I [Read] Myself

I’ve been missing someone a lot recently. It’s painful, and it sucks, and it is almost 100% related to the fact that Taylor Swift recently released 31 new songs and the fact that I had long, unintentional, lapse in taking my antidepressant. But regardless of the reason, I miss him. And it sucks. That’s definite.

I’ve never been good at missing people. I tend to either push them away so that I don’t have to miss them one day, or I hold on so tightly that I end up getting a bad cramp. In this case, the missing creeps up on me and then I feel like I’ve been knocked to the ground and have an unexpected desire to reread An American Childhood. It’s the book he gave me for my 22nd birthday because he said my writing reminded him of Annie Dillard.

I spent the night of my 22nd birthday sobbing in the arms of Lindsey, who was one of my best friends at the time. I cried over the kindest gift a friend had ever given me. This friend who seemed to so clearly understand me, to see through what I said to get what I meant. This friend who I could feel being pulled further away. Maybe by choice, but maybe not. Either way, I sobbed.

The first time I read An American Childhood I cried all the way through it.

"What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call it courage… I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. I wanted strength, not tea parties. What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.”

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

The spring I was 21, Walt Whitman became very important to me for very related reasons. I spent so much time helping him memorize lines for a play that included segments of Leaves of Grass that I started to memorize it too. Every night I found myself mouthing the words along with him, almost forgetting a sound cue each time.

“Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late? … I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world… Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged. Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

One Saturday afternoon that summer, when we were standing in a Taco Bell because he refused to go use a drive through to save his life, we were talking about something so mundane that I don’t remember it now. But I do remember that he stopped talking and then looked at me. ”Things don’t always work out,” he then said. “But people do.” Later that day, after he’d left to go home, I wrote that in the notes app on my phone. I found it again a couple weeks ago, and that’s when I started writing this essay.

Things don’t always work out. We didn’t. Instead, we got frustrated and took our anger out on each other. And it was all because we didn’t know how to be honest. We didn’t want to hurt each other on purpose so we did it on accident. Things don’t always work out.

But people do. I may have chosen to push him away instead of hold on too tightly. He chose the same. We both had our reasons, good or bad I don’t know. And now it’s been almost three years and I have spent that time becoming a person. Nothing is the same as it was. I live in a new place, am surrounded by all new people, doing all new things. I’m not sure we would recognize each other if we had the chance.

“To begin with, take warning - I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction? Do you think I am trusty and faithful? Do you see no further than this facade- this smooth and tolerant manner of me? Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought, O dreamer, that this may be all maya, illusion?”

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I have become a person. I have become a wild thing, throwing my dreams out to catch as many as I can. I am checking my wants off one by one, imagining a future for myself that is so shiny I can’t look at it too closely.

This goodbye was so hard because it was so sudden. It was the act of leaving something and someone at the same time, and not knowing how to come back from that. And three years is a long time, but I think I’ll always wonder. I think I’ll always be curious about how he’s doing and I think I’ll always hope he’s happy. I know that I will find someone else someday. I know that he will too. Maybe he already has.

People work out. We just do. We live wildly and change our minds and start over. We try our best and do our worst and try again, and again, and again. We become ourselves this way. This is why goodbyes are so hard. We don’t know who we will be if we meet again. There is no promise of being the same, no way to say you stayed close by. Just in case.

“But, reader, there is no comfort is the word ‘farewell,’ even if you say it in French. ‘Farewell’ is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.”

Kate DiCamillo, A Tale of Despereaux

I’ll be ok. I am ok, really. Because of him, I know how to be brave. I know how to open myself up even when it’s scary. I know how to keep something precious while knowing it may not last. I will find someone who I can tell jokes and sad stories to. Someone who I can take an antidepressant and eat in front of. Someone who is the first person I want to tell when something so weird happens because they’re the only person who will believe me. Someone who I am proud of when they succeed and want to help when there’s a problem. Someone who I will stay somewhere for. Someone who I can be a person with.

But for now, I will keep practicing being a person. I will keep playing my favorite songs. I will keep being scared but dreaming anyway.

“I will not hurt like this forever, I’m responding to the call while there’s speakers in the outfield blasting out my favorite song. I will not play this out discreetly, it is real and unashamed. I am human now and terrified, but want it all the same.

The heart is muscle. And I want to make it strong.”

Gang of Youths, The Heart is a Muscle

In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman writes, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself. And what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.” I’ll stick with the first sentence for now. And I will make it so strong until I believe it.