reflections from a morning after
The air smells like a combination of laundry and cigarettes. Have you ever had the feeling that because you don’t belong anywhere, you belong everywhere? It’s a very freeing existence. But it’s an existence that always leaves you searching for something. And I wonder what the lesser of two evils is - not being able to hold on to the moment in front of you, or having what you want and realizing it’s never going to be enough.
Maybe home is a moment. Or home is the moment. Who are the people we’ve met along the way? Do we surround ourselves with people who we think have the answers, because we have none? I don’t think the ones who change us are meant to stay.
I know I am alone in ways others don’t understand. And sometimes, you meet ones that do. And you know what I do believe? That we can get everything we’ve ever wanted. And everything we’ve ever imagined. It all comes true. But do we feel like we deserve it? That’s the other question.
“That battle never goes away, Emily.” He looks at me and puts out his cigarette.
Conversations and sex and sex and conversations always become one. And after a while, you can’t really tell which one is which anymore.
“People think I’m selfish, but they don’t understand. They don’t understand people like us. Loss changes you. So I tell myself, I deserve it. I deserve it.”
I’m sitting on the couch, and it’s like I’m having a conversation with a mirror. But I haven’t said much.
“So why that area?” He points to my tattoos.
I start to ramble about my thinking process - when I think of tattoos I want, I think of myself in a black bikini. And the bikini will hide some parts of them and show others.
“But mainly, it’s because I get to choose which ones to show, and how much of them I want showing.” And it occurred to me then, that there was a lot more behind that question than I thought.
We both take a sip of our drink. He texts someone in his phone.
“I don’t usually talk this much.”
He looks down and away when he speaks a lot, unless it ends with “Emily.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Really? Because you’ve been talking for the past hour." I welcome myself back.
“Well, that’s because you don’t speak at all.”
“But I ask questions.”
I’ll let you in on something. I’ve always wanted to leave people feeling like they know everything about me, but they actually leave knowing nothing. The trick is to ask the right questions. And the tattoo question, well - he figured me out quickly.
“I was unhappy for a long time. Because everything I did - it had to be. It had to be for someone else. It had to be perfect. Everything I did. Everything I said.” He lights another cigarette.
There are 4 lemons in a bowl. A glass of water beside my bed. There’s a neighbour who practices the violin every evening at 5 pm. And when I look out my window, I find comfort in the white sheets that are hanging to dry in the sun.
“So what’s next?”
I give my routine answer: “I don’t know.” But this time, I really do mean it.
“Life on the run.” He kisses me and leaves. I am left standing alone in my room, my phone in my hands, head leaned up against a wall. And for the first time in a long time, I ask myself what I am running from in the first place.