I will never forget. They won’t hurt so much, maybe. No, definitely. They won’t hurt so much, definitely.

But I will always remember them. My mind will always be drawn to these memories with the kind of fascination reserved for the very awful; like how you can’t look away when you drive by a bad accident, though God, you hate the horror.

Only, when you look at an accident, you might put yourself there for a moment, actualize it a little in your mind; but then the car in front of you is moving and so are you and you’re thinking about Lost and why everyone seems to think Sawyer is so hot because you just don’t.

Sorry.

And then the accident is somebody else’s and that’s where it’s different for me and these memories: they are mine. They smell like me, taste like me, feel like me. And if you were to look inside of me, you’d have a hard time distinguishing the stuff that is me from the stuff that has happened to me, I think.

Even now I can’t hear a door slam without thinking of that morning when all hell broke loose.

Yes, hell. As I just told a friend who questioned me on that word: I use that word now since my life has been ruined. And then we laughed, because see, it was a joke.

Never thought I’d be making these jokes, though.

But the door slamming. It says something, you know? It said something for me after I first learned what turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of this horrible mess. I couldn’t sleep at all, so decided to go on facebook and write kind comments to all of my nieces and nephews. Because that’s therapy right there, huh?

And when I had exhausted that, I decided to just leave. I didn’t have a car but I didn’t care. Honestly, if something happened to me, I didn’t care about that either. So I left at six in the morning. It was cold, but I didn’t wear a coat because you don’t think about bundling up when you would peel off your skin if given the chance. I brought no ID and no phone and let the miles fall behind me as I perfected anger and fear, sadness and something that felt like prayer.

I eventually got tired, though. And cold. I walked six miles to a gas station and asked the guy behind the counter if I could use his phone. I called my parents. Heck, I called Drew. Nobody was up so I walked the same six miles back to the house and when I got there, I slammed the door behind me. Drew was asleep, looking peaceful and that made me mad. So I slammed it again. He still wasn’t quite awake, so I slammed it one more time to make my point.

He got the point. And asked me what was wrong. To which I gave him a blank stare, because that might be one of the dumbest questions that’s ever been asked. And I am a huge fan of questions, don’t easily think they’re dumb at all.

But fast-forward.

To when I heard the door slam on that last morning, when it woke me up. Not just from sleep, but it woke me up to reality. I awoke to an empty house and the stillness hung heavy in the air. His bag was gone and when I started calling, he didn’t pick up the phone. Not for a while, at least.

And the sound of that door slamming, it was final. Like a bullet. It killed something and I woke up not quite knowing what was dead yet. And my brother Josh, he recently told me that seeing me in those next couple days was like seeing a ghost. Somebody who had died but still had to be bothered with putting on jeans and brushing her teeth. It was cruel, really.

And sometimes when I think about these things, I need to sing. Sometimes I need to sing songs about what will be. You know, the good things that are coming up. All the reasons why I still love a good love song.

And then sometimes I need to sing a good and mad song. Not crazy-mad, thank goodness, but you know, mad-mad. WTF?-mad. And sometimes my sister and I drive in the car and we play this one song over and over again and we sing along to it like it’s gonna make everything better and I don’t know, maybe it does make things a little better.

So tonight I sang the song again, but I pressed record before I did. It’s a cover, Bust Your Windows, by Jazmine Sullivan.

Here you go.

bust your windows

Posted by jessica on Feb 11, 2010 | Subscribe
in MP3, Thoughts and Feelings
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