09/23

I want to be strong, I want to feel it. In some ways I have been, lately. I’ve been thinking about (redacted) again lately, of how safe I felt with her, with anyone ever for the first time. It was so long ago at this point, it’s hard to remember all the bits and pieces - it’s become quite romanticized, I’m sure; a rosier picture. I remember laying on the bench by Spreckles Lake, listening to Under Control and Call it Fate, Call it Karma by the Strokes, her fine silky hair pouring over the side of the bench. I took a picture. I remember when her girlfriend cheated on her with a girl with the same name as me and she cried in my arms in the locker room and I’d never felt touched like that before - she just wanted me. I remember the way our arms and torsos fit together when we embraced, always her small frame cloaked in a thick sweater. I thought she was the coolest girl ever, even though she was a cheerleader. And she’d text me to hang out at lunch everyday, ask me where I was - I might never get over that. On 4/20 we got so high all by ourselves and laughed our asses off, just the two of us on the back of the 38, right where the route starts by Land’s End. I bought my first pipe and lighter in Chinatown with her, and a guy got out of his car to light a firecracker at the intersection before he sped off. The lighter was wrapped in plastic with a porn star on it. She looked like Kim Kardashian but blond, before she went blond in real life. We named her Pamela. There was an unmistakable innocence about it all, a safety I’d never known like that, comfort like home deep in your body, like we knew each other inside out and didn’t even have to try. And it was all gone in a poof. Tonight I’m feeling raw, and it aches in my chest again to even say so. I never really knew what happened, but I can guess. Over the years it’s gotten slightly easier to understand, the classic push and pull. It happens everyday, everywhere. I watched Henry and June and I must admit I thought of her but only a little; myself as Uma Thurman, tall-framed and lanky and my emotions spilling all over everything, uncontained. And her as Maria de Medieros, her petite little body, her big brown eyes, her reverable personableness. When being a person among people hurts so bad I find myself back here, reflecting on my first close intimacy, turning it over and over in my hands. There is always something I missed but I never know what it is until later. You can’t replicate those feelings in gestures, in all the ‘I love you’s, it comes in your body. To be settled, to be seen by someone. They show you in action, not by words but by the way they love you in real life, day to day. I could write a million words, rearrange and edit and replace until it sounds as beautiful as ever, but I’d never find it. I’ve searched and searched, but not really. Always finding myself holding the bag, saying - ‘here I am again,’ sometimes like a question. I’ve searched in those I knew I would never find it in just to have someone to call mine, but it meant nothing. I tried to love those that showed me time and time again they didn’t know what love is, and I began to wonder if I really knew either. And at a certain point, you can’t blame them anymore. I started to love being complacent, I loved holding it all for them, I loved being the oracle. I’ve forgotten at times that we are all on the same playing field, the ins and outs don’t matter. I’m just as human as anyone I’ve ever loved, or tried to. There is only so much loving you can give to someone who can’t love you back, someone who seems to be incapable of it in that moment. The feeling of a chase is a powerful one. I didn’t know how to love from the start, none of us do. But it was my first feeling of closeness like that, coupled with the experience of starting to gain consciousness, to gain autonomy. I threw my feelings out like confetti, sending them flying everywhere, anyone could get a piece. And slowly I learned this was not the way, and soon I began to reverse, to fall so far to the other end that I was picking up every last piece of little plastic sprinkles and stuffing them back in with haste, a look of shame on my face, the kind you learn when you’re young. And I’ve done it again, here and there. Sometimes people are entirely safe, kind, and well intentioned people - and still they can’t hold it. Sometimes I haven’t been able to either. The world we live in does not reward tenderness often, it does not invite vulnerability. As we get older we learn, we start to listen to the warning signs, we find people we like who understand us to a degree, who we understand to a degree. But we are left still holding onto these habits, these messes of self preservation, of fear and insecurity, and we don’t always realize until we unwittingly wield them as weapons and hurt the ones we love. I long to be free of my rough edges. I suspect some of them will be with me my entire life. But I am beginning to see it is about finding people you trust, who look at the rough edges and don’t feel so afraid, who see you are learning and growing just as they are, who see you as a whole rather than an isolated component. I guess that’s all any of us are wishing for; even the meanest, cruelest among us. I’m starting to understand ever so slightly. A shift has been beginning to take place inside me; one tiny little spark after another - and then silence - and then an explosion, and then just another subtle little spark. I have always been preparing, and always will be, learning most in my moments of pain. I think the flame inside me is beginning to burn a little more consistently, burn a little bit brighter.