The Four Horsemen
Copyright Ann G. Kroger 2014
People come and go from her room. First her parents, then a myriad of friends. They all bring things, flowers and balloons and stuffed animals, material things that are supposed to relate some sort of thought, but only further accentuate that no one really knows what to say.
Lydia woke with a start and had a moment of confusion, disillusion, realizing she was not under the fluffy, eyelet comforter at home. And for a split second, just the most minutest of moments, she thought she was back at her friend’s shore house on Jamaica Beach. A wave of gratitude, the understanding and inkling of waking up from a nightmare began to wash over her. As the smile was just beginning to travel from her mouth to her eyes, an unfamiliar sound, the sound of whirling and a beep, followed by additional beeps caught her short. Half propped out of bed, Lydia remained motionless. To move, to turn her head, to acknowledge the machinery behind her would only confirm what Lydia could not bring herself to confirm. As long as she didn’t know, didn’t really know, maybe it didn’t happen. So she sat there, in the dark room, unable to move or to turn her head. Alone and wishing and listening.
Lydia walked along the quiet sands of Jamaica Beach. There was a lingering stillness in the air that attracted the feeling, not of nostalgia, but that this was a moment from which nostalgia is made. From trillions of miles away, the light from the stars was just reaching earth. Dark waves crashed and retreated on the beach. Abandoned white foam yearned to be reunited with the ocean.
There is a certain sadness, Lydia thought, to perfection. People strive so laboriously to find just a single moment of peace, that when it finally comes, they are so terrified of losing it, they cannot enjoy it. Peace is the most elusive of emotions, always within sight and yet just beyond one’s fingertips. Lydia sat down on the sand and pulled her legs up close to her body. She rested her head on her kneecaps and watched as sand sifted through her long fingers. She wanted to remember this moment, remember the smallest of details, so when she would retell it in later years, she could do so with enough exactitude as to elicit winsome approval of innocence and burgeoning adulthood from her audience.
From behind her, Lydia could hear the sound of the party. It sounded far away. Not uproarious, there was no music blaring nor people screaming. Just the tinkling sound of distant conversation dispersed with mild laughter. The girls had driven out from Houston earlier in the day. They had spent most of the afternoon sunbathing and playing in the cool gulf waters. The boys arrived later in the evening and with them, a trunk load of alcohol. At first, the girls played demur, denying drinks, as the rules of the game required, but the boys were persistent and the girls eventually relented.
Lydia turned around and looked back up at the house. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves, enjoying the last hurrah before they each left for their respective colleges and universities. Lydia smiled. In the moment, they all looked so promising, so vital, so handsome.
It stuck her as odd that she would ever be considered a part of this accomplished group. She was, of course, a part of it. It was her station in life. Her friends were the children of her parent’s friends. They had been raised together, went to the same schools, joined the same gymnastics and swim teams and respective scout troops. It would be unthinkable for Lydia to not be a part of this group. And yet, she didn’t feel a part of them. To Lydia, they were all sure of themselves, secure in their place. She was just there. Never quite invited or uninvited. But it all rang untrue. All of it. As if life were somehow this massive fictitious illusion where everyone puts up with everyone else because they don’t know what else to do.
Except, somehow, for Tuck.
Lydia met Tucker the first day of kindergarten. Her father had explained to her the day before that when one meets new people, the thing to do was to stick out one’s hand and proclaim in a loud, clear voice, “My name is Lydia Wilder.”
Then the other person would say, “My name is yadda yadda. How do you do?” Several times, Lydia and her father practiced the routine. “My name is Lydia Wilder.”
So, when Lydia entered the classroom she went directly up to the teacher, stuck out her hand and proclaimed, with an air of certitude, “My name is Lydia Wilder.” To which the teacher replied, “My name is Mrs. Leigh. How do you do?”
Confident, now in her approach, Lydia looked for another person to introduce herself to. Off to the side sat a fat cheeked boy in a striped shirt and Oshkosh jeans. Lydia walked over, “My name is Lydia Wilder.”
The boy looked up at Lydia, and then shifted to look around her. “Your shoe is untied.”
Lydia continued looking down at the boy, waiting for him to introduce himself, while he continued leaning off to the side to look at the rest of the class. “Umm, Lydia? Can you sit down please?”
Lydia turned around to see if she could see what the boy was seeing. Students were filing in. Moms were crying. Kids were crying. Some were wearing Sunday’s best. Other looked like they had dressed themselves. Slowly, Lydia backed up and without taking her eyes off the show, sat down on the floor next to the unnamed boy. Lydia took her hand in his, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He looked at her and nodded, and then both of them turned their attention back to the room in rapt concentration.
For the next twelve years, never would one see Tuck without seeing Lydia in close proximity.
“Hey, Lydia. Where did you go?”
“I just needed fresh air. Tuck, you ever get the feeling that this is the best it’s ever gonna get?”
Tuck sat down next to Lydia, put his arm around her shoulder, and drew her closer to him. “No, Lydia. This is not the best it gets. This is just the beginning.” They sat there, as they were want to do, comfortable with each other’s silence. “You wanna get out of here? Go for a drive?”
Lydia nodded her head, and together they walked off towards the car.
Thank you for visiting my blog! My name is Ann G. Kroger. For years now, I have thought of myself as a writer. The problem, though, was that I was always too fearful to actually let anyone read my writing. My stories were always in a state of flux, never quite good enough to suffer the blows of criticism.
Then one day, with the help of some friends, I realized I just needed an extra dose of courage. I decided to spend a year writing to see what happens. I write almost every day, but a couple of times a week, I take a deep breath and push the “Publish” button. Holy cow.
Anywho, a few weeks ago, I starting writing about this character, Lydia. It was a little thing about how bad things should not happen on sunny, bright Houston days. And in this story, Lydia’s husband left her. I liked the story very much. So, I decided to write the story of how Lydia and her husband (who I subsequently named Henry) met. Then I wrote about Lydia entering recovery.
I’ve grown very fond of Lydia and Henry. Most of my posts are about their parallel journeys through life. As I post them, they are a bit neurotic and disordered. I think confusion has made it difficult for new readers to catch up to whats happening.
Therefore, I have rearranged my website to accommodate Lydia and Henry. You can click on the Lydia and Henry tabs where I have re-posted the stories in a chronological timeline. Hopefully, this will make it easier to catch up. Then you can join the roller coaster in progress as the episodes post.
Thank you for reading. I know there are never enough hours in the day, so it means a lot to me when even five people set aside a few minutes of their life to support me and my writing. Feel free to email or post comments. I would love to know who you are and what you are thinking. Thanks again.
Best regards,
Ann G. Kroger
So… I never gave my update regarding my impetuous plea for attention. I know you have been waiting on pins and needles.
On Wednesday afternoon, five of the nicest writers I will never meet followed me. And four even took the time to say they liked what I had to say. It meant a lot to me. Thank you.
This shotgun writing thing is quite difficult. I find myself at an awkward place of realization that the writer I wish to be and the writer I am, are not necessarily one and the same. It is not like I had hopes of Hemingway-esque appeal, but I do often read frankly just terrible literature that has found it way to mass market. Ahhh… Well, I just started a short story. My plan is to have it somewhat done by next weekend. We’ll see.
Pain is the threshold of growth. Or so they say.
On page 72 of the Twelve and Twelve, it says, “Whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character was lost in the dust after what we thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character building as something desirable in itself, something we would strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not.”
I keep re-reading this page. It was the impetus for starting this website. My whole life, I have thought of myself as a writer. And yet nothing was ever good enough or finished enough to be shared. Then, a few weeks ago, I was at a retreat. It occurred to me, through the help of my women, that “practicing principals in all my affairs” included having the courage in all my affairs too. That night, I came home and signed up for WordPress before I could chicken out.
And so here we are. And all is good.
Except… WordPress keeps track of all the numbers for every single day. How many people have read your shotgun writing. If they clicked on the “About Me” page. It even tells me what country people are from. (Not surprisingly, it says my readers are all from the United States.) And this whole numbers mojo is messing with my headspace. I’m sure other writers must know what I’m talking about. It has become almost obsessive when I get the rare email that someone has decided they like my writing enough to “follow” it. Reminiscent of Veruca Salt, “But Daddy, I want them to follow me now!”
So, yes, here’s the thing. I would like to tell you I’m all adult and Zen about this thing and that my recovery is so strong that I will continue to expose the ridiculous nature of my life as an experiment in self growth regardless of who follows me and who does not. And that’s all true. But I kinda need you to follow me too. Five people. There’s like a hundred billion people out there and I would like five to scroll to the bottom of the page and click the follow button. Five would make me happy. Nine would be like crazy train. Okay, nine people (one from a foreign country and who is not a spambot) and two comments. That’s the most I dare ask for.
And yes, I get it. I’m chasing after what will make me happy. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow. Thank you for indulging me.
Love,
Ann Gabriel Kroger
As I have published my short story, Courage, something keeps itching my brain. There is a stereotype regarding the type of woman who finds herself alone and abused, a stereotype which I have perpetuated. And the reality is that all people, men and woman, rich and poor, from the city and from the country, have suffered that humiliation and pain of abuse. So, I rewrite and re-post, one story next to the other. I wonder if it sounds any different.
She’s been thinking a lot about courage today. She didn’t think she was an especially courageous person. No, courage was not the characteristic about her that immediately sprang to mind.
She was many things. Many great things, perhaps. She didn’t really know. intelligent, maybe, and perhaps ambitious. She was lead in a merger last quarter which brought her acclaim from the partners. They said in the next review her shares would increase. She didn’t tell them the merger was less her success than the other counsel’s failure. So, maybe she wasn’t all that honest either.
But this morning, she thought of herself as courageous.
She, perhaps, had not been courageous the first time he hit her. The time she yelped as she was hit, before she learned that he enjoyed her cries of pain and surprise.
But today, she is courageous.
No, she had not been especially courageous the many times since the first time, when she slunk to the back bedroom and did her best to remain quiet, lest he hear her over the sound of the TV.
But today, the luggage was packed and sitting by the door, waiting for her to pick it up and walk out for good
Nor had she been especially courageous the last time, when she had to go to the hospital. The doctor had asked her what happened, but she simply said she accidentally stumbled down the front stoop. It was not very plausible. And she knew it. And the doctor knew it. And she knew the doctor knew it.
But today, she is courageous. And as she looked out across the city, she wondered what her new life would bring.
Last week, I was talking to a co-worker. He said, “The reason writers drink is because they ca’t write anymore. Hemingway drank when he couldn’t write. He couldn’t express himself.”
I thought for a moment, cocked my head to the side. “Nope. No, I don’t think that’s right.”
I was a cute kid with chubby, pink cheeks, and a big mop of unruly blonde hair. Even though the only videos of me are the silent reel to reel kind, one can see me chuckling, my whole body shaking. What you can’t see in that silent reel to reel was my speech impediment. My Rs sounded like Ws. Till I was in fifth grade my name was “Ann Kwogwa.” While this added to my overall cuteness, it made me painfully self-conscious.
William’s Prize Winning Chicken
When no one can understand you, you stop talking. When you’re alone and silent, restless, irritable, discontent, you pick up a pen and start to write. My need to escape existed long before I found alcohol.
At thirty, I would get sober. I am still not sure how that happened. I sat in the back of a meeting and cried the whole way all through. At the end of the hour, I walked up to the front and got my desire chip. For the next several months, I attended multiple meetings a day. I did not think recovery would work. I just couldn’t think of any other place to go or anything else to do. I remember thinking, “These people seem fairly happy. Maybe it’s okay that I will never be able to go out to dinner or dance or write ever again.” That’s how intertwined drinking had become in my life. I just couldn’t imagine going out for dinner and not ordering a glass of wine. Well, I thought, sober people just don’t go out to dinner. (It’s when they invited me to join that I realized that sober people only eat in groups. That way they can keep an eye on each other.)
But writing was the hardest of all to give up. It saddened me. And yet, I knew writing was an impossibility. For the last many years of my life, a ritual surrounded my writing. It always involved me trying to reach, and maintain, a very specific level of inebriation. I needed the liquor to make the thoughts flow, but not so much to blur me into incomprehensible gobbledygook. While I would like to think that some days I was successful in this tightrope walk, I highly doubt I ever was.
See? It’s not that I drank because I couldn’t write. I couldn’t write because I am a drunk. And when I drink, I annihilate everything else around me.
For months after I got sober, I could not sit at a computer without wanting a drink. My hand would involuntarily reach for the highball which was not there. It made my palms sweat and my heart race. One day, I just stopped sitting at computers.
And I learned to talk instead. I don’t think my support group knows how little I talked before I got sober. Everything went on paper. Everything was processed through the written word. I remember my mom sitting me down one day and asking me to please stop saying, “You know what I mean?” after ever sentence. “Of course we know what you mean.” I didn’t ask that question so often because I thought the man next to me was an idiot. I asked because I feared the words coming out of my mouth were a jumble of random thoughts often supported by my mumble and odd vernacular. I’m not sure if what I am speaking is even English sometimes. Y’know what I mean?
In the fall of 2010, I went back to school. With a couple years of sobriety, I knew only two things. Be honest. Ask for help. My second week of school, I stayed after one of my classes. I approached my professor and said in the flurry of words that only the brave and the stupid use, “I don’t know how to write, I use to know how to write, but now I don’t know how to write, I got sober and now I can’t, I mean, I don’t know how to, and a five paragraph paper, I mean, see, I’m old and I’ve been out of school a long time.”
The teacher looked at me for what felt like an excruciatingly long and uncomfortable length of time. Skeptically, she quietly and slowly stated, “We don’t do five paragraph papers in college.” And somehow that is all I needed to hear. A giant smile crossed my lips. I knew what she meant. I could write how I needed to write.
I still struggle with my writing. I do not like showing to people. Or talking about it. It’s still something incredibly private and personal to me. I still live in fear. My dreams of writing are so soft and subtle, fragile and precarious; my insecurity is only barely kept in check. Some days I think one negative word will cause the entire house of cards to come crashing down.
But here I sit. Its 9:54 on a Tuesday morning. I am writing. And I am sober. I write to tell the newly sober man that sobriety can happen. I write to tell the woman with thirty days that she can go out to dinner and order a Coke. I write to tell the person with two years to continue asking for help. And I write to tell the woman in me to walk through yet another fear. For every day I proclaim I am an alcoholic. Today, I am also a writer.
Ann Kroger 