real life

dear ,

mourning is a process

Dear,

I’ve been trying to write this for a year and am not likely to succeed in saying what I want to say with this attempt, either, but you know me: I’ve never been able to leave well enough alone. I’ve never known when to stop talking. I have never rebuilt a bridge burnt, no matter who struck the first match. I have a tendency to dump kerosene on fires because it’s less risky to stand on the opposite shore alone.

I suppose I might like to know when you made the decision that you would have nothing more to do with me. Between that winter when you told me I was one of the best things in your life to that summer when you stopped talking to me completely there wasn’t so much time. I can’t remember fighting. I can’t remember being cruel. I remember trying to get my feet under me. I remember inviting you over often; too often, in retrospect, because I remember your answering silence. I remember asking you what was wrong and I remember that you would not talk to me.

What happened that spring? 

I suppose I failed you in some monumental way. That much is clear. Whatever I did, surely it was inhumane because you’ve said something to our mutual friends that’s encouraged them to shut me out, too. (A good parting shot you made with that one. Bravo, sir. I hope my loneliness makes you feel proud.) But, in this pretend conversation, I’m compelled to ask: what did I do?

I wish you had told me what I’d done wrong. Without knowing how I failed you I have no way to improve for others.

I don’t know why I’m so torn up about this; I know you aren’t. 

I don’t know why I miss you.

You are content in my absence.

I wanted to be a friend to you. That has been true from my first impression of you: kind, quiet, smart, skilled, killer fashion sense. Those perceptions never changed, although they grew nuance and depth. You made it clear, over the decade that we knew each other, that your first impressions never relented, either: you thought I was arrogant, rude, not particularly pleasant to know. Of course, this was interspersed with compliments and fond affection and late-night conversations about the nature of love and literary analysis … so I let it slide. I thought you changed your mind about me. 

This is, maybe, a prolonged period of mourning which I am experiencing. I have never lost a friend I loved so profoundly for no apparent reason before, even if that friend did not love me back. In theory, I know to expect myself to grieve, to give myself space to do so. In practice, I feel like you pulled something out of me and kept it and now I will never get it back and I am reminded every single day of this new void in my body where something vital once sat. I am distraught for that lack. 

Are you satisfied?

 

re: 2019

We may only look back to be sure we have not come this way before.

(This is the Groundhog Day of years.)

If you keep telling stories you can survive anything.

(You’re not special. Work harder.)

The closest you may ever get to another human being is sitting on a plane and that’s probably for the best.

(Carry Clorox wipes whenever you travel.)

You’ve done this alone before and this is no different; repeat that statement until it becomes true.

(You will need more boxes in more sizes than you think.)

Healing begins by scrubbing the floorboards of a house that doesn’t belong to you until your knuckles are raw and your lungs ache and every inch of laminate sparkles.

(You can survive anything— you’ll prove it when your best friend dies.)

The only cure for fear is anger.

 

 

healthy

Five months ago someone told me– gently, as politely as she possibly could, purely in the interest of helping because she wants me to get out and meet people and find a datemate– that I needed to adjust the angle of my head in a photo– one that I made the mistake of thinking made my fat look sexy– to better hide my double chin. I haven’t taken a picture of myself alone since. 

Last week another friend asked me if I’ve been sick because she hasn’t seen me in months and apparently I look like I’ve lost weight. She followed this up telling me that I looked fantastic, healthy even.

I’m not saying these things are related but I haven’t been looking at myself in the mirror. 

Then my boss changed my hours and I discovered that coffee is better than lunch. Thirty minutes isn’t enough time to eat a full meal. And lately instead of dinner I’ll drink hot chocolate with extra whiskey because that keeps me from being too anxious to sleep because I live alone, my best friend decided he hated me, and my cat died, and I’m convinced my life has no meaning.

I guess it’s supposed to be consolation that existential terror looks good on me.

my life has stood

Dear,

Contrary to the jokes I crack on the internet about being a double Taurus I am slow to anger and you’re not so much toeing the line as you have pole-vaulted over it. I don’t want to rehash the one-sided conversation I’ve been having, I just want to point something out:

In January 2017 I had a stroke. I was bed-ridden for two months after. There’s a solid two years of that must have happened to someone else even though all the pictures are of me. Recovery was a graying string of medications that left me too weak to move.

But a friend I’d not seen since middle school brought their new spouse to play card games with me to re-teach me math and memory. A girl I’d met in a coffee shop who barely knew my name brought me flowers and books to read when the edema let up. My sorority sisters took me to plays when I could walk again and made sure I had food that suited my new dietary needs. My best friend in Denver made me call her every day to talk even when I dropped words because language itself was newly the Gordian knot I still grapple with.  

Do you remember what you did, those grueling months after I crawled my way back from my date with Death?

You didn’t write, you didn’t call.

You didn’t bother to like the tweet I made about being bored at discharge.

If you try to tell anyone you did anything at all? You’re a liar. 

the condominium

I remember a few significant things about the condominium where I was raised.

1. Its front door faced East. The peephole made a prism that cast a rainbow dot on the wall of the stairs that led to the second story. In the early mornings this was magical to behold and I would stand there on the blue carpeted stairs for as long as my grandmother would allow me to, tracing the matte-rough white paint around that rainbow circle, peering at its colors as the sun moved over time, watching the shadows of my fingers moving over it.  
2. The black wrought iron hand railing was magical, too, for similar reasons. The artfully twisted metal that made up its first three bars felt fantastic against my face. My grandmother always swore I would get my head stuck between them but I never did.
3. The carpeting wasn’t always blue. Sometime earlier than I can remember it was different and when grandma spent the money to get new, royal blue plush carpet put in all over the ground floor, we were all proud and excited. All I wanted to do was touch it. I could nearly taste the color. It reminded me of Vienna sausages. I never enjoyed eating those tiny canned abominations but I liked that color blue.
4. There was a single island of dark wood laminate breaking up the constant sea of blue carpet right where the front door was. It was so cold in winter. I liked to lay my hand half on the carpet, half on the laminate and feel the difference. Mimi (my great-grandmother, for the uninitiated) kept a rag run on it, one of those rectangular, rainbow-woven things that’s made from fabric recycled again and again and again.

writing is hard

This isn’t going to be petty except for every way that it’s going to be petty. It’s not going to be selfish except in for every way that it’s going to be selfish. Because you keep doing and saying– or not doing and not saying– things that feel like an ending, a breakup, a quiet demolition or an implosion and I feel worse and worse for every second I don’t say something.

this again?

My mother’s husband’s brother dies and the news comes late at night. The brother he hated, if we’re being honest, they were never close.

But it doesn’t matter because the result is the same, because it could be anything– a scratched bumper, a crooked picture, a contrary opinion, an eye roll, a burnt meal– that sets him screaming and destructive, punching walls and breaking crockery and throwing himself downstairs and into plate glass, threatening lives and violence like breathing.

Part of me hopes that this will be what kills him.

Part of me knows better.

The part of me that remembers eighteen and shaking holding a door shut with my spine while he slammed his weight into it again and again and again until the shitty particle board groaned and cracked and he murmured to me through it like a seduction that he could get into my bedroom if he really wanted, that, of course, he had only ever given me what I had asked for, that I couldn’t keep him out forever with my bruised knuckles and aching back braced and burning against that broken door–

That part of me feels sick because it knows. Because he and I are monstrously alike. Nothing anyone or anything has done to him has killed him yet and I know in my bones that neither will this. He’ll survive and so will I and, eventually, the door will break.

get skinny or die trying

Capitalism has found out about body positivity– I’m sure y’all’ve noticed:

Be-you-tiful.

A body for everybody.

Choose beautiful.

#Lose hate not weight.

It’s everywhere. Self-love and a healthy relationship with food are only one purchase away!

You think these things sound familiar. You think it might be nice to fall for it. You think these people are goddamn fools if they think I’m going to even consider loving a thing that has been trying to kill me since the day I was born.

You think of your mother. You think of her taste in men.

You look at your body again and you think maybe I can be tricked into loving you after all.

This kind of abuse runs in families anyway.

rlb 9.21.18

what’s eating me

You asked me to stop talking to you about writing.

I wonder if you remember that our entire friendship is predicated upon writing.

I expected it, though.

I’ve been trying to get that mistletoe-need pruned back into something that didn’t touch every aspect of everything I did, said, wanted because it has always been too much information, too overwhelming to process, too complex to follow. No one wants to hear it. But I didn’t try hard enough. This year, though, I managed it. Thanks to you.

You asked me to stop talking to you about writing and I finally uprooted the goddamn thing and threw it into the street where it wouldn’t take root in hot asphalt.

I have stopped talking to you about writing.

Now, every week or so you’ll text me about some new disaster at work or home. Once in a while, I’ll send you a meme. Once a month you might send me poetry, looking for critique. You are miserable at work and at home. You don’t respond to the memes for days at a time. I can’t bring myself to give you critique on something I’ve forgotten how to talk about. You asked me how my life was going and all I could tell you is, “Nothing’s really changed,” because it hasn’t. Do you understand? The only points of interest that exist in my life are all from writing: the things that inspire me, the people I write with and for, the constant research into obscure fields, the endless collection of pinterest boards and commonplace books. I have never been very good at writing but it’s the only thing I have ever wanted to live for. Without it, I have nothing to talk about.

You asked me to stop talking to you about writing. So I did.