Hey Loners,
I’m listening to the sound of the rain. This letter contains mentions of suicide/mental health. Take care of yourself and remember there’s this big ol’ tumultuous sea and we are in different boats. Sometimes I find myself envying a yacht that sails by but I have no idea if the whole crew have succumbed to rotavirus and poor plumbing and they’re headed toward an iceberg while I’m fearing capsizing before I touch the horizon. I just have no idea anymore. I can’t swim and this is a shit metaphor.
Every night I can’t sleep, I try to make something I can leave with the world. I’m stuck on the color blue, on objects I find in my house, and just somewhere to put this pain. In my search for one thing, I find a picture of my grandma sitting in front of a window waiting for us to come home, the top knot of her white hair seen from the window. It is an accident that I find this photograph. I get stuck on the image and how she was waiting.
I lose my mind.
Not too shortly before my birthday, I felt unwell. I am in the kitchen when I feel a draft from an unopened window, and I’m tired. I’m thinking about Jochebed (the mother of Moses), alligators, and heaven. I’m kind of unwell where I call a professional and ask why I believe I don’t deserve gravity’s gorilla grip on my life anymore. It’s the time of year. Isn’t it always a time and a year? We are all going through it, and I know it, and I know I have to remain vigilant, but I am tired, and I love and care so much, but my back hurts.
On my birthday in 2017, N. took a picture of me at dinner blowing out the candle, and it’s my favorite photo to this day. I would sit in an empty yoga studio on winter mornings weeks later and promise to make plans; we’d promise to see each other again. In January of 2018, T. called me ten times while I was stocking the tomato can aisle and said, “oh no, I thought maybe you’d already heard, I don’t want to be the one to tell you.”
The night before a big history test, I called K. to answer number 6. I have no idea what the question was, but I knew he knew it. I hope he took notes, and I'm biting my lip when no one answers the phone. Our school bus arrives early, and I run into the school. And I see his empty chair, and I wait for him to fill. I don't have the answer, and I know he does. I feel sick in my stomach when more people arrive, and he never does. A school assembly explains his absence, but I don't understand. C. is crying, "why do we have to be here and I want to throw up from the pain in my stomach. After our senior prom, D. says that K.'s last downloaded song was "Everytime We Touch" and we listen to it from a heavy iPhone that sat between us. My mouth was sweet, and my stomach hurt again. To this day, I can't remember the question. To this day, I've never had a good answer.
I throw a poetry show at Lane’s wine bar, and I see people I haven’t seen in 5 years. Most of the people I see all the time aren’t able to come, and I see so many faces and hold hands— we ask each other if it’s okay before we do, and then we are in each other’s lives again. This sounds so stupid, but today I wake and wonder why I didn’t see N. and why didn’t he come to my birthday party. It felt like one of those times where he’d show up like that time I was sitting at Crown on Sunday night re-reading Nausea like an insufferable tool, and he said, I hope I don’t make you sick. For about 15 minutes, I don’t remember, and then I do. Today I google N. and it’s nice to see him. I can’t stop crying while I tell you this.
Therapist: Tell me a story you tell yourself.
Me: I don't know which life I'm on, but I believe in reincarnation. I'm sure if you unravel the rattlesnake coil of my genetics, you'll learn how eels fuck and how things still grow at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Hear me out. In one of my lives, I am sure I held decay in my mouth, and I took whatever I could. I'll take what I can get and my tiny t-rex arms and my massive head big as the heroes of Greek tragedies— I'm born to wear a poisoned crown, I'm born to devour my children and have them rip me apart.
I believe I chased a blue-skinned boy through a forest, damp and light. Feed me fruits that smell like rotting flesh and flowers, warm milk, honey. He asked if I believed in the next life while beckoning me closer. Come into the water, he said, and I did. The water is cold, and I cannot swim.
The thing is, like, sometimes you're born the sort of person that will be fucked over, and no form of divine truth will make sense of why you, and there's no spiritual advisor that can devise why you deserve what's come.
Sometimes you're born the sort of person who would benefit from learning to throw a punch, do your taxes, and operate a vehicle before you know to write an acrostic poem.
I told my mother my soul felt like the ooze left behind by snails. My soul feels like wildfire in a poppy field where you don't know the flame from the flower. My soul is two eels fucking and dying soon after in the Sargasso Sea. Everyone says it's a mystery how eels exist, and I think that's the soul, the depths, and distinct biomes necessary to survive any given life cycle.
If I have a soul, it is a neon sign that reads like an antique shop warning; if you break, you break, you break, yes we're open, you break, you break, you break.
Soul oozes from my body. The body is an artificial dam built to keep my soul in, push back the darkness so that life could terraform, and the body, the barrier, oh, what a marvelous structure. And yet I break and feel consumed by the unknown. There’s fear and doubt. Maybe the soul is made of bright light, and perhaps it is festering like bacteria and consuming sugary sweet matter to create the body.
There’s an aching in me to terminate my phone plan while I stand with an old shattered iPhone in my hand. For a moment, I wish I could put my phone in a basket and send it down the Nile, through reeds and past crocodiles, to someone who needs a phone. They’ll find it and download an app for connection, and perhaps they’ll swipe right on a man named Moses, whose profile says they’re in it for the thrill of it but doesn’t want anything too serious.
The rain stopped.
Godspeed Loners,
Kx