16 August 2017 "On Bob's Last Day"

I remember the sky, blue and open against a series of brown poles, little light bulbs, string lights like the ones they have at Lake Merritt, only it was daytime, and so they were blank, not lit, bouncing against the openness behind them. Blades of grass, wind rustling over water, the smell of your skin, the sharp but fragile poking of each of the bones in your back when I hugged you, like an old twig at the base of a tree. Little birds, rocks, picnic tables, a coffeeshop just closed, two thin parallel slides and one wide one. I remember these things because when I saw them, sat in the silence of us and watched them, felt your face against my chest, your tears staining my forearm, I suddenly felt alive enough to form memories in the little details around me again. Sometimes the feeling of being alive comes in the form of simply recognizing the ability of your senses to connect with your feelings, both together a team in forming a reaction to your world and to your body's place in it. 

How do you realize when you have been numb? I suppose the only way is when you are suddenly jolted with the electricity of feeling alive, and for me, that jolt of electricity came when you told me how much you had missed me, how often you still think about me. And when I realized that you are so delicate, so fragile, and yet so committed to throwing yourself, hard as you can, off the biggest cliffs you can find. In the aftermath of the shock, while my skin was still buzzing with the light of it, I suddenly was able to see the trees and the grass and the water and the birds again. Not just in the way of noticing that they exist, but rather taking note of them again, feeling their presence, their punctuation of my life and my experiences, again. 

You see, a few weeks ago I drove down to Nevada City, and I found myself on a boat, floating in the middle of one of the most beautiful lakes I had ever seen. I could physically feel the way the sun broke apart the tiny droplets of water that stuck to my skin like so many tiny fish, I could taste the sweet way red wine swirls its way down my throat, I could hear the splash of two dogs (one of them mine) playing and swimming in the water around me, but I couldn't really feel anything, do you know what I mean? The last time I had sex I could feel the pleasurable sensation, could feel the premise of orgasm, could sense stickiness on my skin, but that doesn't mean I could feel anything at all, can you understand? 

So much of my life is spent explaining myself

This isn't about my insecurities, for once. For once, I've felt validated in my own thoughts, feelings, and instincts about a relationship. You felt lucky to have found me, felt strong about our connection, felt as in sync with me as I felt with you. You missed me. I missed you and you missed me back. I thought about you and you thought about me back. 

But what does this all mean? What does the revelation that you should've stayed at my apartment and waited for me, should've waited to talk through your feelings with me really mean, if the manifestation of this revelation was several new addictions, increased isolation, a sped-up version of your least favorite of your bad patterns? You missed me and you formed a connection with someone else, only to leave them behind too. You thought of me, and instead of reaching out you decided to dump on yourself more. You felt numb and so you chased highs to feel something, even if it meant dealing with lows. I don't mean to say that your doing of these things makes you bad, I don't even think your doing of these things is unnatural. 

I know that you are afraid, so afraid. I am too, although I'm learning that to others, it might look like I am the least afraid person in the world sometimes. But I wish you could see yourself the way that I see you. The way that I know for a fact that others see you too. I didn't (don't) love you because you made me, if that were even remotely possible I would still fight for the people who did nothing but hurt me (my dad, etc.) 

I so desperately want to read the notes that you wrote for me, but honestly, I am really afraid. If simply remembering them, simply watching the microcosmic changes in someone else's face as they register what you said, what you did, who you are, and how well suited you are for me, causes me to cry, then I cannot imagine what actually going back, actually reading would do right now. I miss you so much. Still, always. I don't know if I will ever stop, but I am prepared for that. I am prepared to harbor you in my memory for as long as I am alive, to count the minutes finding you, having you, as lucky, as so many minutes of being with a kindred spirit that many people don't really ever get. 

I'm happier alone, I think, then I would be with someone who felt like settling. You haven't made it easy on me, to accept someone else after you. I'm not saying I can't do it, I am only saying that minutes with someone who makes me edit myself, who doesn't understand all the beautiful things you mirrored, feels like dying, a little. Like that gross feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when the ugly kid in your class has a crush on you, you understand why, but it doesn't feel good to have to tell someone no, to tell someone that you would rather be alone than to be with them. 

I'm not usually this clumsy, this messy, with metaphors. I don't know what it means, but my mind has been moving so quickly, lately. I can barely keep up with it, can barely tamp myself down, for how many things feel exciting, feel right. 

Good morning. I met someone a week and a half ago. I don't like him as much as I like you, at least not yet. At least not in the same way, but I like him a lot, and he's dependable, and looking at him and letting myself melt a little into the minutes helps me to pry loose the grip of my emotions insofar as they are wrapped up in you. 

He makes me cringe, a little, in front of other people, I don't quite know why, but I do know he is nowhere near as cool as you. But when we are alone, kissing him makes me remember what it's like to kiss someone just because you want to, to have trouble letting go, to wish you could forget about time and responsibilities and kiss someone forever. 

Is this what growing feels like? It turns me on to text someone and kind of know what they are going to stay, to feel attracted to stability, to know you can count on someone because time and again they have proved it to you, at least so far. And, perhaps more importantly, to recognize in myself that when someone doesn't represent the things I want, the things I have come to know are possible without having to try very hard, I kind of stop feeling an attraction toward them. 

Though it isn't perfect and financially things aren't quite looking like they will get easier anytime soon, I feel the most stable, the most at home, the most myself that I have in a while. Perhaps I have rose-tinted glasses so far because I am still so new here, but I'm finding so much peace in some of the little things. In the way the seasons change the landscape, in the way my skin has predictable color changes, in the way that memories of how I grew to understand the world no longer feel like things I have to explain to other people. People in Atlanta, they love Gucci Mane because he is from here, and it is no longer essential for me to shape myself to fit into Bay Area culture, and and the things I do without thinking, they feel natural again, natural like breathing, like breathing without having to explain why. 

Two things happened at my second job (the nighttime one, the one that used to be my only job, back in California.) First, a man from New Orleans, though he himself was Creole, told me that he was Creole, just like me. That in New Orleans, no one would ever ask. Would I miss it if they did? 

And second, a couple black girls in the locker room asked what I was, and I said mixed with black and white and one of them said "Oh, so you're black" and I said "yes, but if I try just saying that, I get pushback, or something like that. And then I walked away and came back later and immediately some other girl was like "Are you Italian?" and one of the black girls from before said "EVERYbody wants to know what her ethnicity is." and it was the most validated I have felt in a while.