dreamweave

I miss feeling deeply that the people closest in my life were there for life, that we understood one another like family. I miss it being effortless like breathing, like we'd explode if we didn't let it all out within each other. I miss not second guessing each other's intentions. When did it get so hard? I look back to relationships that were magnetic and explosive. We've all been burned by bad intentions since then I guess but we must outnumber the villains in all our stories.

Maybe it's the internet. I remember when it was all these little fiefdoms and it was easy to feel like you belong somewhere. Now it's just an ocean of noise. Maybe it's COVID driving us all a little crazy. I definitely don't feel like my memory or ability to write are what they used to be.

It made me realize that I haven’t really thought of that time in my life in a while. Mostly when I think about my past these days it’s before that time, like when I was in high school and living in New York. Not in a sad way anymore, just reconnecting with the person I was back then, just feeling more confident sharing the music I used to like and the goofy fuckin way I used to act. Just trying to draw a line between who I was before trauma and who I am now that I’m a fucking tech bro that watches videos about woodworking and geopolitics for fun (I guess that second bit isn’t too out of character for me historically though lmao) and has a house and a lil Aryan child.

I still dream about it sometimes though, like every few months. Mostly fucked up dreams where I invariably find myself in some spot we use to cruise to and we cross paths and I’m like, completely desperate to fix things. Those dreams used to bug me for the rest of the day after. It’s taken a while to get over the fact that my life was complete chaos for like... three entire years, especially when it felt safe really quickly but we were just jumping into another toxic dumpster fire.

Honestly? I used to miss it sometimes. It was chaotic but chaos can be fun and I never really knew what was gonna happen next, which is an ideal state of being to me. There was a period where I was like, okay well, all these things are going my way, but it’s weird when large, long parts of your life are Decided and come into focus. I felt like I was gonna blink and be 50 doing the same shit with no real change. I was pretty scared I was going to lose a lot of things I really enjoyed along with all the chaos. I never wanted to trade back but I thought about it.

I don’t feel that way anymore though and this weekend made that hit me. I mean, I’ve been making so many new friends and developing better relationships with the friends that I have. When I saw Devon Zoey and I were having breakfast with my college buddy and his friend after the 6th or 7th time in the last 6 months I’ve seen one of my favorite artists from high school and I just met his friend but it was really awesome and fun where I might’ve felt awkward in the past but I am so, so far away from being that person now. The weekend before we went to another good show and had breakfast with Zoey’s family and her best friend and I’m making plans with some people I haven’t talked to in a long time.

Idk. My life isn’t the way it was before. I don’t have a random cast of people living in my house, I’m not drinking and doing drugs all the time, I’m not going to crazy house parties or in a wildly open relationship. I feel like all that shit could be fun but like, in an easy and unsatisfying way. It didn’t take any work to do those things but I also don’t really have anything to show for any of that. The things I’ve been doing lately, the experiences I’ve been having lately, it’s taking work I’m not used to doing to build relationships and come up with fun plans and reach out to people who live hours away just to see them, but it’s also building relationships I’ve had for years at this point and looking at where *those things* might be down that 50-years-old telescope sounds incredible and exciting rather than monotonous and stagnant.

I was in this weird in-between place for a while where I wasn’t doing things one way or the other and it was a little scary. I checked off all the Big Life Goals in like, three months, which was incredible and a little overwhelming but I still felt unsatisfied in some ways. I guess my life changed very suddenly and it took some time to figure out the details of how to enjoy it for what it is - which I didn’t expect because it’s like, I have a baby and a house and an incredible job, shouldn’t I just be happy without having to try? But it doesn’t really work like that. 

Yeah, I don’t do that shit anymore. Today I became an engineer. Two months ago the light of my life was born. Three weeks before that I got my dream job after just a month of trying and three months before I even graduated. I know exactly who I am and where I’m going. I’ve spent most of my conscious life desperately clawing myself out of a dark tunnel, confident that if I tried hard enough I’d get to this point. I’ve always been right about myself except when I thought I’d never change for the better, and now that I’m here it’s everything I thought it would be.

I can feel the heavenly silence coming over my thoughts as my heart swells and my mind submits, emotion absorbing the flood of words that never stops except in these moments where it’s you and I or us and them or all of us together in a packed room or under the stars, and I hear only a discordant choir of holy angels surrendering their wings. My mind comes to, briefly drowned and then washed up on a beach of pearls that feels like home. 

I can feel even now the exact size and weight of the burdens that I no longer drag along with me. I can feel them even as the space they took up is filled instead by love and light. I feel the secrets and the misplaced hope and a long series of mistakes, and feel like a faded memory that never happened what I might be suffering in these moments we’ve freed to spend in better places, if I had still been wasting them.