Love and Some Verses

   My last remaining grandparent- my father's mother- died Friday night. She was in the hospital for a week beforehand, drifting in and out of consciousness, shifting restlessly, occasionally crying out to ask where her husband was- my grandfather, who died two weeks before my ninth birthday-  and when he was going to arrive. I spent that final week with her exclusively through secondhand accounts, trying to limit my intake of updates, forcing out the impulse to live vicariously through my father, the oldest of her six children, who wandered through the house, quiet and misty-eyed, physically present, but mentally a million other places. I found myself wondering every time he entered a room: Where is he now? Is he three, and screaming, demanding her attention? Is he eleven, ice skating in the backyard, waiting for a cup of hot chocolate? Maybe he's sixteen and sliding out from underneath the body of a car, begrudgingly fulfilling her request that he clean himself up before dinner. Hoping he wasn't in the hospital with her, I silently begged his memory to stretch out beyond the immediate, to lull him back to the comfort of her now-absent maternity.
   I couldn't stomach the wake. I walked into the funeral home silently repeating my mantra of detachment and distance from reality. I looked through the pictures, noticing I wasn't in any. I shrugged it off, rolled my eyes at the exclusion; it meant nothing. Pulling my jacket closed, I entered the room full of family members. I noticed my father at the casket, and felt my throat begin to close. I made eye contact with a cousin, felt my eyes begin to fill and gasped "I just need...I'll..." and stumbled backwards out the door where I pressed myself against the wall and felt my composure crumble. I raced to the car and fell apart.
   The funeral was easier. I concentrated on keeping my composure, and managed to, aside from a few stray tears. Eagle's Wings gets me every time, you guys! I can't help myself.
   It was the first time I'd been to church in over two years. I examined the pews and the altar with a sense of nostalgia, infused with a mild amusement. Mass seemed kitsch in a way I had never noticed before.
   Religion is too big. My mind has no room for it. I have a distinct aversion to anything that could swallow me whole like that.
   My grandmother was lovely and sweet. I won't say a single prayer, but I'll keep her wrapped up tight in my heart forever. That's all I've got. It's the best I can do.

The Air Near My Fingers

   I know I'm supposed to maintain some sense of chronological order, but I'm hopelessly nonlinear. I'm still making my way through these notebooks, and I've been planning to give you guys a better idea of Johnny (who you guys were introduced to in my list of favorite moments.) He was a wonderful part of my life.
   He treated me with respect and kindness. My feelings for him never went deeper than a blissful infatuation and were never really explored, but we had a meaningful relationship and I hold him dear to me.
   Our interactions were very complex; I have a habit of falling into complicated exchanges and mind games. That's true of my relationship with Kid A also, but Johnny and I had a more open affection for each other, while Kid A laced his love with malice and cynicism. Johnny and I had our nights of disagreements and tension; that's inevitable in any relationship between two people, particularly in high school when insecurities and hormones are at such an all-time high, but we always found ourselves beyond them before the sun painted the next day's colors on the horizon.
   Before leaving for college, I wrote him a letter. Actually I wrote him seven, but the first six were drafts and he only got the last one. It went like this:

thank you for being a presence in my life these past years. you have provided immeasurable inspiration with your intelligence and your grace. you have propelled me to become a better person. your take on logic and emotions has shaped my thought process and actions in ways that would take hours to explain. i'm so grateful for that. i'm so grateful for so many things.

i apologize for everything, particularly being fucking crazy most of the time.

you are the best person i have ever known. i wouldn't say it if i didn't mean it. you are brilliant and clever and beautiful. you can always bring laughter. i appreciate so much the laughter you have brought me.

i'm weirdly content with the way we have so drastically drifted apart. it's comforting to know that if i ever should cross your  mind it will be the way i was at sixteen - graceless, guilty, altruistic, indecisive, overwhelmingly emotional and full of ideals. the only adjectives still applicable are graceless and guilty. of so many things.

i want you to know i learned to separate feelings from reaction and to stop apologizing. then i want you to forget that, and remember me how i used to be. i feel like updating you on my current self is somehow a betrayal to the gorgeous, clumsy youth i was so eager to immerse you in.

i have so much respect and admiration for you and i hope that wonderful things happen to you.

thank you for years of support and lessons and, most of all, honesty. i'll never forget it.

-linnea

   I gave it to him the day before he left for school. I handed the letter over in the late afternoon, as he lingered in the doorway to my parent's house making trivial conversion until I, smiling, sent him on his way. Laughing, he walked away with the envelope in one hand, skateboard in the other, to the parking lot across the street where Kid A was waiting. I disappeared inside my house to fold and pack clothing, where I pictured him shove it in his pocket haphazardly and forget it. I found out later he instead went off alone, searching until he reached a quiet place in the shade, and then opened it. 

   He called that night to react. Being the obsessive, anal person I am, naturally I transcribed our entire conversation. It makes remembering things so much more vivid and accurate. I know, I know, I'm weird to the point where it's borderline creepy, but I'll be damned if my stories lack detail!


   "I don't know who you think I am, but you said some really nice things!" he declared, to my laughter. "I think you gave me too much credit," he added, softly.

   "You just made an incredibly positive impact on my life," I explained. "I don't think it's possible to give you too much credit for that."
  "I'm flattered, but I think you overestimate me and underestimate yourself."

   I smiled. "Thank you, but you really did make my life beautiful. Even when things were awkward and occasionally terrible, it was really important and it caused a lot of growth. I really did love you in so many ways." 

   I kept myself in the past tense. He and I had stopped saying "I love you" the summer before when it started to complicate things too much. I remember spending my senior year jumping back and forth between knowing I loved him and being completely unsure if I did or not. Why are these things so hard to sort out? He's such a pleasant, supportive force in my life who still manages to surprise me. But male-female relationships get tangled when you admit love; somehow saying it raises questions that are awkward when unanswered, but nearly impossible to ignore once put forth. It's so much simpler to just silently understand that love exists without expressing it.

   "Yeah," he said, characteristically keeping his responses contained and concise. How sweetly opposite of me, with my rambling, adjective-ridden dialogue! "We had some good times."

   "Sorry I used to be so out of my fucking head."

   "Only that one time," he said audibly smirking.

   "Ohh, I don't even want to know what time you mean!" I laughed. Taking a more sincere tone, I continued. "Maybe if we're ever sixteen again we'll fix everything we screwed up this time... though maybe I said that last time."

   "Maybe I'll see you tonight," he responded, his syllables pulsating with possibility.

   

Remember me as a Time of Day

   Warning: I'm a little bit out of my mind right now. I have too many thoughts to fall asleep, so I'll spill them here.

   I heard from Kid A tonight, for the first time in a long time. He's doing well and is surprisingly one of the few people supportive of my plans for relocation. "It's where you belong," he tells me. "Portland. Not here." 
   I smile a little, to myself, thinking how right his statement is, but how wrong his reasons are. He thinks I'm going to go live among the hipsters and assimilate. He has no idea who I am. I've never assimilated in my life and I have no intention to start- least of all to fit in with a bunch of pretentious morons who think they're living above conformity by conforming to the standards of their selective little subculture instead of the "mainstream," whatever the hell that means. 
   The conversation goes smoothly, although I spend a good portion of it nauseated. I spent a good number of years pretty nauseated actually, mostly due to nerves and self-doubt. With every re-emergence in my life he brings back with him a crippling feeling of inadequacy. The instant he speaks, I literally feel paralyzed. It's so silly and tragic. (Contradictions are my thing here, people! We know this!)
    He and I have a pretty well-developed rapport, and we ease back into it without much difficulty. It stuns me how subversively manipulative he is, but more so how it still affects me. Not to any measurable degree, especially compared to how it once did, but I do still feel a nagging need to measure up to his expectations. He keeps them unrealistically high. As soon as I meet them, he skyrockets them all over again. For someone who found Catch-22 (my favorite book) "annoying," he certainly pays tribute to Colonel Cathcart, eh? 
   He twists my words. It makes me uncomfortable because words have always been so mine. The ones I say, anyway. I maintain such meticulous diction that it throws me off when he seemingly transforms my sentences right before my eyes.
   "I haven't dedicated myself to a concept in years," I inform him, explaining my distaste for self-definition through music or books, knowing he'll compartmentalize me anyway.
   "Do you think that's a good thing," he asks, "not to devote yourself to anything?" 
   He flusters me. Fortunately, I have better balance now. He kept such strict control of me easily for two reasons: I had inordinately low self-esteem, and I was hopelessly in love with him. Now that he has lost both of these, he focuses our interactions on gaining one or both of them back. It almost works in the beginning because time has made me ill-equipped to handle his underhandedly condescending remarks, but I distance myself from the immediacy of the situation and remember how little I am concerned with his approval. Then I feel my spine grow back. 
   "Are you still writing?" he asks.
   "Yes," I reply. "I'm a shittier person when I don't write, so I keep doing it." 
   I briefly consider linking him here but, knowing he would instantly identify himself, I decide against it.
    "Good," he answers. "You were always one of my favorite writers."
   When he asks me what I write about, I draw a blank.
   "Myself, mostly. That's my primary interest." 
   He admits that he has started writing, but hasn't developed his own voice yet. We discuss writing as a tool for self-discovery and he asks me if I've made any progress.
   "Discovering myself?" I ask.
   "Yes."
   "I'm certainly more familiar with myself than I was at sixteen, though I'm a lot less sure about it."
   "Do you think you were happier at sixteen, or now?" The question itself makes me laugh.
   "Now, without a doubt." I affirm. "I'm pretty sure no matter what happens in my life, I will always be happier than I was at sixteen." 
   "I'm not sure if it was the chemicals in the water or what, but those were miserable years," he says.
    "I think it was the age," I volunteer.
   "And the music and the books and the idols," he adds. He certainly has a point; Rage Against The Machine, George Orwell and Kurt Cobain aren't exactly pick-me-ups.
   He continues on to explain that the problems we suffered could have been "solved easily" by a "quick cognitive change." I shudder at the oversimplification, and disagree.
   "I think high school was mostly waiting for the haze to dissipate. And that mostly just required time. I think I did the best I could with the resources available to me at the time."
   I laugh and admit to having had "more angst than everyone else at our entire high school combined."
  "That's why I enjoyed our conversations so much," he says. "You were a breath of fresh air." He laughs and adds, "though more like a tornado." 
   Torn between smiling and wincing, I just agree. "It was a lot more hyperventilating than breathing, I think."
   He suddenly adopts a different tone. Becoming more somber, he admits "Looking back, I see myself as such an egocentric prick." 
   Finding his summation so astute, I burst out laughing. "We all had personas," I reassure him. "What else could we do? We weren't ready to be real people yet." 
   "I had a hell of a time with that persona," he says, absent of the hint of remorse he had shown seconds before. "So it all worked out." 
   I sigh quietly, disappointed with myself for having redeemed him. That's a habit I haven't shaken, I guess; forgiving his sins. I've managed to overcome the need to constantly apologize to him for them, but I haven't figured out how not to absolve him of them yet. 
   When we part ways, I am still reinforcing the distance I've been maintaining throughout. When he breaks through it, I'm floored.
   "I hope things work out well for you," he says, and I can actually feel his sincerity. This may be the first time I've ever felt certain he was sincere about anything. 
   "You too," I say.
   "And I would like to apologize for all the stupid shit I did in my youth."
   My heart falls to the floor. I've never expected or imagined he would make any admission. It's so surprising, yet so quintessentially him; bare and minimal, lacking real substance, yet pregnant with undertones, and heavy enough to break your back.
   "Like what?" I want to ask. "That time you brought all your friends over to my house and walked right past me without so much as a hello and ruined my best friend's birthday cake, then left it ouside on my sidewalk for me to clean up? Are you sorry for that? What about when you started dating someone else, but lied to me about it for eight months while you spent hours telling me how much you needed me, and loved me? Or how you pretended I didn't exist any time your friends were around? What about when you invited me to meet you out, and then sat with your girlfriend, pretending not to notice I was there? Or any of the countless times you invited me places and then whispered to your friends behind my back 'How did she even know we were going to be here? Why did she just show up?' Or the hours you spent convincing me to show you poetry I had written, only to later read it aloud to your friends, and your girlfriend? Or any of the innumerable nights you promised to show up, but never did? Are you sorry for that?" 


   "Thank you," I say instead. "I appreciate that. I made my share of mistakes though, and I'm sorry for those, too." (Mine were just fewer, and less malicious, I add, silently.)
   "Take care, Linnea," he says. I realize this is one of only four times I have ever heard him say my name. The first three, scattered throughout the years, hit me like lightning bolts. This one settles in, softly. It lacks the electrocution.

   I'm grateful for his apology, those sixteen words I didn't see coming. I understand why he kept it so brief. They were painful years. Listing his transgressions would be time-consuming, and heartbreaking.
   We conduct our daily lives with our sins suppressed, nearly forgotten. Carrying the weight of them would be unbearable, and reminding ourselves of them could feel like reliving them. And I don't want to relive his sins any more than I want to relive my own. They were unendurable. They belong in the past, silent and hidden.
   And, although other adjectives have been offered- cruel, evil, sadistic... I could go on- "stupid shit" pretty well encompasses it.
   I feel like I've been released from hostility and bitterness I've felt at the mere mention of his name for so long. I still feel them pouring out of me, leaving me lighter and calmer. It's lovely.

   And I wonder what will be left when the bad things are drained. I'm not sure if there's any love left there. I know there isn't much, if it's there. I'm just wondering if I'll ever taste any sweetness in my mouth, when I remember our good days. 
   I'm not sure, but I'm open to the possibility.

   I'm just relieved I can finally let go.

Here in the Going, Going, Gone

   Each step I take, it haunts me.  These are the last I will take here.  I lament my legs' every motion, as they propel me forward.  Watching the sunlight play on the frozen pond, realization sinks to the bottom of my stomach and settles there.  I will never take this walk home again.  I smile wistfully, recalling a hot day spent splashing and laughing in the pond with an open-eyed musician I should have gotten to know better.  And my final encounter on this trail with that beautiful Nature Boy I never got enough time with.
   This sketchy little city was perfect.  I remember my first night here, still debating the move.  Falling asleep, I knew my mind was made up.  This was it.  This place would belong to me.
   And it did.  From the moment I set foot in the North Country I knew it was mine.  From the vague, idealized concept to the chaotic reality of a vision actualized, every single detail was precisely what I had imagined.  This was the very first place my dreams ever came true.
   I could weave meandering, awestruck paragraphs detailing the people I met and what I managed to absorb from them in the too-fleeting moments of the year and a half I spent basking in the frigid air, but I'm too self-absorbed to bother.  That's not what I'm dwelling on as I pack my things and leave.  I'm thinking about myself.
    The soles of my feet will miss the sloping streets of this town, exploring and parading through them.  I feel a soft ache seep through them as they become conscious of the loss.  My bones will miss the bitter, biting cold that cut straight through to them, ruthlessly.
   I'm so thankful for what this place gave me.  Each of the 500 miles between myself and the rest of my life provided me with the beautiful, overwhelming opportunity to escape.  Outside the confines of expectations, I was finally able to examine myself and differentiate between who I am and who I had always assumed I should be.
   I am aware that college does this for everyone.  I don't think the universalness of the experience detracts from its significance. 
   What I leave with is gratitude.  Immense, flooding, staggering gratitude.  I watch the scenery disappear into nostalgia with a forlorn smile, mouthing Thank you, lovely.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  For every single moment.  Thank you for being exactly where I needed you to be, exactly when I needed you to be there.  Thank you for belonging to me.  Thank you for allowing me to need you.  Thank you for being everything I needed.  Thank you for being my idea come to life.  Thank you for being exactly where I belonged.
   And the knowledge that I'm not meant to be there anymore.  At some point I needed to confront myself.  And you made me do it.  And I will never forget that.  I may forget everything else.  But I will never forget that.
   I return home.  To reunite.  To reassess.  To recover, recuperate, rediscover, release, reform, rekindle.  Reconnect.  To become more than a stranger to my niece and nephew, yammering toddlers now, though I left them cooing infants.  Every inch they've grown without me has torn my heart out.  I want to snatch those sweet, smushy babies back from the cruel hands of time and start over.  I want every missed month back.  Though I needed those months in the merciless, forgiving mountains.
   Someday I will find somewhere else I belong.  I will again imagine a place into being and then immerse myself in it.  I will step into my fantasy-turned-reality and know This is it.  This is me.  This is perfect.  Until then, I am here, home, missing those beautiful goddamn mountains.  Home alone to contend with my illusions and delusions.  But I finally know the difference.