Abilene Hope Kugler

English 1010 Section 3

Jackie Burr Instructor

1 January 2019

Rock Versus Relationship

I sat on a plastic bench without a shirt on— immediately vulnerable in a room full of

strangers. Not that I had much of a choice; it was a locker room and having finished with

ballroom class, I needed to change. Skinnier girls twisted about to grab the branded drawstrings

that held their skinnier clothes. My flushed face was blank as I pivoted each limb into the clothes

that truthfully were not much cleaner than the ones I had on. But, of course, if I were to present

myself in the items I had danced in all day, eyes might scale me— and I am partial to

acceptance. As the chirping mannequins meandered out the metal door, a new figure was

revealed. A stouter girl with a plainer face. Her sealed mouth premiered, “Do you want to see

something?” “Sure,” more an obligatory response than any sort of genuine interest. Before

indulging my perceived interest in whatever she had to reveal, she interviewed me.

Her casual speech was accompanied by versions of “Do you believe in ghosts?” and other

questions usually reserved for transcendental teenagers in the wake of a late night. Her odd

questions prodded at my own curiosity and the initial “sure,” evolved into something more.

Pudgy fingers made their way to a thin black string tied below her hidden jaw line. A single

charmed necklace was endowed in my mind as the something to be seen as she explained that

she had retrieved it from her grandmother's basement. Uncomfortable conversation, made less

uncomfortable only by the nonexistence of any other person in the room, continued until she
reached the epitome of odd questions: “This necklace is magical. Can I show you how I can

remove your soul from your body?”

I’m not one to judge. My grandma’s house has some pretty cool stuff in its basement. Or

had I suppose. She was actually my great grandma and has since passed away, but before then--

before the house was sold to someone who would never look out the windows with the same

wishfulness reserved for chickadees, someone who would never sit at an elliptical table

cyclically counting eye colours in their symptoms of dementia— she gave me this rock: a

sedimentary product of barite crystals and currently undiscovered processes of formation. It’s

rose-like silhouette is now worn at only by the dust that collects on the top shelf of my closet, but

when I was only 10, my obsession with mineralogy overrode my knowledge of preservation. My

naturally oiled hands bit at the petals each time I rubbed a finger, even delicately, over a ridge.

I obliged the locker room girl’s request with confidence that my soul would be staying

quite well put until I died. At that point it was more about having the winning story at next

period’s lunch table than it was me hoping to experience any sort of dissociative supernatural

shift. Per her blank-faced requests, I held one of her hands and maintained eye contact while

what felt like minutes but could not have been more than 20 seconds ticked away. “Do you feel

it?” I refrained from laughter and asked her to try once more. Another interlude of silence struck.

“Do you feel it now?” With the corners of my mouth tensing in restrained hysteric, I said that I

did and switched over one shoulder to exit the room. It was so silly to me and still is. I suppose

everything that arises from grandmothers’ basements is only magical to the grandchildren that

understand its pretense. Even their own children are incapable of receiving this same veil of

mystery and wonder. When grandmothers and great grandmothers pass on, the only thing besides

a few treasured trinkets that immediate descendants are left with is a mess. There isn’t magic at
all. Only four sisters, who have never gotten along, arguing over what to do with the house. Four

sisters responsible for clearing 80 some years of memories and garbage.

What would a happy medium look like? I want to have kids someday and I imagine that

someday my own children will share in that dream. How do you keep the magic without leaving

a burdensome trail? Currently, I am heading into a brand new year. I want to try and become

more minimalistic especially with dorm life creeping closer towards me every day. It can be hard

for me to part with material objects but in analyzing all things that I find most important, rose

rocks cannot compete with the relationships which top the list. That rock would’ve been

valueless to me if it were not for my great grandma’s comforting smile, the one that folded in the

creased lips until they were gone, and too, my witness of her love for the people around her. She

had passion— the quality that draws in connection— even in her age. I worry that I will one day

lose that.

I became a dancer at age three. I had no choice in the matter and in the words of my

mother “it was because you were the most uncoordinated little kid I had ever seen.” Of course,

her decision to put me into these classes was soon overridden by my legitimate passion for the

art form. By the time junior high presented itself, I was enrolled into over 12 hours worth of

classes a week. An embarrassing superiority complex accompanied each passing year’s rise in

skill level. Every competition season tickled my ego while my team sat in the stands berating

every opponent, passing snarky whispers down the line of naive ballerinas. Dancing overjoyed

me; dancers ruined me. A haze of self-preservation blinded me to everyone I interacted with.

After quitting dance, I gained over 40 pounds in a year and a half. I had always thought I

was a bit heavier than I should’ve been, but now I felt morbid. Red and purple streaks crept

across my inner thighs and hips. I hated myself. I was driving on the road with my mother one
day when she offered me an oreo. I was hysterical. Somehow that oreo represented all of the

food I had ever regretted. A few months later, I was home alone. I was changing and I caught a

glimpse of my new silhouette in the mirror. I couldn’t stop myself from weeping. It was pathetic.

Before then, I had looked at the bathroom toilet in envy of those I saw as braver than myself. But

on that day I found myself, an undignified creature kneeling before her master, accompanying

them in a wretched worship that burned my throat. In the end, tears and a sickly saliva were

indistinguishable as I scraped both off of my puffy lips. The act was only followed by more

shame as I thought of my mother and how disappointed she would be in me. After all, she had

seen her own sister suffer in this way all through high school and witnessed its detriment. The

guilt outweighed the hate. I didn’t try it for much longer. Though I didn’t see it then, I now

believe from my own experience that all self hate is rooted in selfishness. For me this selfishness

was derived from an image of dancer superiority that I was left with from earlier years but then

couldn’t live up to. When I hated myself it felt like all I could focus on— a blockade from the

reality of other lives besides my own, it prevented me from truly loving anything.

Somehow Great Grandma embodied the opposite of this. Through her own value she

exuded happiness, exuded love. All things at their core deriving from her Father. Not the one

who had lived with her only in her youth but the eternal one that she would soon rejoice with. To

fill and aim at one’s self with hate is to claim the need to be more than a recipient of His

kingdom, a belief that celestial royalty is not enough. A belief that every time one has wronged

another being, and it was forgiven, that that too could not fill the pierced bucket of selfish desire

that lets each fulfillment dribble out the bottom.

The petalled rock doesn’t do anything for me; the charmed necklace, the locker room girl.

The minute subsistence of physical objects relies on relationship, the qualitative value that
deteriorates the separation of things tangible and intangible, consequential and inconsequential,

natural and supernatural. That value— highly regarded in my mind yet still subject to human

constraints— cannot amount to the infinite intrinsic value Great Grandma holds. That I hold too.

Princesses of a creator.