Shorts by Regan Tessie

Author:Regan, Tessie [Tessie Regan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857009517
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2014-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

One Thing Goes

I wait for one thing to change. One thing that will set a domino effect into motion. One small, subtle thing. One thing that is truth because I didn’t orchestrate it. I didn’t manipulate and bargain for it. I didn’t grovel at the foot of some idol. I simply waited, for 30 years. And the waiting was graceless and full of shame and ugly decisions. It was crooked and aimless for the most part. It was without reward or favor and without surety or promise. It had peaks of joy and laud, but the downward slope that followed quickly overcame the peaks. The one thing was so less profound than I thought it would be, than I hoped for. It was so much less miraculous and momentous than I fantasized about. It was so damn subtle that I would certainly have missed it had I not been sitting still in the company of someone who cried with me. With someone who did not condescend me by asking me why I was crying. She either already knew or she didn’t need to know. I was sitting and crying silently. I’m not even sure I knew what I was crying over, but it mattered none. Three decades rushed the room and begged for forgiveness. And then, then the one thing changed. The thing = my perspective. I realized for the first time in my life, that at that moment, it was over. It was all over and done with. I had survived and I had beat the very poor odds. It was over. I said it out loud. She said it back to me as though it were her revolution too.

“It’s all over, it’s done.”

“It’s done.”

“I’m still alive and it’s over.”

“You are alive, I can’t believe it.”

“I cannot believe it’s over.”

“It’s over.”

I believed that the very bad, long storm was over and that none of its episodes needed to be repeated or played out again. All my life I witnessed the same horrific and labor-intensive scenes replay and replay ad nauseam. It was with my permission and effort and it was sometimes simply the momentum of the downward slope that steamrolled me. It was impossible to stop and impossible to reroute. But then I believed it was all one very large chunk of time that I had lived through and was now done with. The credits rolled up on this one and the last 30 years were done.

As I sat there crying I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t jumping for joy, why my face was not obviously showing signs of relief. Why didn’t these tears feel like tears of joy? Why didn’t I feel less heavy? I did feel immensely relieved and unburdened, but my face looked like a funeral. This is what tragic relief looks like I suppose. Like going into surgery without enough anesthesia. They gave you enough to make you look like you’re asleep, but not enough to curb physical feeling. Gritting your teeth for a

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