Being Alive

31. California.

[athousandsplendidthings]

i am thinking about you today, because today i am cleaning the apartment and going on a third date and i would call you to tell you about both of those things. i would call you as i cleaned, updating you on life, finding comfort in the shared background of you scrubbing the kitchen tile while i sprayed a bathroom counter. you outside, sending photos of your cucumber plants. me sending photos of my aloe that’s somehow still alive. we would pass at least an hour, sometimes two, like this, going about our shared chores. me wishing i could be there to ease the burden. hoping that somehow this phone call was enough of a balm for how hard your life had become. and forgetting it all as we mused about politics and work and the state of my love life. i would hear you sitting down at the kitchen counter to have lunch and i could imagine it all so perfectly. what you would make, how you would sit there, how you’d coo at the dogs as they came over to you. i can still imagine it all so well. many folks have lovingly checked in about tomorrow and it’s not tomorrow i worry about. it’s every day after that i want to pick up the phone to call you and can’t. this past week as we said mourner’s kaddish, the leader added a phrase to may their memory be a blessing that i hadn’t heard before. she added so many lovely words about mourning but it’s the “through you,” that i’m thinking of. how are you living through me? i could count the ways. and as i clean today, maybe i’ll call you up. and i’ll tell you each and every way. and i’ll remind you that i love you. and i miss you. oh, how i miss you.

[athousandsplendidthings]

it hits different and worse in the last few weeks. the days warm up and the nights don’t cool down as much and i am at once living so many last selves. nineteen waiting for a boy all summer, twenty-two and madly in love with a boy all summer, thirty and confused about a boy all summer, thirty-one and drowning in the reality that i will never get to call dad again. i listen to the music i remember from being sixteen and nineteen and twenty-three and twenty-five and thirty and i text lila that somehow this feels worse. suddenly i have the time to process it all. empty nights. slow days. i tell samad i wish i had someone to text when im sad, someone to share the darker pieces. i am reliving moments in the hospital still. i am thinking too hard of all the ways i feel like i could have saved him. i am wondering if there will ever be anyone to love me or take care of me the way he could. i am thinking about how a fundamental detail about dad was how much he missed his mom, and how that’s now me. i am not the same. i will never be the same. i will always be missing him. i am still overwhelmed at times, and i have to stop to cry before i can move on. my grief is living in my body even if i don’t want it. it is june, it is summer, my favorite time, and i am both wonderfully alive and horribly sad.

[athousandsplendidthings]

i buy the tulips knowing they’ll die. they’re pretty, and i want them, so i get them. i put them in the bathroom because the whole place is full of flowers from seder. the seder itself is wonderful, perhaps my best yet. i am mostly in my body the whole time, but there are brief moments i slip away. the rest of the week there is both too much and too little work to do. i watch the tulips bloom as i finish everything before we’re off for two days, and then i watch them begin to die as i spend the first day off being lazy. reading in bed. napping whenever i want. crying, too. today i wake up and as i brush my teeth i consider how wilted they are. that i should probably throw them out soon but i’ll give them the rest of the day at least. i indulge in coffee and wandering and get some more work done but still avoid most tasks. instead i appreciate the quiet. but i’m scared of it, too. i have felt the grief creep in this week, in the slowness and the lack of a to-do list. without anything forcing me to move, there is less motivation to do anything. i just want to curl up and avoid it all. if only i could also avoid the sadness. but it’s there, pressing and pressing until it’s heard. and i wish it felt good, this release. i wish it felt meaningful or helpful. instead i just feel sad. or numb. or both. instead i am both grateful for a return to work and also desperately tired, wishing i had more time to get lost in books and shows and nothingness. this week i watch the tulips wilt and die, thinking that there is still so much beauty in dead things.

[athousandsplendidthings]

my least favorite phrase as i return to society is “how are you?” i know it’s a standard greeting and we don’t really have anything better to offer but it’s a stupid question nonetheless.

how am i? my dad died.

how am i? exactly however you’d expect.

how am i? drowning.

how am i? fine, for now.

how am i? sometimes i am still in that hospital room, rubbing his feet as he begged to die. watching as he is yellow, intubated again, barely responsive.

how am i? bad. i’m bad. am i supposed to be anything else?

and i know there is no better phrase. and everyone has been so kind and the support overwhelming. but now i have to casually respond “you know, not great,” and decide if the conversation stops or continues from there. now i have to debate if i tell you that the hardest part about all of this is the world does not stop.

the world does not pause. dad dies and the the world keeps going. that, really, is the fucking worst of it all. that i have to keep living without him. that the world does not mourn with me.

[athousandsplendidthings]

it's not forever, it's just a feeling

it's not forever, it's only fleeting

[athousandsplendidthings]

"I did not enter this world afraid, and I refuse to leave it that way"

[athousandsplendidthings]

it's humid in los angeles the way it often can be in florida. the evening cools and the pressure drops and we don't need the weather app to know there's a storm approaching. as a kid the shift would often fill me with fear, anxiously awaiting the first strike of lightning. today, i feel a sense of longing.

walking the dog i listen to laura marling and think about a conversation with lila earlier, in which i tell her if i'm still stuck in this loop by may then something has to change. then i'm blowing it all up and discovering myself in the ash. my hair keeps getting in my face and i think about the last time i grew it out this long. i wonder if i grow my hair out when i'm in happy or sad periods. is this transformation or stagnancy? am i growing my hair to hide? i think about being thirty two with long hair and bangs, maybe some songleader or creative type somewhere. she sounds cool. i think i like that. i think about the book series i finished and how the happy ending was a husband and kids. how traditional. but recently it was an ending i thought i was approaching. laura marling sings "to have your children, your flock of birds," as i stare at the neighbors birds, wondering if they sense the incoming storm. wondering if they want to escape. who would want to cage such a wild thing?

it feels like florida in los angeles and i listen back to songs from earlier in the summer, feeling like summer isn't even over yet even as we're well into fall. i didn't listen to the breakup playlist much because so much of the summer basically was the breakup. so much of it was longing and an indescribable type of wanting i can still taste. it's a cloudy, foreboding evening and i think i'm close to finding the lesson in you. it's related, somehow, to the rest of it. i'm sure of it.

[athousandsplendidthings]

[athousandsplendidthings]

heartbreak at thirty might be one of the more humbling experiences. i listen to some of the same sad songs. i oscillate wildly between fine and crying, leveled and unfathomably angry. and i keep telling myself that the only way out is through. i've done this before. i'll do this again. we're in the center of the storm, but eventually someday we'll reach the other side. we'll grow from it. be better for it. and someday someone will find me and never leave. together we'll plant some roots. let our lives entangle. and never look back. someday, someone will stay.

[athousandsplendidthings]

maybe this can radicalize me into something different, something better, rather than lead me to despair. maybe i can become the light. i don’t need the sun if i simply become her.

[athousandsplendidthings]

I think we just commit. fully vulnerable. fully open. we don’t go crazy town and ignore his cues but, we don’t let uncertainty ruin expressing what we feel. I think it’s time to try, and maybe be crushed. and that’s okay. it’s not stupidity, but bravery.

[athousandsplendidthings]

[athousandsplendidthings]

it’s 8:33pm on a tuesday in june. the fan blows loudly as the sun sets outside the window, the desk light illuminating the room in a soft yellow glow. matt corby’s mainies plays and i lay on my bed, thinking of you, wondering if it’s possible to fall in love alone.

[athousandsplendidthings]

somehow talking makes it all harder. i get little done today other than laundry. my body hurts from the gym in a good way. i refresh the news. i think about the guitar i have to practice and the guitar i’m not practicing. i refresh the news. i think about the curriculum i have to write. the errands to run. the dinner to make later and the food to plan and the dog to walk. the work i should be doing. and instead i sit here in paralysis, mostly thinking of your back as you slept that morning. thinking how i held myself back from wrapping myself around you in an effort to let you sleep. thinking how i’m holding myself back now, in an effort to let you process and exist without the burden of our communication. and thinking very much how i long for the opportunity to shift over in the early morning, find you there, and not hesitate to embrace your sleeping frame.

[athousandsplendidthings]

"The power in the naming The story is the telling Potential in the waiting Movement is deciding Forward is the doing Keep going"

[athousandsplendidthings]

I told myself I wouldn't think of you. but I'm thinking of you. I play the songs on your playlist and think of you and your guitar, and your hands, moving down the neck as you play for me. i think of our hands and how they're so evenly matched. tracing circles into them as we lie on your bed. surely I should be able to play the same chords. but your hands move with such ease, strumming in a way that only comes with time. I think of the little dance you did as you played music. i think of my hands in your hair, twisting a curl over and over. you ask what i'm thinking but i'm only thinking "you." you, you, you, over and over in my head. then and now. and i told myself i wouldn't do this. although perhaps i'm allowed. you touched down yesterday. certainly this will lessen. i consider if it's possible to miss you when i've only just barely begun to know you, and i decide i miss the opportunity. right now if you hadn't left i'd be able to answer so many questions, dive so much deeper into you. and instead it's all slowed down and on pause. so i think of you. it's a beautiful summer day. i'm sunburned from an outdoor meeting. the sun is setting past 8pm in the most wonderful way. and i keep thinking about that james vincent mcmorrow song, and hands. always, it seems, about hands.

"Sometimes my hands they don't feel like my own I need someone to love I need someone to hold"

[athousandsplendidthings]

I do not want to get lost in you. I want to open myself up and expand with you. I want to dive in, not because I don’t want to know myself anymore, but because I want to know myself through you. I want to learn who you are and who I am because of you. No, it is not getting lost. It is finding aspects of myself I did not know were wanting to be found.