strangers with memories @ambiti-n - Tumblr Blog

sentimentalbeing2001

bell hooks

extrasad

I dangled my feet off the side of his bed

Swinging them just above the cold floor

Refusing to make contact with the hardwood

“I can’t find my socks,” I complained.

They were tangled somewhere in the sheets

Lost to the night before.

“Here, do you want a nice pair of wool socks?” He offered in a rare show of thoughtfulness.

I nodded and he dug through the pile of fresh laundry I knew he’d probably never put away

And pulled out a pair of striped socks, well-loved.

“You have to give these back,” he said, kissing me on the head.

I went home, his socks slouching around my ankles, delighted because:

A. I had something special to him, something that he wanted back and was trusting me to care for and return. I would never just lend my favorite socks or gloves to just anyone. Having something special of his must make me special to him.

B. He wanted to see me again. This was his way of telling me that. If anything, we’d at least have to see each other again so I could return his favorite socks.

A few weeks later, we spoke on the phone about past lovers and the souvenirs we’d kept. I told him about the quilt on my bed that a much older man had offered me on my way out the door, and the tshirt in my pajama drawer that belonged to my first love, unworn and unwashed for years.

“What are you going to keep of mine?” He teased.

“Well, I already have your socks,” I replied.

“What socks,” he asked?

My god, I feel everything too deeply.

flowerytale

Edgar Allan Poe, from a letter to Mrs. Maria Clemm, July 1849

ambiti-n

Age

Last weekend I tested my problems in alcohol to see whether they would sink or swim and I wound up making out with eight people, four of them not even categorized in the gender I like. This past week I’ve been burdened with a sore throat and a spine-chilling cough, which is understandable after swapping spit with eight others.

Finally fed up with my symptoms, I headed to a nearby walk-in clinic. Due to the limited number of seats, I found myself sharing a couch with a little girl and her mother.

The child’s youth radiated off her skin as she sliced the air with her princess wand and became mesmerized by the “soap” on the table, aka hand sanitizer. For a while I surveyed the scene in a state of tranquility, but then a question escaped the girl’s lips.

“Mommy, why am I only the little kid here?” she asked, tugging on her mother’s blouse as if she expected the answer to descend from her sleeve. “Everyone else here is old.”

In that moment I realized I am no longer a child. The whole reason why I was sitting in that waiting room to begin with is a far cry from a problem that belongs to a kid. My parents’ hairs are starting to thin and grey, and I am not all that far from the age they were when they brought me into this world. Although I feel six, “teen” is still the suffix of my age. In a year or so I’ll be sitting in a lecture hall located in a far away state, pretending I know what I want to do with the remainder of my life when I haven’t even figured out what’s for dinner yet. And I’m scared.

When I was a little girl- not just in my head, I mean actually a little girl- I envied everyone who trumped me in age. I desired their beauty and their freedom. Every time my mom left the house, I crept into her bathroom and daubed her costly cosmetics across my face. And oh god, whenever my father threw the notorious line, “Because I’m the adult and I said so!” in my face, all I wanted was a three before the age that I actually was at the time.

I don’t recall the mother’s response to the daughter’s question due to my own thoughts entrapping me for quite some time. What caught my attention again was the daughter attempting to cuddle with her mom, and the mother rejecting her by saying, “We don’t have to cuddle all the time.”

Sure, I’ll remember that moment for the rest of my life, but I am highly dubious that the mother will because at this time she does not recognize the mistake of her reply. If she could remember her retort in ten years, she would reflect on it with remorse. When she catches her daughter slipping out the back door to do drugs at 3 AM, she’ll wish that just a hug from her was still all her daughter needed to fill the gaping hole in her chest.