the one who mourned my death

daryl dixon’s poncho, lizards, autumn in the mountains, bob dylan, death proof, snapping fingers, ufo sightings, banjos, american football, squirrels, tequila and candy corn, calling for bob dylan on space mountain, avocado cupcake frosting, ahhhringes, wonder woman, nasa tshirts, joan baez, long car rides, milkshake and fries, compasses, laughing in french (555), night vale, typos, the mystical us, the friendship that spanned dreams, the good things, the lovely things, the now terminally limited number of things.

i noticed this stranger on a bus a year ago, and at first i couldn’t figure out why they were making me feel so uneasy, why i kept wanting to stare at them, but was afraid, as if they could have burnt my retinas. at first, i couldn’t figure out what about them was tugging at the strings of my heart, but when they lifted their eyes and for a brief moment met mine, i instantly recognised those eyes; i’ve seen them in a different face. and it’s like that often; life’s been like that often for the past many months. i see her often. i feel her often. but not like i used to.

she wouldn’t look me in the eyes at first, and sometimes that’s all i can remember about her. she wouldn’t look me in the eyes at first, and i don’t think that i’m ready to write this chapter, but maybe now’s as good a time as any. when i met her four years after first talking to her, she wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and i felt like we were farther apart than ever. i hate, hate, hate it when people don’t look me in the eyes (partly nurture, but mostly nature). but then she explained to me that in her culture, people just don’t do that. lakota people don’t stare, because it’s rude. if only she’d have accepted that staring is all i do.

it was an early morning sometime in may and the entire edinburgh was still asleep. she, her friend, and i were hungover and tired, and had to catch buses that were going to take us to opposite directions. we had accidentally ended up at a stag do a couple of nights prior; the best man was welsh and bald, and wore bright blue underwear. and so that morning we were about to part without so much as a hope to see each other again at all. and i remember missing my bus and sitting on a toilet with a closed lid in the bus station bathroom, and bawling my eyes out to fill the empty spaces carved out by unspoken words of appreciation, because no words would have been strong enough anyway. have you ever tried to explain to a friend how wonderful it is that you happened to meet them in this life? it’s always a mess.

i keep waiting for a morning when i’ll wake up and her memory will have faded from my mind; for an afternoon when i won’t look at a stranger’s eyes on a bus and have my heart stop beating for a second; for an evening when i can no longer feel like a murderer. and sometimes those moments are so close, but i can never quite reach them. and sometimes i remember driving around in the dark with her and eating milkshake and fries in her car. sometimes i remember taking a walk along a hiking trail in the woods with her and joking about bear spray and listening to her talk about school as i keep my eyes glued to the forest floor so that i don’t trip, and inevitably watching her booted feet glide across it in front of me; willingly following her to wherever. sometimes i remember decorating the house for halloween together and how she whipped out her art supplies and dedicated at least a couple of nights for that, just because she knew halloween’s my favorite holiday. sometimes i remember the first dinner i cooked the first night we officially became roommates, how we ate it on the tiled kitchen floor because we didn’t have furniture; sometimes i remember always making time to watch tv shows together on that thrifted couch that smelled like cat piss; sometimes i remember blasting bob dylan’s christian albums on our little road trips down to new mexico. sometimes i can still remember being accepted and loved in a way that makes you feel the intoxicating taste of the word friendship in your mouth.

she was contradictions. she loved bob dylan but blasted k-pop in her car. she thought she’d lost her ability to joke but talked about it in the most hilarious way. she told me i was light but kept throwing burning matches at me because to her i was pitch black night. she let me have her love but she hurt me more than i could have ever imagined was possible, she hurt me so much that it ripped me out of numbness. i gave her my heart, i did, but she wanted my soul.

she thought she knew what my heart looks like better than i. she was like that a lot of the time – adamant.

ah fuck, i don’t know how to talk about you. i’m still more used to talking to you. ‘life is a beautiful and complex web of shit,’ you once said to me. and you sure as hell helped it stay that way. although these days it’s becoming easier to casually mention you in conversations; to strangers that have never heard of you, but sometimes even to people who knew how much you meant to me. i think for a long time with the hurt that i was left with, there was also a sense of shame – that i allowed myself to be this broken by all that i knew and loved of you, and all of my friends knew.

and i know i’m being biased, and i’m not trying to pin the blame on either one of us, and i know that in the end it’s both of ours. but you destroyed me, and i haven’t healed yet. so please, forgive me for these words. you destroyed me, and i can’t believe i’ve grown so much that i am able to say this: you destroyed me.

funny though, sometimes i feel mostly hurt by what you said about the scarf that i gave to you. i guess that’s the thing – it was so, so obvious to me why i chose that present for you; i was so content having wrapped three meaningful secrets in it. but you had no idea, and you chose to hold a grudge against me because you had no idea. that’s the thing.

i very clearly remember telling you two things – direct quotations – ‘my thick skin isn’t a shell, it’s scar tissue’, and ‘i love you’. both’re true. both don’t mean a thing at this point. i just hope you’re happy, i hope you’re happy, i hope you’re happy. if you’re happy, i’m happy too.

i can choose to remember whichever parts of all of this, i can choose to not be afraid of the past, i can choose to talk about the lovely parts, and not the ones that hurt like red hot branding iron. but i will forever feel stupid in your presence, even in the form of memories. i will forever pretend i’ve not been to the edge of life, hanging, just barely, when your eyes and your words slashed me like whips. after all, you’ve convinced me you knew what i was when you picked me up.

when the f in ‘friend’ stands for ‘family’

eva used to do karate in high school. we didn’t know each other at all when we moved in together, but i remember that being one of the first things i found out about her. one day (we hadn’t been living together for that long), she said to me, ‘do you think i could try and flip you over your head? i used to be able to do that. don’t worry, you’re not gonna feel any pain,’ and then she paused and added, ‘if you don’t try to fight back.’

i remember us fighting once. eva got so mad that she turned around on her heel and left; we were waiting for a bus, and she just left and walked all the way home in the middle of the night. granted, i was being an insufferable asshole, but i wouldn’t have admitted it at the time. we stopped talking after that night; i think we stopped talking to each other for about three days, and then i was ready for that to be over; i wanted the girl in the bedroom right next to mine to be my friend again, so i found a single cigarette lying around in my room (it had fallen out of my friend’s pack a couple of weeks ago on new year’s but he couldn’t find it at the time). i took that cigarette and pencilled ‘peace pipe’ on it, and rolled it across an ugly carpet with a badly patched up burn hole in it into eva’s bedroom. she looked down at it for a moment, prompting instant regret in my mind. maybe that was just going to annoy her more? maybe i should have just said something, like a normal person?

she then stood up, grabbed one of her big sweaters off the back of a chair, picked up the cigarette, and said, ‘let’s go.’ fortunately, she’s not a normal person either, and so we smoked that peace pipe together, and that was that. rarely have i felt as unconditionally and unquestionably accepted by anyone as i always did by her.

eva is, hands down, one of the toughest, most badass yet most delightful, gentle people i have ever met. she always thinks about others; she would come home, jump on my bed, and thrust a milky way chocolate bar that she had bought for me that day into my hands while filling my ears with a shrill ‘this is for you, glen coco!’, just because. i remember her bringing me a slice of bread topped with icing and two birthday candles stuck in it while she was making a cake for a friend’s birthday one night; she said she’d whipped that up for my 21.57th birthday. she’d have so many preconceived notions, about people and about the dark knight trilogy, but she’s never afraid to change her mind in search of what is true to her. and she’d fall in love, my god how she would fall, in love with people and with days and pictures and cadbury’s creme eggs. she would always tell people little anecdotes about me as proof of how weird i am, and she’d always tell people that i made her weird too. she’d sometimes (or maybe just once, we will never know at this point) carry handfuls of crisps in her hoodie pocket, which i’ll never let her live down. she’d go for walks with me and have little day trips with me; they were like our small whimsical adventures in a large serious world. she agreed to go with it even when i was insisting on having a picnic at 10pm this one night and then it started snowing, but it was never cold, in my memories at least, because it warms my heart to know that she was the only sane person who would have sat there with me anyway, having our snowy picnic. she’d constantly forget the names of simple, mundaine things, like waffle iron, and say the first word that came into her head, which was often nowhere close to what she really had in mind. she taught me to celebrate palentine’s day instead of feeling left out on valentine’s day, and whenever one of us got the flu she’d make sure we had some mulled wine to fight it. she’d score me free coffee and muffins from whatever coffee shop she worked at the time, but it was never a bargain, never a trade or an attempt to gain something; it has always been genuine care that goes beyond any logical, coherent thought. it has always been a given. there’s always room for me in her world, there’s always warmth.

my eyes fill with light of a thousand and one beautiful memories, shining from however long ago, of how we both love baking and how eva hates horror movies, and how against all odds we met. how her genuineness and almost childlike honesty, her wonderful, strange complexity won me over, and her boundaryless friendship made me feel at home, and her intelligence and her science smarts make me so proud my chest could burst, and it will always be my absolute honour to call her my friend (and also to call her ‘evelina’, which she absolutely hates).

our friendship has always been the most beautiful, most functional compromise. if eva was in an all encompassing christmas spirit and wanted to make decorations together, she’d let me put on how the grinch stole christmas. if we cooked together she’d often end up eating vegetarian meals with me. if we went out, i’d dress up a little more and be prepared to keep up with her, no matter how many shots i was going to have to down. if one of us couldn’t figure out how to turn the electricity on, the other one would try until it worked. if she wanted a christmas tree, i’d steal a huge branch from the one stood in the town hall. it’s always been an unending series of littler and bigger compromises. it’s always been like clockwork. it’s always been so simple, so organic, so familiar.

this one’s for you, my beautiful friend.

you know / you never know

i’m a little short-sighted, just a tad; but you have to be pretty close for me to be able to make out your face and your expressions. that’s why sometimes i don’t like running into people i kind of know. it’s not a big deal, but sometimes it takes me a moment to figure out whether i really know the person walking towards me or if their blurred out facial features remind me of someone else.

so i was riding a trolleybus home the other day and i just so happened to look out the windshield a minute before it halted at a bus stop; and as i did, i saw one person standing there, waiting, and i didn’t need his face to come into focus to know who it was. i’ve known this person for about three months, and maybe sometimes three months isn’t enough to get used to someone, but other times it only takes that long to map someone’s aura out and imprint it in your mind like a tattoo, and i got so used to this person’s leather jacket, or maybe his long legs or his blonde hair, that they’ve become a dead giveaway of his presence.

sometimes i feel invisible; not in a bad way, it’s more of a feeling of being impervious to other people’s observing looks, as if only i can notice little details about people, only i can see the world, but the world cannot see me. but sometimes the world turns around and sometimes the world looks me right in the eyes when it talks and sometimes the world wants me there. so this is an ode to my world of the past three and a half months; this is an ode to the people i never looked for but still found. this is an ode to the people who might not think about me anymore after another trimester, but this an ode to the people who don’t have to either. this is an ode to the brief affair between me and them and work that kept me sane, or just the right amount of insane, and that will always stay with me, into infinity.

aistė’s father was born on the same exact day as ozzy osbourne. she told me that one day when one of black sabbath’s songs came on the radio at work. she said she’d always been into their music, and that genuinely surprised me. but she’s exactly like that, i soon found out. she’s incompatibility; she’s collisions between the power of positivity and deadpan humor. she is the very definition of a mother and a child, all rolled into one. she’s a tiny human being with a pair of the biggest eyes and a heart as large and deep as the ocean. it always baffled me how happy she seems; not quite happy go lucky, but happy in a more fundamental sense of the word, somehow. she’s all grown up, she has a husband and a kid, and i think sometimes she worries about not doing something wrong, about not being a mother correctly, and that also baffles me because her dedication and her care and gentleness and love grow like creepers all tangled and hugging even her most sarcastic words. aistė speaks her mind out loud and clear, but she’s not afraid to not know something, she’s not afraid to be curious and to learn. and she’s one of the most zen people i know. she said something to me recently, she said, ‘i’ve had my fair share of misery in my life but at some point i decided to be happy,’ and it sounded to me like the key word there wasn’t happy, it was be. the kindness that she’s thrown my way could only be measured by light-years, if at all. and the light in her; i think  that that’s what that light feeds off.

marius worries about my coffee intake and the first thing i remember learning about him was that he had a toothache around the time i got hired. he always looks people in the eyes when he’s conversing with someone and sometimes he ends up standing real close to them too, but it doesn’t really feel like an intrusion. it’s always more of an exorcism; he’ll listen to you until you run out of breath, really listen, and then all that’s left for you to do is inhale anew; there’s no more room for the exorcised words and thoughts. i gave him a spiral shaped apple skin months ago and he still has it, and we joke about how i’m gonna check to see if he still has it in two years from now, and i really think he might, and i really hope he will, but even if he  won’t, he’s still got a little bit of me with him forever. last time i saw him we were smoking together and he penciled my name on his cigarette before lighting it; that’s what he does. we bicker sometimes, but then other times he tells me i’m the only thing around he doesn’t hate. i’m glad i trusted him with so much of me because i never once felt judged, and he always made me not want to judge anyone else either. we have this deal – if i badmouth someone he slaps me across the face. it’s never a real slap but it’s always enough, and i love that he’s never afraid to confront me. he’s very in tune with words and meanings between the lines, as if listening is a way of thinking for him.

ieva hates to be hugged and she might look like the most serious person in the world until you let her make you  laugh. and she worries about her future a lot but i think she doesn’t need to, i think she’s gonna be just fine. better than fine. she’s got a very sharp mind and she’s not afraid of hard work, and i think she wants to seem tough, rigid even, but she’s still soft in her actions towards people. she’s in love and she’s hopeful, and she’s funny too. she would make me gasp for air during our shifts together; she has a way of making the most  boring, mundane things sound like the most hilarious jokes. no matter how tough she wants or needs to be, she’s mostly just really beautiful inside and out because she makes people smile, and she heals people too. she’s got ingenuity for days, she’s ideas and she’s plans. and she’s a person whose approval i really felt i wanted; if she does decide to hug you, you can be sure as hell you’re doing something right in your life. if she lets her guards down, even if just for a split second, it’s like finding the end of the rainbow.

paulius hates warm tomatoes, and he casually throws in all these ridiculous, archaic words when he speaks. him and i play this game where we keep making up different names for everyone but they all have to begin with the same letter as people’s real names. him and i play with words a lot, and when i would work with him everything seemed more light-hearted  somehow, even on the hardest, busiest days. he likes trains, and i love how he just smiles and shakes his head at me sometimes; when he does that i know i’m about to cross lines i shouldn’t, i know i’m about to stuff a foot in my mouth and he saves me. he’s the one with the leather jacket and the long legs and the blonde hair, and i always joke about how we’re supposed to get married, and he shares his fruit with me and puts flowers on the table when we eat sometimes, and he laughs at the same joke about strange looking cats every single time i make it. and sometimes he plays it off cool, sometimes he acts as if he doesn’t care or feel too  much, but i think there’s thunderstorms inside him, the good kind. i think he’s gonna have enough adventures for three lifetimes when the time comes, because he’s got a mind too unique and strange to not. and he takes real nice pictures of the world, he does. 

and i don’t really know how to put it into words, i could talk about these people for eternity and still not know how to put them into words. but here’s one: myliu.

i really [blank] you a lot

i’m stuck. more than usual; my words are stuck now too. it almost feels like even my hand gestures and my facial expressions are stuck. it feels like there’s an invisible bubble around my head, keeping even the most ardent thoughts from escaping my mind and maybe turning into something palpable. so let’s pretend my last name is frankenstein and here’s my monster of a blog post.

growing up, i was heavily exposed to classic rock. growing up, i kept finding parts of me scattered in music and i kept collecting them and building myself up. growing up, i understood complicated things more easily and so i knew that the beatles weren’t trying to say that love is the only thing you need, but rather that you can have everything else, but love is like glue that holds all of that together. growing up, i thought about that a lot; about love.

it took me almost two decades before someone told me that i’m not supposed to just love people; that i’m actually supposed to love people the way they want to be loved. and yet, i never wanted to accept that. and yet, i couldn’t help but be in awe of how many different loves i can feel and see and hear around me. but then, a few weeks ago, my mom said something to me; she said, ‘i love you so much, i’m trying to love you anyway i can, but it never seems to be quite right.’ and i know that, i know that my mom loves me, even though sometimes we don’t have patience for each other. she does love me, a lot. but it’s moments like that when i’m realising i’m not letting her, i’m not accepting it for some reason. (just how right was stephen chbosky when he wrote that ‘we accept the love we think we deserve’?)

i don’t want to refuse love just because it’s being uttered in a foreign language or because it’s painted in my least favorite colour (orange), or because it’s hidden between the lines or because it’s too loud. i want to accept more love than i think i deserve.

i have a friend who overuses pet names and makes little collages with cats and hearts for me, and who always cheers me on, whatever i do, and that’s how i know she loves me. her love is faithful; no matter what i do, it’s always happy for me and it always encourages me and gently squeezes my hand to let me know it’s there.

i have a friend who will never even admit she misses me, but she’ll tell me little anecdotes about how she saw this one chick that looked just like me and how she really wished it had been me. her love is shy; it doesn’t speak in words but it sits and shares a pizza with me when my whole world is sinking, and she walks and drinks coffee with me when my whole world is sleepless.

i have a friend who tries to show love through care, but thing is, he’s not that comfortable with expressing that either. so sometimes, on days that aren’t so good for me, i’ll catch him looking at me and he’ll hold my gaze and quietly ask if i’m okay. his love is protective; it never wants me to hurt and it never lets me be forgotten.

i have a friend who once printed out a really bad picture of me that she thinks is hilarious and wrote ‘i love you’ on the back of it, and gave it to me. she only ever says it quasi-jokingly, but i know she always means it when she does. her love is goofy; it jokes around and brings me my favorite chocolates while shouting ‘this is for you, glen coco,’ and it paints all my smiles.

i have a friend who just says he loves me, just like that. he says i encouraged him, that i made him feel like he can do that. he has a thousand and one way of showing me he loves me, but sometimes he says it too. his love is honest; it’s not wrapped in anything, it’s not forced or tactical, it’s a laugh that he doesn’t try to hold in.

i have a friend who says says ‘dude, i love you,’ but then she ew’s and frowns a little because she hates being too touchy feely and too sappy. with her, it’s more like it’s a given, she’ll remind me she feels that way, but i always get the impression i should perpetually be aware of it. her love is quiet; it knocks on my window only when the light inside goes out and it hands me a light bulb.

i have a friend who never finishes his declarations of love, he’ll stop in the middle of a sentence – or better yet, he won’t say anything at all – and just hug me and ruffle my hair, and give me this endlessly affectionate and warm smile. his love is cosy; every time i see him i know it’s still there, it’s still waiting for me with open arms, it’s still inviting me to take my shoes off and rest for a bit.

and my mom, she worries about me. she worries about me, and she thinks i’m magic, and sometimes her love is suffocating, and other times it tries to attach wings to my shoulder blades.

so the question is: do you accept the love that people give to you or do you demand the love that you give to people? i want a user’s manual to love.