I KNOW WHAT it’s like to not feel anything.
It’s overwhelming light. It starts at a single spot and spreads outward, so fast that the real world burns in its wake until there’s nothing but light. It’s the white-hot flashbulb in the space behind the bridge of your nose and between your eyes. It’s the inch of empty air between your skin and everything else that exists.
At a certain point, your body stops negotiating with pain and becomes it. It’s liberating; you lose the control and the consciousness and all the parts that make you human, and let your body—the vicious, instinctual animal it has always been—make all the decisions. You think nothing. You feel nothing. You are nothing. Nothing but light.
The room was dark and the house was quiet. My auntie and uncle had gone to sleep seven hours ago, at 9:00 p.m., like Truckee people do. But the moon was reflecting off the lake, through the window, too bright for me to think about sleeping. I reached the end of my Twitter timeline, so I checked again, then again, and again. Each time: No New Tweets. No one posts on Twitter at 4:30 a.m. No one does anything at 4:30 a.m., unless they’re on meth, or me.
This kind of night had become a routine. And at 4:30 a.m., after I’d passed the point of no return on an all-nighter, I remembered what it was like to think about Kaitlin.
Dr. Sandoval told me that when that happened, I should journal, like I used to have to when I was a kid. I told him that was because I gave a shit what my dad thought when I was a kid, and I don’t anymore.
I disagree with the basic premise of journaling for the same reason that I disagree with the basic premise of therapy: because feelings are supposed to be the one thing we just do. Because you can plan and prepare and schedule every other little detail of your tiny life, but feelings are supposed to be the disruption to that. They’re not supposed to be documented and studied in a journal, then calculated by some guy in an intentionally nonthreatening sweater vest. If you’re forced to identify your feelings, then what the fuck is even the point?
But the therapy was court-mandated, so I had to do it if I ever wanted to see Kaitlin again.
I was thinking about Kaitlin. I could still see her with perfect clarity, radiating outward from the prosecution bench of the superior court of Palo Alto, her skin pale and hair flawlessly brown, just long enough to tickle her shoulders, wearing a white tennis skirt and smiling forward, away from me. I’d tried to tell her I was better. She didn’t look at me.
I cycled through the other tricks Dr. Sandoval had given me. “I’m getting better,” I told myself. I stared at my cast, fixating on the physical pain in my hand. He thought physical pain like that would put the emotional pain in perspective. But having perspective made me think about Kaitlin. My hand made me think about Kaitlin.
Pain made me think about Kaitlin.
“I’d never felt so scared in my entire life,” she was telling the judge, but she wasn’t in the courtroom anymore. She was lying on the bed next to me. “He doesn’t realize he can’t control himself, but when he gets angry, it’s like there’s this little switch in him that flips, and he goes crazy.” Her voice was light and airy and inviting, like a pop star’s. “He expects too much from me.” She looked directly into my face. “You expect too much from me,” and she rolled over, away from me.
“No, I don’t!” I pleaded, just like I used to shout at her, but I shouldn’t have shouted because it always made things worse.
“You’re not getting better!” she told me without rolling over. “You look all quiet, and hopeless, and hide behind your little I hate the world and the world hates me routine, but that’s how you manipulate people.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you!”
“You get angry, and you can’t control yourself—”
“I’m not trying to be angry!” I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t let her think I was dangerous; surely she could see the irony of a “protective order.” I was the one who protected her. “I’m not trying to be anything, I just want to be with you!”
“He needs me too much,” she said on my bed and in the hospital and in the courtroom and forever buried in my ear, deeper than I could reach so I could never get it out. “You need me too much.”
I know what it’s like to not feel anything.
It’s overwhelming light.
At a certain point, your body stops negotiating with pain, and becomes it. When you don’t feel anything, you’re not a person anymore. Nothing you do can help you, nothing can hurt you, so you submit yourself to it.
Most of the time, it puts you to sleep, stopping your nerves from vibrating so your body shuts down. But sometimes, it wakes you up. Your body knows it must survive so it lashes out at the nothingness. You still hear everything—I’m sorry, Arthur—you need me too much—do you have any idea what it’s like to have to take care of someone that crazy?—from the tiny little spot where the light exploded, so your body goes after it, unafraid of pain or consequence, because when you aren’t a person anymore, what do you have to lose? Violence is the only way to ensure survival.
Anyone who shouts control yourself always forgets that part; it’s not me steering the ship anymore. It’s my body, the primal creature it’s always been, doing what it must do to survive.
The sound of the chair crashing reminded me where I was. When I looked to the far side of the bed, Kaitlin had disappeared, leaving twisted sheets in her place. I listened breathlessly for a few moments, but no sound came from downstairs.
A dozen photo frames were shattered at my feet, and their stray glass was catching moonlight and throwing it around the room. My grandfather’s last photo sat in the center, on top of a book, cracked only slightly at the center, directly across his face. I set it in the middle of the desk and left the rest on the floor.
You need me too much.
I picked Birds of Tahoe off the floor and began to flip through it, desperate for something else to think about.
The American robin, a small, forest-dwelling bird, had a brick-red breast and a yellow beak, and Kaitlin had a friend named Robin who she used to be friends with at elementary school in—
The hairy woodpecker is a long-billed bird that can be identified by the white stripe down its back and the kind of bird name that would make Kaitlin laugh in public, the kind of laugh that made us exchange a look like we always did when someone inadvertently made a penis joke and didn’t—
I scanned the table of contents for something that wouldn’t make me think about her.
Dark-eyed junco, dark eyes just like hers.
Canada goose, native to her favorite country, Canada.
The western tanager—
Page forty-seven. I remembered my grandfather telling me a story about them once, about how they were a sign of good luck, or how some guy pretended they were. I flipped page after page, as fast as I could, past all the Kaitlin birds, trying to ignore them and failing, creasing over page forty-six—
A folded piece of paper fell out of the book and fluttered softly to the floor.
I almost didn’t see it, but it caught some light from the window halfway down.
It landed amid the glass.
It was thin, folded neatly, almost shimmering in the orange light from the window and the reflective shards around it.
I leaned to pick it up, and noticed the faded inverse of an address on the outer sheet:
S E KOPEK
17 C H ST
E, DA
As I unfolded the page further, it became two pages, fighting back, the creases firm as if they hadn’t been touched in years, frayed on the edges. They had been ripped out of something.
The page was covered in black pen that had dulled with age. The handwriting was a familiar cursive, but sloppy, as if written in a hurry.
I slumped into the folding chair in front of the desk, and read.
april 27, the 2010
dask wooden cold lite
lite
off the photo of family
arthur timothy arthur
lite
from the lake
jagged line burning orange lite
into blackness
mountains & mountains of trees, mountains of
jagged line horizon
i always felt there was some Greater love waiting for me
just around the bend of the orange horizon
i’m learning now that the world is a circle
& what i thought is ahead of me is actually behind
but my eyes are open
& i can see that i’m coming up on it again
& i feel Great purpose.
& i feel
arthur timothy arthur
hand to desk pen shaking lite
lite
off waves, reflections of lite
they’ve long since forgotten us
but they’re just waves
& what were they ever but reflections of lite?
what were any of us ever but reflections of lite?
i’m called to a voice i don’t remember
in a language i invented & have since forgotten
lite, too bright to see its source
chevys & greyhounds & zephyrs
you & me & them
lite from the orange sky
there are clouds ahead
& i hear trumpets & angals in your voice
calling to me
finding
peace in forgotten wars
homes in foreclosed jungles
saints in slums of missions
sinners in sanctuaries of church street
hope in forests of elko
safety in mecca.
chaos in cold, wet veins of ch
lou & sal’s tribute.
a true, Great purpose
great
jeffery arthur
shaking hand to desk ring
we are eternal, we’re together
& we always have been
photograph
of family
arthur & timothy & arthur
& lite
too bright to see its source
in the morning
i will listen
in the morning
i’ll be once again aboard my zephyr
full speed to elko
full speed to you
—arthur louis pullman