When I look at this picture, I see the flaws. The stretch marks on my back, and especially prominent on the side of my ass. Those strange red blemishes on my shoulder that I don’t remember having. The lack of junk in the trunk so common in Asian people. I didn’t even know I had a mole down there.

I used to have body-image issues. Always thinking I was too skinny, and too ugly.

Then someone made me feel differently. She treated every part of my body with as much attention and love as I treated hers. She was the first person to ever make me believe that I was attractive too. Some days, I felt as handsome as she was pretty.

I turn 30 in nine months, and now that she’s gone, I wonder if anyone will ever see me that way again.

The Turning 30 Series

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask

(+5 bonus points if you get the album reference.)

I really do have love to give! I just don’t know where to put it!

—Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, Magnolia

Okay, I’ll admit it.

I need to love. I need it, the way I need to eat.

This is the same part of me that notices the faint outlines of hearts drawn in car windows. Also, the same part that marvels about that adolescent point in life, when one would draw something so simple and insignificant because the only worry was whether or not someone liked you back.

So when I don’t have someone to love, it fucking kills me.

I had been waiting for the right one to come along my whole life. My mistake was thinking she was waiting for me too.

(Just like old times, eh?)

Tyler licks his lips until they’re gleaming wet. He takes Jack’s hands and KISSES the back of it.

I figured it out.

I had too much want.

The saliva shines in the shape of the kiss. Tyler pours a bit of the flaked lye onto Jack’s hand.

I started out selflessly — doing without expecting, giving not to receive, working not for reward¹ — because all I wanted was to live in the moment, to experience as much as I could while it lasted. Eventually, that turned into a desire, a belief that I couldn’t live without what (or whom) I wanted.

One could call it love.

The old me would have blamed myself for falling into that trap, but I’ve since recognized that I’m human. That I’m prone to falling, especially when I’m so amorously intoxicated.

Jack’s whole body JERKS. Tyler holds tight to Jack’s hand and arm. Tears well in Jack’s eyes; his face tightens.

Now that I’m able to stand back and recognize my longing, and I can also see how much that longing that was starting to tear me down.

It’s like in Fight Club, when Tyler Durden is about to pour lye on Jack’s hand. Jack already knows he’s going to die; it’s an undeniable reality we all come to realize as we grow out of childhood, yet are rarely forced to deal with (or even embrace). For Jack, that reality doesn’t truly sink in until he’s faced with the chemical burn on his body.

Jack, snapping back, tries to jerk his hand away. Tyler keeps hold of it and their arms KNOCK UTENSILS off the table.

I was told it was over before it started, but that reality didn’t sink in until recently. It’s taken this long because I dared to dream of something greater, and a large part of me didn’t want to give up the wonderful memories. Unfortunately, those memories are mixed and inseparable from everything else that’s been holding me back. The fact that I think too much doesn’t help either.

At some point, I realized that I simply had to let go. Truly let go.

Tyler finally says to Jack:

Listen, you can run water over your hand and make it worse or, look at me, or you can use vinegar and neutralize the burn. First you have to give up, first you have to know — not fear — know — that someday you’re gonna die.

I used to think I had lost something special, but now I have no desires and nothing left to lose. It’s like I’m starting back where I was two years ago, which really wasn’t a bad place to be. The world is finally lucid and clear.

Now I know, and it feels like happiness.

Congratulations. You’re a step closer to hitting bottom.

1. Readers of the Tao Te Ching will recognize this language. There’s so much of this Taoist idea of paradox and contradiction in Fight Club. [↑]

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There’s been a smattering of good music lately, but this is the song that haunts me; Love and Greed by Magneta Lane. I added it to my collection on the 12th of October, and it’s already in my Top 20 Most Played. By no means is it the best song on the album; it’s just the one that hit me the hardest.

To hear it as a track by itself is a little out of context. It comes as 7 of 10 off Gambling With God, their latest album, and the songs leading up to it charge at a much faster pace. The dramatic change of tone between the verses and the chorus are effective in subtly drawing you in, against lyrics that should be screamed more than anything else.

My favourite part is when Lexi says, “I don’t want recycled love / if I did I’d pour wine in a cup / and get all liquored up / and fucking crawl in front of you” when the guitar and bass stop, and it’s just Nadia doing the bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum underneath on her toms.

It’s stuff like this that makes rather plain looking Lexi Valentine so goddam attractive, very much in a Karen O kind of way. I guess you could say I have a fascination with Lexi swearing, because she does it so infrequently.

So…

I gave this song to Darren, and he sent me back this reply:

shit this song is on auto-repeat right now…. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Darren’s the only person in the world who sees love the way I do. John knows me in every other way — logic, mindset, emotion, personality, habits, taste — but he doesn’t understand my love, which is a big part of me. The only one who understands is Darren¹ because we share the same quixotic ideas about it. It’s as if we developed this romantic attitude as a backlash to how our fathers (brothers, who also look the same) raised us with such aloofness. This ideal is how we bond.

One time he told me he can’t wait for the day when we’re at his house with our girlfriends, and we’re playing Cranium, and we’re just…happy.

This is how I know he’s the only person who hears this song the same way too.

1. Not even my girlfriends have come close to understanding, aside from Bronwen. [↑]

Your friends keep telling you you’ll do better. That you deserve someone who appreciates you, and won’t toy with your feelings. Their words have been keeping together the pieces of your mended heart.

But sometimes, you lose sight of that. Fairness, justice, pride, propriety. All of that goes out the window in a moment of weakness, when you’re sleeping on the couch, and the memory fades in of a time when she was lying where you are now with her hands on her arms to shield her from the cold, and you opened your hoodie to wrap it around her body, the two of your squeezed together in one piece of clothing. Or when you think of something that would be perfect for her, and wonder why you can’t just leave it on her doorstep. These moments of bliss you don’t want to forget, these habits of love proven so hard to break.

So you read her last words over and over again, to remind yourself it wasn’t your feelings that were holding things back. Maybe you can convince yourself of what everyone else seems to know.

Still, there are times when the memories override your logic and overwhelm your reason. It makes you question both her actions and yours, when you know it doesn’t make sense to contact her because nothing has changed, and nothing ever will. You’re the only one in the world who doesn’t seem to understand.

Love conquers all, whether you want it to or not.

I seem to be writing about only one thing lately.

In the day, there are rushes of contentment amidst moments of clarity. Little things, like driving on the highway, feeling the wind ruffle my hair. Waking up to the fresh, cool morning air that signals the oncoming autumn. It all feels great, and for a moment, I can think of nothing else but how wonderful it all is.

The night is another story. The sky draws it’s curtains, leaving me with only haunting memories that turn vivid when the sun no longer washes them out. The darkness is only a reminder of the void she once filled with the very vibrancy of her soul, and without her presence to intoxicate me, I’m left feeling numb.

Jesus christ, I could go on and on.

I wonder why anyone would read all these ramblings about love and loss. Isn’t it just the same shit over and over again? But love is the only thing I do well. Love is the only thing I know, and I can only write that which I know.

In time, I’ll have just as much to say in celebration, but for now, I need to get everything else out of my system, stoking the fires of grief until I run out of fuel.

(A brief continuation of my diagrams for heartbreak.)

I love making these little diagrams. It’s so cathartic. I remember reading this xkcd comic (Do you know the functions? Answers in the footnote¹.) a long time ago, and thinking, “Yeah, I don’t get it either”.

I’ve always been a visual person, but I never realized that doing something like this would make things so much clearer. All those years earning a degree in computer science — learning Venn diagrams, flow charts, and the like — have finally come in handy.

1. From left to right, top to bottom: square root of love, cosine of love (trigonometry), derivative of love (calculus), matrix multiplication of love (linear algebra), and someone help me out with the last one, it seems like another calculus equation with some constants thrown in the Fourier transformation of love (Hat tip to Edd Sowden for this one). [↑]

There were patches of skin on her body that would build, and turn white, and flake.

She was always self-conscious of those areas, to the point of tears, but I called them my kissing map, as each patch would lead my lips to the next. In the dark, the spots revealed themselves in their texture, like delicate wounds. How different they tasted, how strange that skin felt against my own.

I would always kiss those spots, in hopes that my lips would convince her that she had nothing to be self-conscious about around me. To ease, and share their burden.

To acknowledge that she was flawed, as we all are on earth, but I still loved and accepted her, despite it all.