Fire on the mountain

I don't technically remember the fire on the mountain.

Moonshine spilled all over my recollection of that night, leaving what memories I do have fragmented and blurry: Sid telling me to get up, we had to leave, the fire was coming, a brief flash of our luggage by the TV. I fell out of the bed, I remember smelling the carpet, hitting my head. I had no bra on. Cards Against Humanity scattered all over the table. The lit up dash of my car, the dogs and Chas in the backseat, waiting to roll out, the nausea inching up into my gut, that annoying & useless thought of god I don’t want to be drunk anymore, something important is happening and I need to be present. I remember the wind, taillights. The ash, the little fires on the side of the road, but the moonshine kept dragging me down. I remember Sid talking to my mother, assuring her that we were okay. I can recall us stopping at a hotel, but they wouldn't take us because of the dogs, which was kinda fucked up. I remember stopping at a gas station and throwing up. I have no memory of walking into the hotel room that finally accepted us and falling asleep. That hangover was a bitch and a half, though. If it wouldn’t have been for the whole city smelling like a fireplace and the emergency vehicles everywhere the next morning, I would have thought it was a nightmare. But I reeked like a campfire, my head and belly were sour, and the whole world had gone to hell. Literally.

Sid always told me I was lucky that I wasn't coherent to see it. That I would have probably freaked out. I don't know if I would have freaked out to the point of immobility, but I still regret being so drunk for it. I've spent way too much of my life being too drunk for moments I should have stayed sober for. I think the fire is responsible for my belief that I will never see Gatlinburg again. We went back a year or so after, but of course, things being what they are now, I don’t think I can ever go back to a place where we could have died (if Sid wouldn’t have stayed awake we would definitely be dead) and pretend to see it through another person’s eyes. The things you share in happiness, while meaningful and precious, do not resonate as strongly as the things you share in disaster. Sad but true. Entre nous. Anyway-

I do remember seeing it scurrying down the mountainside when we were escaping, when my eyes would drag open from time to time. Like little orange blankets unrolling themselves. Maybe the moonshine made them move, but they were there. Starving. Greedy. Swallowing everything in the way.

That's what my brain was doing a few weeks ago-having a total Gatlinburg. Burning down the mountain. Eating up everything, good and bad. There was no stopping it; it incinerated hopes I was holding onto, feelings I was scared to release-if my brain had fingers they'd be curled into permanent hooks. It actually felt as if these discards were pulling like taffy, stretching away from me, and even taffy has to break at some point. I don't know if this makes any sense, but I felt it snap. I regret that my writing ability falls short of capturing this experience, but that's literally what I felt, if a brain can feel anything-snap. Like a rubber band. Ugh. Somewhere in Maine, Stephen King just got a major headache and doesn't know why.

There was a filthy and derelict room in my head that I visited when I felt down on myself, when I felt less than, when I felt lonely. It was littered with old messenger conversations and audio imprints of phone conversations, memories I built up to be castles when they were only shacks. It had dark & dank corners and a floor the quicksand of what ifs and if I went too far into that room, my feet got stuck and I couldn't get out. Wouldn't get out, sometimes. Some days it was a sentence, others a choice. You lived there. It has to be said-the rent was astronomically high for such a shithole.

After I navigated the sobbing uglies, I decided, what the hell? Let's toss something that really needs to be destroyed. When in Rome, you know? So I threw you. Recklessly. Just to see what would happen. What could it hurt? You were a little miniature in my hand, a tiny architect’s model of purgatory. Fwoop.

And the fire gobbled you up like dry timber. Go figure. It only took since 200-goddamn-7. But there was no snap, you see. You were never worth a snap.

Now that room is white, pristine-you could perform surgery or assemble computer chips, if one could get in at all. The door is locked. There's a window-I can only look in, not get in. I couldn't burn the door completely, but that's next to go, trust me. Sometimes I take a peek, but nothing in there can hurt me anymore.

I am not often good nor fair to myself, despite my many campaigns on the importance of self care. Twenty million baths with an endless supply of hot water and all the bath bombs in the world aren't enough to break old habits. I am a whore for nostalgia so I clamp onto my hurts with all my teeth and I don't forgive myself for my mistakes because my forgiveness gets spent on others. When I make moves to save myself, it's usually drastic ones, and only after I've bled the situation dry. You were so dry.

Being a Southerner, I do not come equipped knowing how to deal with fire. Water, yes. You learn to swim early and tighten your belts when summer comes around. You know that a good few inches of rain can put your city out of commission, that a thunderstorm can be enough to get you sent home from work. You can wake up with the sun blaring 100+ degrees and go to sleep under a sky made out of the sea. But you can't drown the things that haunt you. They always bob to the surface when the rain stops, soft and rotten.

Fire doesn't stop.

So I burned you, because I w̶a̶n̶t̶e̶d̶-needed you to be something that just happened to me and not something that I was doing to myself.

Even a forest fire, as destructive and dangerous as it can be, is necessary every few years. It dissolves the old and lets the new spiral into the sky.

And the things it burns

stay burned.

I may not like myself very much, but my sense of preservation is stronger than my need for self destruction, and if I have to host Gatlinburgs in my head from time to time, I'll do it. I want the world yesterday, always have-but it doesn’t give a shit about what I want and when I want it, so I will burn what I have to, for as long as it takes.

You have no idea what I am capable of, if it means being free.

Memories consume

like opening the wound

I'm picking me apart again

You all assume

I'm safe here in my room

Unless I try to start again

I don't want to be the one the battles always choose

'Cause inside I realize that I'm the one confused