“I kind of see love as this escape for two people who don’t know how to be alone.”
before, September 23rd
It’s 7:52 PM on a Friday night and I’m drinking alone at a bar (well, I know the bartender) and reading old poems I wrote years ago about wicked boys (before I understood that I also like girls) and I’m laughing and I’m laughing and I’m thinking and I’m crying and I’m howling and I’m screaming because life is just a series of oopsies and how did we get here’s and I’m looking around and realizing nothing has changed while everything has changed and we’re still here making memories and tumbling along despite it all.
What are we so scared of?
That there’s no room on the lifeboats? We see someone doing something we’ve always wanted to do and feel that prick of envy like barbed arctic water and it shocks our system. Why be envious when nothing and no one is stopping you from doing the same?
I have a ninety-seven-slide detailed PowerPoint dissecting my dream trip across Europe. Each city deliberate and designed to peel back a calloused layer of myself. It’s a dream that becomes more and more urgent: seeing other worlds to escape my own.
“Why do I make everything so complicated?”
now, September 25th
It’s 6:49 PM on a Sunday night and I’m revisiting Linklater’s Before Sunrise for the hundredth time and wondering how every season of life leads me back to Celine – to another version of myself. I wonder if I ever won’t be afraid of flying. Every love letter I write, I dedicate to the person somewhere up ahead. Someone in a dream.
“It’s like our time together is just ours, its own creation. It’s like I’m in your dream and you’re in mine.”
A list of places I’d like to run to – I’d like to run away with you – places I’d like to see:
· grand canyon (i’ve still never been)
· paris catacombs
· northern lights
· mountains (any and all)
· libraries in prague
· stanage edge
· japan during cherry blossom season
· sedlec ossuary
· peyto lake
I’ve started keeping journals for some far-off future love to read.
I have so much to tell them, and I don’t want to forget.
“You know, I believe if there’s any kind of god, it wouldn’t be in any of us – not you or me. But just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something.”
What are we so scared of?
Falling in love? Seriously? I dare you. There is nothing so sweet, so warm, so life-altering and normal and human and exciting and devastating and painful and confusing and bizarre and dangerous and inconvenient and so perfectly timed as love.
“The answer must be in the attempt.”
What are we so scared of?
Quitting the jobs that make us miserable? Saying something we didn’t mean? Hurting someone because we assume the truth might hurt and we’d rather bank on the impossibility that they’ll never find out? Asking for what we want?
I fear falling.
She fears fighting.
They fear failing.
I crack jokes and bash men and preach divine feminine autonomy, but I’ve always wanted to melt into Parisian streets – the romance of it all. Sit along a sidewalk café with espresso, one drag of a cigarette. Knowing it’s not what I’ve always imagined but doing it anyway.
There is no fuller potential met than that of loving; being open to love, loving others, loving life. Wrestling with brutality - plucking at the sloppy seams we’ve stitched ourselves back up with after losing love again and again only to love again – only to maybe be, most likely be, almost certainly be re-ripped. Loving softer and with intention. Understanding their sutures are also shoddy. Nursing each other back to happy. Back to hope. Back to trust.
Please don’t pull the thread before I heal.
I want to reach my fullest potential.
I’d rather be hurt with a chance to heal than never feel.
“I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone.
The way he’s going to part his hair, which shirt he’s going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he’d tell in a given situation.
I’m sure that’s when I know I’m really in love.”
At any given moment, I’m taking a mental picture, pretending I’m dancing to a harpsichord.