As a kid there was a tiny little me and she lived inside my belly and her name was Margaret. In my imagination I gave her an overstuffed armchair and a plush throw rug, a TV in the corner with all of the forbidden programming and a refrigerator full of candy and sugared soda. I talked to her daily, and I brought her my secrets like gifts in my grubby hands.

I never cried in front of other kids. I refused to show that weakness, to present as anything less than perfect. From the ages of six to about nine I had a group of friends who were a bit cruel, and since I was more than a bit sensitive I had plenty of emotion to quash. It became a full time job. Absorb the blows with a full-on grin intact. Blink rapidly or fake a cough or sneeze to keep the tears at bay. Hang tight until it’s finally time to run home, fall up those stairs on hands and knees, dive into my bedroom and emotionally vomit. Watch through bleary eyes the pink gauze of a curtain as it takes a sudden breath, then shudders still again in the vacuum of the slamming door.

Children grow into adults and imaginary friends shrink to nothingness. Maybe Margaret stomped off in a huff those years I discovered diary writing. Maybe she was absorbed in the contents of my stomach, obliterated by its acid. Perhaps she was drown with years of drink, or wasted away with her keeper during the time of starvation. Maybe she was crushed beneath the weight of her burden. All I know is she is no longer there, and I am a 33-year-old woman with a vacancy.

That doesn’t mean I ever stopped retreating inside myself, and I have never before seen it as a bad thing. I’ve nurtured it, maybe even fed it Little Shop of Horrors-style, a longing for solitude that came alive, grew larger than me; one that was rarely sated. But there are enough years under my belt now to warrant a loosening, my bloated belly of experience too swollen to ignore. I’m beginning to believe that I keep too much inside, and I’m starting to wonder if it will turn on me, consume me back, these words. All of this time I’ve seen my solitude as a coping mechanism, but now I see I haven’t been dealing at all. I’ve been procrastinating.

This is heavy on my mind now because I am sorting a few things out, and in the process it has been gently suggested to me by a friend that I have no outlet, that I never have. I thought it was writing, it should be writing, but between this blog and my deadlines I never just write, like my professional gardening friends who won’t touch dirt after hours. I see now that I must. I need to revisit those junior high and high school days when I wrote in my notebooks with abandon. I need to write volumes that no one but me will ever see, and that needs to be enough. It doesn’t have to take away from anything else I’m doing, it just needs to be a priority. A daily ritual.

I didn’t know. How could I have not known? The only thing I’ve known, and I’ve known it for a very long time, is that I am a secret keeper. I am wrapped as tightly as an onion and it would take years to peel my reluctant layers. I have to let things out. I have to put them on paper without fear, without a smidgen of self-consciousness. I don’t necessarily have to trust other human beings with the contents, but I have to trust the Universe. I have to trust that she will hold my gifts as gently as my own tired skeleton has all of these years, and I have to do it soon, now, before my ribs crack.

I am wearing a girdle. We are in the truck and I can barely move, each bump of the struts forcing my internal organs to spoon. It’s ridiculous, really, that I would wedge myself into this modern version of that old sadistic contraption, my hip and belly fat now resting uncomfortably near my neck. It’s ridiculous because I see so many of these people, these gentle people, pretty regularly on a day-to-day basis. It’s not like I traveled far beyond my bittersweet sticky hometown in the first place. It’s not like they don’t know what I look like now, how much older, thicker, quieter I’ve gotten. It’s not like Facebook hasn’t made our lives a high school Groundhog’s Day as it is. Still, it’s my 15th reunion and so, this girdle. This awful girdle. Me, and it, at my high school reunion. Thick as thieves.

I walk in cold with sweat. I introduce my husband over and over, even though he’s met them all a hundred times. He was there, after all, in the beginning, whether they remember this or not. He was that faithful payphone ring in the commons, that daily lunch call, that lifeline thrown to this drowning girl whose waters were always choppier than anyone else’s, or so it always seemed to her, me. Some days I close my eyes and I can still smell the sharks.

These people, however, were not the sharks. These people, my former classmates, still make me smile, this small town menagerie of Midwestern kindness. There are a few I wish I’d spent more time with. There are a few I wonder if I really knew at all. There are several I want to snatch and drag out back right now, ask them everything I never realized I wanted, needed, to know. Finally take that smoke.

For a tiny moment between laughs and shifting feet I remember how much I cared. I remember how often I wept, how tightly I clenched, how much I thought I lost. I don’t remember the details, the hard facts, as much as I remember the grief, the angst, the flashes of self-hatred and hurt, the bewilderment. The regret.

The truth is I barely survived high school. I don’t know how many of my classmates realize that, I honestly don’t. I don’t know if their memories are better than mine, if they look at me and see only that hot mess of a kid, that girl who sort of lost it halfway through… or if time has softened their perceptions. They are certainly friendly now, more than fair in their faith, more than I think I deserve. I am grateful.

My freshman year was an awful shock, my sophomore year a blur of rebellion, my junior year a singularly focused mission of escape. My senior year never happened, I’d already gone off to college. (Mission accomplished.) One boy defined that second year for me, in the most awful, awful way. A different boy bolstered that third year. Thank God for that boy in my third year, that boy who stands beside me now, at my reunion. Every five minutes or so I steal a glance and he’s always looking my way. All these years later.

I can’t figure out if I’m a fool or not. I look at each of these faces and there’s not a single one I dislike, not a one I thought ill of then or now—but did they feel the same? Or did they whisper themselves hoarse behind my back? It’s a thought that used to disturb me far more often than it does these days, these days where I just don’t care the way I once did. In fact, the only thing that truly shakes me now is this quiet sense of loss, this active noticing of the places people should be standing, people who no longer are, much the way my watercolor artist mom paints the negative spaces into a glorious whole. The rest is easy, light, all pastel cream tubes of color and liquid and sun. The beer is smooth and cheap, the meats miniature and saucy, the laughs thick and abundant. I rock my best friend’s baby. I inhale his newness. I grin at my lot, my blessed, blessed lot.

Later, much later, our truck in my parents’ driveway, the flex of Dave’s jeans as he climbs the stairs, a sudden smack of dizzy, of disorientation. He disappears inside the house and I stare at that front porch, framed by his windshield, an old movie flickering, and I see him there, I see us, there, the first time his hand dared creep inside my shirt, right there on that swing, I watch it play out. I don’t want to look away. He steps out now, interrupts the film, a sweet solid dad behind his old feverish ghost, our daughters draped across his shoulders. Our girls. When did this happen?

Our oldest is now a fourth grader. She blinks, all heavy sleep and confusion in the backseat. I remember my classmates as fourth graders, me and Joel colliding into concussion at recess, Eliza dumping her retainer in the hot lunch bin, Dusty and his box cars, Miss Suzy and her Steamboat and her glorious curses on the bus. Most of all I remember that I was me, that we were us, and I look at my daughter and I wonder what’s to come. I wonder what will plague her, what she’ll be thankful for, whose salty forearm she’ll study in the midnight glow as it steers her family home, everything she ever cared about, everything that ever really meant something, safe, as long as he’s at the wheel.

Once upon a time, when Gretta was a toddler, I told her to trust me and then I nearly drowned her — at which point the heaviest fear I’ve ever felt set in. It was like some God of Terrifying Things was holding me by my ankles and plastering papier-mache-panic upon my body piece by piece, and I was paralyzed but for the involuntary shaking. It wasn’t just that she could have been seriously hurt on my watch, but also that I’d forgotten, for one dazzling moment, to be afraid of everything — and I’d been punished for it. Remarkably, that day, after the shock dripped off, I did what I knew had to be done, for both of us. I forced us back in the water.

Two days ago, I dove headfirst back into blogging, the whole unfathomably large, salty, mysterious, oceanic thing, the feed readers and the stats and ads and designs and community. I jackknifed from the high dive and felt that mind-numbing rush upon impact, fresh and startling, heart-stopping. I have yet to decide if it’s a baptism or a drowning.

I don’t know why I have such a fear of this place. The thing I didn’t say in that Stepping Off post, the thing only a few people know, is that I got scared. There’s a reason I live in the country, twenty miles from the nearest gas station. Sure, it’s scenic, but it’s also private. Very, very private. When the Okay, Fine, Dammit house became a more popular place to be, I was absolutely thrilled. All a writer wants is to be read and heard and trusted and followed, you all know that. But it also felt like there were suddenly all these faces peeking in the windows, and I’d never even thought to buy blinds. Please don’t misunderstand: I invited you, you’re all welcome, I just have to get used to wearing pants, you know?

More than that, though, is the fear of being hated, of being talked about, of being judged. I’ve had only a handful of inconsequential trolls since starting this blog, and though they were mostly drive-by, inane posters, they affected me all the same. And for those other Big Bloggers, the ones who have really made it, the ones who supposedly have what we all want, things are so much worse.

Last night I spent two hours glued to a hate blog, the kind of thing I didn’t know existed until I accidentally stumbled upon it and couldn’t look away. Imagine, an entire blog devoted to bashing Dooce and Pioneer Woman, and others like them. The blog author spewed some of the most rancid vitriol I’ve ever tasted in my life, and it struck me, hard, like a slap: Is this the ultimate goal?

Is that how you’re rewarded when you’ve finally “made it” as a blogger? To get to a place where so many people read you that there are bound to be several who hate you, and dedicate their entire lives to ripping you to shreds bit by bit? Are we all just wishing for traffic and comments and recognition without thinking about the consequences? I know it’s insane, but if I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that blog, how on earth could I possibly ignore any bad things that could be written about me? It doesn’t matter how big or small or in between this blog is, even one sharp sentence will slice me. I know it. And I’m terrified.

But look at me, I’m doing it anyway — and I guess that’s the difference between me today and me two days ago.

Like any good parent, I often wonder if I permanently damaged Gretta that day in the pool. I can still see her face, wet, shiny, open to me, open to the world, plastered with a smile that threatened to split her face apart. The subtle ways it morphed from joy to terror and back to joy again, over and over as we tossed her into the air. The weightless nanoseconds before she came back down, time suspended. How she looked when I betrayed her trust.

She was sitting in one of those flotation devices for babies, shaped like a turtle or a dragon or something, and there were two of us, two adults, a friend and I, one on each side, protective, fun, and it was a game, and she was safe, we’re here, don’t worry! We kept shouting, laughing along with her, until one throw was too high, and out she slipped, and down she plunged, and for several terrifying seconds I waded through molasses to get to her, to pull my baby from the three-foot depths. We climbed out of the pool and clung to its edge, shaken, changed, maybe forever, maybe for a minute, I don’t know. We sunk into each other, into the pavement, the grainy poolside putty leaving a pocked impression upon the backs of my thighs, the experience itself leaving one more nebulous. I wanted to wrap her in a towel and get her out of there, run till my legs gave out, but something bigger than me told me what I had to do, even if it was on auto-pilot. That if we hid from this fear, any fear — hers more primal, mine laden with knowledge and worry and experience — it might be crippling.

That is why, after some cuddling and hushing and sweet, slow rocking, without knowing exactly what we were doing or what would come of it, we slipped back into the water.

*****

This post was inspired by my dear friend Katie’s post today, about getting back on the horse (literally). I started to write a book in her comment section and then decided to come over here, instead. I’d forgotten about this experience until I read her words.

My Grandpa Freddy wooed us early on by taking off his hair when we least expected it. He had a perfectly shellacked silver toupee, a miraculous feat of engineering that never failed to render his only granddaughter speechless. From across the room he’d call, New York accent thick and teasing, “Maggie Snow!” and I’d turn to see him palming his hair in hand raised high, triumphant grin, bald pate gleaming. Honestly, it was a straight shot to a kid’s heart.

He’s still one of my very favorite people. My 85-year-old grandfather is an incredibly charming man, and a very gifted storyteller. He loves an audience, loves to regale us with tales of his youth; the 1930s Brooklyn antics of he and his brothers, and the glory days of a now tainted fur business. On rare occasions, he’ll talk about his service in World War II, and the Holocaust that erased his people — though he waited many years to open up about these things…. The revolving door of Jewish refugees that slept in his boyhood bed while he got the floor; the men and women he still plays tennis with, identification numbers permanently tattooed on the tender flesh of their forearms. I’ll never forget how upset he was with me when I visited Auschwitz in high school. “How could you choose to go to that place willingly?”

Most of his stories are happy ones, though, told with a sort of mischievous glee, always ending with a punch line. He seems happiest in these moments with us, sucking Johnny Walker Black through his teeth and pinching the tushes of the kids who run by, squinting his bubbly-seltzer eyes as he mentally thumbs the well-worn pages of his life story. I’ve heard most of these stories many times over, but they never get old.

When my dad called last night to break the news to me about Grandpa’s cancer, I didn’t cry at first. Cancer is a cold word, one easily compartmentalized, and I know how to hide from it until the last possible moment. When news like this enters my life I pick it up, fold it neatly, and put it away until the season it becomes absolutely necessary. Until its tentacles become inextricably tangled in my loved ones. So it wasn’t until my mom got on the phone and said, voice awash with positivity, “With surgery he’ll have five years. What more can you guarantee an 85-year-old?” That’s when it hit me. BAM.

Five years is nothing. Five years is the difference in age between my children. Five years is how long Dave and I dated before we got married. Five years is two years less than how long I’ve owned my current house. The thing my mom’s well-meaning words made me realize is five years might be all I’ve got left with him, cancer or no. That’s a sucker punch.

I love this picture — I love the way Emma is so carefully examining her great-grandpa Freddy’s head. It’s as if she somehow knows there was once something up there, something that by its regular removal charmed the pants off her mama. Something that sparked a love affair 32-years ago that will be impossible for her mother to end.

I have no idea how I will.

Gretta stayed home sick from school today. At 6:30am her hacking cough was very convincing, but about an hour after the bus roared past our driveway she speedily made a miraculous recovery. I spent the rest of the day torn between a desire to take her seriously, and the familiar dizzying sensation of falling through the looking glass once again.

I don’t know what it was about third grade that triggered it, but it was like I’d been shoved into a cannon and shot to Depression Island; I was suddenly, inescapably, miserable. My only respite was the school nurse and her blessed cot, tucked away in a forgotten room with nothing but the humming florescent lights and the steady drip from an umber stain on the ceiling tiles to witness my inadequacy. I would lie there counting those tiles over and over again until the fluttering in my ears was silenced, until the stampede in my heart died down.

In junior high I traded in the nurse’s cot for my basement bedroom and a well-worn deck of Solitaire cards, and in high school it morphed into a sky blue Plymouth Horizon. I was always looking for reasons to avoid school, despite my honors grade point and no shortage of friends. Sophomore year I racked up 54 absences. Depression and isolation fanned the loneliness in my heart until it burned a hot white anger.

One night driving the Plymie to Mock Trial practice I came upon my dumbass boyfriend pulled over on the side of the road. He’d been waiting for me next to a farmer’s barbed wire fence, waiting for me to bear witness before using it to cut up his arms, in some act of protest to whatever way I’d injured his cowardly soul that day. He was a perfect parallel to my life of pain back then, and I wore him like a cloak until Dave yanked him off. To this day I don’t know how Dave could have liked what he saw at that time, a girl bitter and blackened and twisted, but that’s not for me to dissect anymore. And I digress.

So I didn’t go to Mock Trial that night, and I remember the relief rushing sickly sweet through me like heroin. I welcomed the excuse — any excuse — to avoid school. My friends saw it as choosing boys over academia, over them, but I would have done it anyway. I would have found something.

Is this what’s going on with Gretta now? The relentless headaches, the constant stomachaches… or is she actually sick? I’ve tried every trick I know to get her to talk, to no avail. All I can think is if it’s this hard to reach her now, now at an age when she still seeks my body out for comfort, still leans into my embraces rather than pulls away, how the hell will I reach her in a few years?

I do not wish to project myself upon her. I don’t mean to see things that are not there. But if you’re wondering, yes — she’s exactly like me in so many ways it’s frightening. If this really is what’s going on with her, it’s not a surprising development.

When I steal glances at Gretta lying on her sick bed I can’t help but see my ghost. My only hope lies in knowing my old enemy inside and out, and that this knowledge will give me the strength I need to exorcise it once again.