deciding.

“Nothing is more difficult and therefore more precious than the ability to decide”
from my soul mate’s fortune cookie…or Napoleon Bonaparte whichever you prefer

I’ve had scares before that felt as real as this one. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew that you would take me seriously unlike previous boyfriends who vaguely noticed my anxiety. I made a joke about the possibility. I wasn’t prepared for the response. Your terror was immediate. So I calmed your spirits, told you it was normal – there is still time! – and tried to brush my fear off both of us.

That was on Thursday. It wasn’t until Sunday morning that the truth arrived.

I never thought I would look a positive pregnancy test in its two heartless blue-lined eyes at twenty. I never thought I would say in the same day “so glad we’ve been together a month” and “what are we going to do about this pregnancy?” I needed you in a way that I never thought I would need another person. I will never forget the way you held me upon hearing the news. I will never forget the way your tears revealed your terror and sadness. I will never forget the sound of you vomiting blood in the adjacent bathroom while I laid in my bed, unable to process anything but fear.

As the news set in, we took turns being strong. When you cried, I held you and I kissed away your tears. I tried to pull your muddled thoughts from your mind and listen carefully to your worries. When I cried, you were tearless and comforting. You held me and talked to me and loved me with a gentleness I will always remember.

The experience confirmed everything I suspected I knew about you. You have the most beautiful heart. You are the most gentle and loving boy I have ever had the pleasure of sharing company with. As horrible as the situation was, I knew without a doubt that you had my whole heart.

At first, I was sure I wanted to go through with the pregnancy. I was confident in my choice. I could make it work. I could do it with or without you, although I preferred your support. I was selfish. I was thinking of my responsibility, my life, what I had to do. I made the decision before even talking to you. I made the decision in our silent crying. I knew what path I was choosing.

Yet, there are parts of life that hide in the theoretical. That old dichotomy of right and wrong doesn’t always reveal itself in black and white costumes. No one knows what they will do until they stand before those two ugly winding paths. In this case, one road was indefinitely uphill. It appeared insurmountable. It was made of sand but scattered with medical bills, unfinished homework, job applications, and revised budget spreadsheets. I took a step towards it at first and my footing immediately slipped. I didn’t think sand to be a difficult material. I didn’t realize the level of challenge it promised. I saw sparse shrubbery where people unsuccessfully hid their the disappointed glances, their drinks of alcohol, their spring break smiles, their acceptance letters to grad school, and their cruel whispers – “This wasn’t what we expected from you, now was it?” Maybe there were joys along the way, but the sand covered them. I could see sparkles of gems, ones I knew I would uncover suddenly as my feet brushed them. Would those small finds be enough to keep me going, to keep US going? Just how far would we have to travel before the climb plateaued?

The other road was full of darkness. There were picketers outside, screaming about God, morality, and murder. The path was marked with drops of blood for the first couple miles, enough that I knew it would wet my toes and temporarily become part of my footprints. The trees held leaves that were clear like teardrops, constantly growing and dropping onto the path. The path was smoother but covered in foliage. It was hard to know what lay underneath that could cause me to trip, cause me to scare, cause me to pause to lick unexpected wounds. The road was uphill at the beginning, but it didn’t seem as steep as the other road. There were promises of another chance, more time to love him and to love myself. It’s just hard to see all of that because of the darkness, because the path seems impossible to charge, because the picketers are blocking the way. It’s likely they are hiding along the way, but it’s impossible to know how long their voices will last before their screams are reduced to a dull rasp, then complete silence.

So there I stood staring at my two options. I thought I had to do it alone, but I felt your warm hand in mine. I looked into your eyes and for a moment those paths disappeared. We decided to turn our backs to them and sat down to look at the stroll we had been taking together. We could see our initial fear and uncertainty transform into trust and communication. We saw our trite kisses turn into expressions of love, care, desire. We saw how fearful words turned into laughter and how careful smirks turned into cheshire cat smiles. We kept watching it unfold until all we could see was the tip of the other’s nose. It became clear then that this was a decision that was ours and ours alone. You squeezed my hand and told me that no matter what, you wanted to be with me. You would not leave me.

As our eyes met, I realized we begun this journey by choosing to trust each other first. We never chose to stumble upon this. We owed all our love, energy, and concern to each other, whatever that meant for the choice that lay ahead. We stood up together and turned back toward the diverging path. For us then, to love each other meant to face the darkness. It meant to wait for the sand mountain to seem more like a sandy beach. It meant to wait until the cruel comments turned into congratulations, until the job applications turned into paychecks, until the weight of the medical bills blew away in the wind. It would be hard, we had no illusions about that, but I could see the light in your eyes and I could feel your hand tucked assuredly in mine and that was enough to lead us forward.

Where the Wild Things Are

Since adolescence, I have wanted that which was unconventional. I didn’t want to drown in the monotony of everyday. I didn’t want to be the girl you could pick up from the bar. I learned the chase was safer than the catch. I have based all my relationship decisions on that which was shocking but safe. I dated outside the norm because I hated being young. I went for things I couldn’t have to see if I could get them.

I have dated my manager, my professor, a drug dealer, and men so bogged down with family trauma that they could barely communicate their feelings. I have fallen for girls. I have slept with a man double my age. I have wanted my roommate in ways that left me awake all night. Yet, I wanted to be free. I wanted to prove that I could charm my way into someone’s heart without them ever entering mine.

Why?

I never wanted to feel like I did when I was 14-17 years old. I never wanted to love someone who hurt me. I never wanted sex to be expected. I never wanted to feel like I was only safe alone. I never wanted to feel used, abandoned, or disrespected in that way again.

So I ran away from home. I gave up that which was familiar, comfortable, or normal in the traditional sense in order to seek my own path. I wanted to regain control. I wanted to be the King of the Beasts. Whatever creatures I encountered, I could tame. I could gnash my terrible teeth and roar terrible roars like anything that crossed my path. I could prove I was strong. I could be invincible again. I could make anyone fall in love with me.

At the end of the day, I wasn’t fit to run around with the Wild Things. I didn’t want to be with an older man who would always feel uncomfortable around me. I didn’t want to have sex while thinking about all the drugs stashed in the apartment. I didn’t just want a pretty girl lying beside me. It was never the age, the gender, or the subversiveness that attracted me; I wanted to find home in someone else. I wanted to be understood. I wanted someone to comfort me when I gnashed my teeth. I wanted someone to roar with me.

That is when I saw your ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ tattoo, as trivial as that might be, and I felt like everything fell into place. Max, in the book, ran away from ‘home’ in order to seek his own path, to find the love he lost in his own world. He chose the unconventional. He ran with creatures with whom he could never relate. He has the same name as you.

When I saw Max’s little foot poking out of your shirt sleeve, I knew that you have felt as lost as I have. I wanted what I saw in you more than anything that I had previously chased after. You are beautiful. You are kind. You are sensitive. You are strong. You make me feel safe. You make me happy. You make me grateful.

I can’t identify everything about you that makes me feel so sure. I just know that I see a home in you that I have tried and failed to create in others.

TajBar, Tuesday 8pm

I went out on a Tuesday for open mic night with a boy I just met. We were patiently awaiting your arrival in order to sign up for the evening’s acts. My companion went out to smoke and I was left alone in the room with you.

You told me you were ‘retired’ and I told you about my typewriter. We shared some smiles and I thought that you were particularly attractive. You bumbled in and out of the room. I approached you when I saw that you were writing. I asked you about what you were doing and it seemed like there was an interest floating between us. For the rest of the evening, it seemed we were watching each other. I smiled at you. You smiled at me. Maybe you were being polite. Maybe I was too drunk. I just know that whatever allure you had swept my attention away from my companion and led me to wonder about you.

I found you the following day online and realized you are out of my league. You are a humanitarian while I am more of a humanist. I went out for coffee and I saw your photograph framed on the wall, taken by a local artist.  All of this just seems peculiar. At any rate, I want you to know that I recognized something beautiful in you the minute I saw you. I’m proud of you somehow and I don’t even know your basics.

So…play on, beautiful boy.

COTA bus, 5:20 pm.

I saw you in the aisle, riding the bus in order to get home from presumably a long day at school. You caught me laughing and I caught your eye. You moved to the middle of the bus where I was standing near the door. You asked me what I thought was funny. I replied that people were funny. You seemed intrigued that I could find such amusement in an afternoon bus ride.

When your stop arrived, you thanked me for our chat and hoped we would see each other again.

It wasn’t until over a month later that we both ended up on the same route. We recognized each other immediately. You with your beautiful eastern accent and me with my headphones and suppressed giggles. I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed quiet. I think you are a pretty man. Even though I can’t remember your name, I will continue to look for your face amongst the crowded 5:20pm ride home.

Newport Music Hall, 11pm

I don’t have a clue who you are. We were standing next to each other in the front row listening to The Joy Formidable sometime in September. I thought you were with your girlfriend. You weren’t.

When the final song concluded, you exclaimed “That was awesome! That was so awesome” before proceeding to grab and kiss me. I’m sorry my friend pulled me away before I was able to catch your name. Your hand felt good in mine that night and I will remember that as an essential beginning to my junior year.

Thanks for sharing with me a beautiful moment with beautiful kisses on that beautiful rainy night.

Humanities Scholar Meeting, 6PM

Let me preface by stating that I am sorry for the first impression I occasionally make. I trick myself into thinking that being a cynical bitch makes me more attractive. I know that it is likely not the case.

At any rate, I saw you sitting next to my friend at the Scholars meeting and realized that you were a freshman. My freshman year sucked so I wanted to squash your youthful ideals of what college is and can offer you. You told me you are pursuing a double major in philosophy and neuroscience. I think you are batshit. I also think you have beautiful ambition.

Your hair is white/blonde and you are muscular and intelligent. You are excited to find people who think and feel and read. You incited in me a sense of intrigue; the same intrigue that so many comment I incite in them.  I wanted to see you again.

So here it goes, my freshman scholar. I think you are beautiful. I am tempted to show up to random humanities events in the hope that you might too unexpectedly arrive. I saw you smile today outside the bus stop and I wonder why you didn’t stop. I can only hope for another meeting on another, more fitting day.

W.A.R. Wednesday 7pm

I saw you walking in front of me as I entered the Wexner Center. Of course, I didn’t know it was you yet. You were just a someone, moving their body in the general direction that I also intended to go. I bought my ticket to the documentary and took a seat in the empty theatre. I chose an agreeable seat towards the middle. I checked my phone: 16 minutes early.

You had turned to use the restroom, so you entered a minute or so after me. You took a seat in the row directly behind me. I wonder what would have happened if you would have entered the theatre before me. Would I have been gusty enough to sit in such close proximity to you? We shared some small talk. I could hear your North Carolinian accent adding a twang to your words. You just moved here for grad school. I don’t know why but I felt my heart jump a little. I thought to myself, what are the chances that this girl, attending a feminist art documentary by herself is not at least a little bisexual? You disclosed that you don’t shave your legs or your armpits. The chances increased. We laughed about the difficulty of socializing and meeting people. The film began. I turned and asked what society says about jumping over theatre seats? You replied, “I was just thinking that. I will jump.” It is safe to say that you made the first metaphorical leap.

During the show, we kept our eyes on the screen. The line between lovers and friends is impossibly thin. I was treading between them, not knowing what to expect from you at all. I became convinced that this might be the story of a lifetime. I could imagine myself telling friends, “we met at a feminist art film. It was fate!”

When the movie ended, we were left with awkward endings. Will I ever see you again? You mentioned watching a movie together later in the week and my stomach flipped. But then,  you opened your phone to get my number and I saw a boy wallpapering your background. I don’t know the particulars but it meant the one thing I feared: You are unavailable.

I want you to know that I think you are beautiful and quirky. I am not sure what to expect from you but I know that whatever relationship you allow me to entertain with you will be substantial. The patchouli oil on your skin, that scent I have so long associated with Eden or my past, now lingers in my memory as distinctly you. I can’t say what will happen from here, but you are the first person I have been genuinely, uninhibitedly excited about in a long, long time.

Coming Back Home

The colors are changing again and I feel the same pull towards home. Something about this autumn reminds me of waiting at the end of the driveway, lunch in my backpack and Mum waving goodbye from the windowsill. It’s different now that I am older and have a place of my own. I still look for those comforts, the scent of cinnamon wafting from a freshly baked apple crisp and her soft voice asking me how school was.  I come home to an empty house, my unanswered voice echoing in the hallways. Yet that feeling of home reaches me and envelops me. It’s different now; it makes me feel like a stranger.

Still, I return every year to see the leaves on the trees wither and fall to the ground. I return to walk the paths that become hazier and hazier in my memory. I inhale the scents of home and somehow the distance and life that has accumulated falls away for a moment in time.

I was walking through Hocking Hills last week with a friend when he stopped to tell me how strange it was to be back to a place of his childhood adventures. He said that he could feel the different ages of himself climbing on the rocks and running around the very trails we were walking. It was strange because I had been feeling the same way. It was like I could feel the 13-year-old version of myself tapping me on the shoulder,  reminding me what it was like for her to see the stone formations for the first time. She reminded me to stop and breathe.

I am increasingly thinking that maybe moments are infinite. Maybe memory preserves more than it destroys. I think nothing really collapses like we thought.

I am in a coffee shop in Bowling Green, the place that my love grew for a boy now estranged. I can still see his head in his hands and feel his feet in my lap. I can still see him biting his bottom lip as he flipped pages of his book. I can see his petite hands and the ring I made him on his finger.

I feel like crying from all this memory that has accumulated. I don’t know what it is. It seems that my heart knows something that my head hasn’t quite figured out yet. It registers in pure emotion, but I can’t work out the logic yet. I sometimes wonder if I will live another day. I sometimes wonder if this is it for me. I wonder if these moments of contemplation are the only life I really live. I wonder if everything is imaginary.

the distance between.

Shadows creep across the yard and an eerie silence floats up and down the street. I sit upon the concrete steps leading up the porch, rum and coke in my right hand, cigarette in her left. A drink, a drag, a drink, a drag. The sun has long been hidden by the earth’s rotation but the air holds the heat of the day. I wear a blue dress that goes past my knees, braless and shoulders exposed. My friends talk and laugh animatedly on the porch but I stare off at the houses and the cars lining the street.

SHE begins to tear up at the memory of a relationship recently ended. A fullness now half empty, a future looking dim. I remember when my own hope for forever became a memory. I learned that only that bastard Time can remedy the hurt that threatens to extinguish the life of her. So I sit helplessly and I stare off and I try to be there by silently understanding. The noise from the porch makes me sick, I move to the grassy lawn and stretch my body upon the green blades to clear my head. Despite the city lights, the little dipper glows dimly in the sky. She, puffy eyed and sniffly, shuffles down to lie beside me. The warm breeze of night gently caresses us both. It doesn’t matter, does it? All moves onward, emotions floating away in the wind. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to protect her from herself.

She tries to be brave. She tries to stay positive but crocodile tears gather in the edges of her eyes and roll silently down her face. She is broken. He stole a piece of her heart when he touched that other girl, when a harmless flirt turned into a night of stress-relieving physicality. I can’t help but feel that I would never do that to her. I could deal with her anger. I could deal with her sensitivity. I could show her love.

I am as still as marble. I can’t touch her even as an act of sympathy. I can’t even make contact with her skin. She says I can stay with her tonight if I don’t want to drive home, but I can’t sleep in her bed. I can’t be that close to her without being close to her.

The fact is this: She chose everything over me. She chose homelessness; she chose a cheater; she chose unemployment; she chose uncertainty. She left me at every turn. She cries beside me and I feel myself empty beside her.

The warm night breeze encircles us and I know she will be whisked away with it in a matter of weeks. I look her in the eyes and, with a glance, try to communicate my love, my sympathy, and my infinite affections for her tiny frame. The moon kisses her hip bones in a way that makes me shiver. I tell her it’s time to go. I tell her that I hope she feels better even though I feel nothing but the dark night air. I tell her to call me if she needs anything, anything at all. I tell her I love her… I tell her goodnight.

forgetting.

Memories are collapsing. The ideal is shattered. I am rebuilding my life.

I was so young when I met you, when you tried to capture me. I thought you were my one. You ushered me to a cage and gave me a pet name. I dallied on the outside, never letting that door swing closed. You never considered my feelings. I allowed you to direct my life. Did I love you? We were in different realms. You lived in the future, in dreams. I live in the present, in moments. Maybe I loved you then. It’s too hard to say now.

I used to think the haziness of memory was frightening and awful. I didn’t want my life to disappear without my consent. Now, though, I am willing to give it up. Let the memories build upon each other. Let sadness cloaked in smiles melt into the oblivion. Let me have the truth of what is left. Let our nights and morning collapse. Let our arguments and kisses fall to pieces. I want nothing to do with our past.