August 9th, 2014 - Jerilynn Aquino

I don’t like revisiting Ten Years Ago. She’s behind a locked door, a sense of doom, dark basement type of energy. When I gather the courage to knock, Ten Years Ago starts crying.

We’re stuck, she says. We’ll never get out.

I walk away, saying, We’ll see.

My therapist would say it’s a matter of “parts.” Some parts are Managers, critical and angry, and some are Firefighters, numbing the pain. Both protect the wounded parts, the Exiles, and I don’t really understand, but my mother was a store manager, and my father, a real fireman.

When I try to visit Ten Years Ago, my Manager steps forward. She gets mad at me, ashamed. She says, Keep this between you and me, and tells me to move on. When that doesn’t work my Firefighter kicks in, and before I know it, I’m getting too high to think, or I’m yelling at someone I love.

My therapist would say I need to coax the parts out. Be super gentle, ask permission to talk. And that healing an Exile takes a long time, so another obstacle: I haven’t gotten that far in therapy.

Plus, Ten Years Ago has her own parts. Her Firefighter gets drunk, makes her cheat. Her Manager gives her reasons to stay. There’s a long-term boyfriend, a bedroom on life support. Occasionally there’s fucking, a planned event for which Ten Years Ago must ask. When it isn’t planned, it’s in the middle of the night. He wakes her up with his dick in his hand, tells her to suck him off. And she does, because Ten Years Ago thinks it’s the best she’ll ever get. He’s familiar. They share the same ideas about sharing a home. Routine fighting means love. Commitment means staying, no matter what. And that’s how it goes for seven years, a decade ago the sixth, and they’re damn good at keeping it going, both of them terrified of being alone.

My therapist would say to remind the parts of who we are.

I tell Ten Years Ago, We’re married to someone else now. We’re happy, happy in love. 

Ten Years Ago says, We’re lying, and she remembers this bar, this slinky number she’s wearing. Retro red lip gloss, blue satin heels. She says she isn’t sorry for seeking pleasure, but then again, Ten Years Ago is drunk. She goes to other people’s apartments. She fools around with strangers.

We never sleep with anyone though, she reminds.

How delusional can we be? I reply.

But I forget to say it gently. Ten Years Ago pounds on the door, yells about leaving someone’s house, walking back to our real life, our real boyfriend. On the way, she walks across a church lawn, squats behind a white cross and pees. Above her, a gash in the clouds, the black ceiling beyond, where the moon shines bright, but stuck. Like the moon doesn’t know of different skies. Ten Years Ago imagines apocalypse, the end of earthly bodies. How absurd her retro red lips, blue satin heels. How absurd her desperate longing. In the end, her choices won’t matter. She can fool around, piss in the dark, and disinterested voids would still never budge.

I cut her off. I don’t want to talk about that. I’m supposed to find an Exile.

She’s not even here, Ten Years Ago says, and I can hear her rolling her eyes.

My therapist would say I’m getting too worked up. That it’s time to end the exercise, do some grounding. But I’m so pissed off my Firefighter hands me an axe.

I say, I’m gonna break down this door.

Ten Years Ago says, Wait, don’t, and I hear the lock turn.

*

When I finally walk through, there’s no basement. Everything is bright. I’m in my parents’ house, where my boyfriend and I are visiting. He stands in front of me, my father behind him taking pictures. My mother wipes away tears, ones I sense have been pushed. On my left hand, a diamond winks. I start panicking. Shallow breath, tears I haven’t pushed.

Let me out, I say. I’m going to die here.

Congratulations! my parents reply.

And there’s a sense of doom in my gut, something I’ve wanted since ten years back, twenty, since I was a little girl. This portrait, a family. My parents, pulling me close.

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Jerilynn Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer from New Jersey. Her work appears in Salt Hill, Booth, The Journal, Gulf Coast, and others. She is the recipient of a Hedgebrook Writing Residency, an AWP Intro Journals Award, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. She completed her M.F.A. in Fiction at Temple University and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction at Oklahoma State University. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and through her website at www.jerilynnaquino.com.