"I fell down some steps"

I fell down some steps.

People are very curious about this. Why? Is it like watching a train wreck? So the fuck what! Who the fuck cares! I fell down some steps. Big deal.

I fell down a whole flight of steps. The very first step on my cheap second, that is top, floor, of my cheap apartment, my foot didn't catch on that little metallic thingie/edge, that would have had me slide down face first on my belly down the steps, no: my heel landed exactly where it would slide, skid over the top of that metal thingie, and I spend a whole flight trying to catch hold of anything as I screamed, "oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" as my whole body tensed itself, trying to save itself from this unremitting agony, until I finally did flip over and land on the floor with my face -- BANG! -- and cried and cried and cried until some nice Korean people from the ground floor came rushing out with their cell phones calling emergency.

Boy, did I scream then! I screamed that I was okay, and I wasn't hurt, and I was okay, and I dragged my sorry ass back up those self-same steps back to my tiny, shitty, oops I meant: 'efficiency' place and pull the covers over my head and went to sleep and didn't wake up for a day. A whole day.

Why was I going out?

Well, when your girlfriend tells you she wants to be friends now, and she wasn't your girlfriend, she was the reason you were alive for a whole year, and ...

Well, I was a little ... euphoric ... from emotion, so I decided to self-medicate. Alcohol is a depressant, you see, so I could be back on an even keel after a few drinks. The dive they call a restaurant/bar in our little dive town has 'happy' hour where they serve mixed drinks for one dollar.

By the way: I'm a cheap date. One beer, and I'm drunk. A few drinks? You ever read Salinger? He wrote Sappho's poem: "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters!" as only he could write it. THAT's what'd happen to me. What happened to Buddy after one, very strong, Tom Collins.

Yeah, I was going to self-medicate, then maybe cross the street, and maybe this time God wouldn't stop that oncoming truck, and then everybody's problems would be solved, and it wouldn't even be a suicide, it'd just be some stupid fucking drunk girl crossing the street, crushed under a moving van.

Happens every day.

So, God might've taken preemptive measures, again, on my sorry ass, and had one angel push me down the stairs, and ... but it was okay, I was fine, because the floor caught my fall.

I had a big black and blue shiner that screamed 'SPOUSE ABUSE!' for any and all on-lookers for a few days.

And, well, tensing up like that, and having stair after stair hit tensed muscles like that.

And my tailbone.

Yes, my pride was injured, but then, I couldn't walk for a day, and then running? jogging?

I tried, but I couldn't the pain was general: all over my body, and then 'specific': like, super intense in my neck and back. It was fine walking, but when I tried to push myself, even a little bit, I saw stars through my tears.

And the bruises on my knees and hips.

But why didn't I go (back) to the hospital?

"I fell down some steps."

I fell down some steps.

Yeah, right.

How many times a day do the orderlies hear that lie? In Fight Club, you know: the movie that Saga quoted the 'I haven't been fucked like that since grade school' line, the protagonist used that line, that lie, to justify his beatings, on himself.

In 'Fried Green Tomatoes,' there was some falling down some steps, right, Ruth? But it was because her husband pushed her down them, and she almost lost her baby that way.

And let's not forget the best seller, 22 million copies at last count a few years ago, where Alice DID fall down some steps and crash through a window to cover up the fact that Bella was tortured by James, ... remember how he snapped her leg in half? ... so that she and Edward could live happily ever after?

Stairs, and falling down them, cover up a whole host of sins, of evils.

"I fell down some steps."

I go to the hospital, and say that line, and you know what they would think, and you know what they would do. And they I would have the police over at my house, and more people would be in my life, in my shit, and see just another example of an aborted abortion: poor white trash just taking up space, living in the ghetto.

You know what 'ghetto' is? No, it's not where (now) the Koreans live. It's not where the Black lived in Harlem. No, it's where the Nazis gathered the Jews ...

... collecting them, so they could exterminate them.

And the questions they would ask: "Please give the name of your cohabitating partner. Has he assaulted you before?" He? HE? HE?

Or: "What are the names of your parents? Are you house sitting here? Have you been disciplined by them before this badly? What high school do you go to? Wait: did you graduate grade school yet?"

Yeah: I fell down some steps.

Oh, but I'm fine now. You know why: because I didn't go to the hospital, and have a police report filed against me: Jane Doe, poor white trash, so nobody knows that I can't pay the rent, that I can't go out with the gang from work for lunch, cause I can't pay with credit card and I don't have cash, and if I lose my fare card, I don't have cash to get a bus ride then catch the metro rail, then catch the next bus: two and a half hours to get to work, two and a half hours to get home to get paid a 'fuck me up the ass, boss' secretary's pay that doesn't pay the rent, so, no I don't go to sbux anymore for that $4.25 cup of coffee I don't have the money to buy.

You see: I'm fine. Nobody knows about me; nobody cares, so I can just be a little mouse, shivering in the barn; getting by.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

So, now, when I go down the steps, what I don't do is this: I don't check my email on my phone, I'm not getting any I need to read, like when I needed to read the email when Saga sent it. I don't think thoughts that cloud my sight. Like nearly every thought I think to myself and how I deserve this life I'm living, and I don't even deserve that. No, I grasp firmly on the rail with one hand, and hold the wall with the other, and nudge out my foot, reach out to that first step, and then I tentatively rest my foot on the first step, testing to see whether I rest there, or if I go flying, high as a kite, bonk-bonk-bonk, all the way down.

If I rest there, nobody comes running out their doors, nobody notices. Nobody cares. Nothing to care about.

Being noticed, falling, flying down a flight of stairs, get you noticed, and being noticed ...

I'm tired, and it's not even noon yet. This writing stuff. Wheee! So fun!

And a little tiny voice just now, just fucking right now, whispered in my head: "Saga noticed you."

I have to go to the bathroom now. I don't want my coworkers seeing me crying. They might notice.