hide out from the ones you know will love you

"i'm just so bloody over it. this boyfriend-as-band-aid syndrome."

"yeah, i hear you. it's pathetic."

"you know? it's like, get your shit together. no one's going to 'save you.'"

"right? maybe you should write a blog post about that."

i smirked, thinking of how this blog has become something of an extension of myself now, my life, like a place to hang my coat by the front door.

"yeah, maybe," i said.

****

"do you want to come over?" he asked, online, of course. "we could run those errands of yours. i'll help you. then maybe get some dinner?"

"yeah," i typed back, full of false enthusiasm. "that sounds like fun!" smiley face.

"oh, and bring some swimming trunks, maybe we can take a dip in the pool after dinner." winky face.

"yeah? that could be good. you know what they say about going swimming after you eat, though." winky face back.

"well, maybe we'll just have to think of something else then."

winky fucking face.

*****

last week, i was crossing the street, and i could swear someone who looked exactly like david was crossing from the other side of the street. he looked different, of course, like maybe he'd put on some weight or lost some hair or something, but i couldn't stop staring, waiting for the hint that this was not in fact david, that he was still in new york or who even knows anymore. he'd have no reason to be in melbourne. no reason to be back in my life, even tangentially. regardless of what i sometimes considered, maybe in some way wanted.

to recognize one another.

*****

i forget my swimming trunks and we never run those errands. i have been here before. i know how this works. assumed familiarity, which i suppose is necessary when it's only a matter of minutes before clothes are coming off and privacies invaded. we're in the bedroom, he's fiddling about with this and that on his dresser, i'm not sure if i should sit down on the bed. it's like halloween every day, and i keep recycling my "lady in waiting" costume.

and then he comes over to me, as if he is about to walk right through me, and so it begins.

here's the keys, you drive.

****

"well, when's the last time either of us has been in a healthy relationship?" jay asks, online, unfortunately.

"i know, right?"

"i mean, maybe we're all in something of an 'unhealthy relationship' until we're in the right one."

i agree, because it does seem quite simple, and i'm just too exhausted for complicated these days, but i want to ask if it's possible that it's still healthy, but it just doesn't work. or is it just the amount of sickness? what if it's just the flu, not a five-car pile-up that's ended in a fiery rage and you trapped in the passenger seat?

****

yesterday, on the tram, i said the name "david" in my head over and over, trying to attach recognition to the word. i don't know how this started, what track my train of thought had jumped onto. i suppose i'll never speak to him again, and the greater distance i get from the time our lives intersected, the more it seems like just some strange fever dream that i've awoken from, sweaty and confused, and asking constantly for almost two months now, where am i? where am i? where am i?


****

i read this fantastic quote in a book once. the main character is getting ready to meet a man she's been seeing quite uncertainly for dinner. throughout the story, she is visited by something of an imaginary relationship counselor trying to talk her down from the rooftop of her dating life.

"telling jokes is your way of asking, 'do you love me?' this mentor says as she's getting dressed that night. 'and when these men laugh, you think they've said yes."

it was as if someone had revealed my dirtiest, darkest secret. and the book was a bestseller--how many people that knew this! i put the book down and looked around, blinking away the sudden film of tears on my eyes.

****

"i might just lie and say i have a boyfriend, i don't know, say that we had taken a break and decided to get back together," i said later. "i just can't handle it--it's too intense."

"yeah," she said. "yeah, that'd be easy enough."

"i don't know, maybe i should be honest," i sighed, rolling my eyes. "just tell him that he's looking for more than i can give him."

i look back now, and i wonder: what am i trying to say here? he's asking for too much, or i'm incapable of giving more? this supply and demand of the heart.

****

and let's be honest, i can count on one hand the number of guys i actually liked, which means i've spent much of my time giving shit excuses to men i was too afraid to tell the truth to.

****

i've been here before, waking up at 6:30am in someone else's bed, curled up at the very edge, clutching the pillow and thinking, how quickly could i get out of here? i usually just go back to sleep, go through the motions of waking up (the inevitability of morning sex), having a shower, having breakfast, and gracefully making an exit. but one time, i ran. i slid out of bed, listening to his snores as i pulled on my clothes, closed my backpack (he lived two hours away; i was supposed to be there for the weekend) and held my shoes in my hand as i tiptoed out in my socks.

in the living room, i left a note. "thanks for the accommodations." i was angry at him, but moreso, i was angry at myself. what was i doing here? i knew in the months earlier that we'd spent chatting that this guy was no good for me. and did i really need this on the history books, another 40-something with a kid who can't understand him and an ex-wife who can't forgive him? (talk about validating those daddy issues.) and did i even have any right being pissed off that he was flirting with some surely underaged twink at the bar the night before while i stood a foot away, staring blankly at a drag queen and sighing into my vodka? (some things you can guarantee in life...)

but there i was, the next morning, slipping on my shoes and making my way to the door. scorned by someone i did not actually really know, and yet recognized almost instantly. i think some people's dysfunction fits together like puzzle pieces, and the picture they create is always an ugly one. i said i'd learned my lesson, but this was years ago. i hadn't, yet.

the moment i was out the door, zipping up my jacket against the frigid morning of an upstate new york winter, i started running for my car. i threw my bag on the passenger seat and slammed the door. i hit the lock, i don't know why, except i sort of do. i pulled out of the parking lot of his apartment complex and held my breath all the way to the highway.

****
ultimately, i'm sure, it wasn't david crossing the street that day. i'm sure if i did something crazy like dart through the crowds and grab his arm, i would realize on closer inspection he looked nothing like david, except the look of annoyed bewilderment on his face, which i might recognize from the tail-end of our relationship. and i would apologize and keep walking, my heart pounding in my throat for at least the next ten minutes.

and if it was david? what would i say? what would he say? i doubt i'd be able to even come up with a decent joke. i doubt he'd even laugh anymore.

****
"you know what? screw it," i said. "i think i'm just going to tell him the truth."

"absolutely," she said. "it's so much easier in the long run if you're just honest."

****

honestly? i knew i'd never get those errands done, and i forgot the swimming trunks on purpose.

winky face.

life is a maze and love is a riddle

who isn’t genuinely tired of the question, “what am i doing in australia?” let’s just assume from now on that i’m asking it every day. i think i do at least one thing every day hoping the answer will be lying in the experience. i can’t put pen to paper without trying to draw a map for myself. i analyze everything.

if we’ve talked, i’ve analyzed our conversation later on, waiting on a corner for the tram to come rumbling up the street, or walking to the library to use the internet every day, until we finally get this modem set up in our apartment. (ivy and i are so perfect for each other, i think, because we are equally scattered about these things and over time, none too bothered about it.) or wandering a park, or sitting in a food court eating a sushi roll by myself. or doing a price-comparison on cereals. i’m deciding if saving 70 cents is worth the possibility of a bland breakfast, but i’m also looking for meaning in that thing you said to me that i pretended to not hear.

in related news, i’ve started this twelve-week self-guided course called “the artist’s way.” jay did it, and not-always-gently insisted i start it for months before leaving new york, and i always said, “okay, okay, yeah, i’ll try it.” i kept thinking, “but the book is on your bedroom floor, it’s yours, and i’m going to want to cuddle with it at night.” nevermind the book i’m using now is on loan from the aforementioned library, and i’ll have to extend the loan period at least three times in order to complete the course, but still. i think it just wasn’t the right time. i needed to come to australia, shake off the fixings of my life, like layers worn in winter weather, and then put it on.

it’s related news, because it’s required me to write three pages every morning of essentially anything that comes to my mind. it’s a blank canvas for analyzing. i am generally incapable of free thought. all of my thoughts are quite constrained to the requirements i have for any of my writing. it has to be somewhat linear, it all has to serve the purpose of one topic, everything has to work. the point of these “morning pages” as they’re called is to get all of the thoughts blocking you from writing out onto paper and out of your way. the book suggests this might be hardest for writers doing the course, as they will have to resist actually writing. i have to resist writing and editing, and forming a thesis, and tying it all up in the end with some clever line that somehow references how this all began. (the method to my madness with this blog, mind you.)

but i’m five days in, and i’m slowly accepting what needs to be done. i have had terrible writer’s block for a while, and it’s been an effort enough to write in this blog (hence the two-week break at the beginning of this month) and my theory—which is hardly original or groundbreaking—is that my writing and my personal life are inextricably connected. certainly that’s been manifested entirely in the mere fact that i am writing a personal blog, but when it comes to fiction or playwriting or anything else i might attempt (hello, poetry, my old pen-pal from childhood! i have not written to you in ages!) i think the groundlessness, the aimlessness of life right now is constantly leading me astray from whatever source of creativity i am able to tap into when i feel like i’m growing from roots in the ground.

but i think this is much like the stages of grief, insomuch that there are stages. there are rooms we must pass through to get to the next room to get to our rooms, a place we can relax and call home. the way i look at it right now, it’s like i’ve just moved into this house and taken all of my stuff out of the bags and boxes i moved it in, and now it’s all scattered around me and waiting to be put somewhere. i’m sitting in the middle of my new living room floor, looking at the pieces of my life, and saying, “okay, where am i going to put everything?”

and with all of this newness, a very particular brand of homesickness sets in. i’ve come to romanticize new york, in particular the couple months before i left, but certainly even the times before that, the rougher waters. in new york, i thought, “in college, all of this was some exquisite agony, because i could just skip class and order pizza and lay on the couch, and it didn’t really matter.” but now i look back at new york and think, “what exquisite agony, because i had my work to focus on, and my friends at work to keep it fun, and i could spend hours in central park, and order pizza and lay on the couch, and no one had to know.” i don’t quite know what the idea is here. perhaps the lesson to learn is that every stage of life is full of comforts.

certainly here, while i’m still unemployed, i can wake up whenever i want, lay around the house, go to the library, go get lunch, go for a walk around the neighborhood, and eventually catch up with someone for a drink or dinner or a night out. i think it’s not that i don’t have plenty of life’s comforts here in australia, it’s more like learning how to translate another language into the words you didn’t realize you knew all along.

and the more of this new life i continue to translate, the more i answer the question, “what am i doing in australia?” right now, today, i’m translating. i’m learning the language so i can start to speak it quite fluently, and soon, discover that it always made sense.

i just had to keep with it. even if that requires a fair bit of analyzing. obviously, the question, “what am i doing in australia?” is far simpler than the answer. there will be dozens of answers, as i will discover a year or so from now. so maybe i could just accept the analyzing. it’s my purpose.

i came to australia to analyze everything.

even that thing you said.

we have loaded up your eyes and fed you tangerines

my apologies for the disappearing act. i may well have lost all of you, but my flight path led me briefly astray. or something pertaining to this whole metaphor of me flying (south).

i won't waffle on forever with this one, but at least give a brief update on where things are, now a scant month and a half into australia. the short of it is i've moved into my own place, with my new roommate ivy, who's the best thing next to two-for-one drink specials and bartenders with a heavy pouring hand. i don't have a job yet, but i have been going out a fair bit, and taking regular vodka baths in public, much to my eventual embarrassment the next morning in bed (and sometimes, even my own bed...). champagne may have proven herself to be quite capable, but nobody knows me like vodka knows me.

there is drama. there's always a bit of drama.

i admittedly hit a weak spot about a week or so ago, where it seemed i was really swimming in the question, "what am i doing here?" and quite privately, whispered to myself the possibility of just packing it all in and going back to new york. but clearly, that is when you should most assuredly stay put, because that means the life lessons have arrived for the learning. i'm never having the nervous breakdown i like to claim i'm having (i have admitted in the past, in regards to other topics but certainly applicable here, that i can talk a big game) but as my mother said on the phone last night, "you're always the most surprised of anyone by your ability to be just fine."

fair enough.

give me a good twenty-four hours to realign, and i'll have something solid for you. the good news is that i think the emotional dust has settled, and while there is a bit of bs going on in other fields, it's certainly nothing that's got me laying on the kitchen floor playing with the dust bunnies.

it appears we are touching down with a relatively smooth landing.