how do I tell her I want her to stay?
one day in december and an epilogue
Maybe what I’ve been looking for is more of a feeling and less of a tangible thing. Maybe it’s something that can’t be held and shaped and made sense of. Maybe it’s something that has to take more time, and change its mind.
I’m forgetting something, I know I am, and the harder I try to catch it, the faster it runs—dust billowing and billowing as I stand watching and hoping it will turn around. Helping me to understand something, anything.
Maybe the thing I forgot: feeling small in this world doesn’t mean that I must keep myself as smooth and contained as the glass of water that still sits on your bedside table. Feeling small means pulling the curtains open to the same view every morning and having it remind you of something impossibly vast and new and familiar, as you inhale and allow the sun to warm the back of your eyelids. Again and again. Over and over.
On the same day, once a year, I never know where to begin, and so I pause. And soon I’ve paused long enough to have had my mind made up for me. It’s what I wanted, but it’s also not at all; I’m swept up in the expectation of it all, hoping and hoping that I am able to show how grateful I am for all this love. For the way people care for me and take care of me. It’s a day when being myself feels like too big of an ask, and the best I can do is say yes yes, I love that because you do, and I find it’s easier to trust you than to trust myself.
And today I wrapped my arms around myself and squeezed, feeling the fat and the muscle beneath my fingers. Feeling the warmth of my chest and the pattern of my breath. And just now I light a candle, reveling in the smell of smoke and fire and again, warmth. The reminder of who I know myself to be persists and persists until she is right in front of me and all I can do is stare, wondering what took so long, and how do I not hold on too tightly?
How do I tell her I want to her to stay? That she is safe with me? That she is loved when she is herself? That the shame she often feels is something I feel too, and that maybe together, we can work through it. That together, we can begin to let it go.
It’s an oversight. Something I didn’t see because I didn’t know I needed to look: deservingness has slipped through the cracks and the pieces are so small that I am finding it hard to see them by candlelight. And through the mess of it all, my reflection stares back at me, broken and beautiful and just happy to be here with all the knowing and the not knowing.
The mess of it all being the thing that gives me something to hold onto. Something to keep trying trying to make sense of. Again and again. Over and over. All until I allow movement toward the next thing. And then the next.
Because maybe what I’ve been looking for is more of a feeling and less of a tangible thing. Maybe it’s something I’m never mean’t to figure out. Maybe it’s a way to keep me honest and curious about the parts of myself I haven’t discovered yet, while being reminded that I am safe to fall back, arms spreading wide and mouth open with silent laughter—to trust myself to be myself and to feel and to say actually, I am going to do this for myself instead.
Epilogue.
A few weeks later, I’m driving north, freezing fog swirling around headlights as the day grows light then dark in one breath. As the chosen audio book blasts through my speakers, engulfing the tiny space I am calling home for these 6-hours. I try to picture my to do list, crossing something off, then adding something, only to tune back in as Elspeth talks with Ravyn through the mind of someone else, totally clueless to how or when that happened.
Elspeth carries on as I play catch up with my thoughts, eyes fixed on the hazy road ahead. Driving driving until I get to where I hope to go.
Saving my exhale for the quiet and the calm of the public library, which is where I am now, looking up every so often to see people take computers in and out of backpacks, slipping on headphones, pulling books off of shelves; a small universe existing inside a much, much bigger one—here we are, content to do our own thing, while seeking the inexplicable comfort that comes from being alone, together.
Looking up and up, through the glass ceilings, I see buildings swirling in the same fog I was driving through earlier that morning. I feel small again. All of us here with our worries and our pressures and our expectations and our goals, and for whatever the reason, finding ourselves here beneath the sea of windows and cement and rows of books. And on my way out, I decide that I’ll run my hands along their spines. Feeling their smooth, broken edges.
And maybe I’d like to see what happens if I were to start my car and drive somewhere close bye to have my hair cut by a woman named Chloë, where I’ll ask her to go shorter than last time, and when I run my fingers through my hair I want to lean back and laugh my most disruptive laugh. A laugh that could shake me out of not believing that joy can exist outside expectation. That happiness does not have an expiration date. That there are a thousand different ways to pay attention and to say that I’m here: that everything I do is based off of a feeling and that I really do love that about myself. That even though I don’t always know how, I’d like to keeping trying and trying until something sticks.
And now I’m somewhere else entirely, and the sun is setting in broad streams of light across the green grass. I turn on a lamp, then another, and then I make some tea. It burns my tongue, as it always does, and I settle back into my little corner of my room where I can tuck my feet up beneath me. Where I can feel the cold of the outside tingling the tip of my nose.
I do think I am trying too hard to make sense of things that aren’t mean’t to be made sense of. At least not yet, anyway. And that maybe I’ve already said that, but don’t we always repeat ourselves? Liking the way a certain story takes shape in our mouth? And their laugher in response to it—only then settle in, pleased with the outcome of things.
Wanting so badly for something to be something it isn’t? To take on a shape that is impossible for it to take? I can feel myself wanting those things now as the cold nips at my nose. In many ways, they are forever tugging at my sleeves, begging me to follow. I don’t always, but today I want to.
With love,
Chloe
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