March, 2006
The letter comes. Late. Weeks late. Almost months. An invitation. And interview. A school who's name I barely recognize, the collateral result of an otherwise indiscriminate application process. My criteria of choice involving only proximity to something I was willing to call Life, a lesser aperture set on learning. The process of it alone was heartbreaking, waterlogged and full up with the hollow ache of outgrowing an old love, an older friend. Waking up to realize that I am ready for more and he is still looking backward, leaving me anyway behind. Watching the remains of a short life lived too fully come to its necessary end.
June, 2005
I apply in piecemeal and unintentionally. Self sabotage at the core of it all. The best of schools were written to last, deadlines lapsed, easier to attribute the end result to a clerical error than genuine consideration and, later, genuine rejection. Unwilling, I suppose, at the time, to let go of my life unraveling. Waiting for him to change his mind, come back into the house, tell me "girl, stay. Don't go off without me." And I would have. I did. I would have stayed behind indefinitely for him. I would have exchanged my life wholly for the intermittent glow of his love. I would have stayed and been nothing if it meant, then, being with him.
August, 2005
I do not stay. Not because I am smart or strong or level headed. Because, in the end, it was him. He was some kind of combination of above, embedded in the angry ego of our gender inequity. He made me go. Pushed me, gasping like a chest wound, away. Such a long goodbye, seen myopically and unevenly by everyone. It took a year to do and happened in a single day.
March, 2006
It was half-hearted, at best. All that was left had to be shored up to just keep breathing, remembering to eat. There was enormous much inside of me, and I grew more invisible every day.
I had thrown them each out, every stone I had left. I was feeble and shaky, uncertain and unwilling. And this is where I landed. This letter. On the counter belonging to my sister-in-law's sister. She had taken me in, gave me a room and a bed and a place to be undone in; she was sympathetic and wet with her own sadness. We annealed together like dew. And I called them, responded. Sent them my money. Replied. Yes. I will be coming, thank you, see you then.
February, 2006
He comes without warning. Careless and intentional. Perfectly brown skinned with small somthings that look to me like freckles. He surprises me completely and I am winded when I look at him. He is better looking than I am, I think. I am red and blotchy, sweaty, hiding under my baseball cap, gwaky in my running shoes, just barely back to living; only just remembering little joy, smiling easily, creasing my face. We lean around each other awkwardly, talk about our dogs. I suggest walking, because I cannot sit inside my own skin without moving, because looking at him makes my heart fibrillate and I am not at all ready for this. I am only now just slightly dry.
December, 2005
I am tired of hearing that I am too skinny. I feel that I own this, have earned it. Like a scar, this is what is left. I replace one empty ache for another. Hunger is distracting, it fills me with its demanding emptiness, until I no longer know what it's like to desire. To crave. Hunger is the way I calm the maelstrom within. I run eight miles a day. Because I cannot quell my own hard-beating heart. Because I cannot sit still any longer in anguish and wait. Because I am ready to move on and I need some place to go to. Because I have almost successfully outrun my own messy insides, turning them into sinew and muscle. Something structured, something solid, something other than this.
January, 2006
I feel urgently destructive, intent on transforming the resident ache of old loss into the sweet distraction of new skin. Superficial gain. All I want is someone good looking and unavailable. Additionally, a major drinking problem, a legal past, unemployment or an unremitting use of the word "dude", an inability to spell the word "cucumber" would be ideal. And they are everywhere. These men. Beautiful and golden and utterly absent. They are anywhere that I look. They live here to surf, all else is secondary. They are nothing to get stuck in and they are everything I am looking for.
I am skinny enough. Pretty enough, maybe. So it begins the same, with all of them. A drink at the bar. Someone bums a cigarette. Stilted conversations ensue. But in the end, despite my best efforts, they see through me. I don't use the right language, or tilt my head just so, or giggle in the way they have come to recognize. I am interesting enough to consider, but in the end my vocabulary betrays me, my stature, my deadpan deliveries give me away. They retreat, some more reluctantly than others, knowing ultimately that I am Complicated. Pretty, but Smart. All in all, a complete Liability.
I go home and take Tylenol PM, wondering why of all the times I have ended up with shitty guys, the one time I am actually looking for one, they are abysmally out of reach.
February, 2006
He comes out of nowhere. He is golden and calm and distractingly good looking. He is everything I am afraid of: intelligent, employed, kind. He has a dog, an Ivy League education, he keeps his plants alive, surfs, takes trips to Mexico, practices yoga. I want him to be stupid. I want him to be disposable. I want to be dizzy, but not like this. I wanted someone to trip on, not fall over. Not now. Not again.
But he is kind. And normal. And easy. I cannot protest. This is too simple. He is too easily my love. I tremor only at thinking that I wasted so much time not knowing him, not living such a breathful, uncomplicated life.
