I often feel I am discussing the exact same thing in about forty-five different ways.
Ten months ago I wrote about what I would fill the time with since my time with my girlfriend, Magen, was gone. It has been a few weeks, but, I finally buckled up the nerve to admit it is harder to figure out what to do with yourself the second time around. It’s been about four weeks since I’ve come home from New York, where we terrorized Brooklyn together and I’ve done nothing constructive since.
I can boil it down to small and easy things, markers for how I understand time. Barcelona loses a Clasico, a Champion’s League semifinal and also La Liga. Their coach leaves. Napoli fights for third place still. United loses to City. I somehow end up at a Cinco de Mayo party. I leave the theater after watching The Avengers stunned. MCA dies and I try to hold back tears in the bathroom at work.
It is a strange series of events.
I begin to think about this place and what it means for me. Broken Nerves, an awkward mouthful of letters, strung together to mean something important since 2006. A phrase that changes meaning every time I look at it. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Nerves haven taken on such a meaning to me lately. My grandmother’s jumbled nervous system, left pained by after-shingles neuralgia. My own inability to do so many things because I am nervous. The fears I’ve gotten over because I have fallen in love. My own fear of forever and the way it has diminished. How old nerves bring on new nerves and new nerves overshadow old nerves.
How I still miss the character who had his own nerves broken and couldn’t feel a thing. How it meant so much when he fumbled with his other hand, the one that could feel but was hard to control, just to understand what something felt like, how his body would react to it.
I think of how putting this all together takes forever, takes stitching, takes perseverance, takes repeating yourself over and over again.
Much like you find yourself saying the same thing ten months later. I am just getting by. How do you get by when you find your heart has gone to stay somewhere else, in a place you can’t get to without a pocketful of exact change and time enough to travel.
You fill the space with things. With things. With things.
Exactly like this.
4 Comments
Maybe it is slightly pathetic to admit it but I have been awaiting your return like crazy. I waited all week and weekend until I could truly enjoy this post when things were settled and quiet, so I didn't have to rush through it.
As much as I try not to believe in filling time with 'things' sometimes that is unavoidable. After all, a book is a thing. Music is a thing. Art is a thing. Although they are all processes, in an intellectually stimulating way, as well. I cannot say I love anyone at the moment, but I am familiar with the pain of distance. And I know that all the distance sometimes gives a new perspective, a new appreciation. Someone I really loved lived all the way in Chicago and every day was a battle to just go on without them, but soon it got easier. Everything I did, every movement I made, no matter how insignificant, just getting out of bed was a small movement toward them, for them, even – because I loved them and they deserved my sticking it out another day. They moved for me too. We'd shared the sunlight on our faces, we'd shared the moon in the sky. It was something to keep us going. With every move we grew a little closer to one another, both time wise and heart wise. That is the bright side, or the bright side I have found and reminded myself of time and time again.
I hope you're well, I hope this wasn't too rambl-y or annoying. Best, A.
It isn't at all pathetic, it sort of makes me extremely happy, if I am being honest. Your long response, too, is sort of perfect.
It does get easier and most days are okay to deal with. Me and Magen have been together a year and six months and it is only rough the few days after seeing one another, where you walk around in a complete daze, unsure where you are and where you belong and how you got there. I am glad, though, someone else understands this. How it is not just my brain making all this up.
Things are, in fact, unavoidable. I suppose it depends on what sort of things, what severity of things. I watched a ton of soccer games and read some books in the meantime. Not the worst thing I could have done, I think.
I believe the best you can do when you're not with someone you love is just to keep working on making yourself the best version of yourself you could possibly be – which is what you should always be doing anyway, right?
Finding a hobby may help. I like to dance, you may prefer other sport. The idea is to make a program and to follow it no matter how hard it will be. Soon you will make new friends to sped time with. Because it is better to count on friends instead of "things" to fill your empty time.
I just read your last two posts, your writing is getting so good. Like woah! You should write personal essays and put them in a book so I can buy it and read them all.
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