Don't Cry, Heather-Mary, Don't Cry...

Heather-Mary cried last night. I heard her, and for the rest of the night, I was awake. It wasn't loud. She did not weep or sob or thrash about - antics reserved for silly drunk girls wobbling along the streets of Hell's Square at 3AM - high drama, little true pain. No, Heather-Mary did not want the attention. She cried quiet. Enormously quiet. It satisfied me. And the guilt from that satisfaction made me ill.

I knew her story, so I was always confused by Heather-Mary's happiness. A part of me resented her for it...his name was Tommy. He wanted to see her scream, to lash out, to take her collection of fucking Precious Moments figurines and slam them against the wall. Now that would be a Precious Moment to see. But she never did. She smiles and jokes and takes care and is content to live in her little room, in her little world shrinking smaller and smaller. Insignificant. Disappear.

Heather-Mary hasn't left her room for 6 months. She sits on her bed all day, on her computer all day, chatting and Facebooking and tweeting all day. "Still in my bed," she tweets, "Still in my bed."

Heather-Mary hasn't left her two-bedroom apartment in 6 years, the Lower East Side in 9 and New York in 12. She enjoyed 3 years in San Francisco, the intricate system of electric cable lines lidding the city secured her to the street, unlike the 2 years prior she spent in LA, roaming its vast and all too open freeway system.

From age 6 to 18, Heather-Mary lived with her Grandparents on their 100 acre farm in Idaho. As much as she loved her Grandparents, she hated the land. Too much damn land. Constantly lost, free-spinning and out of control, Heather-Mary's simple chores became an anxiety filled hell. Her core growing more and more unstable, each of her cells expanding, being pulled as if hooked by some invisible string connected to the eternal sky and infinite terrain. Heather-Mary was being ripped apart.

Heather-Mary was happy the first 6 years of her life.

Heather-Mary was born and spent the first 6 years of her life with her mother in a Mexican Prison. She was a guinea pig of sorts - The Effects of Prison on Children, or The Effects of Children on Mothers in Prison, or How Much can We Fuck Up this Child in Prison. Whatever the experiment, by all the data, Heather-Mary had a happy childhood. She adored her mother and was devastated when her father's parents ripped her away from the only home she had ever known. A home small and confined and comfortably finite.

35 years later, Heather-Mary lives in a space smaller than her first. She pretends to be happy, but I heard her crying last night. I felt satisfied. I felt guilty and ill, but I felt no more resentment. Maybe now I can make her feel better.