“some things never change even when they hurt”
Sat on a plane, my bag stuffed with lemonade and beef jerky barely fitting under the seat in front of me. The aisles were packed, the metallic and ozone-like smell of children coming back inside after a winter recess was choking me through my mask.
This was my second one-way flight. I was leaving a place where I felt the lowest and the highest; I felt everything, I did everything, I loved everything, I hated everything. And I was leaving it all like it never happened.
The day before I had sat in my bare apartment, the millions of odd decorations I placed on any open space all packed and shipped and gone. My roommates were gone. It was just me. The couch never felt more comfortable, the stale cushions holding my body perfectly. I opened the blinds and watched the snow trickle down to the ground, dotting the upsettingly gray sky and clouds. The trees were a dead brown with bark peeling off every time the snow touched their branches. Despite the disintegrating environment, I was happy and calm, excited to be alone. I wrapped myself in my peachy duvet, the only color left in the room.
I wondered why I wasn’t more upset about leaving. I was finally living somewhere next to the water, sitting near the river and standing in the pouring rain, I felt every drop. It seemed beautiful. I seemed beautiful. Life seemed beautiful.
Still, I was reluctantly aware that I hardly felt like a person in that place. It was as if a black hole was festering in my chest, slowly pulling in every bit of my being and erasing it from existence. The shell of me could function, but there was nothing inside.
But I had My Love. With him, the black hole seemed to become a dying star on the verge of supernova. I was gifted evolved pieces of myself, rebuilding my consciousness bit by recovered bit.
“i’m a lilac and you are my sun”
Sat on a damp blanket at a picnic in mid-September, myself and the vegan chocolate-covered strawberries I made pressure cooking from sun and humidity.
My Baby, my sweet Siamese cat passed the weekend before. She was my companion on long homework nights, the sweetest cuddler while napping, a comfort during a breakdown. My Baby waited for me, waited to die until I was with her. I almost didn’t come to the picnic.
But that is where I met My Love.
He was a friend of a friend, sitting across from me on the ground. Never would I have predicted the effect his presence would have on me. I was captivated, taking in every detail of the person I saw in front of me, his voice echoed through my mind amplifying each syllable. For a moment I felt safe. Time passed and the picnic-goers moved together for a picture. Him and I ended up near each other and we seemed to catch each other’s eyes a little too much.
Asking everyone but him, I got his social media accounts. I didn’t even know his name until our first date. We bonded over condiments and art, movies and caffeine, stolen paper cutouts and all things horror.
The days together evolved into weeks together evolved into months together. Finding ourselves in the middle of December, we sat in our favorite queer coffee shop, one slice of pink cake next to a slice of dark chocolate cake, a frothed heart floating atop my “too nutty for his taste” latte. Holiday songs played quietly throughout the shop, accompanied by the sounds of steam bursts and grinding espresso.
This was a moment I thought I would never experience. Everything was so easy with him, so comforting. I told him how he was a sun in my life, the third soul that’s ever let me rest in their capable hands. How odd that the loss of My Baby brought the life of My Love.
“when you’re gone, sky turns crimson”
Sat on my cold and dense bed back home, boxes piled in my already small room. My Baby’s sphere of blankets vacant and her matted little moose toy untouched. The walls were covered in a graveyard of pictures containing people I no longer knew, cards from those I had spectacularly fallen out with still taped to my dresser. I was unable to turn on the light, too afraid to confront what surrounded me.
I hated it. This was supposed to be my space and it seemed to house everyone but me. I felt so alone. An empty, drilling alone, my consciousness caving in on itself. I wanted to rot in my bed. I didn’t want to wake up or move. If I was asleep, I wouldn’t have to think, process my emotions, confront my mind.
Nothing could end my thoughts. Each question drilled my consciousness: Who was I if I wasn’t happy? Who was I if I wasn’t productive? Who was I if I wasn’t home? Who was I to my parents? Who was I to my siblings? Who was I to my few friends? Who was I to strangers passing by on the street?
Who was I to me?
My Baby wasn’t here, and neither was My Love. I had no one to help me. I thought I was finally doing better. I thought I had done everything right this time.
Tears streamed down my face as I remembered the coffee shop with My Love, the times I sat with My Baby outside in the backyard as she showed her belly to the sky. I begrudgingly accepted that I had never done anything for Me. I was simply a product of everyone and everything else. I understood why I’d rather die than sit alone with myself.
“you help me define how to remind myself what it’s worth”
Sat in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel after my shower was cut short by the water heater giving out. Music playing from my phone filled the air untouched by steam. I was trying to ground myself, my eyes erratically watching the water drip from the shampoo bottle, then the towel left on the floor, then my wet hair stuck to my shoulders.
I refused to clear the steam from the mirror. It was easier to look at the blurry and distorted version of myself. My eyes were proving to be unreliable, forcing me to engage my other senses. I turned the faucet on and placed my hands under it. It was cold. I could see the disruptions my hands made in its flow, the minuscule bubbles popped in my palms, water flowed through the ridges in my fingers. This was the first time I felt it this way, so intensely. The water was freezing my hands and began turning them odd shades of red, but I didn’t mind. It proved I wasn’t entirely numb.
I took this as a sign, a sign that I was present enough to nurture Me. Planning the rearrangement of my room, I would clear everything out, the current furniture and decorations. A blank slate for a blank person.
My bed had to be shifted back to the window wall. I was terrified to move it there after an earwig had somehow made its way to my face during a humid summer night, but I needed the sun to accompany me each morning, and the moon to protect me each night.
I bought a bookshelf to house what I thought Me would like to see each day. My plants I had unfairly neglected were the first to go on, hopefully they would forgive my past self now that they could bathe in light. Rocks and crystals always fascinated me, I liked their variety and how they had existed on this earth far before and far after me. I collected every lovely one I saw, now resting on the shelf. I also seemed to have a soft spot for anything odd. For the past few years, I had been buying broken fox ornaments during holiday sales, giving them a loving home after being deemed “undesirable”. I set them up in their own little spaces.
The last facet Me wanted to see were My Baby’s ashes. I had them hidden away. If I didn’t see them, I didn’t have to accept that she was gone. She was in an intricate wooden box, stained darkly with a flower carved into its surface. I also had a paw print impression of hers in a sleek black frame. The sensation I felt in that moment, staring at her box and paw, was the pain of being alive. My Baby was gone. I would never see her as she once was.
Now I saw her in the pale blue sky that matched her eyes, in a baby duck that I swore she looked like because of the white markings around her mouth, in the shadows cast by the moon that matched her dark fur, and in the white light of the stars that matched her belly and toes. I saw her in My Love.
“so i wait for the dawn”
Sat on a spotless bed in a small hotel room, watching My Love read the journal I had been keeping during our few months apart. It contained draining breakdowns, drawings done when words were too much work, declarations of absolute adoration and love, self-realizations that had dawned upon me.
I didn’t feel complete. Me was still a project that required my daily attention.
I did feel safe, a safety that wasn’t provided by My Love alone, a safety that began with Me and flourished with his presence. I acknowledge the work I’ve completed, the steps I’ve taken to grow Me. The complexities of it all are oftentimes confusing and difficult to convey.
I hope My Baby and My Love feel my eternal gratefulness for their presence in my existence. I know Me feels grateful to finally be cared for, something she had been missing far too long.
Header titles inspired by Jesse Rutherford’s song “Bloom Later”