Ant In Me
Crawling Back
I look at my arm and see thread poked out my skin. I give it a gentle tug then squint in the sun and soak warmth. An airplane flies east, small and tiny. I think how things grow smaller with distance, and wonder, briefly, if time is the same. Or memory. I don’t think so.
Gunpowder’s in my blood and my hands are antique vases—when I get this way I trace my emotions, starting with a freckle or mole and ending in the locus of my childhood. This makes me aware of myself, and I relearn who I am. I take grace, wrap it in yesterday’s news then regift it.
I own an ant farm. Watch them for hours. Their softly stepping army, moving one place to the next. I’m fascinated this happens beneath my feet. I carry on ignoring them and they carry on ignoring me. All that changes about these ants is the size of their loads.
I watch the ants to understand who I am. The process of similarity teaches me. If we both carry heavy loads—if we both crawl to the same places on the same roads—if we are the same in ways that matter—why differentiate between us?
I don’t remember the first time she called me stupid. I just remember they accumulated like paper dolls. I was a wall and her words were decorations. She said other things but at that time they all meant the same thing—not that she didn’t love me, because I thought that was love—but that I wasn’t good enough.
As I got older I considered the individuality of the names she called me. Stupid. Useless. Deaf. Mute. The nuances of these words now carried more meaning, each of them a sniper’s shot fired from a different roof.
I’ve carried inadequacy my whole life, and still find myself getting defensive, creating offense where it doesn’t exist. I don’t mean to. I just always have this sense that I’m being called stupid. Then I consider all my adventures back and forth along the same roads. I think of ants.
I have to trace it—the path of my emotion—to the electrical short. Something is broken. Don’t know where. That’s what the tracing’s for. I look at the sun—melon-balled cantaloupe—and tug on the thread. Resistance then it relents, and I take two more inches. White thread. Briefly, I wonder where it’s coming from, then—how much thread is there?
Throughout my life I have taken solace in not having options, because it makes the next step easier. Sometimes choice is tougher than action. At other times I sabotaged my options. To have had them would have meant I was worthwhile.
Maybe that makes me an ant—a simpleton who can’t get out of his own way—but I always found comfort in the inevitable. Once there was no more arguing with the future, there was no reason to not accept it. Maybe that’s the stupid in me.
I think about my mother and her words, and like the ants, I crawl back that direction, and there’s something about crawling back when you’ve always been the one to do it. Then I think maybe that was her way of training me to stop trying with people. She got me to walk away from everyone else but always return to her. Even after I hate her. Even after I don’t call on her birthday. Even after years of silence fly by like a blank sheet of paper.
Maybe that’s the ant in me.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
Makes my heart sore to hear you speak of how difficult your childhood was, Roman. Mothers are not always what we dream them to be, and you have experienced that first-hand.
Devastating damage can be done by our parents; your healing journey is rich with possibilities. Keep going, Roman. Thank you for sharing this.