sun and sea

“you kiss the back of my legs and i want to cry. only the sun has come this close / only the sun.” shauna barbosa, cape verdean blues

[oceaniicwhispers]

sometimes the hardships of life can be eased by friends. not just in the ‘you give me a place to spill my secrets to in the dark’ or ‘you listen to me when im angry and sad and upset’ sense but in ways that never cross your mind at all.

ive had covid for two weeks, been hacking out my lungs until my ribs feel like cracking, and a friend knocks and brews me a cup of tea. he tells me to inhale the steam and to drink hot water. he tapes a napkin over it so I don’t burn myself. for the first time in weeks, i can breathe.

i spill water all over the carpeted floor and leave it there, not knowing I was supposed to clean it up. the same friend walks into my room a few days later and drops to his knees, starts scrubbing it and runs for towels. he tells me everything i need to do in this situation in the future. it is the first time i’ve lived alone and now I know what to do.

i don’t have enough space to bring my clothes back over break so a friend lends me his duffel bag. i let him borrow my face soap he’s been wanting to try out but is unsure about spending the money on. he gets the cleanser eventually.

I don’t have the meal swipes for food so every week my friend uses his own, picks up food and delivers it to me so I don’t starve. when I get food money, I buy him snacks when I know he’s too busy to eat. he loves the croissant sandwiches from the campus store.

when I’m too bedridden with sickness to leave my room, my friend crosses campus to bring me and my roommate too, food. he promises when I get better we’ll go downtown, romanticize life a little.

your friends are there for you and yes, there are the big moments, the dramatic and the emotional and the vents, but there’s also the small gestures. the ones that you don’t think about until they happen, that you don’t realize make your life so much easier. your friends are there and they will help you and you will help them in ways that perhaps you don’t even realize. you do it because sometimes love is about making each other’s lives a little easier. you do it because you love each other. you do it because it’s about love. it always has been.

[oceaniicwhispers]

i love my online friends so so much and i don’t explicitly say the words I love you to them (but rather express them in different ways and they know, they know) but still, every single time they tell me they love me (and they do so frequently) it still stops me in my tracks and takes my breath away.

and i have to pause and take a break from the conversation and sit there in the quiet, solemn knowledge that they love me and i love them back, so much more than i can bear.

And I never do say it back but they know and I know and we all know and we sit there quiet and holy in the knowledge that we are loved.

[oceaniicwhispers]

Sometimes you know that you’re going to lose a friend, that they’re not going to stay in your life and not because of anything catastrophic, but just the inevitable passage of time and distance. you know it in your very bones, accepted it, but the knowledge still feels like the sinking weight of the sun, like the nausea building in your ribs before it all comes up.

even though they’re here next to you, it won’t last. they will never be a part of your life again, just someone you once loved and who no longer exists but in half-golden, washed out memories.

you miss them and you miss them and you miss them because the ache is already there, because you can so easily imagine the two of you not in each others’ lives anymore and you want to cling to them with everything you have, you want to give them the world and lay it at their feet for all the love they’ve given you and all the love you’ve shared but you don’t know how to just say it. how do you tell someone I miss you already. that you’re next to me and I feel it slipping through our fingers.

let me give you one more hug. i hope you feel all the love I have and I hope one day in the future you’ll look back remember the love and the care and the affection we shared. when we cross paths again one day in the future, will you meet my eyes and think about what we used to be? or will the disregard hurt more than outright dismissal?

thank you for holding my hair back that night. thank you for telling me about your dad. thank you for whispering to me and making the night a little less dark. thank you for letting me share my scars, letting the knowledge and the release wrap around us like a blanket. i hope you’re happy with the school you choose. i hope you become that surgeon. I hope the weight of obligation gets a little lighter, that you’re able to write and freely do what you love. I hope you’ll be free from your family.

i remember when you held me so tenderly. i remember when you told me I was so dear to you. i remember you were the first friend I had there. ill remember your midnight knocks.

(these are the only ways I can tell you I love you, here and now before you’re gone)

and you know their scent will stop you in your tracks for the rest of your life and you know that night they held your hair back as you threw up will be imprinted in your mind and you’ll sit on a stool in the dark of their room trying to laugh with the knowledge that it’s all slipping away from you and that this is just an imitation of what it used to be as you try to cling on to the gossamer threads of your friendship as they fray and fray in the candlelight.

and you’ll miss them so very very much, perhaps more than when they are actually gone because now, you’re here and so are they and they’re not in your grasp and there’s nothing you can do about it. at least after they’re gone you can let them go.

you are right next to me and I feel the absence as acutely as anything i have ever known. i love you now and I will miss you forever

[oceaniicwhispers]

Sometimes your friends, the people you love, will tell you little things about themselves and their pasts and it will make you ache for them, like something rotten and heavy as the sinking sun, a weight in your chest like a piece of your heart has been torn and buried. and it’s like: you were so small then. you were so vulnerable. you’re so strong but in this moment when you are admitting this to me, so softly, so gently; you don’t have to be strong and i will hold you. you are so very very dear to me and the knowledge that that happened to you, that you felt that way makes me want to weep. i wish i could do something. i wish i could hug you. i want so desperately to take some of that pain from you and carry it on my shoulders to lighten your own. and sometimes it’s not even anything big, or maybe they don’t think it’s a big deal at all and they laugh it off or apologize for dumping and it’s like god I love you so much don’t you know that and no matter what it is, i want to weep for you and i want to hug you. i know you’re strong but i wish you didn’t have to be in those instances. and there’s nothing i can do about it now but i can be here for you and i can listen and i can love you very very tenderly as you tell me about your scars.

to my friends: i love you dearly and we will sit here together and unravel our pasts and that love will not heal us completely but it will count for something.

[oceaniicwhispers]

sometimes you just have to express to your friends that you love them and they’ll say it back to you and vice versa and you don’t even have to use the word love all the time. i got out of the car of a friend i knew i wouldn’t be seeing for a long time and impulsively yelled love you; they rolled down their window, half laughter half disbelief, as they asked if i’d just said i loved them. i laughed back as they pulled away. an online friend told me once that it was absurdly easy to be human with me and that they had many online friends but i was very dear to them. (they were the first to show me that i could just tell people I loved them, that love could flow as freely and easily as the light between our hands). i made a joking comment once about deserving all attention all the time and was sincerely told ‘you do; everyone i care about deserves everything’. (i couldn’t bring myself to tell him i loved him back, but i told him it was easy to see why he is so Adored, that his tenderness always stops me in my tracks). my friend tells me he loves me everytime he bids me goodnight and i’ve never said it back but i write him poetry he’ll never see. love is tender and it is soft and when you have it, you have to hold it tight in your hands, cupped like a little flame. but love is also bright and golden and that light needs to be reflected back on those who shone it upon you. so tell your friends you love them, let them know that they too are loved, in whichever way you can.

(and since some of the friends I’m talking about are chronic tumblr users, if you ever see this, i love you and i love you and i love you and i hope that love echoes through time to reach you whenever you read this)