#bb me

it me!

Day 1 ➡️ Day 11,688

Same nose, same lips but a hell of a a lot more hair.

31 was fantastic and tbh, this is the healthiest and happiest I’ve been in long time and I don’t plan on changing that anytime soon. My birthday last week consisted of treats at work, a Friday off, and breaking in the new boat up at the cabin with family.

It was decidedly chill and a vibe that I loved.

32 is going to be even better. There’s a lot I want to do— like, oh, I don’t know, post the TRR multiverse of Jaela that I have on Ao3 (busy bitch and broken links DO NOT HELP)— and take off writing my own shit/correcting and finishing Autumn Blues… and unveiling the 3rd in that series that takes 10 years later.

Lots of writing to do. Maybe I’ll explore writing some OG smut and drama and shit under a pen name because my mother is not reading that.

But who knows. All I know is that I love my life, my partner, my friends, the people in it and that I’ll continue to lift heavy shit.

“You should still be at home. It must be like thirty degr—like negative two degrees,” I said, trying and failing to convert to Celsius in my head. “Why don’t you go to Richelle’s? She must be worried sick.”

               “Not Richelle.”

               “Okay, well, go home.”

               “I don’t have any money for the tube,” George said, in this awful despairing voice like a creature already dead, and I suddenly realized that, one, he was slurring, and two, he had been slurring the whole time and I hadn’t noticed. Because of course he was.

               “You’ve been drinking,” I said. “Go home. Call someone to pick you up and go home. It’s daytime there, isn’t it? How long have you been outside?”

“I think they believe I have antisocial personality disorder,” said George. “They will send the police after me and put me in jail.”

               “They will not do that.”

               “How do you know?” George asked, with deep cunning.

               “I know.”

               “I am a psychopath. They lock up people like me. I could kill and eat someone, like this lady in the book I just read.”

“You are not a psychopath. Nobody thinks you are one. You are bipolar and anorexic and drunk and drug-seeking as fuck and everyone who cares about you is very worried.” I paused. “I am very worried. Do you understand that?”

               “Richelle isn’t worried. She says I’m an abuser now.”

               “Does she really, or are you just projecting that?”

               “I told her I was going to jump off the bridge if she didn’t come get me, more or less. Last week. She says that’s manipulative, and that is, when I reflect, pretty manipulative.”

               “Oh,” I said. I tried to think of someone else he could call, but my mind was blank. George had a repository of people he said were his friends, but as far as I knew they were mostly his friends when he was supplying them with vodka. Richelle was the one I knew would generally stick around to pick up the pieces after parties, and make sure George ate, and all of that. I had friended her on Facebook. Richelle and George both liked to joke they were going to get married, even though both of them were gay.

“I wasn’t bluffing, and she was the one who offered to come retrieve me, I didn’t ask, but I see her point. I don’t want to see her point but I see it. And now she says she needs a break from me.”

               “Oh god, George,” I said.

“I have to get up and leave,” George said. “The guy in the store is looking at me weird. I must have been using the WiFi too long.”

“Where are you going to go?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” George said. “Maybe the river. It would be very cold. And nobody would miss me.”

“You are going to go home,” I said. “You’re going to go home now.” Behind me, there was the sound of the door opening, and I looked up in surprise. Thomas was glaring down at me.

“Be quiet, will you?” Thomas said. “It’s three thirty in the morning. What the hell are you doing shouting?”

“Sorry,” I mouthed. Thomas turned and shut the door behind him. I felt in my pocket to make sure I had my key. My fingers hit my hip under the thin fabric of my pajama pants. I did not have my key. I leaned over and knocked with one hand low on the wood of the door, hoping Thomas hadn’t already laid down in bed again.

“I’m bothering you, aren’t I,” George said on the other end of the line. “I can tell.”

“It’s just early,” I said. “My roommate got woken up.”

“Oh god, I even ruin the lives of people I don’t know now,” George said.

“Oh, fuck off,” I said. “You didn’t ruin anyone’s life. You made my life really great for a while, and even when you’re messed up like this, you’re not some evil monster. Just go home, make some tea, and go the fuck to bed.”

There was a long pause. “I’m probably going home,” George said. I could hear the sound of traffic behind him.

“Well, good,” I said, cautiously.

“I’m going to hang up to walk.” And the phone clicked off, leaving me sitting in the hallway. Thomas didn’t open the door. I knocked three more times and checked the time on my phone. It was almost four.

The all-night doughnut place on the corner a few blocks down from the campus was empty when I came in. I couldn’t even see the cashier for a minute or two. The yellow walls had pictures of flowers on them in small, silvery plastic frames made to look like they were gilt. I checked if the place had WiFi and signed in to it, pulling up George’s blog. It still hadn’t been updated since the post he had made about the hospital. I studied the picture at the top of his page, with the dark eyes peering out into the world with a studied coolness that was nothing like the way George actually acted.

“Can I get you anything?” the guy behind the counter said. “Ma’am sir ma’am?” I was in my pajamas still, sweats and a university sweatshirt, and my gender was thus more debatable, I guess.

“A bear claw and a coffee,” I said, smiling. “I think.” I wondered if my hair looked okay.

I watched him reach into the dirty glass case with a piece of brown wax paper and grab the pastry, and then fill up a paper cup with dark brown coffee. The guy was maybe three years older than me, black with a kind of cute snub nose, and had bad acne scars on his face. He made eye contact with me as he poured the coffee and looked away. I actually could probably startle this boy into kissing me, I thought. I am a mysterious, androgynous stranger in pajamas. He will think this is his own personal quirky rom-com. Nobody else is going to come in the shop. We could make out in the back. George, I remembered, had once let a strange man into his apartment on a whim. This could be a way of getting even, surely, of having equally remarkable stories. But as I took my bear claw and coffee I knew I would never so much as open my mouth to suggest it. I retreated to the safety of a formica-topped table and stared out at the dark street, my back turned on the cashier. I looked down at my phone and saw that George had tried to call again. I had missed him, because my phone was on silent. I hit the redial button and put the phone to my ear, but nine rings later he hadn’t picked up.

“Shit,” I said aloud.

“What is it?” the guy behind the counter asked.

I didn’t know how to lie, early in the morning. “My friend is in trouble, I think,” I said. “He tried to call.”

“I’ve been there,” the guy laughed. “Hope he’s okay.” He disappeared into the back. I felt an overwhelming embarrassment rise. I didn’t like telling people anyone around me was in crisis. It felt like a betrayal. I stood up and gulped down the scalding hot miserable coffee and left the shop, walking aimlessly into the night. I thought maybe I would go to one of the libraries on campus. As I rounded the corner onto the sidewalk, I paused at the sound of a rattling trash can. I took a bit of the bear claw and looked down the long alleyway at a cat that was balanced on a fence. It was big and black, and its eyes were reflecting the light from the parking lot next door. I took a step toward it and it meowed. Nan once told me how to approach cats, and I tried to do what she said, stepping slowly, a little bit at a time, making that little soft noise with my teeth. The cat watched me skeptically and hopped down from its fence, moving toward me a little. I wasn’t sure why I wanted so badly to bother this cat, but it seemed almost like an omen. Its fur looked soft and I wanted to touch it. I needed so badly to touch something warm and soft like that.

I set down the bear claw on the glass-covered asphalt of the alleyway and the cat came closer and put its little velvet nose to the sugary surface. This was probably a terrible thing to do, I thought. But there was a little patch of white whiskers above the cat’s eye, and it felt very important to do what I did next, which was to reach out and pet its fur as if it were my cat, and I knew it, and it loved me. In retrospect this was a bad idea.

I didn’t really register it as I saw the cat arch its back and hiss, but I evidently recoiled enough to allow it space to race past me. It was a darting bolt of electricity outlined against the very early morning, shooting off away from me, over the sidewalk, into the street. I stood up and watched it run. For a split second I wanted to race after it, follow it where it must be leading me. I stepped forward out of the alley and back onto the sidewalk in time to hear the screeching of tires and watch as a truck swerved rapidly in the road, its tires skidding heavily, leaving black marks. The tires hit the cat’s spine, I think. I didn’t watch that part. Instead I turned to try and see the truck’s license plate number as it drove away. I almost tapped it into my phone—I have a memory for numbers. But then I remembered that there’s not exactly anyone to call, to report a guy who hits a cat with his truck.  I stood and stared at the cat dying in the road, holding my phone and feeling a deep weight pressing down on me from the sky. I stood there a long time.

5-yo me: It’s an island. There’s only so far you can go.

Where 5-yo me got her understanding of islands (0:30):