Lilacs

Photo by Roksolana Zasiadko on Unsplash

Eulogy

My mood was a soft pink on those cloudy days. Sitting indoors, in our cluttered garage we insulated and converted into a guest bedroom. The gray walls, the queen sized bed with white sheets, the mismatched tiny black nightstand I used as a desk. The black shelves around the walls held the only real colors in the room, all our collective books, DVDs, paintings, and photographs. This room was really my room, and the rest of the house was yours.

The garage felt like the good parts of my childhood home. I liked a claustrophobic room, a homemade minimalist aesthetic. I liked the quiet. The hours would pass by so quickly that winter. They would be filled with procrastinating, then writing, then procrastinating again, until you got home, and I would be distracted by something else entirely.

Wind could be clawing against the walls outside, but you would distract me. You would stay up late with me to talk my mind out of new nightmares, and I would feel safe. Every day was boring, and so happy.

My friends and family faded into background characters in my mind. Finally, all of the searching for approval had dissipated. I could feel love for everyone else because I was given love constantly, and the love would wash over the anger and resentment. Everything was forgiven, because what did all of the pain matter now? I’d had 19 years of depression and anxiety and dismissed trauma, but from now on the rest of my life would be different. All I had to do was keep you.

Those early nights made me feel so alive. Every night we would sit in bed, talking for hours about religion, politics, everything artistic. You made me a better person. You made me want to care about people more, to be more empathetic. You made me see the world as a beautiful place, despite all the horrible things that happen. You made me believe in the existence of a pure, good God, without me feeling bad about myself in the process.

Eventually, I pried into your background. You never had to pry into mine, I gave all my information so freely. You loved your grandparents, even more than I loved mine. Your family wasn’t perfect, but they meant everything to you. You loved filmmaking, but Taos was ultimately where you wanted to stay, and I fell in love with everything the same way. You were just as emotional as me, but you had alchemized that into art and empathy. All of my problems and frustrations diminished under your light, in a way that I’d never felt before, not even with my imaginary friend, Jesus. I saw the world more clearly. It felt like nothing could hurt me.

I’d finally found home. God, or the Universe, or Fate, one or all of them sent me to you.

Kismet

The sun was sinking beneath the horizon. The wide Taos plain was bathed in orange and purple shadows. Staring at the view, I was awestruck. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

It had been some time since I had felt joyful. Normally, just a glimpse at the outside world would be enough to give me hope, to shake me out of my funk. But recently, it took a lot of effort to bring me out of my head.

A scene like this had been my lifelong dream. Filming at golden hour, on a Taos landscape, with a small group of people who were creative and quiet, and just wanted to live their lives the way they had always imagined.

The script was brilliant in a way I hadn’t expected. It was ambitious, with a number of main characters, and a nonlinear timeline. There was no budget. No consistent schedule. It was a rare day that every one of the actors could be there.

Camren was reciting her monologue. Her profile was framed by the last sun rays. This was her last day of filming. It was the last scene of the movie, where each character performed a monologue. Camren had been a performer her whole life, and had the talent to be the main character. Joel had been very persistent with me being the main character, but I couldn’t be. He was insistent on me co-writing the script with him, but I didn’t feel comfortable. Instead, I made slight tweaks, because this was ultimately his movie, and not mine. And I knew what happened last time I collaborated with someone. I wasn’t meant for sharing.

Joel had cast Camren, similar-looking to me, an alternate version of who I felt like I was meant to be. Long, wavy brown hair, pale skin, even a sharp nose, defined eyebrows, high cheekbones. Her thin body was flexible and athletic. She was a natural dancer. Her soft voice fit her soft demeanor, but she was not shy, or at least I didn’t see her that way. She had a quiet kind of confidence. Everyone liked her and respected her. She was someone I found myself wanting to befriend, she felt like someone I was supposed to know.

It felt the same way with Joel. From the first day we started messaging online, it felt like I had known him forever. We found each other’s Instagram accounts and started liking the others’ pictures. He would post photos of behind the scenes, shots from his movies, snippets of music he would score on his own. I posted weird, gothic edits of photos I’d taken. I guess he felt like our souls resonated in some way.

Within two days, of sending each other essays over our love of storytelling, visuals, music, I knew I really liked him. Within one day, he knew he liked me. He told me in one really long paragraph how he felt like he knew me, how he saw so much of his younger self in me, how he wanted to work with me, and create something with me. It was everything I had always dreamed of hearing.

In two weeks, he had convinced me to meet with him to discuss working on his new film. It was surreal seeing my dream person sitting across from me. He was dressed professionally, with a blue button up shirt and khaki pants, but he had navy blue Beats around his neck. His dark, curly hair, his tan skin, his thin but defined forearms — he was a man. I felt like I had finally seen my future, and was quickly forgetting my past at 18.

When I was with Joel, nothing mattered anymore. Everything I had been through stopped replaying in my mind. Even my voice shook less.

Gazing at Camren now as the sun set, I thought about how I wasn’t jealous of her, because I didn’t feel like I was miles beneath her. Instead, I just admired her. She seemed like someone who had no insecurities. Maybe one day I could get there.

***

Tucked under moonlight and blankets, Joel and I watched the night sky. Or, at least, that’s how the night started. After the crew left, just the two of us stayed on the same plane as the last of the sun glowed and faded on the horizon. We watched dozens of stars pop up in the blue. I told him how I used to think the sun was God, and the moon was Jesus, and the stars were angels. I’d read parts of the Bible, and though they were supposed to be the same, I prefered Jesus over God. I’d always felt more comfort at night, more alive.

We talked about our favorite artwork. Joel’s favorite drawing was of an owl in his favorite children’s book. My favorite children’s book was a series of illustrations on the same tree going through the four seasons, and I lamented on how I couldn’t remember what the book was called.

I started telling Joel about my visit to a Van Gogh exhibit. Van Gogh’s wavy, almost childlike artwork intrigued me. His journal entries comforted me even more. He wrote about trying to find the world beautiful while he struggled with depression. Reading those entries was like reading my own journals. Just knowing that someone others revered had struggled with the same feelings I did made me feel less alone.

At some point, Joel’s lips interrupted mine.

Joel was my first real kiss. I remember being surprised by the sensation of it, how it wasn’t firm or dry like I had expected. I hadn’t considered how wet a kiss would be. And how little else I would feel.

I hadn’t felt a spark, or fireworks. I simply just felt safe. Present. I was paying attention to what he was doing, and I was letting him do it.

The moon was cold, but it watched us without judgement.

Third Place

I always hid from the sunlight

Except for on those drives

My happy safe, third place

A way to see the world

In my own childhood bubble

Listening to songs on loop

As if I’ll never outgrow them

Admiring Taos and Santa Fe

Under a bright Georgia O’Keefe

New Mexico sky

I guess you were all of those

Cherished songs, wrapped up in one

Plazas and mall areas

Summers and Christmas

Chocolate and coffee and hotel lobbies

All my DNA matching in someone else

Both have the blues and the arts

Blue spots in a sea of red

Where no one else can sense

Our body heat because

We’re just so close to being dead

You were asking for nothing

While I asked for love

And then always tried to run

Eventually we both should’ve known

I would get away

And yet nothing ever changed

Brown walls and sheer green curtains

Garages doubled as a bedroom

Staring at the ceiling

Listening to a soundtrack

To keep myself alive

Trying to believe in love

But everything reminds me of you

Even me before you has shadows too

And somehow when she died

It felt like you finally did too

And I’ve been outrunning ghosts

But I still circle back

Because I still believe in resurrection somehow

I’ve been a different person since I met you

And it’s not because I was growing

Some lessons never come with age

I was supposed to learn self-love

But when you left, that was yours

And I’ve been searching for it ever since

Counterparts

Photo by Yoksel 🌿 Zok on Unsplash

I don’t remember how love first appeared to me. I don’t know if it was Disney movies, or adult couples all around me, or perhaps it was Adam and Eve. I was almost always aware I was expected to have a male counterpart.

Adam came to me in some of my earliest memories. He was an angry boy, with a hidden sweet side that was sickly. He asked to zip my dress, and to take it off. He wanted to claim my unformed body. Those looks he gave me weren’t so different from the ones older men cast my way, that I was teased for shying away from. Grown men were always the first to comment on my existence, kicking my feet, reading in the lobby. I was a pretty little girl, and I didn’t know it. I just knew I didn’t like those men.

But I did like Adam, sometimes. Not when he was mean. Not when he was sweet either. I knew I was supposed to like attention and affection. But I didn’t, not from him, or almost anybody. I didn’t want just anyone to say I was pretty. I wanted “the one” to think so. That was all that mattered. I wanted everyone else to say I was smart, or talented, or hardworking, or that I could do anything, but most of all I wanted everyone to say nothing to me at all.

I liked Adam when he was talking about something interesting. When he would make jokes. He could be funny sometimes. And most of all, he was the nicest person to me, which I knew even then didn’t mean much.

He was mean and aggressive far more often than he was kind. His talks of marrying me, wanting to kiss me, those moments were mercifully less often. He was my first love, which I assumed was often forced. Love was a choice, after all, an action. That was what all the adults said. I hadn’t witnessed a lot of happy adult counterparts.

Throughout elementary school, there were moments that made me think being engaged, or even married to Adam as an adult, wouldn’t make me very happy. Adam bringing a kitchen knife to school, Adam randomly muttering to me that he hated me, leaving me in tears, Adam’s threats to hurt me, to break my arm, or break up with me, if I didn’t do what he said — they were all things that made me nervous to be around him.

When he spread rumors around the school that we’d had sex, and he’d convinced my naive mind that we did, that was the final straw for me. He told his best friend, and then his friend supposedly told him a series of images he was picturing. What position were we in? Was I bleeding? I didn’t know what any of this meant, but somehow they did. And then the whole elementary school did.

Watching in humiliation as he told the principal in detail what his friend had told him, under the guise of reporting his friend, I felt completely helpless. It was bad enough that God was watching. I’d pleaded for forgiveness alone in my room, sorry that I’d “given in” without even knowing, fearing I was pregnant and begging not to be because I would die. It was bad enough even knowing the things his friend was saying, and feeling like I was missing some kind of information.

I didn’t know why he was throwing his friend under the bus to our principal. He seemed so outraged that his friend could say those things. But his friend wasn’t the one who spread the rumor. I wasn’t even sure his friend had actually said those things. Somehow I felt like it all came from Adam, and he was enjoying it.

The principal talked to me privately. She said she knew Adam and I hadn’t had sex, but she asked why I didn’t speak up against the rumor. I broke down sobbing and said that we did, because we were changing in my parents’ bedroom, and when I turned around to grab a shirt, I realized he’d been watching me. We were both just in our underwear. The way he looked at me made me feel uneasy, like we were doing something wrong.

“Do you think it’s hot in here?” he said, smiling mischievously.

I nodded.

“I bet it’s cooler under the covers.”

“Maybe,” I said.

We got under the sheets. Adam was grinning at me. I smiled back uncomfortably.

And then I said, “I’m cooler now.”

“Me too.”

We got out of the sheets and dressed.

The principal told me that wasn’t sex. I stopped crying. All those times I’d prayed for God not to send me to Hell felt so embarrassing now. God had known nothing bad had happened. I just wished He had told me.

I didn’t talk to Adam again. I went home. I sat quietly on my bed, feeling anger and relief.

My mom came into my room, the home phone still in her hand. She asked me if something happened at school. I asked her why she was asking me that. She said that Adam’s dad called to apologize to me for Adam’s behavior. Adam also supposedly wanted to say sorry, and asked if we could still be friends.

I said that I forgave Adam, but I didn’t want to be friends with him anymore. I wouldn’t be talking to him at school, and I wouldn’t be seeing him anywhere else. I felt a little guilty, because apparently Adam cried a lot.

That same week, he asked his parents to take him out of school because he couldn’t stand me hating him. I didn’t hate him, though. I knew I disliked him, but I was happy not to think of him. I wasn’t mad at him when he wasn’t talking to me. I just felt free.

Years later, Adam went to military school, and then got married at 18. I hoped he’d changed, for the sake of his new wife. He sent a wedding invitation to me, then attempted to Facebook message me. I ignored both.