Wednesday, April 18, 2018

the rays of sun coming in through the blinds

...are lines against a back - her back - not just a back, you can touch. Not the lines, either. I suppose. It's light, electromagnetic radiation, but you touch her skin and cover up the line and then run your fingertips back and forth. For a second you could convince yourself that like the bed and the shared space and this feeling, everything is warm, that the snow that keeps falling well into April is a trick, an illusion, before you know it you'll be cursing the lack of A/C and the stifling heat of an 89 degree room. You've gotten used to it over the years but you worry if she will want to sleep here and wake up to stifling nature of it all and the feeling of sweat.

There's a hug in a store, a restaurant, any place, and each time it gets a bit easier, the self-consciousness becomes less about self and more about conscious decisions to affirm this. If people are looking they can look, really, maybe, where was I? In the store. Nobody is looking. It's 11 pm and the greeting card aisle is empty but the two of us. The hug feels safe and reassuring and like something that should last forever.

Each dress looks good. You don't understand. You have color preferences, black, blue, maybe a few others, but every one of them looks just right on her. You wonder if puke green would for a brief second and then admonish yourself for such a stupid question; of course it would. She shows you pics of herself over the years and every single one looks good. She scrolls through; different hair styles, different colors, different clothes, different poses, things change but you still find yourself enamored with each one.

Some days you wake up alone and the first thing you smell is the pillow next to yours where her hair rested the night before, until the most painful part of each night; saying goodbye at 2 am, getting up from this space, this warmth, this holding and sharing, walking out to her car, flip flops ungainly down the stairs and against the slick sidewalk. We're back to the fucking April snow again, but I'm kidding myself if I say it'd be easier to say goodbye at 65 degrees than it is at 25. It's for the best, I suppose, both parties need sleep, right? You're not convincing. Is anyone?

There's anxiety in arguments and conflict. There always is. Remember how you shake when you go to class? When you discuss politics with parents? Sometimes when you get home from work even though nothing happened that day? There's shaking. There maybe always will be. Your doctor originally told you to take the Xanax daily, years ago, the prescription still says to do so, maybe the daily anxiety would be better but resistance is a hell of a non-drug and forgetfulness is a hell of a non-remembrance. But you remind yourself that even though you can't communicate, even though you've bungled something or been shitty or whatever, you have each other. There's a walk into the treeline after one such occasion, after argument and shaking and music and the sounds of birds permeating the silence when your brain can't construct a thought. Their are paw prints on the trail and joggers and people with dogs. Suddenly, a jaunt off the beaten path, she takes a sharp turn away from the people, maybe that's the key to everything, the road less traveled; so say inspirational posters and occasionally your brain when you discuss which restaurant to eat at. The details of what conspired in the woods thereafter are messy.

There's some future to construct. There never really was. Now there is. Of road trips and coming home and cat pictures and someone having your back. Life is hard alone; it's hard together too - what isn't - but the little texts and pics and smiles and kisses mean even on the worst days there will be highlights, and I suppose that's about as much as you can ask for, not every day can be a good day, but hopefully the bad ones are a little less severe now. She reaches out to touch you on the couch while you eat the noodles she brought to you. It was a bad day. It's much better now. You still don't know what the best response is when you get the late night text saying "I love you." Han Solo is cool, but that gets old eventually, right? Say the same but amend a "too" onto the end? Why is this so hard? It's not. Her responses are great. No big deal. Sorry Finn. The next morning, it's 10 am and phantom phone vibration sensations set in. There's an excited anxiety for the first text. Or all of them. Or what to respond. Maybe you just wanted to ring out one more Star Wars reference. Stay on target.

In a car you share string cheese and eat it like corn on the cob, she laughs and you laugh and now you have a reference, an in-joke, you can always come back to it and smile. It's not just the humor, the ridiculousness, it is that shared moment, the positive upswell brought forth by the spontaneity of the hilarity, the warm expressions, her head thrown back and her hair draped down across her shoulders and the car seat. A strong feeling of contentment.

You have it a lot lately. Other feelings, too. Your boss won't communicate. Your money is still evaporating, months after you figured it couldn't get any worse. It didn't. It just never got better. There's a class in a few weeks. Remember all the times school made you want to self-harm, hide, disappear, give up? You're walking back in. Fifth time is the charm now? You can't remember how many times. Does it matter? Failure is the beaten path this time, and the side jaunt feels distant. Your closest friend is in a strung out medical emergency. Travel is probably over, the immense luxury afforded to you in tatters, like the car whose brakes are squeaking again. Remember all those friends who left? They never came back. But there's a voice inside you that says you have more support than ever, a feeling that maybe this time will be different, because something very important is different, and there's no more doing this all alone. You're used to that, the alone-ness, you have to unlearn it, but it's worth it, and you feel optimistic about things. Not all things, but some things, for the first time in a while. The early part of the year was rough.

It's the evening. There's no more light coming in through the blinds. In nervous excitement, you keep peeking through them, every few seconds, waiting for a green car to show up. Your neighbors might suspect you for drugs if they weren't dealing themselves. You know that the light doesn't have to come through the blinds and onto her back later on when she lies there. She's right next to you. The light is already in the room.

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