PinkyRing

So, it has been two years.

I have woken up more than a few times with your smiling eyes gluing me to the bed. I have spent multiple mornings tossing and turning to dive back into your arms.

You are the first person I think of when it gets too hard to ignore the urge to love.

I have spent eleven months away from my home, my best friends and the people I want to hold. I have been so busy and isolated that I don't know how to type anymore.

Life often feels like it's slipping away from me.

I never really believed in time, but when I was a kid still, I sometimes glimpsed its tight fabric.

Today I got overpowered by the tide and rendered helpless by the need to survive.

It has been two years.

I knew I was not going to get over you easily but I did not expect it to take this long.

I allowed myself to do something a lil crazy, even if it probably really isn't.

I am teaching my nerves that everything is okay. I am learning to live new things and meet new people without having to break down. I am living my adult life with all the spontaneity and fun of a real young person, and I am learning to breathe through it all.

Every day after school I used to run to my cousin's workshop. She would be deep in work, probably bored as hell, and would perk up at me and my big emotions spilling all over her linoleum.

I used to talk to her until my mom screamed.

I used to tell her about the things I did and didn't do, the events I planned and the people I met. I used to process my emotions out loud in her presence.

I used to tell her, almost every day, about the frustration of wanting the things that hurt.

I had not yet seen that pattern nor recognize that behavior, but I used to talk it out.

I used to speak until I forgot I had an audience. Until I was back in the scenes I described. Until I saw myself from the outside and heard my voice through speakers.

I used to tell her everything I needed to sound out but couldn't bear my parents hearing.

I used to stay in her workshop until my mom screamed for me to go back for dinner.

Years later, she moved her workshop away from our home. She rented a flat in the Casablanca I wasn't allowed in and I went from school straight to our dinner table.

I was growing up and out, meeting new people and planning more events.

And I was not talking out loud to no one.

I stopped working out the kinks and smoothing out the knots. And they started appearing in my jaw, my face.

I stopped breaking down the boulders and climbing up the mountains. And they materialized in my traps and shoulders.

Tonight, I went off script.

I have no one to tell about the fun people and good food and loud music and jealous boy.

All I have dreamed of in the past two months is being with and around him.

He's now pliantly saying yes to my invitations and risking Friday evenings for my musical whims.

And all I can think of is how to unstick us, having barely touched.

I thought I was doing myself a favor thinking of her to get over him.

Would my God be angrier if I kiss her or if I marry him?

I am tired of denying myself eveything, of repressing everything, of pretending I don't want these people.

And then I face the reality of almost having them and the sudden, overwhelming weight of my avoidance.

Will I ever be over the fear? Will I only ease up the eve of my death and burn years of patience?

Why?

I sure can pray for you.

I just wished I would get to do it every morning, every night.

The whole world is trying to comfort me. Even the rain stopped falling.

I cannot focus on anything else; I've come too close to having you.

I don't know what I feel for you, but I am also tired of pretending. It got old, this oblivious confusion, older than I seem to be.

You're making me wait.

I don't mind it, usually. But this time feels different.

You can't lie to me.

Was seeing me too much? Did I say too much? Should I have kept my reservations to myself?

I didn't mean to completely shoot down any thought of us, but a lot of what I said could be interpreted as exactly that.

I wish I would have spent more time with you before you realized I could not be trusted.

But the reality is that I wish I could give us that life. I do want you.

Not more than the people before, but in a way that is real. In a way that would become our everyday.

In the way that I got space for you in my life. That I would carve it out for you.

And I think you can tell that I'm right about that at least.

I am tired of going from person to person. It's exhausting.

You seem like the kind of man that I can call home.

I am not allowed to have you neither. And it doesn't seem to bother you that much anyway. Or is that precisely why you won't answer my texts.

It's a boy this time, again.

He shares a birthday and an eye color with her. He shares a glint in the eye and an easy smile with me. He's got someone at home.

He brushes past me silently when we're on the clock. He beams at me on the breaks, a laptop in hand and a joke slung around his quarter-zip collar.

He smells of cold sunlight and fruity vapors.

He sounds like a boy.

He sounds like doubt, like nostalgia. He sounds like recklessness and anxiety. He sounds like a monogamous cheater.

He said no one had his SoundCloud but the closest of his friends. I spent my evening looping his half-songs, chuckling at his silly bars.

I barely know him and he barely knows me, but I'm glad the easy feeling of familiarity is mutual.

It's the bisexual struggle of figuring out where envy ends and want starts.

In a world where men like me back, I'd wrestle the truth out of the loose strings of our loving. I'd hold his hand and wreck his mind and engrave his words in silver rings.

In a world where I had a chance, I'd watch his dreams take shape and take flight. We'd work hard by day and play harder by evening. We'd make music our air.

I long for freedom and I ache for love.

I too want to feel like I'm flying. I too want to live the clichés.

I want a guitar, taut leather, sticks in my hands, and a familiar crowd to raise me above their dancing arms. I want to let music flow through me.

I want my people to stand up and stand strong. I want people that I respect, love, protect and lead to better, happier times. I yearn for a community that knows me fully, with no bigotry or judgement, and chooses to accept my service as pure and sincere.

I want an embrace. A tight, warm, secure and comfortable embrace. I want a pair of shoulders to lean on, against, whenever I can. I want an easy smile on a familiar face. I want the steady joy of going back to arms that have grown around me, to nurture, console and accommodate. I want eyes that recognize the spark, and spurt diamonds to reflect the rainbows back. I want ears that listen to the melody. I want a soul that dances to the tune everybody hears but no one can follow along with. I want a jukebox of a mind, no echoing hollows. I want a universe to merge mine with.

I want God's grace.

I want this life over with.

I want to be here. To be alive and present. To feel and tremble and shake with the reality of breathing and singing and loving.

Churches are dim art galleries to me; the opposite of the echoey carpeted halls my kin pray in.

I pass sculptures, statues and paintings dating centuries back. There are more visitors than worshippers, all wearing shoes.

Christian Jesus' face is distinctly European. To my eyes, he is unremarkable.

Tall boxes appear from time to time, closed and windowed. I sit on the bench in front of one.

I have a lot to confess. If I can't afford to do it in therapy, a priest will listen. I don't believe in his god anyway.

There is no movement in the confessional. There are no curtains on the latticed windows. I stand to look; there is no one. The organ is quiet and the church is cooler than Paris streets. It's an easy choice.

I'm sat again and I can see the stained glass better from below.

Does God like it when I seek him where his word has been misinterpreted? Am I wrong for thinking He appreciates every soul chasing His splendor, regardless of how and where? Would God be madder for my wandering or for my complacency? Would He rather be misunderstood or forgotten?

There are small cards stuck in long lines above the alcove. The writing is small and even. Generations of donators praise Jesus and his saints for little miracles that have changed their lives to the point of deserving to be carved on a church's stones.

I wonder what heaven is like. I struggle to come up with a genuine desire.

Beyond an inseverable soul tie to one of His human servants, I don't know what to ask of God.

God has heard my pain before. He's created me lost and lacking. He knows my plight.

I just want someone to write my life off to.

I don't know how to battle this loneliness. I no longer know how to be grateful for the web of platonic connections around me. I have outgrown my refuge.

I have outgrown most things I have known since forever.

Maybe the single-ness is retribution for my arrogant take-off and my readiness to call everything that's brought me up to where I am old and constricting.

It's been stronger lately, the need to be held.

Although the day had been warm, the approaching night promised the soft breeze of a stalling spring.

The armrests under my palms were slick with sweat. My fingertips could not recognize the glass they clasped. My ears dipped in and out of pressure, unprepared and unhelpful.

It was not a lightbulb, a grand reveal or a climax. It was a gunshot, straight through the heart. And I sat there, hunched, watching puddles of love, shame, guilt and lust bleed out of me.

****

I was still on the balcony when Tangiers ran out of daylight.

The stars had averted their eyes. The streets had emptied all of a sudden, and everyone had gone back to their home, to their normal, acceptable, expected lives.

The night breeze did nothing to dry my palms or revive my fingertips. I stared deep into the clouds, limbs irresponsive.

Just like nothing could stop their slow trek across time and space, nothing could change the reality of who I am.

****

It started on the train ride.

The sky had seemed inhabitually gigantic and the sun uncharacteristically gentle. The uninterrupted chatter of two cities - and the endless fields in between - was reassurance. There's life outside home.

The hotel was on a hill overlooking the sea. Gold seeped into every nook and cranny of the lobby. Rainbow sparks hopped from floor to ceiling. Soft jazz notes echoed in the empty hallways. I kept time with my traveller boots.

I had arrived earlier than expected. The room was off-white, well-lit. The fridge was empty, the bathroom was clean. The bed could comfortably carry two people to sleep.

There was a balcony. The street was the main view, and shimmering blue was visible once fully out on the suspended tiles. There were a table and two chairs, facing each other. Their mirrored iron patterns were crafted to witness conversations and shared meals out in the open.

Should I lurch forward grinding for a better, brighter, bigger future. Or should I stop to look around and take in what I have sacrificed so much to get to.

When do I stop. When do I rest. When do I accelerate.

Do I ever get to sleep.

I have felt lonely since I realized you were not the one for me. I think I had known you were not since we met, but I still wanted the satisfaction of having the possibility to hold you.

I knew you did not fit the description of who I wanted for myself, but I still wanted to chase and conquer. Seeing why I could not give myself to you in spite of it all managed to hurt me regardless.

I am alone on most nights. I wish I had someone to chase. I wish I wanted someone, anyone of you. I have had nothing but lukewarm interests since you were gone.

The men are uninterested. The women are unattainable. I am fickle and capricious.

You knew to listen and engage, but you overwhelmed me with desire. I did not know what to do with my want for you when you so openly expressed yours.

I have no one to talk to the way I used to talk to you.

I am weak, and my words on these nights are nothing friends say to each other.

You were right to leave me in silence. I am sensitive to any sign that I still have that effect on you. I have long lost the desire to be with you, but I fantasize about your room, about your car, about your eyes still.

Texting would have been a mistake. We should have spent a night together while we still could. It would have severed this thread clean.

Or maybe not. Maybe we would've wound up more intertwined than I'd hoped and I would have had no choice but to address the yarn ball heads on.

I don't think you would have withstood my emotional whirlwinds. I don't think we would have been happy screaming our weaknesses at each other.

I read our conversations when loneliness becomes too tight to breathe. I stand by my decision to never interact with you unless I have to.

I don't know how to lay words in a format different from that of a journal entry. I can't make sentences that are not about me. I cannot weave stories that are not mine.

I'll get on to learning back again, maybe, once I'm done grieving. It's only been three years after all.

It's only been three years from that lost kid in search of validation. From themselves, from society, but mostly from God.

Only three years since that grand revelation of splendeur, shaky and vapid to the core. Only thirty-six months since that tragic epiphany, that earth-shattering realization. Only about a thousand and a hundred days since that uninspired breakthrough, that flat advance.

It has only been three years since I first admitted to myself that I thought I was the shit, and had been thinking that for as long as I could feel.

And even then, I knew I was right. I knew that to be a fundamental truth, as flawed as it may be. I knew God had different plans for me than for the rest of humanity, and that is factually true.

The conclusions I deduced from such narcissistic beliefs were not half as bad as they could have been. I was just a firm believer in the uniqueness of each and every individual. I still am. Only now, I have the discernment to never share those thoughts until fully safe, and the vocabulary to express what I really mean.

None of us can be fully and entirely identical, no matter how many generations go back. We're each different combinations of matter, flesh, soul, spirit, mind, emotions and experiences. We're molded by isolated forces and sculpted by irreplicable winds.

And I am a little more different. There is no binary I naturally fit in and no conventional role I truly covet.

I know I'm stressed out. I know I'm probably taking on more than I can handle. Again, always. I don't know how not to.

Days stretch longer than ever when I spend them by myself. I haven't talked to someone in real life in more than fifty hours. Damned phones.

I got music and chores to keep me grounded.

I'm not worried about the future as the current signs should make me. France has sedated me.

For the most part, my thoughts hang unfinished. Like grains of sand, they're suspended in fog, drifting aimlessly, landing with no impact.

There was a time when all I wanted was food and fanfiction. There was another when all I asked for was a ball and a hoop on a wall. And another when a man was all I would ever need. And another when breathing light and halting my brain was all I dared pray for.

And now I have grown.

My wants are complicated and my emotions run deep. Nothing seems like it really is, and whatever signs I am present enough to catch are lies and mirages. My desires carve canyons in their wake and my aspirations carry the weight of mountains.

I have never really left home, and I have stopped feeling safe in there for years already. I love every wall of that house; every tile, every stone and every leaf. Every bug and every critter, every cat and every bird, every slug and every snail, every grain of sand, clay, lime, every drop of dew and ray of sunshine means the whole entire world to me. Every angle and every smell directs me to the essence of my soul. That house is my compass, my true north, my home.

But I have outgrown it. No matter how much it hurts, I have outgrown it.

My roots, thirsty and thickened, lacerate its foundation. My branches, rough and now inflexible, puncture its ceilings. My core, heavy and unsatiable, occupies its center, cuts light and sustenance from it.

I had to leave for it to stay like it is and has always been in my mind.

That's the word.

Bitter anger and simmering pain, pushed far away from the consciousness. Deep hurt fused with the self, indistinguishable from the rest.

Resentment. Rage. Grief.

A wounded beast screaming and thrashing, incapable of seeing that its convulsions are widening the gash. Canines flying in dull shrapnel after desperately biting at unbreakable bars. The floor is slicked and the chains are tighter with every howl and kick.

No one dares get close to the beast. From afar, the naked eye cannot see tears.

Resentment.

I'm stuck in my unshed anger and my unspoken screams.

I thought I didn't know anger, and only wallowed in sadness and cold despair when things got too bad.

It turns out, I've only been too good at swallowing down my wrath. And I've had my share. I've lived two decades grinding my own tongue into ashy dust instead of voicing the pain, the hurt, the confusion. I've made it to adulthood with no one in life angrier at me than my own self.

I did it, and I did it bruised, scared and disoriented. I did it as a child, as a teenager and as a young adult. I have always done it. And it caught up with me.

Resentment.

When I'm reminded that I can't sit, can't walk, can't live and can't talk how I want to without trading part of me away. When I'm made to buy, consume, like and hate things I never cared for unless I wanted to be profiled.

When my parents say that suit is for men, and that pose is too masculine, and that girl is too exposed, and that guy is too girly. When they say I have to be home before nine, and I have to be up before noon. When they say I have to listen and agree, or speak and suffer.

Resentment.

The one emotion I never understood the purpose of.

I do not condone revenge, and I believe people around me are doing the best they can.

But I can't keep it in.

I sometimes wish I never saw them again.

My body like time away from home. Home is toxic to me. Harm is all I will get if I don't move away. I outgrew them the second I graduated highschool.

It's resentment and guilt and shame and pain.

I held her hips in my hands a couple of nights ago. I dropped hot tears on the same palms, on the same night, chanting broken pleas for forgiveness from the Lord above.

I can't hear the hiss of regret when the bass is loud enough. Her breath was warm enough to dull the chill of guilt. I lost myself in the swing of her back. Nothing mattered when the weight of her body was on my belt.

I only know music. I only know movement.

She only knew me, in the whole crowd, and she let me show her around and watch her introduce herself to my friends. I don't really remember what she looks like. I don't want to meet her again.

We still weaved between paintings and mannequins, and we giggled in the shadows to jokes unfit for civilized society.

I don't want to see her again.

The first songs hit and I was happy hopping friends.

I am back to feeling like I could shape the world with my bare hands.

I am spending way too long on trying to secure jobs, internships and cash for the next bill.

I am a young Sisyphus, shuddering in the growing shadowing of an approaching boulder.

It took me a semester and a half to feel alive again. It felt like I'd been wading in the mud of a Parisian winter, squinting at foggy figures and unfamiliar silhouettes, unable to make sense of a reality outside of my home.

I thought I'd died in August, and March unexpectedly resurrected me.

I can drill tunnels in mountains if so I wish. I would be able to unite the world if I ever set to.

I cannot check more than two tasks off my to-do list a day, and I am a prisoner to my love for wandering.

Sometimes, I physically feel it, the heatless boiling of my ambition.

It occasionally bubbles up, stirred to movement by some rogue spark in a friend's eye or some well-timed basketball edit on Instagram.

It used to spill over, flow and move everything on its trail. I was athlete, artist, debater, president, crush and valedictorian, all at the same time. I was productive.

It was not healthy, but neither is the sustained rumbling of my choked youth.

There might be some tragic explanation to my chronic need to overperform, outdo and stun. The reality of things is that I feel useless when not all three are achieved, proven and maintained.

I credit my achievement to my restless ego and anxious pride.

Out as in on a little promenade. A man as in a male friend.

I think.

It's the ambiguity kicking my brain into overdrive.

He's sweet, faceless. He's invited me to lunch and I had accepted, absently. I had promised to make it up to him when I rainchecked on the meal and he'd turned it into a Paris visit. His city, his home.

I have accepted because I hope it's friendly.

I'm scared shitless of it being anything else.

I am always amazed by this insane bout of unbridled ego when an event like this happens. I am already rehearsing lines to reject him; already drawing plans to escape. I don't even know if he's into 'women' like that.

Maybe he truly just wants to make a friend.

My girlfriends would die laughing at me. A man doesn't have friends that are not men.

My legions of bros aside, I am used to being rejected. Advances get refused all the time. There is no reason for me to feel nervous for him. He's probably just a sweet nerd trying to take me sightseeing. I'd do the same for someone I've met and read a story out loud to.

My mind would have none of this.

I'm already peptalking myself into letting him hold my hand, listening to him nerd out about heroic fantasy and medieval tales, and trap me into another date.

I am hopeless.

I am already feeling trapped under a non-existing weight.

Ghost asphyxiation. Trauma from future events. Alternate reality flashbacks.