wishbone

under my left nostril, above my lip is a tiny scar. and if you look closely, under my left eye there is a spot that always looks a little sooty. as if my mascara has run a tiny bit. the worlds tiniest black tear.

the time:halloween 2005, the place:the doubledown saloon. i adore the doubledown, sincerely. and its a great place on halloween-all the freaks at play. but at that point, at that very moment in my life almost to the second, i had become the proverbial car that had lost its brakes on a curvy road. i had just recently returned from montana where i had fled to from vegas after a particularly nasty drug bender. after close to 48 hrs i was told, "it's not funny anymore." this, as i sat on a crate at 11am in the alley directly behind the doubledown on a friday in broad daylight wearing a black, beaded cocktail dress (from the show i had seen the night before) and a dirty blue mechanics shirt that my friend had given me because i was freezing. i had ran all over town for a day and a night. i made friends with strangers, gave them my drugs, smacked them around. early in the morning it was just jesse, me and the bartender. but jesse, in his fashion soon dissapeared with a girl leaving me only his shirt, his car keys and the last of his blow. hours passed in a stupor. at one point i even tried to take his car and leave. as i sat there waiting to pull into midday traffic right off paradise, i, for once, listened to the the voice that said no. i threw his car in reverse and left it in the middle of the parking lot. finally at some point in the late afternoon i was rescued, given haven for some much needed sleep. only to wake up friday night at 10:30 with seventeen messages on my phone from jesse about me having his keys and his car being parked directly in the middle of the doubledown parking lot. not so great on a friday night. after cleaning up my mess and finally getting home i slept for about fourteen hours, called my boss, and drove from vegas like i was being chased by the mob. i retreated to the comfort and calm of a friend in montana with no set time of return. i ate healthy meals, i slept, i walked and i got my head back on straight. all of my craziness was taking place during a time i was also doing 4-8 hours of massage a day so to say i was sucked dry would have been a grave understatement. "running on empty" doesnt even come close. so montana was a blessing-i didn't want to be a total fuckup (just the normal kind.) and i thought my head was straight until i returned, whereupon i immediately got back up to my old tricks. and as my friend had warned me, "it wasnt funny anymore...."

such a silly thing, completely undramatic. two friends, drunk rolling around in the doubledown parking lot playfighting. i walked over to them, leaned over to ask what they were doing. and they rolled into me. not intentionally, just in the way drunk people do without regard to spatial thought. and for reasons i will never understand my hands didnt go out in front of me. my legs went out from under me and my two little traitorous appendages did not stop my face from smashing into the concrete. (as if i hadnt made enough of a jackass of myself a few weeks earlier in that same lot...) i sat up very fast, as if i pretended i was okay then somehow it would be. but then betsy looked at me and made a funny noise. i waved my now reanimated hands, "no, no, im fine..." but my face felt funny. i put my hand to my face and like a stagetrick it came back covered in blood. then i felt for my teeth. i still thank every possible god or spirit in the universe for sparing me my teeth since i had no dental plan and it would probably have been very hard to do my job in the fancypants place i worked with broken teeth. however, the entire left side of my face was fucked. i had literally split the skin under my eye from corner to corner and the skin under my nose was shredded. i was quickly covered in blood but since it was halloween, funnily enough, no one even noticed. my makeup ran into the open split under my eye where a teeny bit remains to this day. if there are words to describe the feeling in this moment for me, i have yet to find them. but just to throw something out there let's say "abject horror."

my sweet, sweet friend betsy stayed with me for almost 24 hours. she took me home and nursed me the best she could. she held my hand and let me cry it out the next morning as i woke to my new face. she took me to eat and made jokes to break the tension since i was being looked at like a domestic case. it was awful. and i was pretty certain i had broken bones around my eye but it was so swollen it was impossible to tell. i had to take several more weeks off work to allow all the swelling and bruising to go down enough to be presentable. (im actually still fucking amazed i didn't lose that job.) in the end, there were no broken bones. just me looking pretty damn freaky there for a bit since one side of my face was untouched and the other side looked like train wreck. and that's literally when shan came into my life. we recognized each other. she saw past it all. past my fucked-upness, saw my heart. we were both kind of falling at that moment in time, and somehow we caught each other. that's why i feel so lucky.

somehow, the mangled mess under my nose healed into a perfect, tiny scar the shape of a wishbone. which is still a beautiful irony to me, because if i ever had one wish it was to find real love that lasts. if you see me touching it, as i often do, you will know that im remembering the moment in time something horrible turned into a gift.