the untethering
to remember is to visit the dead
“Untethered.”
I’m having drinks with a man who I met on the street. I know how that sounds. But it was 8 am, and I was walking out of my favourite coffee shop. He approached me, told me I looked nice, and we started chatting. I was in leggings and a hoodie and it was -12 degrees, but I took it all as a compliment.
It’s the second time we are hanging out, and I know this won’t go anywhere. But I realized, it’s perfectly fine to be my whole and entire self.
“That’s how I imagine my mom to have felt when she lost her mother.” He tells me.
Untethered.
That really is the perfect word to describe it, though. Isn’t it? Those pillars. That foundation. The crumbling, the unravelling of it all.
And it is as equal parts dark, as it is liberating. As it is terrifying. But when I’m really honest with myself, I realize fear is just an emotion that lives in my mind, disguised as protection.
If I pay no attention to it, it will go away. It will all go away.
This man is perfectly fine. He’s kind, he’s well-read. But I just know. I know when the martinis never seem to go down fast enough.
And to get through the rest of the evening, I decide to pretend he is someone else.
What attracted me to him in the first place? We were complete opposites, but I must have recognized something. I must have recognized the longing in his eyes.
-
“He has a fear. But so do you.” My spiritual healer tells me.
Every time he came back, I felt a sense of completion. Of wholeness. I felt lucky. It felt like I could revisit the dead.
But it was those two losses that year, that came back to back. And what I learned in those moments, was this: I was going to lose it. I was always going to lose it. It was inevitable.
“Abandonment.” I tell her. “You realize that every single person that you love, will leave you. Or, they will die.”
Tears start to form in her eyes. “Emily.” Her voice softens. “You couldn’t have stopped her from dying.”
You can’t have everything you want in this life without feeling like you lost something else in return.
-
I send my best friend a message on a Thursday evening. I tell her how thankful I am to have written about him. To have written about us.
“Writing it then, exists as exactly how you felt back then. Not tainted by complicated feelings now. The retrospect of it all…can be confusing.” She messages back.
Sometimes I curse the art of remembering, but then I remember the gift of choice. We can choose who and what to remember. I don’t think I want to remember him as he is now. I want to remember who he was.
-
“There’s something else you want to tell me - isn’t there?”
I don’t know how to speak of this moment out loud, and I realize it’s one of the first times the words are leaving my mouth.
“The last time we…hooked up.” The phrase “hook up” seems casual for what it felt like, for what it was. But this might be me trying to down play it. Down play all of it.
I pause before continuing.
What am I feeling? Shame? Why do I feel the need to defend him?
“You can say it.”
“It felt like…there was an intent behind it. It wasn’t like how it normally was.”
There’s a difference. When it’s frivolous, when it’s playful. But when they know they’re losing you and moving on. They don’t want to let you forget.
She purses her lips together and nods. “Like he was saying: you’re mine.”
I nod. And I gave in. To whatever bond was being created between the two of us that night, whatever he wanted left tied. Emotionally, physically, psychologically. I gave in. Because I wanted nothing more. And I would never tell him this. But I wanted nothing more than to be his.
“Emily, you can love him.” She tells me. “It’s the most powerful thing in the world. To be in love, to love someone else. And you don’t need to deny it. To yourself, to anyone. But…you can also love from afar.”
-
To remember is to visit the dead. And what do you do when certain memories have a hold on you? I want to craft them to be something that isn’t as painful.
So, this is what I have written down. This is what I will choose. This is how I will remember you:
Through the wooden floors that creaked as we danced on that Sunday at the old bar. Through those chairs you moved closer and closer. “I was smitten.” When we talked about being just a little bit younger, and just a little bit more naive. How your face lit up when I talked about my freedom, my writing, my art. “Do you think we’re together in a different universe, but just can’t figure it out in this one?” The way you stroked the palm of my hand when I talked about her.
“But Emily - look at what you created because of it.”
I loved. And I once was loved. She smiles down on me. The moon caresses my face.
Till we meet again.
Till we all meet again.
Emily