So long, so long.

I am a reckless collector of memory.

Under my bed shoe boxes teem with notes, postcards, scraps, and shopping lists. Totes stuffed with cards from every occasion. My empty spaces overflow with Miss Yous and Happy Birthdays. The ticket stubs: Brandi Carlile, The Great Gatsby. The empty gum cartridge from my first solo road trip, each silver bubble ruptured in an effort to stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. Albums full of photos from when photos were a thing. Smiles permanent and fixed points in time like somehow remembering makes them real. Like remembering makes anything more real. Your face could be more than your face just because I ask.

Every few months I dig through the e-mail archives. Click through the digital relics. Expose myself to the plotlines fallen by the wayside; all the places my story didn’t go. All the places it did. The inside jokes I’m no longer party to, familiar but forgotten like the tune to a lullaby your mother used to hum. We were once so small. Like any good archaeologist I recognize beauty in the scraps, even if I can’t identify their original purpose. If I hold onto these things I can nearly piece them back together, nearly piece myself back together. Nearly find peace.

Today I learned that a former coworker lost her battle against depression, and it’s got me thinking about the lexicon of losing. What it means to be reduced to words and memories. How a struggle so fierce can be expressed so passively. I only knew her casually, but this loss tears at the seams of my community. Prickles at the back of my mind. We are so small. Memories. Words. There is no agency in either. After we’re gone we are thrown to the mercy of the people who cling to us. If we knew how they would cling, would we ever be able to leave?

There is no such thing as a casual tragedy. But there is information gathered in passing, a hung head in the back hallway, a moment of processing before the day lurches forward again. I didn’t really know her, but somebody did. This was somebody else’s beginning and end. And I feel selfish for the relief, that brief instant of recognition: this could have been my loved one. Someday it still might be. But today I can read through the archives fondly knowing the people I care for are still breathing. I can tell them I love you, please be ok even if those aren’t the words I use to say it. I am so profoundly sorry for everybody today who can’t say the same.

Here is what I remember: a laugh, and a smile. Eye contact from when eye contact was a thing. How you could mine something interesting from the most mundane details. You made a person feel so fucking special just for breathing. If you knew how we’d cling, would you still have to leave? Did you have to leave us with the pieces so you could find your peace?

In a New York City bar I left my ring on the sink, but not before tracing its lines into the pages of my notebook. In the back of my car, all the clothes I never wear. No longer taking up closet space, but still within easy reach. Memories. Words. Nothing ever big enough to replace a person. Nothing ever real enough. It is reckless the way we hold on; the ways we let go. Slowly, slowly, then all at once.

To every You I have ever clung to: I love you. Please be ok.

-b