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Written by Leslie Cairns
(Twitter: @starbucksgirly)
“I visited many places,
Some of them quite
Exotic and far away,
But I always returned to myself.”
― Dejan Stojanovic
I took a maimed or fallen barn owl into my home.
Its mask was similar to what huskies have on their face except tawny: all ribbon, concise, unawares.
Blinking at me as if to say I know. I hadn’t named it yet, but handed it a crumb of off-brand blueberry Poptart, which it surprisingly took into its gnarled teeth.
In middle school, before we could dissect shark or sheep – really large mammals – we had to dissect owl pellets. I’d sheepishly thought the pellets were homes. Only after I cut in, asking my lab partner if she saw twigs, did she laugh in a snarl. Teeth pearled with braces I would never have. Braces meant a family that loved you, took you to the doctors, wanted more.
It’s old dung. It’s disgusting. It’s not a home or a nest. Are you ridiculous? She’d pulled her Abercrombie sweater closer to her, head in her curls. I couldn’t tell if she was discussing the home or me.
I snap from the memory, clutching the phone to my ear. Telling my friend Eleanor about the owl. Eleanor’s like a sister to me, even though I hadn’t been able to travel to her wedding. Couldn’t afford it back then or now.
She sighs on the other end, and I make the owl a blanket of my own creation. She sighs some more.
“Elsie,” she says.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I retort. “The owl’s staying. I’m weird. I know. But it needs to heal.”
Eleanor, my truly devoted friend – the one who made me a bridesmaid in emerald, even though I didn’t go – sighs some more.
Distress Tolerance
I hang up, not unkindly, and the owl blinks at me. My head pulses like a migraine, but unsteady and shaky. Not constant, not needing to drown out light. A headache just for me. I know I’m about to disassociate, untangle from the vertebrae of the day.
--
“Go, just go,” she said.
“Mom?” I say. Stomach wavering.
“Go on, get out.”
She shoves an old toothpaste colored suitcase at me. Oversized, looking like it could fit a funeral suit.
"It was your father’s old one. Perfect for you.”
No one would get the context of why that remark was so cruel. I think of how my two sisters don’t have to leave. Just me. I think of how I drank her champagne, diluted in orange juice since I was underage, still naively afraid the cops would come looking for me if I spilled.
I wanted to help her finish the bottles, always forgetting when the moths and crickets hugged me outside, that she would just bellow her way into another one. Howl at the moon, foul.
“I can’t. Where would I go?” I say.
She shrugs so simply, as if I was asking her if it’s Monday. That’s when I knew I needed to get gone. She’s not there: just dead weight, lackluster.
“I’m going.” She pawed her feet, unsteady.
“You’re just drinking. Maybe you want me to stay.”
She laughed. “You know that’s not true.”
I throw random blouses, sweatpants from Victoria’s Secret Pink into my bag. Garments that hugged me in another life.
My childhood dog, Dexter, whimpered in the corner.
I looked him dead in the eye.“Don’t be afraid little guy. I’ll be back.”
I didn’t think that was true, but I couldn’t bear telling him. He wagged his little dachshund tail; it reminded me of the summers we spent jogging side-by-side, near the farms and pebbled hills. Barely a car.
It was bad for his back in long distances, but he loved it just the same. So, he’d endure for just a little while.
I kissed Dex, his jaw wobbled, then he dove back into unfinished laundry. Just a little head sticking out, as if he was cascaded socks.
I’m halfway out the door, and my Mom said, “Do you think you’ll ever even graduate or get a job in this world? I mean, you?”
I just looked at her. Our eyes almost the same hue.
I finally didn’t have to answer her, or perhaps I’d been too shocked to care. Just residue, leaving time and jazz sounds.
“Goodbye Mom,” I said.
I didn’t grab towels or socks. I thought of how my room would just shiver with no one to sleep in it. How it will go unused like a broken heart. The ceiling fan will twirl without an audience. For some reason, that made me sadder than anything else.
--
The owl nestles into me: all strange muscle and tissue. Feathers oddly soft.
“Hi, Buddy,” I said. “I disassociate from time to time.”
She doesn’t fly away. I realize she’s hurt. Grabbing my first aid kit, the first thing I put in my newfound house when I moved in. I take out gauze, add some soothing balm to it like lipgloss, and stick it around her wing. She beaks me but I know it’s just because she’s afraid.
I practice in my head how I’m going to talk to her three times before I say anything out loud. I don’t want to spook her or to think I’m kicking her out. I would never want to sound like she did, not to any living thing.
I practice, whisper before saying it out loud, in moon tones. Soft, hushed and lunar: “You can go at any time. If you need to.”
I nod, satisfied. The owl shimmies closer as the breeze wraps around my ankle and her talons. They’re almost mustard. She has a white streak down her right side. There’s no blood.
My therapist once said – during inpatient – that distress tolerance is when you’re actually in pain. Trauma unfolding. All you can do is see it’s happening: spinning like someone suddenly under ice. Just there then gone. Dissociation won’t last forever, but time will trick you. You just
have to grab that ice-bitten hand. Call 9/11. Do what you have to do. When I disassociate, I just count my breaths in lunar phases. Full, half, sliver, blackout eclipse.
The owl chirps, wanting to join its family, probably. But it can’t fly so it can’t find them right now.
“I know the feeling buddy,” I say.
Emotional Regulation
Once the memory of leaving my Mom subsides, I’m left with wanting to hurl. My therapist said emotional regulation is the second tier. You’re ‘with it’ enough to tolerate and name the feelings. She handed me a rainbow pinwheel that I pocketed. ‘Sad’ became a thesaurus of larger words. You spun the wheel for feelings.
I have a Masters Degree now, in English: I could name so many words. Until I was sitting on a sofa, or a therapy chair, then I could only mutter basic panderings. Sad. Fearful. Afraid. I’m okay though, was my constant addendum to anything I said.
I nod, satisfied. The owl shimmies closer as the breeze wraps around my ankle and her talons. They’re almost mustard. She has a white streak down her right side. There’s no blood.
My therapist once said – during inpatient – that distress tolerance is when you’re actually in pain. Trauma unfolding.
All you can do is see it’s happening: spinning like someone suddenly under ice. Just there then gone.
Dissociation won’t last forever, but time will trick you. You just have to grab that ice-bitten hand. Call 9/11. Do what you have to do. When I disassociate, I just count my breaths in lunar phases. Full, half, sliver, blackout eclipse.
The owl chirps, wanting to join its family, probably. But it can’t fly so it can’t find them right now.
“I know the feeling buddy,” I say.
Emotional Regulation
Once the memory of leaving my Mom subsides, I’m left with wanting to hurl. My therapist said emotional regulation is the second tier. You’re ‘with it’ enough to tolerate and name the feelings. She handed me a rainbow pinwheel that I pocketed.
‘Sad’ became a thesaurus of larger words. You spun the wheel for feelings. I have a Masters Degree now, in English: I could name so many words. Until I was sitting on a sofa, or a therapy chair, then I could only mutter basic panderings. Sad. Fearful. Afraid. I’m okay though, was my constant addendum to anything I said.
The pretty words left my body when I tried to name them. I even used to recite Shakespeare in highschool; I was good at it. But when a therapist said, how are you feeling? I just stared at the windows like I was cigarette plumes of smoke echoing out the window. I turned into nothing.
“Sad?” I’d say. My fists would be clenched but I didn’t know how to say mad. I’d have to leave the room to throw up, but I’d say, sort of anxious.
But I’m in my house, I’m in the present. I can do this.
The owl stares at me.
"I’m afraid. For you, for all of my friends’ sighs. For this house not really being a home yet. Does it look alright to you?” I look over at the bird and laugh, because of course she doesn’t know.
“I’m going to call you something beautiful. Like that pinwheel of words. I’ll really think of what you should be,” I say.
She fluffs, preens, ignoring my story. Of course she is: she’s a bird.
I glance at the alcove above us, the quilt from my 1920s grandmother underneath us.
“I’m so petrified,” I say. I think that was on the pinwheel.” Clutching my sides, knees, scabs, stomach, hip bones.
“I won’t even be able to eat. When those memories come up, they just snatch everything. You know?”
She lets out a howl, and the bandage looks weird. I redo, breathe. Barely feeling it now: the way my Mom smelled, the way it comes into my vision whenever it wants to, all the time.
Mindfulness
The third tier, my therapist always said, was mindfulness. When she’d say it, her argyle sweater would be draped over her shoulders. Her sailor stripes and ruby flats reminded me of a weird kind of armor. Bad stuff wouldn’t happen to people dressed so preppy it almost screams at you. Maybe looking sweet would keep the monsters away.
I looked at my acid wash jeans, and looked at the therapist, and felt so alone.
--
Now, I stare at the owl, leaning on my belly. I place my head in my hands, and watch the moonlight trickle on us. In this way, we’re exactly the same. We could both be animals, or both have in tandem heartbeats; no one would ever really know.
Do one thing at a time. Wrap your arms on your stomach. Breathe in. Out. Visualize a safe space, or bubbles of loved ones that you can count. Count the different shades of autumn on trees. It turns off the chaos of the world. Plus, your brain cannot panic and count at the same time, my therapist had said with a slight giggle.
--
I count the owl’s eyes, obviously two. The feathers until I get to her belly and she moves to a branch above me: 206.
I call Eleanor back.
“206!” I say.
“What?” She yawns. I hear her husband cooing to her just like the owl is to me, only sweeter because it’s actually something tangible, not my messed up version of love. Of losing my mind with an owl.
“She has 206 feathers. I was trying to do mindfulness in my new home.”
The sighing again. The pause like the shifting of Petal’s feet. That’s what I wanted to name her, Petal. Not a basic part of a flower, but a specific one. A pretty sounding word, but it held everything together.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
This one seems easy, I’d said to my therapist. She’d leaned forward; a cat with a canary.
Finally winning.
“Really?” she’d said. “I think you struggle with this one the most. You’re lonely. You isolate. Your Mom kicked you out.”
The reality is like pebbles in pockets.
"Make future plans,” she said. She changed the subject and I noticed, but I pretended that I hadn’t.
“Ask someone what they need from you. Listen for subtext. Clarify your needs.”
She handed me acronyms: ways to be KIND, FALTER, and TIPP.
Okay,” I said. I threw them to the back of my purse for a while, wanting to believe I was lovable. Not an isolated version of the girl who used to recite Shakespeare for her friends, who would then laugh at her, leaned against lockers. Tolerating.
--
I paused, air. “I need you to love my house, I decorated it so. And, the pebbles I put – ”
“Stop, just stop,” Eleanor said. I could picture her leaning against her husband. Him giving her a soft mouthed kiss, after.
“You’re not in a house,” she said. “You want it to be, but it’s an abandoned shed. You pinged me the coordinates. You won’t go to a shelter.”
My stomach starts to belch in fear; memories start to crowd my vision. I shake my head, count feathers.
“I have an owl,” I whisper.
“You both are not where you belong,” she says. I cradle the phone near my ear. I don’t want to hang up, nor do I want to believe her.
“I have to go,” I say.
The owl suddenly jumps on my lap. Stares into my eyes, then takes off. Reaching my hands at the feathers that fall down as she goes, pretending for a moment that she’s leaving me something to follow.
The answer, the reason, the need to, that I’m after.
About The Author:
Leslie Cairns holds an MA degree in English Rhetoric. She lives in Denver, Colorado.
She has upcoming flash, short stories, and poetry in various magazines, including Cerasus Magazine, Coffeezine Mag, Swim Press, Bright Flash Literary Review, Londemere Lit, and others.
Twitter: @starbucksgirly