he puts five spoons of cane sugar in his tea and Then two spoons of honey after that. it’s this Every morning. every morning he gives himself sugar rushes without thinking twice about it

I think this is sweet. because it’s freedom, it’s freedom happening without even the chore of remembering freedom. so I like him. and I want to be more like him.

But u know how it is, people are complex, our insides are mazes, the open places of our hearts are guarded by one riddle after another………

I don’t get to know him for long and then things end in such a wilted way, the last night that I see him.

He starts talking to his friends on his phone while I’m over. This makes me feel too small and also too big so I say I think I should go. He says No u should stay a little longer. and I’m glad he says this. so I do.

He plays his music on high and i like his music so i don’t mind except he doesn’t turn it down even when we talk. He has one ear always tuned in to it, I can tell because his responses delay every time the song in the background climaxes, and it’s clear then he’s been listening to something else.

When he gets thirsty and he goes away into the kitchen for a glass of water and doesn’t bring back a second glass I come to a conclusion that everything he’s doing around me he’d be doing whether or not i was there.

It’s not rude though, I’m thinking, because it couldn’t be, because it’s pure. Pure the way gulping water like a kid is, pure the way tapping ur foot without realizing it’s rattling the whole table is. If he were rude i know i would have left, if he were untrue i know i would’ve left. but he wasn’t, he had only gotten so used to being himself that the filter the self goes thru when any one else is there observing had sort stretched out and become only two or three flimsy holes.

When he’s paying attention to me we have fun. he picks out an outfit for me with some of his clothes and i try on his sneakers and sweatpants. He takes pictures of me dressed like him and we laugh. the music and i continue switching turns being in the background but i’m having good ideas now about freedom and purity and filters of the self and stuff so i’m satisfied with learning not to mind this.

then it gets to be so late, maybe it’s three, and we’re talking, because he’s afraid to kiss me. he says that.

He says I don’t really stick around people and will u think this is something it isn’t if i kiss u? I say no i had a feeling it was gonna be this way. he looks surprised.

he says something about how it’s good to not attach to others and how it’s bad to need from others what u can’t be sure they’ll give u. i say Ya totally.

Then the playing song fades out and a new one fades in and wipes away this conversation like a tide.

Another hour later and i’m laying on my side watching him hover between the open fridge and the counter. he’s eating leftover soup out of a to-go container, and not looking back at me once the whole time. and i have tears in my eyes because i feel like i gave my self up.

i guess it’s only after u have given urself up that u realize it. Like when the person you’ve given your self up to is eating cold soup not looking at u not saying anything not asking u anything at all, i think that’s only when u can only truly realize that u really did do it, u gave your self up. i turn so my forehead presses up against the cool wall. I tuck my arms into my body.

It’s so late and i’m too tired to drive back home now so i sleep there in this position, squished on his bed which is the couch. he sleeps too. I’m cold, even though I’m next to him, I’m cold the whole time. the dark stretches into the morning. his music has not stopped playing so it folds into my dreams, and in my dreams i am searching for the source of this sound because i want to turn it off, but i never find it.

when the sun rises two hours later, I’m awake counting my breath. I’m waiting for him to wake up and maybe want to kiss me. then something comes over me, or maybe actually something emerges from inside of me. It is a random burst of something, A sense of justice? I can’t place it. Courage possibly. it tells me I need to stop tipping the scale even more against myself. and so finally it’s time to leave.

he wakes up as i’m putting my shoes on and I thank him for having me. He says do u want some tea first? I say yes because I’m still at this point reaching for the feeling of him giving me something. He makes me tea but he makes it the same way he makes his and i can barely drink it. and then i drive myself home feeling like I’m gonna get the flu.

I hear from some voices in the world, maybe a choir of voices, that if u as a girl feel sort of sick and discarded and like u gave your self up it can only mean that you’ve been used or wronged or that it’s just all bad. but i don’t know about this because i keep remembering his freedom, which felt pure and so was also beautiful. and i’m not trying to be a saint about it, I’m trying to be practical like a mechanic. there’s a part of him shining like a piece of metal catching light and because i’ve seen it, i don’t see how i could paint the situation All bad.

I just didn’t like the way it felt, staying with him for too long, trying to pull his eyes towards me. I decide I want to ease up on trying to stay next to people. I want to get better at going.

thinking this way gives me something to do, a project, and so it gets me through my sadness and also my embarrassment. it does get me through.

I tell myself: this is the work of my life playing out in front of me. I keep on saying that. I have the work of my life on my hands!!!!! The work of my life is training my self to not need much, to not grasp on, to go exactly and always when it’s time to go. and I begin to hear that truth play on loudly inside of me

A season later in the spring, I make a plan for the fall. I will use some savings and spend some time traveling by myself.

these last three/four weeks I go away and i do this. i take my self to foreign places, i take my self on an adventure. i am going to eat alone, going to sleep most nights without saying goodnight out loud.. I have a peaceful beginning. and then things sort of fall apart.

i have been unaware of this, but my jaw has been clenched almost the entire time. it’s been clenched because I’m stressed. i didn’t realize i was so stressed. but i am, Believing i need to excel at being so alone has become so so stressful.

the clenching pulls some muscle in my jaw up and back and something connected to that muscle begins to press on my auditory nerve, producing Continuous ear ringing( tinnitus). it’s an appropriately symbolic issue. i’m alone so much i’m hearing the sound of my self ringing in my ears.

the doctor asks me 2 questions before sending me away saying Just take Claritin. I seek out a healer, who tells me tinnitus means i have not been listening to higher laws. I ask what the higher laws are saying that I’m not listening to. The healer says the higher laws state that u are never so alone.

I feel embarrassed.

it was that (half)truth that I decided on earlier about going and not grasping on, i think it pulled me all the way to Europe

was this half truth given to me like a virus by that person I liked over the summer and into the winter and who seemed to me like a beautiful expert in going so alone? no Ofc not, all he had done was be who he was, which had only uncovered something that was already there laying dormant in me, just waiting for the lightest tug…………

I can trace the pull of my half truth back to times when i am multiples of 7. twenty one is now, so i go to fourteen, then further back to seven….. when I am younger, my family splits itself open over and over into what becomes a predictable chaos with no resolution. each time this happens, I am alone within it. I see now, the idea planting itself inside of me: that i should become so sharp at being alone that being alone can’t be a painful experience.

The world can and often does reinforce anything for u. when i am seven i like those stories about the princesses. by the time i am fourteen they are problems. Me and the ppl who have a problem with them, we’re saying It’s Disempowering because You shouldn’t need any body to come and find u where u are and be there, u should be able to be all that for ur self. You should be able.

I’m not making a point about who has the correct opinion on feminism or any of that. I’m only trying to explain how i don’t know as much as I thought i did anymore.

possibly I have needed some body to come and find me and hold my hand.

Possibly there are times in a person’s life when what they need is the natural and miraculous thing of some body coming and finding them and holding their hand. that isn’t grasping, that isn’t saving. i think It’s just holding hands.

I am imagining this other thing. don’t laugh. Pls don’t

I get into a passenger seat wearing a hat that doesn’t really fit me because it was put on my head for fun. I don’t think about consuming or taking, eating or getting gas. The person driving the car thinks I’m pretty inside and out and goes fast. but I don’t worry about us getting too close to the cars in front of us because he’s a thoughtful person. I got my nails done two weeks ago. There’s music playing. He drives with only one hand, that’s a crucial detail.

and I don’t use my ideas to stretch things out the way I can when i wanna make enough of things. It’s sufficient, is what it is. it’s practical. It’s resourceful. it’s two people, and We’re going.