Still Missing

by Chevy Stevens

When I wonder how I became the zombie I am now, how I could have gotten so lost, it always traces back to that moment—the moment I put my soul on the shelf to make room for the devil.

When he finally came, I wanted to pour bleach on my crotch and scrub with boiling water until I bled, but I couldn’t even get up to wash.

I need to allow for the possibility I won’t always feel the way I do now, and it’s important to take note of small signs of progress, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

I thought I’d worked past my childhood, past my family, past my pain, but when you’ve rolled around in manure long enough, there’s no getting away from the stench. You can buy every damn type of soap out there and scrub your skin until you’re raw, but then one day you’re out walking around and a fly lands on you. Then another one, then another—because they know. They know that underneath that fresh-scrubbed skin you’re just manure. Nothing but shit. You can clean it up all you want, but the flies always know where to land.

You can be as happy as you’ve ever been in your life, and shit is still going to happen. But it doesn’t just happen. It knocks you sideways and crushes you into the ground, because you were stupid enough to believe in sunshine and roses.

I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they’ll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person.

I’m like a wound barely sewn shut, and every time we talk the stitches break, the wound reopens, and I have to sew it back together.

My grief is a windstorm. Sometimes I can stand straight up in it, and when I’m angry, I can lean into it and dare it to blow me over. But other times I need to hunker down, tuck around myself, and let it pummel my back. Lately, I’ve been in hunker-down mode.