THIS IS MY CONSTRUCTED REALITY
I AM SHAKING as I write this, moving through the gate in Ottaviano on the page.
I am freaking out.
Je pète un câble!
Ignazo came to visit us for three weeks which landed ten years later. I am going to run away—though I am typing this—to Ignazo’s room since I have to shower in the past and get ready for the Feast of Sant Lucia. I did handstand drills first, so I’ll allow a version of myself to keep doing it—I’m walking past that. Show me a Neapolitan who would have a problem with multiple realities happening at once.
Up the steps, into my chair ten years later, I cannot speak!
“Do not speak to me!”
I am screaming it in the stairwell and no one can hear me because this is my constructed reality.
I’m busting through the door that isn’t real, charging down the hall, waving to Emilio because he’s a real person who’s not really there and Death. He isn’t a real person but he’s there…and closing the door, I have made my point.
I have been telling this story to my cousins—Franco and Flora specifically—for ten years. Last Christmas, Franco asked me—” Alzheimer’s, what?”—after I have been telling this story for ten years. I’ve said it many times—the Neapolitans are a very present people. They have no issue with the truth changing or operating from whatever present understanding that they have. I will acquiesce that my language skills were subpar, but they have never said anything but “yes you can speak—speak!” How many times did I say—he had Alzheimer’s?
Why did people not believe me—it was annoying. I had to keep telling my current mother…he had Alzheimer’s the whole time. Me? Rebellious? My hypnotherapist friend hoped I wasn’t listening to that. No, I wasn’t. Good. I felt time bend? Yes, that was the Alzheimer’s. The first time I had a wild, I must admit, experience around time perception, he said: “you can pierce through the fabric of reality, that’s what you did.” I was, if I’m looking back on it, always interested in time, so maybe I came into this existence to explore it, with bow, specifically.
I told the people around me when I found out at twenty years old that he had been diagnosed ten years before with Parkinson’s first, and it didn’t register to anybody. It says a lot about how one’s awareness affects their reality, in a sense. It was hard for me to go back through these ten years, as you can imagine. Even contending with myself, the way I responded, but who was this guy?!
Franco challenged me yet again, on this “idea” that my father was sick the whole time though I have been telling them this story for ten years. I came through the door with that. Alzheimer’s—it’s the same word in Italian. At this point, did they even have a concept of how much they were hurting me? No, they didn’t give a shit. It’s a small, minuscule example.
“Did he hit you?”
Angela asked me this. I didn’t have the language, so yes, but I stopped it. I didn’t want to talk about it with them, to be frank, but it was the “he had Alzheimer’s, how, what?” The pushing against my story, not believing me…why? Why did people defend this guy? What did the wise screenwriter say? Yeah, he wasn’t that special. Beside the fact that I confessed–for the first time, by the way, except on the page—that our arguments had tipped over—and let me tell you, yes, I went after him. Oh yes with his Bible that he didn’t even read. No, I had no tolerance for him. Let alone the feelings I have processed.
I am hiding in Ignazo’s room though I am not really there.
I can open and reopen his friggin’ door and hear it cracking.
It’s an image crystal clear to me—this is my constructed reality.
There may have been a couple of times that my father called Franco? A couple of meals in the two years I was in college?
I am going into the bathroom of tiny shimmering blue tiles, which I have done, deleted, and moved a few times now, moving the space heater, throwing a bathrobe, and finding myself at the double sink to regard myself in the mirror. The story that “I had mysteriously vanished to them when I was thirteen along with my father” was a reflection I got back from them—ten years.
“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
Franco had asked me.
On the phone today, he even claimed that I had contacted him in college to let him know that my father was sick.
“I lost your numbers!”
That’s what I had said to him at Christmas.
Ten years—that’s the cycle. I got my period when I was 13 on The Feast of Santa Lucia. I remember it, and always would because I was 13 and it was the 13th of December. My Big Sister of America was the hero this day—as I was about to chuck a box across SAVONS at my father in my red and grey St. Jerome’s P.E. uniform. “This is a biological function!!”
The language barrier needs to be taken into account, but in terms of my experience of it, Franco can, himself, shift the truth. Who doesn’t? For example, the other Sunday, he asked if I snored or something like this. When I said no, he said yes, I did. It’s not like I haven’t, probably, but I’ve never gotten that. But I was shaking because my mother was a pathological liar and my father had “a secret Alzheimer’s…” So, do I have the right to say that? Is that true? Are other people more correct than I am?
Flora snapped at him: “how would you know that?”
He said that he heard me one night.
It would have been impossible unless he was listening to me sleep. Their bedroom is at the other end of the hall, so it would imply that I was snoring so the whole house could hear me. Why was he doing this? To simply insist on the truth of his reality? You see? At the same time, I was repressed for a long time, so obviously memories have been coming up to the surface.
I started deleting everything I had written around “vanishing at thirteen” around my book without even questioning Franco, or taking a minute. No, I will not lie—a blade. Death, yes. On the page, I was about to cue the entrance of Vico, Angela, Emma, and Rosa for the Feast of Santa Lucia. In real-time, I went running outside for lunch with Vico, Angela, and Emma because I am finally able to express my paranoias—ten years later.
Under a canopy of yellow jasmine not in bloom casting shadows on the outdoor table, Angela was scratching her brow in navy leggings. I was also in navy leggings…it just so happened. Over rice, lentils and tomatoes, olives and tuna, they couldn’t help me with the facts—I had disappeared around this age. “Meri,” Angela said sweetly, “are you wondering why your father did this? There’s no one but Nick who can answer the question as to why you disappeared…why he stopped calling.”
“But Ignazo came for three weeks!”
Emma took a deep breath, her hands in a wide triangle.
“What does this man remember?! Ten years ago? Do you think—” It was twenty years ago if not more.
“He remembers?”
My father was not well, the first day of my junior year in college, he was in the hospital. I didn’t have these people’s numbers. Facebook? What was this? I didn’t use it.
“MERI,” Angela insisted that I calm down, playfully.
“Maria no one can ANSWER the question of why you and your father disappeared…”
“He didn’t call you?!”
“No,” she said, “and he called us…”
And would Franco say—”no, he called us!”
Emma crumpled her napkin about this man’s ability to remember what happened ten years ago.
“So what? Ignazo came for three weeks…”
I texted him. It was right before I left for college.
“You stopped coming…here…si.”
They looked at me.
“I cannot just say that I disappeared at thirteen…”
I was shaking. Ten years! I’ve been telling this story for ten years!
It rattled me. It was why I became a recorder—why I carried one around as a child—because my mother was a pathological liar, my father took thirty years to wrap my head around, and people changed the story. I knew that people could do that, but I couldn’t do that, to a problematic degree, for quite some time. Meri, yes, Angela gave space for my feelings, which she would more than once, “do not invent things that are not there…” She didn’t say that to me this time. They had no clue what I was talking about, afraid.
Angela threw her hands up, a phone call? Does this discredit your story?
“Three weeks?”
Well, if I’m being honest, what did my father say to me at four years old about Galileo?
“People get killed for a lot less than that!”
“He’s talking about when you called at the end of your twenties when you re-appeared as you are your father stopped coming…”
Emma said.
Vico shrugged tensely.
“There’s nothing,” his blues wide and sparkly, “you can do…you disappeared. You cannot change this.”
“Si, Meri,” Angela turned her head. “Do you remember?”
Shaking her triangle, “Smarix,” she only calls me by my cartoon name. And what was I supposed to feel about that? If I called someone a cartoon, what would that person say? I’m just curious. My ex-boyfriend called me “mini,” but the cartoon came later. “The adventures of MINI.” MINI, it was MINI. I was MINI.
Emma insisted—THE MAN does not REMEMBER what happened ten years ago, please, Smarix.”
I was being Smarix—cartoon-like in my feelings? She invented this name the first Christmas or so that I came back…and I was—a cartoon. I also didn’t speak the language which contributed to it, my hand gestures being “imaginative” and “fantastical,” they got the vibe. There was magic.
“Okay,” I said, “so I can say this?!”
“Say what, Meri, say what?”
Angela smiled.
“Say that my father and I…”
Emma took a deep breath.
“Disappeared…to you…when I was at this age….”
“Si,” they said.
I was being upfront about it, on the page, because this was MY constructed reality, so I would bring this lunch conversation into the Feast of Santa Lucia since it is believed that she has eyes that can see through the darkness. Excuse me. In any case, it might not…I think I have taken it out.
I was about twenty-six when they came back into my life. Can I just make myself thirty? Does this phone call… Ignazo coming for three weeks discredit the story? It hasn’t been the easiest since they don’t remember a lot of the things I said over the past ten years—clearly. Who would people believe—them or me? I just…I became a tape recorder for that reason…at eight, nine years old. This is coming to me now: the summer before my senior year of high school…my father did go to Italy. So, I disappeared. You see, they didn’t even remember that. I am not sure if he came to Naples, but some pictures are appearing in my mind.
It’s still true, okay, but I cannot even deal with him right now.
It’s still true—I disappeared around that time. How that truth breaks down or complexifies over time is another story. How that truth breaks down or complexifies over time is another story. It still has value in the world today even if we consider that I went through a personal process and my reality shifted as a result; it’s still useful when speaking about change. I can meet people on that level of exchange—conscious, I understand it’s an element in my real story.
What is the goal Ignazo since Franco called him “Obama” or “Obame?”
Transparent government. I knew, I said it to the people.
“I believe in transparent government.” Oh yes, I am going after Ignazo “Obama” on the Feast of Santa Lucia. Is he really Obama inside? You must defy your family then. It is my job, it IS to YOUR advantage to pay attention. “Stay with me man.” Clowns + politicians. Who is who, what is what? This is Persephone’s wisdom coming through Facetime.
The “crap” that people can throw at human beings, though, and it isn’t even true. The delusional realities that we live in that are “true.” The lies…where do you begin…that people will insist are true? Man, if I take my own story, my understanding of it, I was always reaching for truth. I spoke a lot of it, I’m sure, but from what standpoint? I had to wrestle with some of my own delusions, very real. Dr. J, obliterated the truth, I knew it at four. It fascinated me. These four years I spent in this other house were a case study, even, in exploring these ideas. What manipulates people’s understanding of the truth? How do our unconscious expectations and even desires play into our construction of it? Does emotion play a role in one’s crafting of it? Do people impose truths onto people that do not apply to them? Believable?
Angela said to me, driving around the coast, “will people believe you?” Really? She believed me; she’s a feeling person. Why wouldn’t they? People have done extraordinary things. Would you place me in that category? Really?
Lies—I’m taking a deep breath. I do not lie. That’s a baseline. But then, there was so much I withheld—that I couldn’t say to people. I didn’t have the capacity. What do you do with the information you withhold for many reasons? In private, we can say whatever we want, in a sense. I am shocked at how true that is also in the public space. It can be vicious—I do not participate. I could hardly watch TV and films. I had to work on that. How do you know all this? What do you know? I do not come from a typical story—you cannot apply conventional logic to me, sorry, but then, of course, I uphold the system, don’t I? How we behave is ridiculous—yes, “the truth,” people claiming they “know what it is and that “they know people” because “someone” credible knows, told them, I do not care.
Ask Karabek—he knows. I do not believe and I do, I don’t come from a solid framework, do I? I didn’t think that was unusual or special, but even with the information I hear, I do not use this as a frame to define a person. What the hell do I know about who is who and what they are doing? What did I say to Aunt Jane in high school—this ridiculous phrase: you know, most men wouldn’t have done what your father did…I hope you are cringing. Most men would have left, it’s usually the mother who stays…which, on the one hand, is true. But to me, this is why things don’t change. I tried to express it to her. She didn’t understand. If you want the narrative to change, you have to begin making them ideologically. What did Dr. J teach me? “It didn’t have to be true…huh” with my confused hair…launching undercover investigations.
Good, see how terrified I am, no longer afraid.
Prepare to meet me and my associate in a future conceit—a Scorpio. It’s true. This is a Scorpio and Saggitarius alliance.
“And on behalf of the end of the year, “ he says as our relationship is built upon mutual respect due to the elements involved.
“This has to stop.”
Thank you.