a reckless careening of emotions and actions

That’s how you described your­self, soon after your dad died. A girl lost in grief, try­ing to drink and smoke and work and fuck her way out. Living her life like she was the only one who had­n’t fig­ured out what to do with it.

It’s hard to imag­ine you being so sad once. Or sad at all, and secure enough to admit lone­li­ness. You even had the objec­tive­ness to know that you shrank from oth­ers even though you did­n’t make your­self hap­py. That’s why I keep going through these entries in your old blog. Not just a dream jour­nal, but a jour­nal of dreams. Before you became trapped in a domes­tic life and your heart turned into a lump of stone.

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Princess Dolly, 2003–2018

Dolores was more than a pet. She was capa­ble of pro­found love (or burn­ing hatred), and that loy­al­ty made her feel more like a lit­tle per­son than a com­pan­ion. With the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize peo­ple through win­dows, I’d often find her sit­ting on the sill at the front of the house, wait­ing to greet me with a cho­rus of raspy meows when I came home from work; a rit­u­al only spe­cial guests may be privy to, if they’ve pre­sent­ed the princess with enough presents.

I adopt­ed her in uni­ver­si­ty, and she was a con­stant pres­ence through many res­i­dences, house­mates, girl­friends — we even shared our space with oth­er cats for years at a time. When find­ing me after a few moments apart, she’d come lean against me with an arched back, invit­ing me to scoop her up, and I’d make a point of spend­ing a bit of time to cradling her like a baby, even if I was just pass­ing through. Sometimes we’d lie in the blan­kets and stare into each oth­er’s eyes; there was as much com­fort to be found in her purring as my warmth and atten­tion.

I could tell our bond was spe­cial from the start, and being fear­ful that I’d nev­er share any­thing like it with anoth­er cat again, always made sure to cher­ish every sec­ond.

Continue read­ing “Princess Dolly, 2003–2018”…

it's complicated

At the very least, theirs was a friend­ship of unusu­al ardor.

Terms like “acquain­tance”, “friend”, and “lover” tend to denote defined roles. This makes for con­ve­nient social con­structs, where we have an idea of the nature of the rela­tion­ship, even when not direct­ly involved. Responsibilities of one group — care, affec­tion, respect, com­mit­ment, trust, will to coop­er­ate — don’t often over­lap with anoth­er. When they do, terms like “work wife” or “friend with ben­e­fits” might be used; re-char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of pre­vi­ous terms for a lack of bet­ter ones1.

It took me longer than I’d like to admit before I real­ized how rarely rela­tion­ships can be so neat­ly labelled. Not every “friend” con­sid­ers it an hon­our to be trust­ed with the spare set of house keys (and would I real­ly con­sid­er them a friend if they’re not to be relied on in an emer­gency?). Not every roman­tic part­ner is inter­est­ed in exclu­siv­i­ty or com­mit­ment. Not every sex­u­al encounter goes as far as pen­e­tra­tion, or even con­tact (which is why it’s pos­si­ble to have an affair of the heart).

Suffering the loss of many impor­tant peo­ple has also taught me that rela­tion­ships often evolve, as we grow and cir­cum­stances change. Whether it was due to some break­ing point or sim­ply the pas­sage of time, most of my sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships have come and gone. Now I can’t help but tread care­ful­ly when I’m about to invest my emo­tions in some­one, whether that means pri­or­i­tiz­ing them in my life, open­ing up with my secrets, or let­ting myself like them; that’s when I’m as scared of being hurt as I am of los­ing them.

  1. I’ve seen “meta­mour” defined as a per­son who’s in an inti­mate (roman­tic or sex­u­al) rela­tion­ship with an inti­mate part­ner of yours, but I like to use it as a catchall for any­one who falls between cat­e­gories. Perhaps if English was a rich­er lan­guage, there’d be less ostra­ciza­tion of uncon­ven­tion­al arrange­ments or needs. [↩]

almost like the blues

Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and sur­pris­ing things, and some­times lit­tle won­drous things, spill out in me con­stant­ly, and I can count on noth­ing.

—A Scanner Darkly

Winter has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a dif­fi­cult time. In my youth, the hol­i­days were filled with fam­i­ly gath­er­ings where I nev­er found my place1. Then I start­ed com­ing into my own, but every­one else began spend­ing time with their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, leav­ing me an observ­er with a sur­ro­gate fam­i­ly. Eventually, I grew the need for a con­nec­tion with peo­ple who could bet­ter under­stand the per­son I’d become, and again found myself in exile.

cat with bass guitar

This year is no dif­fer­ent. The weath­er has been par­tic­u­lar­ly pun­ish­ing, with extreme cold fronts that make any form of trav­el a lit­er­al pain. It’s a fine line between inspi­ra­tion and oppres­sion when trapped in a win­ter won­der­land. Even after a week of Darren’s com­pa­ny, along with new instru­ments and some of the stick­i­est of the icky, I haven’t been able to shake this feel­ing of lone­li­ness.

Continue read­ing “almost like the blues”…

  1. Now I real­ize that being forced to spend a night with a ran­dom assort­ment of peo­ple is a crap­shoot at best. [↩]

keeping the rage tender

Fall has fall­en, and I was ready. I was wait­ing. I was trapped for months on end, when my body would­n’t coop­er­ate or anx­i­ety got the bet­ter of me. Even hear­ing Townes Van Zandt sing to me about snow in Raton was enough to make me miss win­ter again. I’d live vic­ar­i­ous­ly in any form of visu­al media I could find, just to remem­ber what it was like to feel the tin­gle of sun on my skin.

Now I can go out, but on my own terms and for the sake of it, not just ther­a­py or a doc­tor’s appoint­ment. It’s giv­en Heather and I a chance to date — to dress up for each oth­er, to trade secret glances about peo­ple who might be the oth­er’s type, to hold hands and show each oth­er off — instead of all the cop­ing we were left doing after falling into the rela­tion­ship so sud­den­ly.

portrait of Heather and Jeff

Rachel Weisz has noth­ing on dem brows.

Ever since she began her career, I found it dif­fi­cult to deal with how lit­tle we saw each oth­er. It felt like we were bare­ly con­nect­ing or hav­ing mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences when we had such lim­it­ed time. Now that she has a bet­ter shift and a car­pool, we have an extra hour and a half togeth­er on week­days. Combined with Jesse com­mit­ting to hang­outs twice a month to play games or jam, it’s made a huge dif­fer­ence in the way I approach my goals and plan my time.

They’re small steps, but after so much regres­sion, I tend to be hap­py with any move­ment in the right direc­tion. Still, I won­der if I’ll ever find a bal­ance that won’t leave me fran­tic, one that’s con­ducive to get­ting my intro­vert needs met while let­ting me feel secure in my rela­tion­ships.

Continue read­ing “keep­ing the rage ten­der”…