LeftToWrite

For Halloween that year I was a magician. Really all I did was buy a cape and spray paint a broken hanger to make it look like a wand.

When we left the Halloween store I told you my heart hurt. You drove me to a 24 hour clinic because my heart was always hurting. In the parking lot you put the cape on and told me you’d make all the pain disappear. You told me you’d save me from absolutely everything and I giggled because your eyes were like a clear day and I wanted to tell you I probably loved you but I didn’t. Instead— I accidentally called you my ex’s name who I actually was very much still in love with. You ripped the cape off your neck with one hand like you were punishing the fabric. When you got mean everything changed color. Your cheeks were all ripe and your knuckles pale and your eyes so deep blue I could drown. You told me to get out of the car and I did and you drove away so fast it was exactly like a magic trick. I stood in the parking lot and wanted so bad to cry but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I thought it was funny, actually. I was grateful you were not there to see me standing alone in the parking lot smiling like a crazy person. I always knew you deserved someone more balanced than me.

You came back ten minutes later and I was already in the waiting room. You smelled like a pack of cigarettes. You fell into the chair next to me as if someone pushed you. We didn’t look at each other. My chest felt like a giant pinch. You bounced your leg so fast it made me sea sick. When the nurse called my name I got up and you stayed seated. I went in the back alone.

"I’m dying," I said when I finally came back out to the waiting room. I wasn’t dying. It just felt like I was. You raised your eyebrows and your face made so much sense right then. Everything fit perfectly. Your face was so very easy to stare at.

"You’re what?"

"Dying."

"No you aren’t."

"I know."

We walked back to your car. The sun was setting and the sky was fading and I purposely bumped hands with you to see if you’d hold it. You did.

"I wish it was acceptable to wear capes all year," you said out of nowhere. I laughed so hard I forgot how much pain I was in.

We went to your house and you made me chocolate milk with more chocolate than milk and you played the guitar for me and I was in love with the way your fingers moved across the strings, I was in love with the way your elbows bent, the curve of your spine, the shape of your jaw. I wanted to fit inside of you. To be every part of you. It was a desire I could never articulate without sounding insane.

When we curled up together under your sheets your heart beat sounded like the guitar and I imagined my fingers strumming it alive.

"If capes were acceptable to wear I’d make you fall in love with me."

"That doesn’t even make sense." I giggled.

"Well it does to me. The cape would be magic and I would magically make you mine forever."

I wanted to tell you I didn’t believe in magic. Or maybe I didn’t believe in love. Or maybe they’re both the same thing. I said nothing. I stared at your symmetrical face, your eyes like a night light, and took a deep breath.

"Can’t you just save me from everything without a cape?"

"I can."

Almost 5 years ago my family and I got evicted from a place we called home. Our belongings were spread across the lawn like a garage sale and people would slow down as they drove by to see if there was something they might want to buy. They didn’t realize that the torn boxes were filled with our life. The things we used every day and probably took for granted. We fit our lives into boxes like professional tetrus players and the rest of our lives folded along with it

Because of this I have learned how to grow. I have learned how to leave. I have learned how to take care of myself and everyone around me.

And when I moved back to Chicago a year later into a tiny apartment filled with roaches and even when everyone thought it was disgusting—I was more proud than I had ever been in my life. They didn’t see how beautiful it was that I had a roof over my head because they didn’t understand and will never understand that empty feeling you get when you lose everything. The first night in that apartment I had nothing to sit on or eat on or even to look at. Michael and I went to Target and bought a beanbag chair for me to sleep on. We used a cardboard box as a table and ordered takeout Chinese food. There was a shooting not even a block from my apartment so when we went out for ice cream we had to go through alleys because the yellow tape wouldn’t let us take the main road. We spent the entire night with the backs of our legs sticking to the wood floors because it was so hot and there was no air. It was a real life cliché. You know, how everyone talks about having nothing and making something of it. That was us. That was me.

It’s funny how many things have changed since then.

And now as I look for a new place to live I am being picky because I can. Because I have earned this. Because I can afford to be picky. Because I worked until my body felt broken in order to support myself. Because I never once curled into that tiny ball all my friends used to say they would have curled into if they went through half the things I had to go through.

We went to a grocery store real late at night to pick up alcohol. I wanted you to love me. We danced through the aisles and you twirled me and I had really bad sunburn so you bought me Neosporin and promised you’d get all the places I couldn’t reach. I watched your hands pick up a case of beer and I tried to imagine those hands doing other things. Holding mine. Tickling me. Writing me poems. Giving me goose bumps. When we got to the register the lady said it was too late to purchase alcohol-- that we couldn't buy any till tomorrow. That’s stupid, you said. I stood next to you. I didn’t care about the beer. I didn’t care about the sunburn or what time it was or anything, really. Sorry, she said. We both knew she wasn’t. We went back to my car and the sky was so velvet. There were no sounds. I wanted you to fill in all the empty spaces. When we got back to your hotel room I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended it was real. That this was normal. That you could love me. That we weren’t just place holders. I would wake up to you getting ready for work. I would watch you get dressed. I would wish you could stay. I just wanted breakfast but you were always leaving.

Heavy body and limbs and joints and bruises and kisses like fingerprints on shoulders and hips and I'm sinking in your waterbed or maybe I'm drowning. Your room has no windows so I don't know if it's daylight or night time but it's fine because maybe there is no time when I am with you. Time is not a thing. 

You draw on your desk with a permanent marker and I watch your knuckles and how you don't blink not even once.

"What are you drawing?"

"A cloud wearing glasses."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

And in this moment you have taught me that not everything needs an explanation. That sometimes things just are. 

I like that.

I watch you draw the cloud wearing glasses and your spine curves into a smile and it is like you are telling me a secret but you aren't really saying anything at all. Quiet moments are my favorite.

I threw my UGG boots away when I was in Seattle because the harsh Chicago snow and salt ate away at the fabric and made a hole and I heard it always rains in Seattle so I tossed them in the trash. I thought of you while I did this.

 YOU. Filling my car with balloons you blew yourself. I left my car at the train station. You broke in through the drivers side door with a wire hanger and filled my car with balloons the color of candy. I imagined you sitting there, using your oxygen to bring each balloon to life. I wondered what you would have said to the cops if one drove by and saw you breaking into a vehicle in broad daylight.

 YOU. Writing me a poem with an entire stack of sticky notes and posting them on my car. “You’re my Jersey girl,” one of them said. You were the only person besides my dad who ever said that to me.

 YOU. Your eyes the color of the sky when we went for walks with absolutely no destination in mind. The freedom was all we needed. The freedom, the air, the trees, and each other.

 YOU. Lying next to me—scratches stretched across your skin like directions. We were panting. Your eyelashes were so long. The veins on your arms pulsated. I thought maybe I loved you. Instead of saying that, I spent the next ten minutes kissing the moles spread across your flesh, “Like chocolate chips,” I said, Yum.

 YOU. Throwing my phone against the wall because I was seeing someone else and later when we were out of our minds on substance and your body was all over my body, you said, “Tell me you love me.” Your skin was melting and sweat dripped onto my stomach and my organs were  all little kites and you seemed so desperate. “Tell me,” you said again and again and again and maybe I wished I was somewhere else because none of it made sense but I said it. “I love you,” I said. Maybe I meant it. Maybe I just said it because I wasn’t sure what you would do if I didn’t.

 YOU. Pushing me into a wall because I loved calling you names. I pushed you verbally. I pretended to be as crazy as you. You couldn’t take it. I smiled because I liked the forcefulness of your hands. “Psycho,” you said when you saw me smiling. You meant it. You thought I was psychotic. I liked that.

YOU. Asking me to read something I wrote but I wouldn’t let you because I thought you’d think it was about you.

YOU. Thinking everything is about you.

YOU. Probably thinking this is about you.

YOU. Not realizing you could be anybody. You not realizing that everything is fiction. That everything is a first draft before it should be taken seriously.

YOU. Saying, “I want to make you happy.” And I believed it. Maybe.

YOU. Buying me UGG boots because Chicago winters are brutal and one day you asked me what would make me happy and I wanted to say love but instead I said boots.

                So you bought me UGG boots. After I finally got rid of you— after the fighting and yelling and spitting and restraining and blaming and palms on skin and fists on bone and words that cut deeper than knuckles and elbows— I was able to believe none of it mattered even though I was good so good at staying with you when nothing mattered.

I used to not know when to shut up.

I used to have the kind of mouth that’d get me in trouble because I let it keep spewing words— most of the words immature and angry and pointless. Most of the words (no matter how well thought out and planned out) didn’t matter. They didn’t matter because the people I was using them against didn’t matter. The people who provoked me were sad and bitter and lonely and angry about things I couldn’t change for them.  They lost control of their own happiness somewhere and instead of proactively trying to get that control back in their own life they tried to control my happiness. They tried to make me sad and angry and bitter just like them. I was an easy target because when I was my old self I didn’t know how to shut up and so they got off on knowing their words were living inside of me— eating at my organs, making me sick, causing me a kind of pain I didn’t know how to comprehend.

When I was young and didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut I would fight back with these people like my life depended on it. I would throw fists, throw words, throw bricks. I’d kick and scream until my throat felt like sunburn and until my face was red and until every tense muscle felt like it might snap in half from the pressure and then I would look around and realize none of it mattered. The fighting, the yelling, the tension, the drama, the explaining, the pleading, the apologizing. It didn’t ever matter because when someone is only dragging you down on behalf of their own problems that ultimately only they can fix- it doesn’t matter how perfect the words you choose to use are. It doesn’t matter if you are articulating yourself calmly or if you are freaking out about it because at the end of the day people do not change. People are not thoughtful. People cannot be trusted. You cannot make someone believe something or make someone understand something or make someone see things differently because these people are not looking for someone to change their mind. These people do not care if they are right or wrong. These people just care that their actions and words are hurting someone else.

And maybe it took me this long to learn that because when I was young and stupid I used to think everything mattered. I used to think that it mattered what people thought of me. I thought that fighting for myself against these one-track-minded people might change things. I thought wrong.

The best defense against people who are still that young and still that petty— the people still too bitter and sad and lonely— is to shut up. Because if fighting and being condescending is all they have and all they want is a reaction and you refuse to react?—well then I guess they have nothing left.  

- I have made mistakes.

- I have been mistaken.

- I have mistaken someone for something that they are not and it has disappointed me.

- I have been mistaken by someone to be someone I am not and it is disappointing.

- Most of the time people are disappointing.

- Most of the time people are predictable.

- Most of the time I want to make the mistake of predicting someone's character because I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt but people do not surprise me anymore and all my predictions are real and it is disappointing. 

- Realizing that a person is not who you wanted them to be/ thought they would be/ hoped they would be is not a mistake. Being wrong about a person's character is not a mistake. Wishing for the best is not a mistake. Believing that people are better than what they show you is not a mistake. 

- Trusting someone is not a mistake.

- Trusting someone is beautiful. 

- Letting go when there is nothing left is not a mistake,.

- Letting go is probably never a mistake.

- Letting go takes more effort than holding on.

- "Pick your battles" is the smartest cliche I know.

- Making a mistake is mistaking when you've made a mistake and didn't learn.

- When you use/say the word mistake as many times as I have in the past ten minutes it no longer sounds like a word.

- Actually, if you repeat any word enough times it kind of loses its meaning.

Promise.

Sorry.

Trust.

Thank you.

Please.

Forever.

  One of my biggest fears in the world is one day I will run out of things to say. That one day I will open my mouth and nothing will come out and my limbs will feel like they’re being filled with water and my insides will be twisting and cracking and being shaped into something that can no longer function and that all I will want to do is explain this to you but I will not have the words.

I fear that one day I will have something very very important to say but no way to say it.

I am afraid that I might have all the answers but no way to articulate them and what good are answers if they can’t be shared?

I’m afraid that there will be something on the very tip of my tongue and the words I cannot find will feel like a blister and it will hurt.

I fear that because words are my weapons, I may one day be defensless.

One of my biggest fears is that one day I will have the perfect idea and no way to articulate it.

I am afraid that I will lose all my words. I will lose their meanings. I will lose their power.

My biggest fear is that I will feel so many things— I will be confused or sad or lonely or lost or in love or disappointed or happy or proud or excited— but no one will ever know because I will not be able to find the words.

I’m afraid that people will slip away like one of those dreams you always think you’ll remember after you wake up but you never do. I’m afraid people will slip away and I will not be able to stop them because I have run out of words powerful enough to make them stay. I’m afraid these people will disappear and that I will still feel their presence like a phantom limb and I will be sorry that I couldn’t make them understand.

I am afraid that one day I will be empty because words were all I had left and once they are gone I will have nothing.

I am afraid that I will be dying and I will have nothing to say with my last breath.

I am afraid that time is running out and words are running out and people are running out and I will have nothing left because I am exhausted and I have no more energy to repair all the things I have broken and I will no longer have the words to use as a band-aid for all the open wounds.

                When everything cleared up and the restaurant gradually emptied—an old woman sat at a table in my section. She had white fluffy hair on top of her head and it reminded me of a Q-tip. The wrinkles on her face made little paths across her cheeks and at the corners of her eyes. She held the menu with hands that looked like they’d been under water too long.

                I took her order. She was very pleasant.

                When I dropped her food off she asked me about my tattoos. I held my arms out with my palms facing up so she could see it all like an open book and I told her the story. She asked me to sit down across from her while I explained and sometimes when people ask me to sit with them I think they’re lonely. It’s not always the case but I like to think I am saving them somehow— reminding them that sometimes all you really need is one person who is good at listening.

                I told her about how I’m far away from my family and that most of my tattoos represent how torn I am because I don’t know where to be.

                “It’s good to not know,” she said. I smiled because it sounded like something I’d say. Something I probably already do say.

                “Do you have a boyfriend keeping you here?” she asked.

                “Sometimes. I mean sometimes he’s keeping here. He’s always my boyfriend.”

                “Keep looking,” she said. Her eyes  were a faded brown and they reminded me of old pennies and rust.

                “I’m sorry?”

                “For anything. Don’t stop looking for anything. For happiness. For new love.”

                I thought about telling her that I’d take whatever love I could get but I didn’t think that was her point.

                “I got it. But I’m happy,” I smiled to prove it.

                “I don’t doubt that you’re happy now. But don’t let it stop you from being happy later.”

                I’m really bad at planning my future. I’m really bad at managing my time and taking care of myself and not focusing on one thing. I need ten things to be doing all at once because my hands are restless when my brain isn’t moving at full speed. I thought about that and her copper eyes grew soft.  I thought about all the things I look for every single day to compensate for the things I’m lacking. The perfect word. A way out. A way in. I’m always looking for a surprise. I’m always looking for something to change me. I look for truth in strangers.

                “Maybe if we keep looking we’ll live forever. What if the secret to living is to keep looking for answers. Settling kills us.” When she said this her voice was not sad.

                I decided that I liked her. I thought about asking her why she felt this way. People are the way they are because something— an event or a person— willed them to be that way. It all stems from something. I wanted her to tell me everything. But she didn’t. I never asked. I cleared her table for her when she was done and she paid her bill and she walked away with her copper eyes and white hair and I didn’t know anything else.

We were the worst at breaking up.

“Let’s go to Boston Market,” he’d said to me on the phone. I was leaving cheerleading practice and my body was sore and I was tired but I would never turn down Boston Market. Not ever.

I pulled up to his driveway and waited in the car because there was a good song on and good songs mean everything. He waved his hand at me like, ‘come on’ because he was always rushing everywhere.

“You’re never gonna enjoy anything if you don’t take the time to absorb it,” I’d say. He would shrug and that would be the end of the conversation.

His car always smelled like stale cigarettes and tar and grease. I got used to it. It was comforting. As we drove to Boston Market I looked out the smeared windows and thought about cornbread. I hate all cornbread except for Boston Market cornbread. He was silent at first. And then he said the most dreadful thing ever.

“We need to talk.”

“Well good thing I’m here then,” I said with a smile. He did not smile back. “Talk,” I said. The trees that we passed were the same trees we always passed and I realized that no matter how important of a talk we’re about to have, the trees will always be the same trees and for some reason I found comfort in that.

“I’ll tell you when we sit down.”

“Is everything okay?” I wanted to see his eyes because his eyes are the prettiest green I’d ever seen. When I was younger I used to say I would marry a man with green eyes. That was when I still wanted to get married. Now I just wanted to fall in love and be loved back by a man with green eyes. So far so good.

We got to Boston Market and he didn’t hold the door for me but he never held the door for me so I thought nothing of it. The girl behind the counter wearing a visor looked more bored than the pile of mashed potatoes that were probably sitting out for way longer than they were supposed to. We ordered our food and they said they had to make more chicken and that they would bring our trays to our seat and I was at the soda fountain when he came up behind me.

“Everything is not okay,” he said. His cup was still empty and I told him that maybe he’d feel better If he had something to drink. He shook his head sadly and I felt like a child whose parents didn’t understand how to share bad news. My stomach twisted. Good thing I got sprite.

We sat down at the table we usually always sat down at and he wouldn’t look at me and his cup was still empty. I sat on my hands.

“We need to break up. I’m not happy.”

I let the words sink in for a minute. Two minutes. Three. We were silent and I was trying to come up with something to say. Being speechless gives me anxiety.

“What?” Was all I could come up with.

“I said I’m not happy. We can’t be together. I think we should see other people.”

I looked around the restaurant and there was an old couple with matching white hair eating dinner and smiling at each other. They obviously had no idea that my world was ending. No one else was there. I looked back at him and his green eyes. He didn’t flinch.

“No. No…you can’t. You can’t leave.” I could feel the panic swimming up my gut, crawling up my esophagus making it hard to swallow. Everything felt heavy and hopeless and my ears burned. “Please,” I added— not because it was polite but because I meant it.

He sighed loudly like I was interrupting him from something important. Which I wasn’t. “Look. Don’t be all dramatic,” he said. He shifted in his seat and looked past my right shoulder.

A young girl walked over to us and she was smiling and I wanted to punch that smile right off her face. She was carrying our trays of food. My tray was mustard yellow and his was the color of an old carrot. She placed the trays down in front of us and smiled even wider.

“Do you need anything else?”

“No,” he said, looking around to see if there was anything else he might need. “Everything looks great.”

My mouth hung open because everything didn’t look great. In fact, nothing looked great. I didn’t know how to articulate that to this girl though, because I was pretty sure Boston Market didn’t sell second chances.

She walked away and she might have even skipped and I wanted to set the place on fire.

I cried into my mashed potatoes. Each tear landed silently and I watched them fall and I tried to count them so that I didn’t feel tempted to look at his face. I could hear him chewing his food. His silverware scraped together like grinding teeth. He used the salt and pepper and I couldn’t take my eyes off my teary potatoes. Tears are salty. I wanted to ask him if he wanted to use my tears as salt only I couldn’t even get a word out because I was hyperventilating.

It was summer out so everyone was tan and smiling and the sun was bright and cheery, too. I sat in the booth and my legs stuck to the plastic seat cover. I could feel my skin getting blotchy and I hoped he didn’t notice. I slid out of the booth giving myself plastic-burn because my skin squeaked against it and I pretended it didn’t and I went right into the bathroom. I blew my nose. I blew it again. And then again. When I went back to the booth he was swallowing and I watched his Adams apple moving around his throat. I wanted to squeeze it.

“Are you going to eat?” he asked. “Or are you going to waste the food I just bought?”

I did not eat. I took it home in a to-go box like usual. In the car on the way home it was quiet but I put on a song called, “Almost Lover,” and hoped he listened to lyrics as intently as I did. All I hear when music is on is words. I wondered if he paid attention to the words like I did.

When I got back to my car I threw the leftovers into the back seat and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel and cried while listening to sad music.

I ended up forgetting the leftovers for a week and soon my car smelled like an alley. I was upset for wasting so much food but then I convinced myself that the leftovers were never good anyway.

He called me a few days after the leftover scenario.

“I wasted all that food,” I told him. It didn’t matter, though.

“Sometimes we forget,” he said. He said it like it had a double meaning. I smiled.

A day after that I pretended my car wasn’t working and I called him and asked him to look at it. He showed up wearing green so that his eyes would pop out and I knew he did it on purpose. I watched his elbows as they bent and straightened. I wanted to kiss them. And so I did.

“I have you right where I want you,” he said with a smile I wanted to put in my pocket and save for later. He placed his hand on my thigh and the overwhelming desire to feel needed burned my insides like the shots we just took and I wondered if that meant he was right. I was there, wasn’t I?

“No you don’t.” I took a sip of my beer and remembered how I just wanted to feel so I threw myself at him. And then I wanted to hurt so I tried to make him leave. I pushed. And then he started to leave and I asked him to stay. Please don’t leave yet, I’d said. And this is what I’m good at. I’m good at playing with my own emotions. Putting myself in situations where I know I’ll get hurt. People always leave, I always say. I said it to him. “You’re just going to leave like the rest of them,” I said once. And just like everyone else he said, I won’t. But they all do. They all leave. He left. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just predictable. Not because he was predictable but because I am. No one knows how to hurt me or break my heart better than myself. I have many years of experience. I’m a pro.

“I have you wrapped around my finger,” he said as he held one up and I wanted to bite his jaw.

“You’re wrong.” I looked away and I could feel his hand on me again and I hated that I liked it and then I liked that I hated it.

“I’m good. I’m good at this.”

And he was. But only because I let him be good at it. I wanted him to drive me crazy. I wanted to be reminded that I could feel things because sometimes I forget.

We left that night and I was at his house. Under his roof. Between his sheets. Below his body. But I had a feeling that this was not the place he wanted me. He did not want me here for any real reason besides the thrill of it all and maybe I knew that. Or maybe I was wrong and it wasn’t a thrill. Maybe it was loneliness. I was lonely and going anywhere with anyone helped my brain stop working and I liked that sometimes. I liked to not think and so I let him let me stop thinking. I didn’t know what role I was playing for him but I played along anyway.

And then I waited for him to get mean like they all do. But he didn’t. And then that string that attached me to his finger became unraveled and maybe a little tangled and the button broke and his hands weren’t on me and it’s almost like they were never there to begin with. And maybe that’s what’s different about this time. Maybe it’s because as much as I wanted to hurt— I didn’t. Maybe it’s because as much as I treated it like a game— it never was. We were just two people who needed to feel something because everything else was ripping apart like sheets of paper stuck in the rain. We found each other when we wanted someone who didn’t want us back and so we fell into each other. Folded into something that reminded us of familiarity and stability and it distracted us from everything else and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but I’m also not saying it’s a good thing.

 And then at the end of the day when I am sleepy from everything I put in my body and when everything feels numb and foreign and disconnected— I feel good. I am right where I want to be. I am not hurt. I am not aching. He is still wonderful, I am still crazy and unsure and needy, his eyes are still the darkest shade of blue, mine the lightest, and I will still listen to the sounds of violins and pianos and write about this because it is still living inside me somewhere and I want to get it out so I can stop feeling and I think this is all okay.

It is okay to still feel.