the story of past newsletters
from the beginning
My friends,
It’s hot. It’s fucking hot. It’s 11:30 on a Sunday morning in late July. 36 degrees and an “Extreme Heat Warning” my phone reads. There’s an espresso cup and half a litre of water beside us. No matter how hot it gets, I will never give up my morning espresso. I welcome the little burn on my tongue as it wakes me up from another restless, sleepless summer night.
How many hours a night are you sleeping in this 40 degree weather? I have my AC blasting, but I think, at most, I’m managing 5 or 6. This could be due to a very heavy social week, in which, I think, I potentially drank my weight in white wine. But, compared to last July where I spent the majority of it crying on the floor, I welcome the weeks that are filled with options and possibilities, gossip, pizza al tonno, and of course, vino bianco.
I mean, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve shed a few tears over the past little while. Cancer season wouldn’t be Cancer season without emotions. But there’s something about this Cancer season that has made me feel as though my tears are actually helping me move through something, versus me drowning in them.
Sometimes, whenever I’m homesick, I have dreams of the past. Our First Muse gives me a hug, calls me “Emily Mais”, and apologizes for all of the things that I’ve forgotten, because we were young. I then will dream of my family losing me in a grocery store, but somehow finding me in an aisle with samples of free chocolate.
-
The night of Past Newsletter’s outburst still haunts me. Maroon plays on repeat. I told someone that it’s the cool-sad girl anthem of the summer.
The mark you saw on my collarbone, the rust that grew between telephones, the lips I used to call home.
“Hanging out with you always feels like eating cotton candy.” My friend tells me over a second or third spritz.
This compliment warms my heart. We both start to laugh.
“But that’s why I was so confused as to why he was so enamoured with me. We could not be any more…different.”
I have been googling karmic relationships and karmic cycles. How can one end this? I spent over a year analyzing, comparing, understanding, just trying to make sense of something.
But, like he once said to me, “You can’t describe something that’s only meant to be felt.”
Making peace after that night was very important to him. And maybe it would help me out a bit, too.
I knew I’d never get the direct answer I always wanted, but maybe there would be a way to get something that I didn’t know I needed.
So, this past Saturday night, after taking myself out for pizza al tonno and a very heavy pour of white wine, I decided to go on a stroll.
Thankful that the humidity was mostly gone, my hair, usually in a low bun, stayed straight and frizz free. I threw on my favourite strapless black linen mini dress, and an old pair of gold sandals. My beloved multi-coloured Fendi scarf hung from my little straw H&M bag. I call this the everyday - you have no idea what you’re up to - but you just know you’ll get up to something - look.
“Emily.” The man at the front immediately recognizes me. He’s cold, most likely as a result of me not pursuing our one night together an episode further.
“Hi! I didn’t realize I’d see you.” I don’t know why those words came out of my mouth.
“Why? Did you forget I worked here?”
“No, I just …” The nerves of what I’ll encounter inside ends up taking over any bone of polite small talk I have in my body.
He opens the door for me and I walk inside.
I haven’t seen the hostess since that night. For the first time ever, she stands up from her chair and comes to greet me with a huge smile and a double kiss.
“The Venetian ball.” I text my best friend. “We never know what to expect.”
It really had all felt so public. That’s what was so jarring about it. Like I was on display, and he had chose to air our laundry to everyone.
“Only TWICE? Last SPRING?”
I tell a friend the truth about our hook-ups a few days ago.
“Emily. The poor man is in love.”
Peter Pan is there. Smiling and more aloof than ever. I laugh whenever I see him. He was a distraction, I realized. A good and fun and harmless distraction. He waves, I wave back.
I take a breath and sit down. Knowing that there will be murmurs, and trying to be okay with not knowing what those murmurs will be.
From the corner of my eye, I see Past Newsletters slowly walking towards me. And for the first time in a long time, the mask he usually wears is slightly off. The veneer. The puffed out chest, the commanding and dominating presence. Both of us have become well-trained in poker faces, but the problem is, neither of us are well-trained in hiding our expressive eyes.
Sheepishly, he holds up a peace sign. “Peace?”
I smile and start to laugh. However, he does not.
“Yes, I came for a peace offering.”
Knowing that there are people watching, I am careful to not say anything about that night.
He places two shot glasses in front of us and grabs a bottle of vodka. But the energy is different. It’s not celebratory.
You know when two people have finally realized that their something needed to come to an end? And they look at each other and say, “Well, we had a good run, didn’t we?”
Taking the shot with him felt exactly like this, except neither of us could, nor wanted to, look at each other.
-
“Have another shot with me.”
I roll my eyes. “I think you just want me to stay longer.”
On the first night we met, I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. But I didn’t want to leave, either. It had been 3 hours of him making me 3 different cocktails. It felt like we were in our own world, in that corner spot at the bar. And it was the way that he explained them to me, as though he was telling a story. About the bar, about the drink itself. The ingredients, the measurements. The science behind it all. He told me that the art of bartending came down to one thing: the understanding of people.
“It’s like you’re inviting someone into your home.”
He tells me that he went to school for journalism.
“And then?”
He laughs. “Well, I’m here.”
Here’s the thing: I was tired of the same conversation I had with every other guy in Toronto. The one whose dad gave them a job and didn’t have to work for anything. The one who was perpetually lost yet loved to mansplain TFSA’s.
And here was this man. Who came from less opportunities and less privilege. But he took what he did, and what was offered to him, and made something meaningful from it. He was creative, he was intelligent, he was emotional. He was observant. He stood out without trying. Or without wanting to. He was passionate and he was well-read. He asked the right questions. He was interested in my responses. He was curious. He wanted to know everything. He was beautiful.
To everyone else, he was a man behind the bar pouring drinks. But to me, he was orchestrating a room.
-
“You know what it felt like? Like he had went to my therapist before coming over. And he had asked her for notes on all of my innermost thoughts and behaviours. And then he just…repeated them all to me. It all just…it all just clicked.”
I’m FaceTiming my best friend in the spring of last year.
He had just left my apartment for the first time, and I’m in a complete haze.
It was the way he looked at me after. And the way his eyes held on to mine. There was a sadness to it. Almost a torture. His hand tracing the tattoo on my collarbone. The moment, I wanted to hold on to it. But you never realize the beauty of a moment until after you lived it.
“Whenever I get a tattoo, it almost feels like an archeologist is digging underneath my skin, and unveiling another layer of myself to the world.”
I start to laugh. “Well. That’s a lot of layers.”
-
“The good news is - we figured out your type. The bad news is - he might be…exactly it.”
“But you know what scares me the most? I think if he said Emily - give up everything and let’s run away together. I would. I totally and completely would.”
-
“I have to tell you something.”
He texts me to stop by, and I slide into what would become my usual spot.
He smiles. “Tell me.”
“They’re not publishing the article unless I change it. They told me it’s too deep.”
“Tell them to go fuck themselves. You’re too smart for them, anyway.”
-
“I was hurt and I reacted wrong. I’m sorry. Please. I really hope you can forgive me. It won’t happen ever again. I promise.” I re-read our conversation from that night over and over.
“It’s not just about tonight. It’s about everything.” I tell him. “It’s last year. I wish we just had a conversation. To just acknowledge it all and wish each other well. I feel like you’ve always resented me in some way.”
The way things left off last year was terrible. And it’s really now only looking back, I realized how I played a part in his hurt, too.
“It’s okay, Emmy. I understand. It’s okay. Please. Let’s move forward. Please.”
It’s really not okay, I want to tell him. It’s really, really not.
-
“My newsletter community became everything to me. I’ve met so many girls that have lost people close to them. Some parents, siblings, some friends. And the way we go about life and love, is all so different, yet somehow the same.”
“What do you mean by that?” A new friend asks me.
“I think we’re more carefree when it comes to living. But personally, I’m extremely protective of my heart.”
“Maybe you’ve become too rational about it. Love, I mean.”
You can’t describe something that’s only meant to be felt.
“Maybe.”
“Do you trust men?”
I go silent. “I want to. But sometimes, I’m not exactly sure I know how.”
-
“Grief really is love with nowhere to go. And when you don’t have the proper outlets, that grief, that love - with nowhere to live, will come out as pain.”
My therapist tells me.
“That night plays in my mind on a feedback loop. I replay the way he looked at me, the way we looked at each other, his voice, how he did it in front of everyone. His apology. All of it. I replay all of it.”
“It showed you something though, didn’t it?”
“Why is it easier to tell ourselves that they don’t actually like us? And to tell ourselves that we’re just a body, a number, all of that?”
“Well, because this was a situation where you both were well aware that those feelings couldn’t go anywhere.”
Maybe I was mourning it all before it even started. It really was all love with nowhere to go.
“The difference, Emily? Sure, maybe some of your actions were derived from a bit of pain, too. But you’re well equipped to deal with loss. You have the tools. You have the outlets. I’m not sure he has any of those. But can I be honest? I’m really not worried about you.”
-
“You want another?”
He points to my empty martini glass. But we’re capping it at just one this evening.
I shake my head. “Just the bill.”
He looks surprised. “Where are you off to now?”
“Home.”
“Ah.” He smiles.
And it’s the way that our eyes hold on to each other’s as I say that four letter word. Home.
And even after all of this. For a split second, I’ll still let myself imagine it. 4 AM. Wrapping my arms around his neck. Telling him that I missed him, even though I just saw him.
I stand up from the barstool to leave. The linen on my black dress wrinkles easily. I smooth it down, and catch his attention before walking out.
“We’re good?” I mouth.
The tattooed forearms. The dark brown eyes. The furrowed brow. Both hands fixated on the bar.
Where I first met him, where I always find him, and where he will always be.
He smiles and nods. And maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I see the smallest twinkle in his eye as I wave goodbye.
-
As tortured as the battle between my mind and my heart both felt over the past year. I wouldn’t have done anything different. I wouldn’t have changed anything. I wouldn’t have stayed last fall or last winter. I wouldn’t have said anything more or done anything less.
That irrationality. And how lucky was I to have experienced it? To fall. That’s exactly what it is, and what it was. To be driven to the point of madness, to use our eyes to speak a completely different language. To find solace in art. To find connectivity in sharing our broken hearts to strangers.
He helped me to build something. That karmic connection. That push and that pull, and that connectivity that makes everything become so intertwined.
Did it mean as much to you as it meant to me? I never got the answer I thought I wanted. But I think I got it in other ways.
To those moments last spring that led us here. Those afternoons. Where nothing rational ever existed. Where rationality wasn’t meant to exist.
Only us. It was always only us.