#notebookings

to realize that was the point

After years of silence, a silence I built bone by bone around me, not realizing what I was building was a cage, you start to haunt me. I meet M. at the reservoir and stop short at the silhouette of a man in all black with a sharp jaw and a big nose. I turn around, palms immediately sticky. He is wearing Vans, I tell myself. You would never wear low top Vans. For as long as I knew you, you would only wear dirty brown leather boots or running shoes or orange Crocs that I found hideous. After you, I dated a man who wore Birkenstocks and socks, and when I would look down and remember his splayed feet the light would go out between my legs. But it was never that way with you. The orange Crocs, your idiotic hungover face chugging orange juice from the carton, puking saffron bile into a metal bowl next to your bed. It didn’t matter. The light between my legs never went out. My body circled yours like a seahorse. Did you know they mate for life? Did you know that the men give birth? Father-birth - you would have laughed at that. You pushing out your bloated stomach after dinner. A balloon of skin and bone and air. Breath glittering with tobacco. The heat I felt for you never cooled. You are still my emergency contact on forms I never bothered to update. It took years to peel you off of my life. Did you know anger is only three shades of orange away from lust?

A year that asked questions but gave no answers. A year of open faced tomato sandwiches and long lonely hikes. A year I tried to talk less and listen more. A year I wrote less but saw more, heard more. A year of morning pages and microdosing mushrooms. A year of listening. A year of sweat, shivering palm trees, a pinch of salt. A year that taught me to loosen my grip on my life, lower my blinders, dream again. A year I was a little reckless and utterly unflappable. A year I realized every ending is a beginning. A year of rising to the occasion. A year of burning out. A year I no longer wanted to write but sometimes I did anyways. A year I loved no one but myself. A year of gratitude blooming from my mouth like flowers - for my resilient body, for my cheap rent and backyard of fruit trees, for the city I love, for friends forged into family. A year of writing love letters beneath a full moon. A year I got worse at answering emails and texting back but better at picking up the phone and making eye contact. A year I tried to move lightly from defeat to defeat, a year I learned that it hurts more to not try. A year of sore muscles from the elliptical and writing while sitting cross legged. A year of growing pains. A year of grace, of loving this life simply because it is mine, in so many small, strange, singular ways. A year I tried to taste as much as I could. A year I forgave myself. A year in which nothing could scare me. A year in which everything scared me but I did it anyways. A year of driving myself. A year I left most parties at 4AM. A year I tried to be honest with everyone without hurting anyone. A year I mostly just tried to be honest with myself.

4 PM at the liquor store near my apartment/a balding man shoving a clear flask of vodka into the back pocket of his blue jeans/sucking his teeth at the white miniskirt I borrowed from C. this morning/a man wiping the pay phone on the hem of his shirt before using it/probably germs, but maybe fingerprints/4 PM at the liquor store near my apartment/the last half-hearted exhale of heat/slow spreading tangerine sky/marmalade sun/crawling towards the scabbed mountains/I am thinking about cold chlorine/wearing this spring heat wave like a scarf/heat winding its way around my neck, wet and full-bodied/every flower in LA is blooming and I can’t smell a single one/I am thinking about the red blur of the sunset/blood stains on my sheets/honey on my lips/milk of magnesia on my canker sore/eucalyptus branches in the shower/mint and steam and deep breathing/all the useless knowledge/of being/a woman/the old man sitting in the backyard of my building/watching me putter pantsless around the kitchen/a long-necked Budweiser/the blue sky/a wide yawn 

Your therapist says you shouldn’t see him until you have figured out what you want. She loves to drawl the word boundaries, drawing it out into a round-bellied mouthful. You say you want to see what he wants and then you’ll figure it out from there, but she leans forward and puts her elbows on her knees and says that won’t work. You whine. You say, how do I know what I want. You say, I want both things. I want him back and I want to never see him again. She says you are grieving. She says you are processing. She says all of this very slowly, like you are a child who is not listening. You are a child who is not listening. All you can see is the days passing like leaves falling off trees. All you can see is your own sadness blaring like a siren. All you can see is the slow spreading stain of being left, the sting of being forgotten, of someone deciding they’re better without you. On your worst days all you can see is him, blond hair and freckled shoulders, though you shield your eyes like he is the sun. On your worst days you prickle like a cactus and resent that you don’t have the choice to leave yourself.