The Longer I Lay Here

   Two posts in one day? Talk about narcissism! But seriously people, shit's about to get real.

   I just had a long conversation with Johnny, who you may or may not remember and are welcome to catch up on here. He and I have fallen out of touch with each other, due to time, distance and the awkward stiff exchanges that have developed in their wake. It's often easier to let things fall by the wayside, to succumb to the seeming inevitability of drifting. Until today, when he pissed me off.
   I posted a dreamy facebook status about the romance of youth and letting the world break your heart, and he responded with a snarky psychoanalysis, claiming I was projecting frustration I felt with my own apathy onto the rest of the world. I responded with a sarcastic thank you for his insights, and forced myself not to send him a text message demanding that he never dare psychoanalyze me ever again, for fear of death or whatever.
   Tonight I saw him on facebook chat and decided to make a joke of it, asking very sarcastically when his interest in psychoanalysis had developed. He responded sincerely, the bitter undercurrent evidently (and fortunately) having been swallowed whole by the internet, explaining that it was an ongoing process, "sparked by the fire of self-discovery." Driven by his sincerity, I told him I was in the process of redefining my own identity and trying to overcome my fears of intimacy and communication through breaking down my mental barriers, but that it was still in its infancy and I wasn't sure "which barriers were appropriate." He responded with: "You are awesome. Honestly. I'm so glad we can talk like this and I want to support you any way I can." This led to an hour and a half of confessional honesty, a baring of egos and self-inflicted obstacles on relationships and the construction of self-images and the limits of our very similarly contained selves.
   The conversation ended with an agreement for another later in the week. Whether it will happen or not- your guess is as good as mine. Either way, I'm happy and nervous that I overcame a little bit of myself tonight. And that's one of the best things I've been able to say to myself in months.

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.

   

Tomorrow is a Long Time

   I'm still in the process of reading old notebooks; it's very on and off, and I have over 30 of them. Seriously, how did I have 3,000 pages worth of things to talk about in 5 years? Is this normal people?! I was out of my damn mind!
   Anyway, I found a few amusing things, although maybe only I will think they're funny. I love the awkward, biting cynicism of adolescence.
    Mr. Fantasy and I first met in June of 2006. So, I guess the four years I give us is a little bit of a stretch, but I'm only two months short, so let's just give that one to me, okay? We went to the same high school, and found out later we had both secretly been checking each other out from a distance for a year before ever speaking, but were introduced in the first weeks of the summer I was 15.
   He was a surprising and welcome distraction from my traumatic relationship with Kid A, which was still the main focus of my life (and can be read about for newcomers here and then here, if you want to be up-to-date and informed) and I was grateful for and excited about that. When summer ended, so did we- really, really badly.  It was ugly enough that we didn't speak for about the next year and a half, though I spent much of that time whining and obsessing about him and us. We started talking again in the middle of senior year and, save brief periods of estrangement, he has been in my life since.
    Here are a few things he inspired that first summer.

7/6/06

pasta & flowers

my pillow for hours

he wants to empower

before he deflowers

before he devours

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop!

you say you could thrill me

while begging to fill me

you claim that it's still me

say it always will be

at least 'til you kill me

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop!

7/29/06

there seems to be some sort of a force propelling us towards each other, daring us to touch.
so we do.
and in the sickening heat of the night, i start to shiver.
this feels so different from anything before.
this feels so different from everything before.
i love the way your whispering voice sounds in my ear.
i love the way your hand feels locked in mine,
like this is just where it belongs.
everything is becoming laughter between us,
maybe for the sole reason that we're too nervous to let it be anything else.
what a good place we're in.
everything feels like it's supposed to.
i've never felt so alive.
i've never wanted to feel so alive.
i've never wanted this before.
the night turns to tragedy when we part ways
still trying to resist the pull.


but i guess that's half the fun.

8/2/06

we trade lines like a poorly written, overly high school novel but, then again,
aren't we living one?
aren't we all living one?

   He and I don't address that summer or its aftermath, except in jokes. Some are harmless. "We were so dumb," "Yeah, we were dumb, but we were hot," Some are more misguided. "Like when I used you and then left you!" he interjects with, laughing, but retracting it quickly when he notices I wince and cannot quite laugh convincingly. "Did that... do something to you?" he has asked, in moments of quasi-sincerity, knowing I will roll my eyes and scoff before abruptly changing the subject. 

   We have a lot under the surface; a lot I don't acknowledge, a lot he doesn't accept, a lot we don't confront. Sometimes we try but, between the two of us, it's too raw somehow. It always ends with my pleading for a new conversation, and his reassurance that "the past is in the past." 

   But is it? Is progress possible when we have a time capsule of bitterness buried in the backyard? 

We Built Another World

   I fall in love with moments instead of people, I think; because of how perfect they can be, and how terrible, often at the same time. But people can too, be both perfect and terrible at the same time! But people change and moments cannot, so they're easier to fall in love with; it's so much safer to love a frozen moment than a fickle person. You saw some with my favorite first kisses. Here are some more.

   Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky is someone you haven't heard about yet, but was a huge part of my life throughout high school. He & I still keep in touch and enjoy seeing each other when our schedules allow for it. The easiest way to summarize him: Jim Halpert. With a little bit of this guy. Someday Johnny will get his own entry, because he deserves it, but tonight he'll have to settle for being first on my list of favorite moments.

    We left my sixteenth birthday party to escort home a friend who badly needed it. The walk home was the first time we'd ever been alone together.

   Being the emotional disaster that I was, it was barely a minute before he said something to trigger tears, which I'm particularly bad at controlling. In the middle of a four-way intersection, in the middle of the night, Johnny pulled me in and wrapped his arms around me, tight. 

   "You are the only genuine person I've ever met," he said calmly, but firmly. "Everyone else, you just think they're nice because they pretend to be. Then you get to know them and they're assholes. You are the only person in the entire world who isn't an asshole."

   As I collected myself, I stood enclosed in his arms, feeling safe. He provided such an instant sense of security, of love, of reassurance. 

   "We should do this again sometime," I said smiling, as he left me at my front door. 

   "Yes," he said, taking me in his arms again. "I love you. Happy Birthday."

   Kid A and I were a disaster, start to calamitous finish, but I wouldn't have spent three years in it if it had been constantly terrible. There were periods, however brief, of ecstasy. (Inevitably followed by hopeless periods of agony. Sometimes I can visualize our relationship as an almost tangible manifestation of his mysterious bipolar disorder, a journey we took together, mirroring his unendurable moods with the blissful peaks and excruciating valleys.) But for every descent into disaster was another ascension grace. And while the grace was wrought by heartbreak, even the heartbreak was beautiful sometimes, in its poetry and its sheer destructive force.

   "Promise me something," I whispered quietly.

   "And what is that?" he asked.

   "I don't know," I admitted. "I  was hoping you'd have something." I forced a small laugh. "I'm sorry." (I was constantly apologizing to him.)

   "Don't be. It'll be okay," he assured me. "You'll be okay. I promise."

   My first visit home from college was Halloween weekend. I spent a total of 23 hours in the care of public transportation services for 48 hours at home, because my absentee ballot application had been mishandled and I was hell bent on voting in my first election. 

   At the end of a night with my friends, Bobby McGee and I walked out to his car. As we got inside, he paused before he started to drive. 

   "You're very important to me," he said. I smiled and returned the sentiment. "I love you very much," he continued. "We've been friends for a long time, and you're always going to be a big part of my life."
   He paused again and started driving. "You were like... my sexual awakening," he stated. 

   My eyes widened and I laughed nervously, unsure of how to respond. "What... um. What?"

   "Our first kiss," he explained. "I don't know, I'd kissed lots of other girls before, but that was different. It was like... just totally different. It woke me up."

   I continued laughing and thanked him.

   "You were like, the awakening to my whole life, actually." 

   Again, unsure of how to respond, I just smiled and looked at him inquisitively.

   "I was just this...kid, before you. Who was always following rules and never doing anything cool. Then you showed up and it was like... I started having fun. You just... you were the awakening of my life."

   I smiled, feeling a mild discomfort only because I didn't know how to react or respond. I just thanked him again and reassured him that the gratitude and love were mutual. 

   They were. They always have been. They still are.

High and Low

   I guess it was inevitable; nothing stays perfect.  We preserved it remarkably well though, and I think we deserve credit for that.
   Oh, there were obstacles and there were certainly mistakes.  We've had confrontations, disagreements that have escalated into silence.  But so short-lived, so few and far between!  And so easily left behind when finished. Practically immediate returns to our sweet, mutual bliss!
   And somehow we completely disintegrated, my Bobby McGee and I, through unfortunate twists of fate and alternating stubbornness. It's effortlessly functional when it's right because of our compatibility. We are so alike in all the right ways. Our love of adventure, of salvaging other people's refuse for our own repurposing, finding excitement in the most mundane tasks, staying up all night talking as our souls fill the air surrounding us, connecting and growing. Our respect for each other was only matched by our affection for and appreciation of one another. And there was such an easiness, a comfort in looking at you and seeing a reflection of myself. A completeness. We laid on couches together and designed our futures like the insides of houses, details draping beautifully like custom made window dressings, every so often making slight adjustments to maintain balance and symmetry. We chose songs wedding songs, planned out children's schedules. Our dreams were the same, with our hopes and fears so frequently lined up. 
   I can't believe we've stayed so off-measure for so long. We'd been in perfect tune for so long, I never saw it coming. I'm not sure how to get our song back in key. I'm not sure where to begin, or if I'm capable of it. If we both decided it was worth it, we'd have a chance. But we can't get it right.
   As similar as we are in the right ways, we are too much the same in the wrong ways. Our stubbornness, insensitivity, coldness and defensive detachment are harsh and merciless. We collide bleakly. I don't see our future anymore. I lost sight of it. I don't know if I can get it back. I don't even know if I want to. Not because I don't want us to be us anymore, because I do. I just don't know if I can handle the work required to rebuild us. And will we ever be the same, anyway?
   I have a habit of letting go the instant things turn sour. That way, when the bad taste fades, all the memories are intact, are sweet, are perfect. And every time I convince myself it's worth it and work up the courage to make an effort, you disengage. I know this is a reaction to my detachment. I'm sorry. I'm trying to overcome it. 
   I just don't really know. I don't know a thing. I do not know a goddamn thing.

Morning Yearning

   I've been going through old diaries on and off for the past week or so. It's enlightening. If you have some, I recommend it, but consider yourself warned; it's tumultuous. Everything seems so different in retrospect; the tragedies seem trivial, funny, while the triumphs break my heart a little.
   Anyway, it's interesting because my life has not become what I envisioned at age sixteen. (Does anyone's?) This isn't upsetting so much as...like waking up? Not in any traditional symbolic rude awakening sense; it's been more of a late morning, where my eyes open slowly, contently, ready to regain consciousness. I frequently convince myself of things that make my life simpler; that I am cold, independent and indestructible to the core. And that I always have been. The vulnerability exhibited so openly and honestly in my accounts of youth are unsettling.

   My sixteen year old imagined account of my future goes something like this:

i sprawl out to cover the part of the bed you just left. 

it's warm and still smells like you. 

i inhale deeply, to fill myself with you.

to others this could feel lonely, 

but i'm surrounded in the silent promises
you flood throughout my room, 

even in your absence.  

i'm so in love with them. with you.

you are grace.

you are bliss.

you are love.

and after a while in silence,
i drift back to sleep with the quiet remnants of you 

on my sheets being gradually embedded within me, 

joining the other traces of you 

that live underneath my skin and flow through my veins.

  

   (I didn't believe in capital letters when I was sixteen.)

   The reality? Keeping in the context of the situation:

I hate taking showers

when I'm dizzy and I might throw up.

I should have drunk more water last night.

I just barely remember

sneaking out of bed

to put on makeup

before waking you up

and telling you to leave.

After this

I will tear the blankets off my bed,

stumble downstairs,

and shove them in the washing machine,

hoping to rid them

of your smell

and your skin cells.

Dress Me Like a Clown

    In bad times, I remember good times.  Through good times, I plan better times.  It's inevitable.  I'm hopelessly hopeful.  Neck-deep in cynicism, I'm still spinning sickly sweet conceptions that spiral beyond my mind's control.  Wallowing in bitter misery, I construct and reconstruct various fairy tale endings.  You grow up.  I calm my nerves.  We get it together. Whiny whispers creep back, draining my reserve, straining my (ears? heart? head?), making me desperate.  "What are you thinking about?" "Nothing. I mean... it's silly. It's stupid."  "Tell me."  "You won't laugh?" "Do I ever laugh at you?" 
     So much affection in nuances, in hushed laughter, in the closeness of our good nights.  Why do we always have to end up back together?  It's exhausting.  It's miserable.  It's exhilarating.  The way you can't hide your feelings.  The way I never let mine show with anyone else.  The easiness.  The simultaneous existence of comfort and nervousness.  Of familiarity and strangeness.  Oldness and newness.  Trust and suspicion.
     I'm so ambivalent, even though the decisions seem so obvious.  Especially to everybody else.  But they're not us.  And I'm sick of their input and their interfering and their inferences.  So my decision is this: I'm staying exactly where I am.  With you, without you, with you.  Wherever we end up, we'll see.  But I'm not any more prepared for the commitment or consequences than you are.  We stay in limbo because it's what we need from each other, and all either one of us can provide.  And some days it breaks my heart.  And some days I'm unsatisfied.  And some days I'm miserable.  But every day it's what I want.  You're what I want.  And maybe we'll grow into commitment and consequences, and maybe we'll grow apart.  I'm not placing any bets.  
     I'm just keeping us between us.  We're so much better that way.

Shelter

   My Mom's parents died seven weeks and six days apart, my grandmother in early October and my grandfather late in November.
   "It's the end of an era," my uncles mumbled desolately, stumbling through the house after the second funeral. People filed through rooms embracing each other and clinging a little too long, feeling deeply the  endless loss of our matriarch and patriarch.
   I focused my energy on avoiding tears and thinking about something else, anything else.  There is nothing else.  Autumn was ending and I knew I couldn't handle such all-consuming grief in the winter.  Losing the leaves and the flowers and the taste of life in the air is hard enough every year.  To add to that, especially to add something of this magnitude... unbearable.  I'll grieve in the spring, when I can handle it.  I can't handle it now.  If I process any of this, I'll fall apart and I'll never be able to put myself back together again.  They deserve my strength.  I can't dissolve into desolation.  Any breaking down would immediately result in my being inconsolable.  So I daydreamed about the future, getting married and remembering them from a distance.  My children will grow up with stories of these two, these gorgeous forces of nature I've had the blessing to grow up with.  Will this ever go away, this gaping hole in my heart, in my life?  Will anything ever feel okay again?
   I have never been particularly close to my cousin Burning Man but I passed time during wakes and postfuneral gatherings on couches next to him, struggling to stay dry-eyed. While everyone else congregated in the centers of rooms for comfort, we isolated ourselves in the outskirts, shying away from the intimacy of our unapologetically Irish Catholic family, finding silent solidarity in our shared solitude.
   Nearing the close of the weekend, our parents sent us to a local grocery store to return the cans and bottles that had been piling up for days. Perhaps I should pause here to explain, for those of you who aren't Irish; we celebrate the lives of those we lose very traditionally.  We leave work, school and responsibility for as long as possible, retreating back to our roots to cry and reminisce and revel in the memories.  We repeat the same stories, embellishing a bit more each time, until we make legends of those we are lamentably without.  And we drink.  We drink a lot.  
   We agreed to go willingly, finding the idea of fighting the harsh, inexorable cold (he still in his stiff gray suit and I in the inappropriately short black dress I had worn guiltlessly, a tribute to Rita's advice;    "If you've got it, flaunt it.") so much easier than enduring the love, warmth, support and security of our heartbroken family.
   Eager to escape, we loaded the car and drove away.  The drive was largely a continuation of the silent rapport we'd developed as a sort of a break from the tragedy we were immersed in.  Occasionally, we spoke softly, dispassionately about music and potential plans for college.
   Getting out of the car in the parking lot, the night was numbingly cold.  "This is colder than her fucking pool." I gasped, painfully, under my breath to myself.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him smirk, though I wasn't sure if he had heard me or was adrift in his own thoughts.
   We pulled carts from a nearby stand and loaded them with bottles and cans, overflowing them and still not having enough room.  We struggled to push them through the parking lot, fighting the heartless wind.  Halfway through the trip, shaking from the cold, we stopped abruptly and looked at each other.   Brimming with repressed emotions, we threw our heads back and laughed, loudly, manically, hysterically.  Hypothermic, miserable, terrified, we laughed in anguish at the absurdity of the situation, of ourselves.  We confronted the metaphor of ourselves as the carts and the overwhelmingly abundant alcoholic litter as the tormenting grief and laughed at it.  Hard.
   We laughed frenziedly during our multiple trips back and forth from the car to the bottle returns and to the cashier as we handed in slips for $20.00 worth of $0.05 cans and bottles.  Customers stepped away to avoid us, nervous about our hysteria.  We laughed until our eyes formed tears, which slipped out the sides of our eyes and down our faces, leaving icy trails behind them.  We clutched each other, falling over, unable to suppress our lunacy and not interested in trying to.  Not bothering to even wipe away the tears, we staggered back to the car and got inside.
   We stayed in the parking lot for several minutes until we regained control of ourselves.  The drive back was rife with bouts of laughter, both of us beginning again any time we made the mistake of looking at each other.
    Arriving back at the house, we discovered our family exactly as we had left them; drunk, distraught, delirious. Too-loudly retelling stories with tears and laughter in the same breath.
   And I finally understood.

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.

Nobody Does it Better

   One walks away from the other feeling empowered.  Invincible.  Leaving the other feeling desolate.  Deprived.  (Neither of us is ever unscathed.  And we're never both okay.  I guess that's the problem with letting someone in.  It's never going to end with both of you whole.)  "I trust you.  I promise.  I trust you one hundred percent."


   This time it was I, late at night, who confessed, as I have before, that it needs to be over.  He should have seen it coming, but he didn't.  I understand.  He drops hints too, when it's his turn and I never notice them.  Or I do, but I ignore them.  Why do we think ignoring the signs will change the future?  If anything, that will only guarantee it.


   It takes awhile for me.  I toy with the idea for too long.  I can never do it as cleanly as he can.  He's less invested.  He can so easily be absorbed in distractions.  I just focus singularly on loss.


   I come right out with it.  He laughs.  "You're really drunk, aren't you?"  I'm not.  Fortunately.  Another drink and I wouldn't have had the spine.  Another couple and my assertion would have escalated into aggression.   
   "I'm sorry."  He doesn't get angry.  "It's up to you."  "Do you think this is fair to me?"  "No."


   That night I fill page after page with the same two words.  There are filler sentences, but I can really only comprehend a single thought.  I'm devastated.

   It isn't just the present we're losing.  "I just wish you were here."  It's the past.  "I want to kiss you badly."   It's the future.  "I want our boat to have a fireplace.  And be just like the Titanic."  "You know that sank, right?"  "Well, just like it except that part."

   The next morning is positive.  I'm excited to find out what I'm going to do next.  "It's like anything is possible now.  I'm devastated, but I feel so optimistic.  Like anything can happen.  I needed to do it.  I put it off for way too long."

   We last a week.  You come back first, which surprises me, because I left.  I guess you didn't think I'd come back.  Maybe I wouldn't have.

   "I'll be there."  "I'll believe that when I see it."  "I mean it!" "Maybe someday you'll actually prove me wrong."  "I will.  I'm going to."

   My head's way too smart to believe that, but too romantic not to want to.  In any event, I'm smiling.  And tonight, that's enough.

Tangled up in Blue

   I've been swimming this year.  It started because I accepted an invitation to the pool from my Lithuanian friend and I've always liked swimming.  So I went.  I had no idea I would keep going, or what I would find in the water.  (I'm more likely to search for meaning in books or music.  I certainly wasn't looking for anything in a swimming pool.)
   I found Rita.  My grandmother, who died my senior year of high school.
  Death was no stranger to me and hers wasn't entirely a surprise.  She lost a short battle with a cruel disease.  But leukemia didn't just take Rita from me.  It took my heart.
   She was the most wonderful, wicked woman I have ever met.  Strength incarnate.  She lived to eighty seven and every year she cut her own Christmas tree, hauled it into the house and decorated it.  She always got the most pathetic looking tree.  That just made it better, somehow.
   And every summer she swam.
   Rita's pool was above ground and four feet deep.  It was secluded in her forest-y backyard completely surrounded by trees, which guaranteed it remain ice cold into August.  While we gasped and shivered, squealing and giggling as we dipped in our toes, Rita was in the water every day.
   Tonight the water is particularly cold, and I am taken back to those summers.  It takes my breath away, literally.  I make my way to the last empty lane, each step accompanied by a sharp intake of air, frequently emitting short squeals to express my discomfort.
   I submerge myself entirely under water and start the breast stroke.  Strong arms and legs and cupping the water, technique she stressed as I floundered in her cold little pool summer after summer after summer.  Careful, deliberate strokes.
   I frequently find myself under water smiling.
   It's so rare to think of her and smile.  Focusing on her for any significant period of time unfailingly results in tears.
   I reach through the clear, icy laps, while my head glues patches to the bottom of her pool lining.  There were so many holes.  It would have been more practical to buy a new liner.  She told everyone for months afterward how my hair shone in the sunlight, streaming out behind me as I struggled on the bottom of the pool.  I felt a twinge of pride every time I overheard her tell the story, and touched at the affection in her voice. It was rare to hear such softness from a woman so fierce.
   And I am twirling in her kitchen with its Fred Flinstone floors, showing her my dress, like I did every Sunday.  I'm enveloped in her strong, thin arms as she reaches around to spank me.
   That's Rita; no display of affection would be acceptable without just a hint of sass.
   Memories linger as I dry my hair in the locker room and I find myself stifling tears.  I force them away and focus on something else.
   But the closeness to her stays.  And tomorrow night, I'll be under water smiling at her again.
   Sometimes we find healing in the most unexpected places.