Creative Non-fiction

Starshine

        I arrived in Portland, Oregon on January 2 of 2013. My plane landed late in the evening and since it was winter, the sun had gone down a few hours before and the deep winter darkness of the northwest had set in. I sat on the floor of the baggage claim area with my dog waiting for the only person I was sure cared about me to show up. Though the move to Oregon was a long time coming but at the same time, I felt like I would never be able to make it. My whole world had been flipped on its head in the last few years and Oregon was the last place I thought I would end up. I spent the better part of those years learning what happens when someone falls into a black hole. I was stretched, twisted, and broken past the limits of my anatomy. The things I thought I knew were replaced with entirely new things: new rules, new ideas, new truths and when I cancelled the transaction no one bothered to return my old stuff. And sitting on the vaguely green carpet of the airport with my dog panting anxiously next to me I had made it through the black hole but instead of being a valuable tool for the advancement of space travel, there was only a sign on my forehead that said damaged goods, like I was an old desk with a wobble and a drawer that just wouldn't open right. Over the next few months I would learn that Portlanders are famous for leaving junk on the corners and sidewalks in front of their houses with a sign saying free; on that night I felt like that junk.

        I got picked up to be brought to a new home. We drove through the darkness of the foreign city and since it was January in Oregon, it was probably raining. Before long we parked in front of a house where they pulled me out and placed me in the doorway saying 'this is your home now'. I went to bed that night like I had many nights before in the past two years, with the warmth of another body against my back and the mantra 'this time you'll be safe' on my lips. 

        I woke up four months later.

        But first a rewind, to December 29, 2009, the night I slipped on the edge of infinity into the black hole; at this moment though, you couldn't convince me that he was anything but Starshine. I was back in Colorado, home for winter break from college and coming off of an emotionally difficult semester. I got dressed up and drove off to see an old friend; we were going to dinner and a movie at his suggestion. He was home for a short time as well and since they coincided, it made sense to meet up since our paths diverged after the holidays. I knocked on his door, was rudely greeted by his brother, but then he came down the stairs and I forgot everything except the slight flutter in my heart. He had spent the last thirteen weeks at Marine Corps boot camp and, I'll be honest, I thought he looked good. He bought dinner, he paid for the movie and he even wanted to go to the 3d show, what more could I ask for from someone that was just a friend. The way he criticized my life choices, and more specifically the guy I was dating at the time, did not phase me and at the end of the night when he pulled me in close for a hug lingering just a little bit longer than necessary so that I could smell his cologne and feel his beating heart, I knew somewhere deep down that I was hooked. 

        Each time we texted at night or video chatted on the weekend, the hook dug deeper. When I told him all the reasons I wasn't happy with the guy I was with and all my fears about relationships and he made promises he couldn't keep, the hook dug deeper. The pictures he sent only me, the way he could be himself only around me, and the compliments he gave me that made me feel so good only dug the hook down deeper. It sliced through the soft layers of skin and pressed through the tough ribbons of muscles, past the bones that held me together and planted itself deep down in my soul. 

        At the time, I didn't realize there was a wound. In fact I felt like I had been given a new body, a new life. I left the guy that I was with at the beginning of the year so that Starshine and I could finally be together, just like we had always wanted. According to him, he had these intense emotions for me from the moment he met me his freshman year of high school, my junior year, and had been trying to find his way to me ever since. All I heard was that he wanted me and that translated to he loved me. May came with the typical promises of the spring, new love and a happy summer. I had my Starshine and I was his; by the end of the month he made that official by proposing and we were set up for a happy life. 

        Except there was a wound. More than a wound, there was a poison, an infection that festered deep in the abstract parts of who I was and who I thought Starshine to be. By the time I realized that light didn't radiate from him but was sucked towards him, into the void at his center, it was too late.

        Four years and four months later, I woke up during the Oregon spring in the basement of a church where I was making coffee and lightly chatting about what brought me to Oregon. How could I explain, there weren't words in the English language to explain. There weren't words in any language to say what brought me to Oregon from New Jersey and why I needed to travel the whole distance of the country to be...

        Timidly I say, "I was married, but we got divorced and I couldn't live in New Jersey anymore so my best friend said come live out here with her and so I did."

        Phew, I got it out and now the cool looking girl with her septum pierced like I used to have would smile nice and stop asking questions, right?

        Wrong. 

        "Well, my ex-husband was a bad guy and it just wasn't working out." Vague enough to encompass the truth; now I'm off the hook. Fill up that filter and don't look her in the eye because then she will see that right now you are only pretending to be human because what came out of that back hole couldn't have been human.

        "Yeah, me too actually, though we weren't married." 

        Me too. Me too! And in two seconds I wasn't alone anymore. It was ok in that moment that I felt like the free junk on the corner because someone else understood completely why I felt like that.

        But I didn't get to sit there on that corner forever feeling sorry for myself. Restoration was in my future and over the next year or so, the strong hands of a carpenter worked hard to pull away the layers of cheap paint and varnish that former owners had painted carelessly over my surface. Now I sit in his work studio, naked and raw but smooth and ready. Sure, I'm still a little wobbly and it takes a good pull to open that drawer with all the old files from former lives stuck inside but my carpenter has sturdy hands and all the tools at his disposal; he can rewrite the history that has been cut and chipped into my wood and he will restore me.