Here there be totems.

-- Creep

[ape-cast]

“Santa Claus isn’t real,” I declared to the van full of elementary school girls. I thought they’d want to know it, the truth I had recently found out. I sat there with a grin waiting for their questions. I’d imagined they’d want to know how I knew. Why did I think that Santa wasn’t real. And I would tell them that I had read an article about it in an adult’s magazine that my mother had let me read. The adult’s magazine was full of secrets that I had temporarily been privy to and I wanted to share what I had learned to everybody.

But there were no questions. Just a moment of silence and furrowed brows. Poppy, who usually never said anything and barely registered emotion on her face, now looked at the ground in front of my feet in restrained anger. A younger girl yelled at me from the side of the van closer to the driver. “You don’t think he’s real because you don’t believe.” A grumbling from the crowd had risen in volume. “Santa is real!” Another girl yelled at me in defiance. “How could Santa not be real if I get presents from him on Christmas day?” I didn’t understand why they didn’t accept it. “He’s not real guys. Our parents made him up!” I strained through the cacophony. “My mom wouldn’t lie to me. You’re the liar.” The grumbling nodded its head in agreement. Poppy had tears on her face, “It’s not real to you because you don’t believe in him.” I looked over to the other side of the van. Teresa, the big bow on her head bopping with every bump of the road, was amused by it all. She looked at me with her arms crossed and then I saw her peer at the girl sitting on my right. It was my sister. She was younger than me. I hadn’t told her yet about my discovery. Not until now, with everyone else. She was looking at the floor of the van beneath her shoes. Her little arms supporting her weight as she leaned over and clasped her hands. She didn’t join the other girls who were jeering and arguing with me. But she didn’t talk to me either. I wasn’t supposed to tell her but I thought everyone should know. That was until I saw her silence and a storm grew in my stomach that also made me clench my fists.

The van finally got to school and the girls piled one after the other at the entrance. I stayed behind. I figured I’ll just exit last. The littlest girl Perrin scoffed when she passed me. As soon as one of her feet touched the school grounds, she looked back at me and shouted “Santa IS real!” The girls in front of her chirped their agreement and I thought wisely then to shut my mouth. I looked at my sister and reached out to her arm, “Hey Carla, I…” She stood up without looking at me and walked towards Teresa who was waiting for her at the back of the bus. I remember Teresa, with her arm interlocked with my sister, looking over her shoulder at me as they walked away. It looked like she smirked at me before she turned head to the front again. That day, I became the outcast and Queen Teresa started her reign.

[ape-cast]

There is a wall between my thoughts and my fingers that I have to wrestle through. And sometimes, I forget what I was meant to do, once I get to the other side.

“I came here with nothing. Why? What were my expectations? Why did I push through?”

There is a crowd in my thoughts. I am atop a stage, at least I think it’s a stage, and I am looking down at all of them. They are shouting commands at me. What am I? Am I an auctioneer? Auctioning my time to a voice in my head. But which voice do I entertain? Which is the one to write here? I take their bids, but one is always the strongest.

Don’t fall in love with a sentence. Forget her as soon as you decide to remove her, no matter how beautiful she is.

Why is a sentence a woman?

They have all treated me well through the years, different faces, different masks.

Perhaps they were never me. This is the me. The one who lives here.

To think, I have to be outside of myself, through time, through space, to know the future and know the past.

it’s easier to be me when I am alone. It feels like I have to find myself all over again. And over again.

I don’t think I am a story teller, when all I care about is the rhythm of the words. when arranged. like. So.

I should find fellow scribes. I would aspire to write for them so they can hear the music too.

Do I not belong to one person? Am I meant to belong to more?

I’m afraid that that life is lonely. That it is the life that I need to go towards. just dancing. by myself.

Isn’t it better to dance with somebody?

Is man meant to be alone? Or woman for that matter? What is meant anyway.

Do I need the loneliness?

I do. I do. I do.

I have no more time for, that word, I don’t want to say it. I have given it enough. I already tried. I already followed that dream. And I think, it’s time to let go of that d… but it’s my best dream.

I’m not ready to let go.

[ape-cast]

“I had fed off that look once, when I had been starving and thought such crumbs a feast.”

— “Circe”, Madeline Miller

[ape-cast]

My Arclight story

It wasn’t a blockbuster like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Avengers or anything. It wasn’t big or popular at all. It was a straight to DVD movie that most people hadn’t even heard about. But to me, it was everything.

I was twenty five and I was still trying to ‘make it’ in the camera department in Hollywood. I would take camera assistant, camera utility, and some camera operator gigs. One such phone call came from a friend of mine, a neighbor in fact, whom I’d filmed a couple of music videos for.

“Do you know Futurama?” he asked.

Do I know Futurama? DO I KNOW FUTURAMA?

Go back another ten years. I was 16, sitting in my cousin’s house staring at his big screen. There was a new cartoon premiering. It was from the creators of “The Simpsons”. This time, the genre was sci-fi. We couldn’t wait for it to start.

Then, we were introduced to Fry, a hapless pizza boy who accidentally falls into a cryogenic chamber and finds himself waking up in a different world a thousand years later. We meet his soon to be gang of friends. They are a one-eyed alien with purple hair, a robot with a panache for insults and alcohol, a lobster doctor who doesn’t know anything about human anatomy and can’t seem to keep himself in his shell, an old, supposed to be wise gentleman that’s supposed to be the leader of the group but can’t seem to remember most anything, and the list goes on.

I watched the show every week. Some of the characters’ quotes I’d internalized and repeated, and when they were repeated back to me by a stranger, I’d make an instant friend.

When I finally saved enough money to buy each season’s DVD box sets, I displayed them by my TV as trophies. My friends would borrow a season and I’d remind them to bring them back.

Back to my phone call. The show had ended four years ago and I was hoping for a comeback. Something. Anything.

“So they made a movie called ‘Bender’s Big Score’. It’s premiering at the Arclight and I’m covering the red carpet. After that, I get to watch the movie with my crew. Do you want to shoot it?” He asks.

“What?” I mouth to my palm. I try not to scream or prolong the moment too much fist pumping and jive stepping on my living room floor.

“Absolutely. I’m available”, I answer.

It’s the night of. I’m dressed in black slacks and a black long sleeve shirt. Camera people usually dress like this in these type of events so as to fade in the background. I find the circle we’re supposed to stand on beside the red carpet and prep the camera in my hands. My friend arrives and tests the microphone. We have our small talk. We do a sound check. And then, we wait.

[ape-cast]

Career change

(I wrote this as part of a school discussion on my experience getting and/or transitioning a job.)

In college 1.0, I had dabbled in Computer Science. I took engineering classes for the first two years but my other interest, filmmaking, won out in the end. I graduated with a Film degree, moved to L.A. as all my peers had done, and started a career that spanned more than a decade. I can't say it was all bad. It did have its shining moments, most notably fresh, breakfast burritos from the on set catering trucks. But I digress. I was unhappy and it took me years to admit it.

I finally decided to do something about it at the young age of 35. I did the oft-stereotyped millennial thing of moving back in with my Mother so I could go to school full time. I hid this life change from some friends because I was a bit embarrassed and I had some doubts about whether I could actually make this career change happen.

But surprisingly enough, things did happen. After my first quarter at OSU, I got asked to TA one of the intro classes. Then, after the second quarter, my friends and I joined up to participate in an OSU hackathon and we actually won some categories.

I started applying to jobs then. I got cold-rejected by plenty of companies and ghosted by most. But slowly and surely, I started getting invites for interviews. There were some interviews I flat out bombed, some interviews I thought I did well on but never got a response back, and some interviews that eventually led to internship offers.

One of these was on the day after Christmas. It was an especially good day because I had breakfast with my family in Texas and had been playing with my niece all morning. This was the interview for an internship with a FAANG company that I told my family "I would never get". And that it was just going to be for "good practice". But you know what? Those months of leetcoding, the studying for algorithms and data structures, the mock interviews with friends, finally came together. And I remember telling my sister with incredulity right after that interview ended, "I think I killed it." A week later, the offer came.

This summer I interned for that company. And by the end of the summer that bled in to the first weeks of this quarter, I was told by my manager that I had an offer for a full time job.

Nowadays, I've started reaching out to the friends that I hadn't talked to in a while. When they ask what I've been doing for these past couple of years, I tell them all about moving back in with my Mother, going to school full time, and interning at the ripe age of 37.

I guess you could say that I'm not embarrassed anymore.

[ape-cast]

This is my report on my first time at a caucus. Today, I went to one at my precinct in Nevada.

[Super late post found in private. Obviously, all voting is virtual now. This seems like a lifetime ago.]

Someone described it to me as "political musical chairs". That's fine. Seems interesting. I go with my Mom. She's going for Steyer. I'm going for Warren.

We get to the registration table. They can't find my name so I re-register as a Democrat.

They shuffle us from one room to a second, bigger one. Everyone sits with who they're going for. Everyone's in their "cliques". Bernie's supporters are almost half the room. There was only me and this lady, let's call her Nina, that were going for Warren.

She expresses her disappointment. "I thought she'd have more supporters. She did well on the last debate." I nodded. I thought so too.

For your precinct to send delegates to vote for your candidate, your candidate has to be declared "viable", meaning they have earned the required amount of votes as determined by the number of caucus voters for that precinct.

For a candidate in our precinct to become viable, they have to have 12 votes. That's combining the votes of those attending the caucus and the absentee votes.

Tina and I stayed with Warren hoping that maybe we'll get 10 votes from absentees.

We didn't. There were only eight votes. So now, we have a total of 10, still less than the required 12.

The candidates who became viable in the room were Sanders with 35 supporters, Buttigieg with 13, and Biden with 12. Steyer was the only other non-viable candidate that had in-person supporters.

We stared at the Steyer supporters from across the room. "Come to your Mother!" I waved at them, which was weird since my Mom was one of the Steyer supporters. I meant come to Warren, who felt like a Mom to me.

It didn't take much convincing. They waved back, "we'll join you! Come sit over here." We moved our chairs next to theirs. So from two people, we became six. Plus the absentee votes, we now had 14 for Warren. Warren was now viable.

We all wrote a check next to her name on the back of our cards and we were counted again. Someone from Buttigieg's camp commented that it felt like a M Night Shyamalan twist.

Now, it's time for the delegates to be divided among viable candidates. There were 13 delegates from our precinct. The viable candidates were Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and Biden.

Sanders got six delegates and Biden got two. Buttigieg ended up having the same number of votes as Warren at 14 (he gained one from the absentee Steyer vote who had him as their second choice).

So we had five delegates between the two camps. This meant that a tie breaker had to be done to determine which camp got the extra delegate.

The caucus chair breaks open a brand new deck of cards. "We've never done this before," he says. He explains that the tie is broken by having a representative from each camp draw a card from the deck.

The highest number wins the extra delegate. He also told us, in case of a number tie, the values of the suits in order. Buttigieg's camp picks a rep. He's over six feet tall wearing a Pete button on his chest. He was intimidating in stature but his face was friendly.

"You should go," Nina pushes on my arm. The Steyer supporters urge me on too. I get up and get to the right side of the caucus chair. He tells us to watch closely and make sure that he shuffles the cards seven times.

People jeer at him playfully. He retorts, "I'm from the midwest. I don't know how to shuffle cards." Laughter as someone from the back says, "we can tell." He keeps looking at me and the Pete representative, making sure we're watching. He shuffles the cards a seventh time.

A Sanders supporter lifts up her phone to document the moment. "This has never happened before!" She repeats. We draw in alphabetical order of candidates' last names. Pete's rep draws first. He draws a seven and he lays the card on the table.

Everyone now looks at me. My heart is beating against my chest. I picture Warren standing at the podium at the last debate. I draw a card.

I got a Jack! I lay the card down, turn around, and give high fives to all six people in my corner. "We knew you'd be the lucky one!" one of them says. From two Warren in-person supporters, we grew to six. And now, we were getting three delegates.

Nina looks at me, "you should be a delegate". I tell her, "If I'm going, you have to come too". The rest of our camp agree on our choices. We have one delegate left to send but no one else seemed to want to go. I ask my Mom, "will you come with me?"

She agrees. So now it's me, Nina, and my Mom going to the county caucus in April. I sign the caucus sheet as a representative of Warren, after having gone home and being called back to sign. It was a short caucus. It was my first caucus. I am now a delegate. The end.

[ape-cast]

Not the protagonist

I’ve read that INFJs are usually not the lead character. They’ll be the sidekick or the mentor guiding the hero. But they were always just on the side.

I’m back from my week long trip camping and visiting  LA. Sometimes, when I’m sad, my emotions sit on top of my stomach and just fester there. My hands are a little numb. I don’t really know how I feel sometimes unless I talk about it or maybe write about it. I guess I’m trying to figure it out by logging onto here.

There’s no eloquence here; no poetry. 

There is a boy that I tell everyone that I like. I think I like him sometimes. Sometimes, he is a burden on me. I don’t think I like feeling unless there was something definitive about it. Since the possibility of romance with him is still a mystery, I’m starting to lose interest. I have no patience for these things; especially when I’m trying to change my life. 

My cat meows like a child. He is calling me to bed. Although, I can’t. The heavy eyelids beckon me to bed but I must know. What is this feeling? 

I’m reading the book “Less” by Andrew Greer. It’s the only Pulitzer prize winner to be a romantic comedy. It makes me think that maybe I have a chance of writing something significant or worthy of renown. 

I want to sleep. 

My old bf got married last week. We were together on and off for almost seven years. I didn’t think I felt anything about it; just curiosity. When my Father died, I didn’t cry in the first few hours. I wondered why. I thought maybe I’m just emotionless. Maybe I didn’t really love my Father. Maybe I wanted him to go. I felt guilty not crying while everyone else wept around me.

Days later, it was my Father’s funeral. My Mother arranged for my sisters and I to do a reading from the bible out loud in front of everyone who attended. I was incensed. Why would she do that to us? We went up on the podium and I traced the bible with my finger -- down to the passage we were supposed to read. I opened my mouth and a croak came out. The croak rose in pitch until it was a squeal. Something happened inside me. The spasms came from my stomach to my shoulders to my nose and my mouth. If I opened my mouth again, they would come out and I was afraid of what sound they would make. I doubled over, eyes filling up with water. I tried looking down at the passage but I couldn’t read them anymore. I clutched my stomach as my little sister took over the reading. I fought with the spasms until she was done. 

I heard my Mother tell a friend later that I shouldn’t have held back crying at the hospital when he died; that I should’ve just cried then. Now, it was my fault that the tears wouldn’t stop in front of everyone at the funeral.

I didn’t tell them and I didn’t admit it until now that I was relieved. I didn’t know that I was going to cry. I didn’t know that I could. I thought I didn’t feel anything and I was glad that I could prove that I did.

I don’t know how I feel about him getting married. Or maybe I do. 

I was at a bar last night, sitting on a stool staring at the empty one a few seats down. My friends were all huddled together, talking about something I didn’t want to join in on. And the thought passed me. What if he wasn’t attached and we met again, now years later, years older, and he sat at the empty seat I was looking at. I think it would be a good meeting. Maybe, we’d fall in love again. 

I hadn’t thought of that idea in a while. The impossibility of it now hurt me. We really were in love, weren’t we? He really was my best friend. And now, well, I guess I can feel pain about his wedding; belatedly so. 

Sometimes, I get suicidal ideations. They come pretty frequently. I medicate with CBD and they usually leave after a few hours. Adverbs. I hate them. I guess I’m back to using them. I’ve forgotten how to write. 

This is free-writing if you haven’t guessed. I must put a disclaimer here to reassure my insecurity. 

I don’t know what the future holds anymore. I haven’t for a while now. Everyday is just walking with one foot in front of the other, not looking too far in the horizon. It’s hard to live your life in just the next step when you’ve always looked at some assured imagining as what you were walking into. I have no such notions anymore. I know that I don’t know what the future holds. I know that I don’t know what will happen. I’ve been walking by myself for a while now, balancing on this tight rope, not knowing if I’ll every make it to the other side. Is there even another side? Or is it just a never-ending dalliance with fear and death and the fight against giving up on it all? I sometimes just want to fall to the side and let it end. I’m getting tired of holding my breath. I’m getting tired of the seeming meaninglessness of it all. 

CBD for the pain. CBD to help me sleep. CBD for the anxiety. CBD to patch it all. Maybe someday, it won’t be able to cover this wound. 

I know no one will save me. And you’re supposed to be the only one saving yourself. You’re supposed to be strong and independent and a model for others to follow. You’re supposed to be cool and unfazed and logical and caring and empathetic and ... fuck. It’s wrong to want someone to save you. It’s supposed to be wrong. It is wrong. Fuck it. Fuck wrong. Fuck right. 

I’m wrong that I want someone to save me. I’m wrong that I can’t be my own hero. I’m just wrong. I don’t want to think about this anymore. I just want this to be over.

[ape-cast]

John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter of Advice to His Lovesick Teenage Son

“If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”

[staff]

Tumblr Tuesday: ASCII Art

Alpha Gravy (@alphagravy)

It isn’t the ASCII art you’re used to, but it is the high-end ASCII art you deserve. Check out more of @alphagravy‘s original GIFs in their #gravygif tag. 

Samayalost (@samayalost)

What you need to know about this fine piece of work is that it’s titled “HamsterBoy.” We hope your day is better for it. 

scenex (@scenex)

This is what real friendship looks like. 

[ape-cast]

Are we connected at all?

Our cells, are any parts of them still in touch with each other? Does your body remember where mine is? Do we have addresses in space-time that people can find us at, or remember us at? Most days, I call for you. It’s a beacon inside of me calling you, searching for you, looking for you. Do you remember where I am? Would you come back here? Or am I a place you avoid? 

Remember Aquaman? Did you watch that? His father at the lighthouse waiting for his mother for years. Everyday, waiting by the sunrise. 

I can’t stop waiting. My body goes to the end of the dock and it stares at the horizon at the sunrise, at the green light and hopes it’s you. 

I don’t want to but it goes of its own accord like that dog in Jurassic Bark - she doesn’t know any better.  If I listen closely, I can hear your voice inside of me. “Hey Babe” in my right ear. I can feel the touch of your face on my cheek. I remember the circumference of your waist, the feel of your legs when I wrap myself around them. I remember your space, the space you occupy. I feel it around me, all of my cells magnetized to wherever you were. I remember a ghost. How do I make him appear? 

I’m not real. What is real? I’m not here. I’m not here. Because I’m with you.

[ape-cast]

I tried to lay off the melatonin tonight and used the other instead. 

I’m thinking about him. Thinking about us. Why can’t I see his face? Why do I remember myself and not him? Is it because I use myself to be able to recall the memory by placing myself there? And the thought of placing that memory with a picture of him is too unbearable? If I put his face there, I would stop trying to remember.

So, here I go, diving into what happened between the both of us and I tread lightly. I dance around their edges. I flip the pages, I’m walk a tight rope on paper cuts, and I see the detail of the world around us, the car honks, the air, the heat, the people. Because I know that in the world I create, in the middle of everything, there is a shape. It is a shape around him. And it is enough. 

I need the endurance to hold my hand around the emptiness of him and believe he was once there. We don’t remember. No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember the mundane, the moments we spent in the car holding hands, the times our legs laid on top of each other watching TV on the couch, the times we walked the sidewalks with conversation; conversation that felt fluid. There was no border between my head and my heart. I was there with you - living in those moments. Not taking pictures. The pictures you make in your head. I was fully there with you. And now, I don’t remember. I want to take the times in the shower with him, the times grocery shopping with him, the meals I took in front of him, the facetimes, the tests, the phonecalls, the memes, the seeing eye to eye, the feeling understood, the times of just being next to him in the mundane, ordinary world that have so much more color and life than any other memory I have. I stopped looking for patterns when the world was all sunlight and comfort and safety and friendship. I don’t remember all the little things we did. And I am sad about it. And I am proud of it. Did I always know it wasn’t going to last forever? Did I know? I don’t completely know what I’ve lost. I just know that I’ve lost something precious. Something extraordinary. 

People tell you not to regret. It’s not practical. People don’t like living in that pain. They don’t want you to either. But there is a reason in the regret. 

I know it. I feel it. I feel it nine months later. A hard regret. A ball of regret. A boulder of regret. Something that could stop a woman, a man, me. A regret that makes you look back in a way you’ve never had. A regret alarmed by your lack of memories. 

Were you that selfish? Were you that vain? Is it all about you?

I don’t know. I’m telling you, I don’t remember.

No, I remember. I was good. I was kind. It broke my heart so much to care for him the way I did. I was afraid of him , of the disappointment of losing him would be. I remember I loved him. I don’t know it now. But it was a good love. A love that manipulated him for time and effort. Did I? I think I did. 

I don’t know.

I keep on trying to reason and trying to remember and I fall into this cesspool, this leaden tar pit of g’damnit. that fucking word. 

Yes, could almost stop a woman.

So, I group my regret and my emotions past the sheath of air beyond my fingers. I could touch it I reached for it. But it’s not here with me in my every day, the moments I need to plod on. 

The further I’m away from him, the more I remember. 

And I let the thought drip out of me of does he think of me too?

No. You mustn’t. You don’t know. You can’t suppose. You can’t guess. You must not try to figure it out. Because you will find an answer. But is it the truth?

Must forget again. Move forward. Forget. Move forward. Forget, Forget. Remember. Forget.

[ape-cast]

The Custodian

One of the stories I’d thought of before was about a man charged with being the caretaker, the custodian, of a spaceship traveling hundreds of light years away. The ship was filled with sleeping migrants, colonizers of worlds, those we dared to send or dared to leave. They were all asleep, cryogenically frozen, as this was the only way to survive such a trip. The ship could care for itself well enough, this being the future, and AI at its more advanced imagining. But we, humanity or whoever scientists or politicians or governing body of note, deemed that at least one human was going to be awoken for years at a time to watch over our journey. 

It’s the story of one man who is awoken. He monitors the ship, inspects the cryogenic pods, cares for the multitude of flora and fauna that this ”Noah’s ark” has brought. He cleans. He watches. He dreams. He takes us through his routine through the same halls and the same stops, the minutiae of brushing his teeth and drinking the same cup of coffee at the same time every day. Sometimes he diverts himself with books. Sometimes with music. Sometimes with substances. Sometimes he does the strange things that a man does when no one’s watching and the things one does when he wishes that someone was. Through the years, structure and decorum give way to more outrageous practices. He sings at the top of his lungs. He runs naked at full speed through the halls. He jerks off to one of the women he’s admired through the glass of her pod. 

How long before he returns back to normalcy? Is there a predetermined time when his service is ended and another takes over?  Is this the amount of time that one loses their mind? 

What is the passing of responsibility like when another awakens? I imagine it is she - who he’s been sexually gratifying himself over - that is his replacement. And he has to pretend that he doesn’t know her; hasn’t watched her face every day for all these years. That he doesn’t have his morning coffee in front of her imagining that she is asking about his day. 

My days feel like a journey. I wake up. I eat three small cheese sandwiches and a cup of green tea for breakfast. I take a walk of 8,000 steps. I watch a show while I do the walk - any of the multitude of shows that I’ve heard about. Once in a while, I mix it up with yoga. I cook a meal. I eat. I shower. I count my calories. How many until 2000? I sit in front of the computer and read or listen to today’s lesson or complete today’s assignment. I feed the cat. My mother comes home. “How was your day today?” Dinner again. Another 4000 steps for my walks. More calories until I reach my goal. I go back to my computer and finish my lessons. I brush my teeth. I wash my face. And I force myself to sleep.

Every day.

I feel like I’m on a ship traveling light years into a new life. The destination is far. I don’t know how long my sanity will hold or if it was ever there to begin with. Every day I think of what I’ve left behind, mainly whom. Is it all worth it? Will it be? Does it matter anyway? 

I’m in the in-between, trapped in the momentum of a decision I had made and a future I’m unsure about. But even here, in the midst of this travel through the stars, I am finding the silence comforting and the loneliness, an embrace. Maybe the in-between is where I’d rather be. And so, I welcome the gray.

[ape-cast]

I just solved a crazy math problem.

Took me almost two hours to solve it. Actually, I don’t know. It seems like forever. It’s a two page solution. I wanted to call you all through it so you can help me figure it out. But I couldn’t call you. So I figured it out on my own. And then after that, I wanted to call you to tell you. I thought you might be proud. But I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. My little successes are my own. No one will know. Because you’re the only one I want to tell.

I miss you. Every day. I hope you’re good. I hope you’re happy. I hope you had a good birthday. I hope you got great presents. I hope someone made you laugh. Maybe laugh hysterically. Maybe you sang a song. Maybe you danced. Maybe you played games. I know you’d like that. I still love you. I hope you’re happy without me.

[ape-cast]

I can’t watch Better Call Saul

I have bad memory. I can’t remember most things. So people like me, who can’t remember anything, we use totems; mnemonic devices to remember anything. 

The memories I have of you I’ve stored in a variety of things in the last two years. In your gifts, in art, certain smells, certain patterns, certain ideas, certain songs. They’re like -- you know in Harry Potter. Like Voldemort who has stored himself as horcruxes in all kinds of things. My memories of you, I guess they’re horcruxes. I think I’ve gotten rid of most of them. I know I’ve forgotten where some are and they’ll catch me unaware some day. But some memories of you, I know exactly where they are and I try not to touch or smell or feel the thing that holds it. Better Call Saul is one of those things. I’ve spent many nights watching it with you. And I can’t let myself remember.

[ape-cast]

Do I still love him?

I don’t know. At this point, I don’t even know what love is.

What I do know is that when I think about him, I feel sad. When I wake up, when I sleep, and all of the hours in between.

I guess, I’m always sad then. If this is love, then I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

[ape-cast]

It’s OK to be the one who loves more.

For a while, I painted myself to the world and to myself as a victim. “I loved someone so much who didn’t love me back or in the same way.” “I did all these things for him and he didn’t reciprocate in the same way or his efforts were less than mine.” “Why did he not want to spend as much time with me?” “Why did he not want to talk to me as much?” “Why did my gifts feel more thoughtful and his generic?” It was always ‘why did I love more?’ and ‘why do i love more?’ It’s unfair. He has to meet me in the middle -- me putting half of the effort and him putting his fair share. Fair. Those are the terms I put the value of our relationship in. It wasn’t fair. 

Even now, I think “I must be thinking more about him and he is not thinking about me.” “It’s unfair.”

Why must I put the value of love in terms of fairness?

Yes, you can evaluate your relationship in terms of contribution and determine there if you should proceed or not.

But for yourself, for the value of love that you determine for yourself. Why must you only give as much as the other? Why not put value in the fact that you ARE ABLE to give more; to feel more? That being able to love more; willing to love more; and in fact, doing the act of loving more is not a disadvantage? It is your gift. It is your evidence to yourself that you truly loved someone; that you’re able to overlook the unfairness of it and give anyway. Because love -- as a feeling -- is rarely felt. Even with marriages and triumphant relationships, it wanes and sometimes disappears. So to be able to love, despite it not being reflected, returned, given back, in the face of someone who doesn’t love you, is your strength. It is a bravery. It is determination. It is selflessness. It is kindness. And it is pure love.

[ape-cast]

I am sick with memories of you.

Am I better? Is this better? The dull ache whenever I remember something new, something old. Why can I hear you clearer now? Why do your motions play like gifs inside of me? I can almost smell you. 

I don’t know if this is better.

I am not paralyzed with my memories. I am not left useless for a whole day. But these breaks of sanity -- of normalcy -- prove false. Because when your memories come, there are no defenses against them.

I break harder. I fall harder. 

When does it stop? How do I heal from you?