Open Mouth. Insert Foot.

ouch!

i was was bitten by a man i know while horsing around at a friend’s house (in case your brow is worriedly furrowed, i feel the need to disclose that i’ve punched this man in the mouth hard enough to make him spit blood while horsing around. the martyr card is pretty much out of the picture).

i made a casual documentation of the 2-week lifespan of the bite’s bruise. 

should be fully healed by wednesday!

call me ishmael.

i have been trying to write the same song for the past month.

the first stanza came instantly; the chorus, hammered out in a day. now, though…nothing. i don’t know how to press on with it. everything i try to play sounds wrong. i can’t pin an ending on this thing. it’s gotten to the point that i am absolutely fucking sick to death of listening to it. whenever we have band practice, my teeth are on edge from the very first chord. this song makes me want to smash my guitar against the wall. 

i am being histrionic, of course. 

hilary doesn’t want to move on until we finish it. we are very nearly done, she says. i sigh and sullenly strum ‘free bird’ while she tinkers with it.

i usually suggest we go watch law and order svu in lieu of practice.

she usually declines.

i usually go help myself to a sprite from her fridge. 

i try out a few things, ask her what she thinks of them. she shrugs in a noncommittal way. she plays a bar or two, asks me what i think. i sniff, pause, then play my mine again—just in case she didn’t hear them the first time. 

i am ready to finish this song. i am ready for it to be done. i should probably work on it tonight. 

i don’t want to, though.

i want something

like what i remember. 

chuck

one of my dearest friends is moving back to columbia from portland, oregon tomorrow. i have been literally counting down the days. chuck’s return soothes me in a lot of ways—beside the fact that i adore him, i feel like i have a comrade of sorts. 

chuck moved away very shortly after i did. we have been gone almost the exact same amount of time. while away, we were able to console each other in the newness and strangeness of our respective cities. our reasons for leaving south carolina were almost identical, and it was nice to have someone to flourish with—even if that someone was clear across the country. 

my friend beth sent me a text message after i decided to move. she had heard the news (as word travels extremely fast in our social circles), and wanted to know if the rumors were true. i confirmed, and she responded, “you and chuck?! this is awesome!” turns out, he and i had decided to call it quits at nearly exactly the same time. 

i’ve written in earlier posts about my feelings of isolation and displacement stemming from my own return to the south. i am happy to be here, but knocked off-kilter by both the changes and sameness. i have had trouble relating these feelings to the people around me, which has only served to make me feel more isolated and displaced. i’ve talked to chuck about his decision to move, and many of his reasons were the same as mine. he has expressed anxiety and excitement about his return in the same portions that i feel in my own life. it’s going to be such a relief to have someone nearby who is going through the same thing as me at the same time—someone i can share my doubts and apprehensions with who will be able to understand without taking offense.

chuck’s decision bolsters my own. he is one of the most rational, sturdy people i know. if his arrival isn’t evidence of failure…then maybe neither is my own. 

lovers

i spent a full day and night with the man i love this weekend.

in the interest of time, i’ll paraphrase: i love him. he loves me. when i moved back, he told me he can’t be in a relationship with me, but has no interest in being with anyone else. this either suits me or rips me to pieces, given the time of day. we hang out sparingly, and sometimes fall into bed with one another. strangers assume we are together which is, again, alternately comforting and heart-shredding. 

there are nights where we hang out and i go home and bury my face in my hands and wake up with pain behind my eyes; when i pour my every insecurity into him and us (or, more accurately, the lack of ‘us’), and decide that what he offers me isn’t enough, and that i am a fool to pretend that it is. 

and

there are nights where he tells me that he watched a film and the main character reminded him of what i must have been like as a little girl; where he runs out of the house of the party we’re at to floor the guy i’m fist fighting in the front yard; when i get upset in the dark and cry myself to sleep, only to wake up to him still comforting me. 

i was afraid this weekend was going to be one of the former, and was pleased and relieved to discover it was the latter.

i know that this will not always be the case.

The Wild Rose

sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and trust

so that i live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart,

suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,

and once again i am blessed, choosing

again what i chose before.

-wendell berry

(i expect to be writing with my heart strings in the coming weeks. prepare yourself, reader).

pulse:

the rate at which the heart beats, or the underlying feelings, emotions, or sentiments of a group of people.