Hello dream weavers. It’s been a minute, right? Tonight I’m sitting cross-legged in the bedroom where I’ve spent the last four years, with the yellow walls, and the always open windows where That Cat can come and go, scaling the lilac bushes. In less than two months there will be a new body in this room, and I will be magically somewhere else. Everything different the way everything has been different before, but in a new way.
I will have survived a 20 hour drive with a sedated hellbeast in a silly clown car with no air conditioning. My worldly possessions: 3-5 boxes, one guitar, one longboard, as many houseplants as I can safely transport, the table my grandfather built, the blanket I don’t sleep without. Ideally. I’ll have attended two mandatory orientations, met my cohort, enrolled in a publishing internship. I’ll know my faculty’s handshakes, and the way they pronounce their vowels. Who clips their consonants, who lets their language drawl and dribble.
Today I held my graduate course catalog in my hands for the first time, and those 8 pages (printed double sided) made everything somehow real. This fall I’ll live in San Diego. I’ll go to school in San Diego. When I am lonely I’ll drive to my grandparents’ house, and sit next to the pool, and watch the sun set over a desertscape. I’ll study Queer Texts & Contexts, or the Literature of Terrorism, or Living Writers in coffee shops, and cafes and parks. Sunshine. There will be enough sunshine to make a body appreciate rain. For so long now I thought it had to be the other way around, and maybe for a while it did.
A few weeks ago, sitting with a friend sipping a Mint Thing, which is a real thing concocted from coffee ice cubes, cold brew, cream, magic and muddled mint. The red double-decker bus and the plastic tarping still erected to protect us from the cold, even though the sun was shining that day. How he told me it’s ok to want to be ok, and that’s a hard thing to learn. How a body can become addicted to anything, even tragedy. How we can all write from the rain for as long as we need to, but there’s so much more to us than that.
This last week I’ve been feeling frenetic and raw. The missing takes me by the throat while driving to work. Grocery shopping. Driving from work. Brushing my teeth. It doubles me over while I’m running. The sort of ache that wakes me up at 1am, heart racing so I beg it to stop, stop, stop, please stop and don’t know if I’m talking about the persistent beat, or the thing that causes it.
I tell my friend, who gives the best hugs and loves the color purple, I started this blog so the people I care about would know I’m still alive. The ritual of it keeping me grounded: Thursdays for processing and feelings, Sundays to document hilarious antics. The things coming out of me as true as I could allow. The voice that I discovered something I fell in love with. Reading it now, that wry self-deprecation trying so hard to mask the lonely... I love that desperate, often messy, occasionally insightful human beast. I hope you do too.
I’m leaving this here as a reminder to myself, as a reminder to you, because everything is about to be different the way everything has been different before, but in a new way. Even through the breaking, somewhere at the center of me is a smoothround stone. It is calm, and still, and perfect.
I text the wizard when I feel like I’ve tricked myself into a drowning tank, and I can’t shake the chains I locked around my own wrists and ankles. She says Make a list of the things you’re grateful for. Today I’m grateful for my sock collection, and how I’ve managed to keep them mostly matching for the better part of a year. I’m grateful for pork chops I can eat with my bare hands while sitting in traffic on a long commute. For a body that can run and jump and move, not without pain but despite it. I’m grateful for words; the places they’ve taken me and the places we’ve yet to go together. I’m grateful for That Cat, curled up sleeping so small and warm, because keeping me awake all night is exhausting work.
Here’s to the hilarious antics, and the thoughtful reflections. Soon I’ll be doing this in a new city. I hope you’ll stay with me.
Stay with me?
All my love, you bunch of creeps.
I will have survived a 20 hour drive with a sedated hellbeast in a silly clown car with no air conditioning. My worldly possessions: 3-5 boxes, one guitar, one longboard, as many houseplants as I can safely transport, the table my grandfather built, the blanket I don’t sleep without. Ideally. I’ll have attended two mandatory orientations, met my cohort, enrolled in a publishing internship. I’ll know my faculty’s handshakes, and the way they pronounce their vowels. Who clips their consonants, who lets their language drawl and dribble.
Today I held my graduate course catalog in my hands for the first time, and those 8 pages (printed double sided) made everything somehow real. This fall I’ll live in San Diego. I’ll go to school in San Diego. When I am lonely I’ll drive to my grandparents’ house, and sit next to the pool, and watch the sun set over a desertscape. I’ll study Queer Texts & Contexts, or the Literature of Terrorism, or Living Writers in coffee shops, and cafes and parks. Sunshine. There will be enough sunshine to make a body appreciate rain. For so long now I thought it had to be the other way around, and maybe for a while it did.
A few weeks ago, sitting with a friend sipping a Mint Thing, which is a real thing concocted from coffee ice cubes, cold brew, cream, magic and muddled mint. The red double-decker bus and the plastic tarping still erected to protect us from the cold, even though the sun was shining that day. How he told me it’s ok to want to be ok, and that’s a hard thing to learn. How a body can become addicted to anything, even tragedy. How we can all write from the rain for as long as we need to, but there’s so much more to us than that.
This last week I’ve been feeling frenetic and raw. The missing takes me by the throat while driving to work. Grocery shopping. Driving from work. Brushing my teeth. It doubles me over while I’m running. The sort of ache that wakes me up at 1am, heart racing so I beg it to stop, stop, stop, please stop and don’t know if I’m talking about the persistent beat, or the thing that causes it.
I tell my friend, who gives the best hugs and loves the color purple, I started this blog so the people I care about would know I’m still alive. The ritual of it keeping me grounded: Thursdays for processing and feelings, Sundays to document hilarious antics. The things coming out of me as true as I could allow. The voice that I discovered something I fell in love with. Reading it now, that wry self-deprecation trying so hard to mask the lonely... I love that desperate, often messy, occasionally insightful human beast. I hope you do too.
I’m leaving this here as a reminder to myself, as a reminder to you, because everything is about to be different the way everything has been different before, but in a new way. Even through the breaking, somewhere at the center of me is a smoothround stone. It is calm, and still, and perfect.
I text the wizard when I feel like I’ve tricked myself into a drowning tank, and I can’t shake the chains I locked around my own wrists and ankles. She says Make a list of the things you’re grateful for. Today I’m grateful for my sock collection, and how I’ve managed to keep them mostly matching for the better part of a year. I’m grateful for pork chops I can eat with my bare hands while sitting in traffic on a long commute. For a body that can run and jump and move, not without pain but despite it. I’m grateful for words; the places they’ve taken me and the places we’ve yet to go together. I’m grateful for That Cat, curled up sleeping so small and warm, because keeping me awake all night is exhausting work.
Here’s to the hilarious antics, and the thoughtful reflections. Soon I’ll be doing this in a new city. I hope you’ll stay with me.
Stay with me?
All my love, you bunch of creeps.
-b
<3.
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