From Dec 4, 2005:
“Today whilst I waited till my heels and toes froze, a man fell out of a truck and stuck up a notice: MISSING: Samantha ____. I stored the face away in my mind, for a day when I might see her but be unable to remember the number to call.
With you it is different. I have your number, in fact I have two, but no mental imprint by which to pick you out from hordes upon hordes (your face: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, possibly eyebrows and a tan). It has been three days since I used both numbers, there has been no reply.
So now I know you are beyond missing; you are completely gone from my world and I can only comfort myself guessing that you have found yourself in some other galaxy.
Sleep tight wherever you are.”
The ironic thing? 4 years later I know where he is but don’t care to call. To think I claimed to love this person, and that a majority of my afternoons from the best years in my academic life went towards aimless romps under his airconditioned blanket. When I learnt to cut, grind and solder glass, it was a particular point of pride and my very first creation went to him as a mark of superior affection. When I first became obsessed with his walk, his smooth skin, the slouch of his adolescent spine, I made sure to walk past every table tennis practice and to trace with my eyes his path from hunger to repose every recess. I was hungry for him like nothing else.
Kex recently reminded me that in those months, I wore a ring he had engraved— unbelievably— with our names and the word ‘forever’ (!!!). ‘Forever’? We hardly made it past a year and I had to refer to old blog entries to confirm that we were indeed together for 13 months, and not 9 like my cognition had tricked me into encoding.
Togetherness! What did I know about such a thing then? We were so ready to toss around with hyperbole, and to tie each other down with assumptions based on books and movies and the examples of our parents. We never even had sumptuous conversations (which, thankfully, I at least enjoyed with the boyfriends that followed), what did we know about the black boxes of each other’s unformed minds?
It’s important to remain foolish and hungry, to believe in lofty irrationalities like LOVE and TRUST and SPECIAL SHINY SERENDIPITY. I’m not any smarter at this bullcrap and perhaps even more impetuous than in 2005.
But ah friends, keep me willing to laugh through uncertainty, and if I should decide to be certain instead of uncertain, when I get it wrong, stupendously, wrenchingly, atomically wrong, remind me through the pulp of my heart that the comedy goes on and that I should break out the popcorn.