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MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT
Mentor Commentary
Jason Harris Recipient Reflection
Megan Hanlon |
Recurring Apart-mentProse by Megan Hanlon
NORTHEAST OHIO SPOTLIGHT
College town, sweet tang of pine, streets that slowly go nowhere despite what you've been told. The apartment complex sits on the left side of the road you’re traveling - sometimes you know this is south despite being north. It's a corner unit, number 203, just off the stairs.
Kitchen straight in, small living room to the left, a couch in front of a TV. Clear windows that hint at freedom. Sometimes the bed where you can rest lies just past the couch, perpendicular like trees and ground where the roots grow sideways. Sometimes it's adjacent to the kitchen in a separate room which you know should exist, but you can't see. This is the way of dreams. ** What I need you to know is I never meant to stay home with my children. I never longed for this exquisite monotony, never planned to hastily stuff my own identity into a cedar chest to pull out years later, ill-fitting and moth-bitten. I never intended to live with hollows under my eyes big enough to bury my dreams in. I thought this life would be built like children are built: fifty-fifty, each partner contributing half of themselves, and yet not diminished. I couldn’t have known how it would claim and consume me, or how I would become each child’s dearest possession instead of my own person. I waded in blindly and woke up drowning. ** In early dreams, you’re worried you haven't paid the rent. You’re just a college student hustling for a part-time paycheck, striving to make it on your own. Were you supposed to clock in today? Is the rent overdue? Are you risking eviction? Who can you ask, and why can’t you remember? Your only roommate is solitude, your only gift is trying. In other dreams you've been away for a long stretch, or maybe always. You imagine your apartment disused and dusty, full of old things you forgot you needed. And you’re distraught, scared you will be locked out and left nowhere. Frantically you try to go back, to reclaim what was yours and yours alone. It’s more than merely an apartment. It is the nexus of your independence. You need to get your small stack of cash to the office woman right away, before you lose your space. ** Space is just a suggestion. Personal space, head space, the space to take a deep breath - all visions I once had while drunk on unattached-ness. I was clawing at water to stay afloat while on my back pressed responsibilities already so mighty - providing every necessity to a brand new, howling thing – that I wasn't capable of taking on yet another boss. I slid into stay-at-home motherhood by default. On my darkest nights, while the world sleeps fitfully in my arms, I miss the days when it all didn’t fall to me. I miss having a name besides mother. ** You dream you lose the apartment; it was rented out from under you while you were years gone, tending to other needs. You knocked on the door and found someone not-you living there. An entire family you didn't recognize. But you know their expressions – blank, open faces, waiting to understand. ** In many dreams you ache to go home, but you can't remember the apartment number. Was it 302? Was it even in these pale brick buildings? You drive circles through cracked parking lots, stricken and lost, looking for familiarity. You tried speaking to the managers – don’t you still deserve those rooms you had set aside? No longer exists, they say without saying. But if you volunteered to work there, you could have the inside edge on different apartments coming open soon. More giving of yourself in exchange for something just this side of fulfilling. ** Apartments are a myth pushed by the go-getters and leaners-in who preach the joy of having self and family and loving both simultaneously. They raised us on dreams with fine print, things they wished could be true. It turns out you can’t compartmentalize a soul, even one with a garden view. ** Maybe I’ll walk. And keep walking until I find separateness – as though leaving wouldn’t wreck the people I’ve built. As though doors, once closed, could ever be opened again. ** There is no apartment. There never was.
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