Counting Steps

Three steps off the school bus. One… two… three. Deep breaths. And then a half-hearted leap off the edge. My skirt sways just enough I can feel the air hit my thighs. It’s like the wind carries me. For just a split second, I’m weightless. I’m sailing through the sky and I’m free. In that moment I become jealous of the birds. I wish I could wrap myself in feathers and fly away. I’d never again feel the impact of the hard, cold ground under my feet. Not unless I wanted to. Not unless it was my choice to land. And I’d only land in a spot that feels safe. Instead, I land here. Gravity gets me every time.

Sixty-two steps to the house. I’m thankful for this old gravel road. It’s home to a lifetime of stories for anyone curious about the little girl with bruises and broken bones. ‘Oh, this bruise on my cheek? Well, I was about fifteen steps in on that old gravel road when my shoelaces came untied and I fell flat on my face. A million little rocks are pretty rough on a face.’ And there was the time I broke my arm. My best friend could repeat the story word-for-word as I told it. She always laughs at the part where I was ‘too distracted by the cute boy to see the bike laying in the middle of the road.’

“That’s so Maddeline!” She says.

The stories eventually become memories and I learn to believe them. I like those memories better than the real ones anyway. Sometimes I give an audible ‘thanks for the memories’ to the road before I start my journey home. This road taught me a lot. It gave me time to think. And the more I thought, the more I realized thinking wasn’t helping. And over time, I learned how to not think at all. This road taught me how to breathe. Take a step and a deep breath in. Take another step and breathe it all out. There’s no time for thinking if you’re counting steps, counting breaths. Sixty-two steps to the bus in the morning. Sixty-two breaths to escape where I’ve been. Sixty-two steps home after school. Sixty-two breaths to escape where I’m going.

Sixty-two steps and I’m home. I walk in the door quiet and un-disturbingly. I never announce when I’m home. I prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. I count my footsteps to my room. I’ve memorized the creaks in the floor. In those spots, the floor is lava. I’m skinny, long-legged, and limber. I stretch and bend over the lava spots with ease. No need to disturb the currently undisturbed. I creep past the empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter at step nine. There’s always at least three empty bottles by the time I’m home from school. I just keep counting. Keep breathing. At step eighteen I am relaxed. I open my bedroom door and I stay in for the night.

Weekends are the worst. I have nowhere to be. I’m just…here. I can’t keep up with my steps. There’s so many. I breathe and I breathe until I’ve used all the air in my lungs. I start to get light-headed as I try to recycle the air I’ve already used. These days are unpredictable. I don’t like unpredictable. I can’t focus. Someone’s screaming. Step, breathe… step, breathe. Someone’s crying. Is it me this time? Step, breathe. Something’s broken. Step, breathe. I miss my old gravel road. I miss the steps on the school bus. I can breathe there. Now, I can’t focus. I struggle here. But I keep counting and I keep filling my lungs with second-hand air. Weekends are the worst.

It’s Monday. This is my favorite day. If every day could be Monday, I’d call it Heaven. Monday mornings are the absolute best. Mom is the only one home when I get out of bed. Dad works his early shift. He doesn’t sleep in. He doesn’t send me off to school ‘dad style.’ He has tunnel vision on his early days, and he has no time to worry about me or mom. He only has time to leave.

 It’s 5am and I can hear his alarm down the stagnant hallway. It’s faint, but it’s powerful. It wakes me out of a state of anxiousness. It’s the sound I’m waiting for as I count a week’s worth of steps, as I breathe a week’s worth of breaths. The world I was lost in Sunday night has faded into the sweet sound of a Monday morning alarm. I went to sleep on a battlefield and woke up in Heaven.

It's 5:30am Monday morning; dad is leaving. I listen as his steel-toe boots pound across the hardwood floors. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk… sixteen heavy stomps in total. Ten steps from the bedroom to the refrigerator in the kitchen. He grabs his orange juice. I hear the glass containers rattle as the door closes. Six more steps to the front door. I swear when he opens the door, I can feel the breeze. It’s as if it drifts under the crack below my bedroom door to remind me that this is the freshest day. This is Heaven. This is Monday.

I jump out of bed and count my steps to the kitchen. Mom meets me there. I’m so excited I don’t even hear her coming. She always seems to glide across a room so effortlessly. I think the floor is lava for her too. It’s almost impossible to hear her at times. We small talk over orange juice and the smell of bacon frying on the stove. It pops and cracks and the echoes are the only sound in the background as we catch up. We’re in Heaven. I count my steps as I walk across the kitchen floor, heading for a refill. One… two… Mom catches me counting.

“Maddeline,” she says with the purest of smiles, “you don’t have to count today. It’s Monday.”  

It has become so normal to focus, to count. Sometimes I forget on Mondays that I’m safe. It’s a habit. A safe place. Almost ritualistic in its own way. Whatever you call it, it helps. I turn to her,

“Wouldn’t it be nice if every day could be Monday? It’s just sixty-two steps down the old gravel road.  Sixty-two deep breaths. And then we’re free.”

She looks at me, eyes wide open, and smiles again. She makes her way to the front door and steps outside as I follow closely behind her. As soon as her foot hits the ground, she grabs my hand, takes a deep breath, and starts counting.