"You’re a bitch on wheels" my mother once said to me when I was acting out as a child. I wasn’t so much a child as a pain in the ass know-it-all. I wasn’t driving a car or riding a bike and didn’t quite understand where the "wheels" bit came from. For some strange reason, I imagined a dessert cart when she said it. The glass kind found in upmarket restaurants, and I wondered how I’d fit on it. And now, although it makes no sense, I still use the phrase. Lately, I’ve been a total bitch on wheels.
Well, what the fuck, I’m sorry, but who gets her goddamn spot twice a month? This used to happen when I was trying to conceive. Doctors said I wasn’t ovulating, which completely spun me into a panic. Now that I have kids, you’d think I’d be a-okay with it. You’d be wrong.
Let me just say, when I do get it, it lasts for five days, maybe six. So then I’m spot-free for a week, that’s right, seven days. And then I get that shit again? And for a whole five or six days. That’s having your period every other week! Yeah, no wonder I’m a bitch. And I want everyone to feel as pissed off as I do. You’re tired? Tough shit. Entertain me. If I’m miserable, damn well better know I’m taking you down with me. And it’s not fair. And I’m sorry. I apologize for being impossible lately, for saying mean things, for lashing out. For being a bitch on wheels. And it’s not because of what we’ve been going through lately, because I was this way before all that. And I want to thank you for always finding your way back to me in the middle of the night, with tangled touch, or a foot crossed over mine. My body growing closer to you, apologizing in touch before the rest of me is able to catch up.
Because the truth of it is, I distance myself sometimes, get so used to holding a grudge, that I keep it safe, and stay true to it. And then we begin to live like brother and sister, in a polite house of yes and please and no thank you. And I don’t like the living I’ve created, and don’t always know how to stop it, to cross the line back over to you.
