Hey Loners,
At the time of publishing this I actually can’t stop listening to The Fray’s “How To Save A Life.” I went through a lot of emotional ups and down today. I love that it feels claustrophobic and cinematic. I want to run down a hospital corridor and arrive too late. I am running down the hospital corridor and I’m a ghost. I realize I’ve died and the nurse I should’ve picked up at the local dive gives the time of my death. How do I save my life? I drove my car today and found myself saying the lyrics as if it were my vows - Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend. Somewhere along in the bitterness. And I would have stayed up with you all night had I known how to save a life— Why do those words haunt me? I had to google they weren’t in the Bible. Did Doubting Thomas say this to Jesus at the last supper? I had to google the meaning. I want it to mean what it means to me and I am on Rap Genius and looking up the meaning to The Fray’s “How To Save A Life” and I’m losing my mind on 495. I am feeling so sad on the beltway and despite knowing CPR - I am thinking of the social calamities of never being enough and being too much.
You know the drill—
I love New Year’s. I don’t have many persisting traditions in my life and I look forward to the countdown. It’s a good food holiday and I love glitter and I love sequins. I don’t really have a hometown to return to around this time of year but I look forward to the tried and true whinging that happens before the New Year. What could it be, what could it mean, listen to Jet Black New Year on repeat. I always watch the New Years episode of The O.C.—I was never truly that kinda teen but Ryan Atwood being an at-risk teen given this brief and cursed attempt at a second childhood appealed to the at-risk teen in me who was given a second and third attempt of starting over. New Years always resonated with me and I love the last moments of the episode. There’s an urgency — how you spend your new year is how you’ll spend your years. I am a sucker for that— Summer kisses some random extra and looks him in the eye with a wobble of her glossy lip and pronounces him to not be Cohen. Cohen here is synonymous with salvation.
I was obsessed as a teen with the idea of kissing and I remember the first time I kissed the wrong mouth and the shirk and fold of my heart realizing it wasn’t the person I wanted. I like the idea that it’s the world’s birthday, it’s the celebration of manmade devices like the seven day week and names for the most intimate ways we circle the sun. I love that Ryan barely makes it to Marissa. I like the idea that in the New Year, I confront what I want but just barely. I am so close to the ways I want to change my heart and how wide the scar of the barely sealed wound I’ve been hoping to close for years— it’s the New Year and I’m thinking about how I’m spending the eve with my woes and how likely tomorrow, this year I’ll sit with the horrors.
I’m walking under a sky where there’s a wolf shaped cloud and it’s mouth is open. It looks like an Aesop fable. What do you want to teach me, little wolf? Each cloud that builds the jaw moves and parts and opens the mouth. I am standing in the middle of an intersection with my eye on a sky that always seems so new to me when I’ve been in the gutter. Tell me how to change, wolf, and if not, can you, will you devour me in the end?
I am trying to make a list of ins and outs for next year. I have been reading so many and for so many years— we love a brave and inspired listicle and it seems sorta fun and lighthearted. I’m very bad at this and it was written when I had a tummy ache so I’m not sure if I mean any of it:
Ins: Turkish soap operas, Chess, candles, love out loud, grazing, collecting seashells, making my own yogurt, compression socks, danksos (she never left), pistachio flavored anything, admitting I’m curious about anti-aging if anti-aging means dissolving the notion that life stops arbitrarily with each orbital revolution, going to bed early, low impact exercise, taking risks, ingrown hairs, narrowing my focuses, learning to swim, stretching, joining a choir, prayer, long goodbyes, wearing reflective clothing when walking at night.
Out: sourdough starters, meal prepping, the pain that lives in my pelvis, the ghosts that reside in my tightened hamstring, secret dating (whoops, my kryptonite) hate following, manipulative uses of the words empathy and compassion, buying organic, seeking a third, peplum, Irish goodbyes, astrology. In: Allowing myself to let go and also allowing myself to be equally uprooted. Out: The yogic phrasing of “that which serves you” or “emotional labor” but realizing the people in your life shouldn’t be in bondage to your content and whim anymore than they should be apart of a ponzi scheme for your adoration.
I am thinking about how I’ve been trying to let go of how things used to be — relationships to the world. I’m trying to sit soberly in the present and accept what it is and not force my luck or fortune. It have lived with regret and each action was to make up something in the past and I always think I will make it up but I am filing for bankruptcy. Things have changed and it’s hard to accept that people I love or champion are further away from me— over the years instead of actively seeking absolution and peace, I’d lazily chalk it up to astrological differences because mythology is fun and easy.
Like seeds growing in the same garden but without knowing our final form— we are growing together and then apart, differently and the ways we contribute to our ecosystems are different and the subjective and eviscerating experience of determining what’s invasive and what’s a weed happens even to people. I am both beautiful flower and god awful weed.
This year I did some things but it still feels like I did nothing— I know that’s depression and that it burns the flavor of all achievements and so I know I am still here. I want that to count but this is one of those times and years where I’m not sure.
I walked along a beach in St. Augustine and sat next to peacocks. I sipped cuban coffee and read a good book. I hit another month sober and another month feeling the full brunt of the maelstrom that wrecks my heart and mind monthly. The sea was so calm as I picked seashells but I could smell the sulphur of rage on my breath and I knew I’d exhaust fire. My muscles ache from sleepless nights and this desire to do something or a fear I am doing nothing. I sign up for a triathlon because I can’t swim and I want to swim the lake my grandmother did. I feel sorry, even now, that I didn’t quit my job and go to see her. I let my job quit me and I still didn’t get to see her.
On my birthday, I turn 34. I build a bright blue garage shelf because my therapist tells me I need more support in my life. I ask my best friend to hang out with me and we get a poem tattooed on our arm. I sit in a room and hear poems and sighs and laughter and feel content but always bottomless. My body hurts but I ignore it. I fear nothingness and yet in some regards I exalt its simplicity. I am honestly envious of anyone who had the best year of their life and I often think - God, I see what you’ve done for others and the works you are doing in their life are astonishing and if you’d do it for me.
When I started this dispatch, it was a way to bridge the self-imposed isolation of chronic illness that began in 2018 for me. It was a neat way to package my daily writing attempts and my enduring commitment to the little things despite and in spite of chaos. Lately I find when I’m alone—All I have is the mundane— at times I can’t control how I make a dollar or the burden of the labor or what’s fair and what’s not fair.
I can only fight nihilism by identifying the slow creep of its ivy. I can only fight the feeling of meaninglessness by trying to put one word in front of the other and taking back my resolve. I don’t have a resolution per se but inexplicably and determinately I know things will be different. I’m not waiting or yielding — like the violent of unearthing of weeds that were flowers in a different context — I am redefining in actions. I am always doing my best.
This wasn’t the best of years but it wasn’t the worst and I look back on this year and say good riddance. I am sitting in my dark room. I have laced up my shoes and I’m watching the sunset. I don’t feel good but I hope I will feel better. The air tastes nice. It’s warm for a New Year Eve. The new year will come and tomorrow will take hold and I rallying around this earnest hope that love will find me in the end and that I am more flesh than an anchor sinking.
Do I still have purpose within this garden? Am I weed or flower? Am I the right mouth for kissing at midnight and how fucked would it be if the was the new year and I did feel a little different? Fuck it, I will keep trying regardless. If only I knew exactly, how to save a life?
If you feel alone tonight — I did and do— call a friend. Say I love you and goodnight. I tell my friend that the next time I talk to her in the new year I won’t be so heavy and she says she lifts weights and can carry more than I think.
Goodnight and I love you, friend.
Godspeed loners,
Kellyx