i come alone here
“There’s a showing in my apartment.” I plop myself down in a chair across from a friend at a cafe on Saturday morning.
I’ve spent the morning cleaning. The plus of apartment showings is always having a tidy house.
“Wait. Where would you go then?”
“Who knows.”
“Back to Rome?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’ll work in a bakery. Write. Date another bartender. Again and again and again. But I’m not mad about that life.”
“Honestly? Sounds pretty great to me.”
-
I have felt dizzy over the past few days. As if I am observing my life instead of partaking in it. Hovering. My friend at work scared me when she said, “Emily - it’s like you’re looking through me but not at me.”
Through, but not at.
Through, but not at.
I wonder if other people are having the same experience with me.
-
After my Saturday morning cafe visit, I go about my usual. Buy a carton of eggs for a week. I pick up an avocado, too. I blast Arcade Fire’s “In the Backseat” and I think about how the entire album is based on the grief of growing up and exiting childhood and entering adulthood.
I don’t normally do this. I don’t normally want to worry people. But I text a friend and ask to pop by because I desperately need to get out of my own head.
“Of course!” She immediately replies.
I make my 3 eggs and eat half of an avocado at home before bundling up in my fur and pink Ganni boots and walking over.
She’s in the middle of cleaning and I seat myself down in the corner of her sofa.
“Can I make you a drink? Hot chocolate?”
“Girl. Do you have any alcohol?”
It’s 1 PM and I wouldn’t even judge myself if it was 10 AM.
She makes me a Campari Spritz and brings it over to wear I’m curled up.
She looks concerned.
“What happened?”
-
A few nights prior, I’m attempting to light a candle. I have stolen a few lighters from him since our reunion at the start of the summer. Collecting lighters from men is one of my favorite habits of mine. It’s the last lighter that I have of his, and I’m struggling to light this candle.
“Don’t tell me the fucking flame is out.”
I say this to no one in my empty apartment. But it is out. And I know exactly what this means.
-
“Is it normal for him to go this long without speaking to you?”
“The last conversation we had was him sending me a screenshot of a conversation he was having with that realtor - of him recommending me as a “great tenant.”
He did his best, I will say. The morning after I told him about my apartment situation, he immediately set something up. Then, he immediately disappeared.
“This all goes beyond commitment.” My best friend texts me while I’m chugging my first Campari spritz. “It’s like this dark hole. I can’t even describe it. Something tweaked in his brain after his friend died. But he has to want the help.”
“It’s sad, Emily. This is all so sad. I’m almost like - do we just show up to his apartment and knock on his door?” My friend sits next to me on the sofa.
I shake my head. “I just feel like…he chose all of this. Like he chose his fate.”
-
What are our lives are fated to be? What about the endings? Is it up to chance, or is it all predetermined? I think about my mother’s cancer. I think of how it started in her abdomen, which is where stress and resentment lie. And I will often wonder to myself - what if she had gotten help? What if she went to therapy? Could it have prevented something? Could it have prolonged something? Or was she destined to leave this earth after 57 years? Was that in her fate? And would death just have happened a different way?
-
“You will move on from this. And it won’t be from some random hook-up. It’ll be when you’re in something real. Three to four months in.” My friend makes me another spritz without me asking. “But I understand. I understand all of this. It’s a helpless feeling.”
I look down at my phone.
A text from my best friend reads:
“And you know what? I believe him when he talks about picturing you in the library and inside that house. I do. I just don’t think he’ll ever let himself get there. But Emily - you did everything you could.”
-
I climb into bed on Saturday evening. Soup simmers on the stove, but I don’t feel like eating. I write down:
Did I rip apart pieces of myself just to feel chosen? Did I grow to resent the parts he loved? What do I need to fix? What do I need to give away? What do I need to give to you?
I read an old newsletter.
And in the corner of this dimly lit bar - he tells me: “In eight years - I have never met anyone like you. No one is ever you.”
At 10 PM, I fall asleep.
-
It’s now Sunday morning. My hair is long and dark and shiny from Friday night’s mask. I decide to put on a new black sweater with a scoop neck and trumpet sleeves. A pair of old Reformation jeans go on without any struggle, and I slide into my olive green Ganni’s. The sun is shining and it’s bitterly cold, but I’ve ran out of coffee. At 9 AM, I bundle up with my fur and walk to my favourite bakery.
I forget my headphones on purpose.
I work in a few hours, and I decide to sit with my coffee inside. They know me in here, and I seat myself in a corner spot, bundled up with my fur. I used to come here with Rose on Sundays.
I’ll curl my hair when I get home, I decide. I’ll make a fluffy omelette and cut a few slices of fresh bread before walking to work. I’ll gua sha with a new oil. I’ll send a text to my friend to thank her for letting me drink half of her Campari yesterday. At almost 33 years old, I’ve seemed to have something figured out. Nothing is perfect. I can’t control what I can’t control, but I can control my days.
I can control the hours given to me, the minutes, the seconds.
I’ve chosen something too, I’ve realized. I’ve chosen a life that might look smaller to some, that might look quieter. But it is intentional and emotionally expansive with every movement I make. It’s a world full of beauty that was birthed from a world full of pain. A world that will forever choose expansion over retraction. Choices birthed from love. Choices birthed for love. Scars and sentences that I will wear proudly on this body.
I have loved. I have been loved.
I have been loved so well.
I am thankful when my friends use the term, “you will move on from this”, versus “you will get over”.
To me, there is a difference - moving on is moving forward. Not forgetting, just moving along.
And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
How we move alongside of it all.
How we keep moving, despite of it all.
