intimate.

what did that word even mean? she wondered. intimacy, how do you know when you are intimately with someone, how do you understand that the moment you are living in is a moment of intimacy?

she didn't mean intimacy in a sexual way, though the word commonly referred to moments such as those.

no, the word intimate meant so much more than the animalistic nature of simple sex.

the way she saw it, intimacy meant getting close and personal with someone, seeing the side of them they tried to keep hidden from the windows of the world.

I just got a new computer and i am in the mood to write and without microsoft word

This post is about self-respect.

As a child, i always respected my elders. Looking up to adults, understanding that those older than me were those wiser than me, that those who had had more time to grow were often those who had obtained more knowledge than me.

respect was always easy to give, it still is. Do something to impress me, be kind, be good, be intelligent, thoughtful, anything honestly, and you will probably earn my respect. it doesn't take much, but it must be significant.

however i never really put together the understanding that in order to gain respect you must give it; not only to other people, but most importantly, you must give respect to yourself.

why this has and is one of the most difficult things for me to grasp, i will never understand. I am a person deserving of respect, i know i am.

When i was younger, i always used to obsess about what things felt like. some of my favorite things to ponder were what did it feel like to be in a relationship, what did it feel like to hold hands with someone, to kiss someone, what did it feel like to have the word boyfriend come out of my mouth in a possessive tone of voice.

i still wonder about feelings, but now they are different. 

i have kissed boys before, i have held hands, i know all the aspects of relationships and i know what the feel like. but here is what i still wonder: 

what does it feel like to have someone gaze into my eyes and care about the ocean they see? 

what does it feel like to have someone 

I was sitting at the top of the stairs, hugging my knees and trying my best to stay quiet as i held my breath and waited for the moment to pass. It was my shoe, there was not anyone who it would fit as perfectly as it would fit me. I tried my best to reassure myself, but it was difficult as i watched. My stepsisters always got what they wanted, and i found it quite difficult to believe that this time would be any different.

I'm sure you can imagine my feelings when the shoe didn't fit my first stepsister's gargantuan foot. It wasn't surprising, really, she had never been the favorite. Higher than me in the ridiculous hierarchy that was my inherited family, but still not the top of the chain. The prince smiled at her as he reclaimed the glass shoe and moved to my second stepsister. She smiled with eyes sparkling green and evil as the prince caressed her with his kind gaze.

he slipped the shoe onto her foot, and after some wiggling it was apparent that the shoe....fit. I blinked a few times to make sure i was seeing correctly, and each time i opened my eyes the scene became more and more hopeless. My stepsister jumped out of her seat, she hugged the prince, she hugged my stepmother, she smiled wider than i've ever seen, she glared at me.

challenge.

I just want to start this, don't know whether or not i should do the entire challenge so

day 1: hopes, plans, and dreams for the next 365 days with a picture of you.
first of all, here's the funny thing and here's what i said just about 365 days ago--

okay, well, i haven’t really been thinking about the coming really soon future, as in the future of the next few days, i really am just focusing on what i want to do with the very distant future, as in in college, after college, etc. i really should be focusing on my direct future, because that is what is going to lead to all of the stuff with my distant future.
REGARDLESS, here it is.
Hopes for the future:
I hope to make it through the week. i hope that i don’t completely die in swim practice after a full day of school and track. I hope to be called by Rock Spring and be told that i received a job. i want to do really well in long course this season, and i want this summer to be the best on i have had so far. i hope to earn enough money to go to France this summer, and i hope to get a pair of Dr. Martens for my birthday. i hope that i get to go to the beach this summer more than i got to go to the beach last summer, and i hope that summer comes really soon. i hope that my grades get much better this quarter, and i hope that finals go really well. i hope that i am genuinely happy for the rest of the year, and i hope that nothing will be able to take away my happiness. i hope that everything goes well for me, and i hope i can handle next year, in all of its crazyness that i can already tell it is going to be. i hope i can handle the SATs, and i hope i can handle looking at colleges. i just hope i can make it through the next 365 days without having a mental breakdown.
Plans:
i plan to have a great sweet sixteen, but i don’t really want a party. i plan to celebrate in France, with my grandparents and whoever chooses to come to Paris with me. I plan to go to practice everyday, and i plan to sleep all weekend in order to catch up on all the sleep i will be missing during the week. i plan to get better at planning things, and i plan to start thinking more about my future, one step at a time.
Dreams:
i dream of having a fantastic rest of the school year, and i dream of a fantastic swim season in which i make long course states, which actually exist.i dream that my summer will be fabulous, full of a great job and lots of money and great birthday presents and great clothes. and i dream of continuing to write and getting a book published, and doing really well for myself. andddd i’m really done with this. i dream of bigger and better people places and things. the end.  

And now let's see what i would say today, just for comparison's sake.

hopes: I agree with the beginning of the first answer. I hope to make it through the week. I hope i do okay in swim practice, and i hope that i can keep up with my homework as well as i am already, though it is so early in the quarter to really tell. I hope that tonight i will be able to get to sleep at a relatively reasonable time, and i pray that somehow practice gets cancelled so that somehow i will be able to sleep in on saturday. I don't need to hope that Rock Spring calls me back with news that i got the job, i already have a job at the arena club. ummmmm i hope that i find a date to ring dance. and SOON. I hope summer is amazing, i hope i swim well, and i hope that things just go well for me. i hope to go back to paris reallyreally soon, i miss it so much i can't breathe.

A third time coming back to look at this challenge, and now i will explain what i hope, what i plan, and what i dream of.

Hopes for the future:
i hope that tomorrow i will wake up, and i will go to swim practice and one of the kids there will smile at me, or thank me, or someone will make me feel confident that though i am not the strictest of the coaches, that i am still doing a good job, in my own way. I hope that during championships i will talk to many different people from many different teams that i have lost touch with because i quit swimming, and i hope that when i finally finish the swim season this year i will have good feelings about it and happy memories.
i hope that on august 24th my mom will not cry excessively. i hope that i do not forget anything, and i hope my dog doesn't forget about me. i hope that i make lots of wonderful new friends, and i hope my roommate is someone i will feel comfortable around. i hope that college is the type of wonderful experience that everyone has been warning me it will be.
i hope that i find my passion. nevermind find, i believe writing is my passion, and i hope that i find a way to utilize it, to improve it, to learn from it. i hope i can travel, i hope i can learn, i hope i can experience. i hope i can go back to paris because i miss it wonderfully.

plans:
i plan to move into college on august 24th. i plan to make new friends, i plan to do my homework, to become more organized, i plan to eat healthier, i plan to work out more. but most of all, i plan to work on my image of myself. i plan to gain more self-confidence, to respect myself so that people respect me.

dreams:
i dream of a better world. I dream of my mom being happy again, i dream of a world where i can talk to both of my parents again, i dream of living only with the stresses of a normal college student. i dream of traveling, i dream of saving the world, i dream of writing, i dream of living. i dream of happiness, i dream of constantly avoiding settling, i dream of ups and downs. i dream of life itself, and everything everyone has told me about it.

I've always liked to pretend I am an incredibly independent person. It's a wonderful idea to flirt with, to sit alone in a secluded area and think I am here and I am by myself and I am happy. 

And sometimes that is nothing but exactly completely true. Sometimes all I want to do is walk outside and sit down on grass greener than my eyes and stare at a rippling pool of water and wonder how long I can enjoy the scenery before my mind will start to wander.

There really isn't much more beautiful than a small stream, at least I have never believed so. There is so much life, so many things that are small and insignificant and....independent. It isn't difficult to be a small bug or a fish or a frog and to wake up in the morning with only the thought of one's own selfish needs.

How do I know when I am happy? Because the type of person I am is not synonymous with the type of person I would like to be. And I know that the most important thing in my life, and especially at this point in my life, is to love myself for who I am. But how am I supposed to do that when I don't really believe I know myself? Everything I say seems to be to please others. I want people to like me, and it is more difficult to be honest than it is to make friends. I do not lie specifically to people, I am not the type of person who paints myself in a different light in order to make myself seem more appealing. But instead, i am confused as to when I hear myself speaking and when i feel the words leaving.

When I was younger, I wasn't sure about other people, but I know that I was sure about myself.

Sometimes I just wake with a feeling that I know I am a writer. And this feeling stems from something truly, deeply inside of me.
Yesterday I was drunk, like I usually am on friday nights because I am in college and I am a usual American student. And like usual, I was upset. About god knows what, something irrelevant. And I was crying, by myself, embracing in my solitude that I was truly alone, in every sense of the word. I was happy to be alone, to not have someone restricting my tears, but yet, being alone was the very topic I was crying about.
And somehow, I found a comfort. And that comfort stemmed from my spoken poetry. I looked out the window at the stars and the grass that was made up of ten million little blades. Little green blades that believed in all their essence that individually they meant nothing. And that's not really what I thought, that's what I'm thinking now. But I did just talk to myself, I told myself poems and poetry phrases that I just came up with on the spot. And I felt so much better. It just feels so so good for me to articulate my thoughts through a keyboard, to write things down so I know that they are real and they are there and they have happened.
I want to be a writer. all I have ever wanted is to write. It is what I love to do.
Because when I live through a moment, I feel it in a way that a lot of people don't. When I walk outside, i take notice of exactly where the sun is. Because it is really important to me, what position the sun is in when I look up at the sky and notice it. and the exact shade of the sky is very important. Whether it is a deep blue or an azure, or whether it is breathing in the setting sun, inheriting the orange, or the purple of the sunset, or whether it is overtaken by wispy thick white clouds.
I notice when the buds of flowers just begin to peek through the dead branches of trees. I notice when little blue and purple flowers begin to poke their heads gently through the dead gray grass, and I notice the first yellow dandelions and the first buttercups, and I count how many petals are on the first clover I see inhabiting the new grass.
When I see a clover, I picture the cow that wishes to chew it. I picture the spots, and I picture the gentle pink tongue, and I picture how the cow would react if it saw me walking through its field. And all of a sudden, that's where I am, I am walking through the field.

I listened to a new song for the first time a little while ago, and when I closed my eyes and accepted I was in the dark of my college dorm room, my mind allowed me to travel to a tightrope overlooking the grand canyon. and it

And maybe it's because
what it means to shine
is to realize that the sky above you
and the ground beneath you
will always be a little scarier than you thought,
because you have to jump to be able to fly.
and maybe what hurts the most
is when you realize
that you are not the only one who has wings


and maybe it's because
you are not the only one
who has been in love with your favorite food
and you are not the only one who has cried.


and maybe it's because
the snow is kissing
more than just your nose


and maybe it's because
your special
is what makes you special
but their special
makes them special too.


and maybe the stars are there
to fill everyone else's notebooks
but darling, you have to remember:
just because they can fill the notebook of the girl smiling next to you
does not mean that they will not
still flow into the pages of your mind
that's what they are there for
and they will always be there
as long as you let them.

Last year, before I had to catch a flight to my semester abroad, my mom and I spent the night in a hotel. We were both nervous, and had just come from spending a week straight in my house, with my ex-boyfriend.  We ordered room service and tried to pretend that we both liked what was playing on the TV. I thought about crying, but couldn’t make the tears come. Instead, I texted my ex-boyfriend on a whim, frantically asking him to let us go back to the original “don’t ask don’t tell” plan, allowing me the comfort of having at least one familiar thing to hold on to as I left. He agreed, since I had been the one to break it off in the first place.

A few months into living away from home, I broke up with him again. I told him that he shouldn’t wait for me, that we weren’t good together, that we were too different. It took a while, but eventually we both decided it was for the best.

It’s strange, but the weeks between when I ended things with my ex-boyfriend and when I found a new person to attract my attention were some of the best weeks I had while living abroad. I was so free, so unconcerned with my emotions, and so focused on myself that I forgot about almost everyone else. All the connections I made were ones that didn’t necessarily depend wholly on the feelings of others; instead, I was enthralled with the idea of being alone.

A few weeks after I got home, I met up with my ex-boyfriend again. We went to dinner, but I think we both knew it was inevitable that we would end the night by doing something physical. We didn’t have sex, and though I felt entirely different—as if I had a bit of power I had never before felt in the relationship—I still felt tied to him, at least emotionally. In a strange way that felt like being slowly pulled underwater, I began wondering what I had become. It was as if the simple push of one of my most emotional relationships to the realm of the physical suddenly made all my emotional attachments feel worthless.

I think I’ve always been the type of person who values personal, singular connections. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve had trouble in college—I’ve never been very good at the group thing, and sometimes I get myself too involved in things that were doomed from the start. When I first came to college, getting into a romantic relationship with someone was on my top list of priorities. It was something I had never had, something that I desperately wanted. And when I finally found it, in February of my freshman year, I was so desperately afraid to lose it, that I allowed myself to get lost instead.

Even though I keep in cordial contact with my ex-boyfriend today, I still credit my leaving to go abroad as one of the best decisions I have ever made for myself. It allowed us both the separation to grow on our own, and to realize solutions to things we had been so blind to while we were dating.

But this isn’t about my last relationship, it’s about how I’ve grown to view and understand love, and to be honest, I can’t really say that I’m entirely sure about that. I think my generation gets extremely caught up in the idea of love, but how many of us can confidently say what “love” means? While dating my ex-boyfriend, I would spend hours on social media, looking at pictures on Instagram and Tumblr, and wondering why my relationship didn’t make me feel the way those pictures did. I never noticed how uncomfortable it was when my ex-boyfriend and I would pick fights with each other, how hard I tried to make him feel the exact same ways that I did. One of our most difficult, and still unresolved issues stemmed from the fact that our refrigerators are organized very differently. It was ridiculous and understandable at the same time, but we were young so it seemed insurmountable.

Dating my ex-boyfriend was my longest, deepest, most personal and singular connection, and yet I still allowed myself to say “I love you” only twice.

Do you ever look at my profile picture on Facebook and wish that it was something different? How many times have you looked at my pictures on social media or read things I've written and wondered aloud exactly what you and what Max can mean to me, simultaneously? I can't put myself in your shoes; I only know things in the way that I personally experience them. And I won't lie, I'm not used to having multiple people in my life that want to be with me. I hate to sound like the jaded twenty-two year old, but the little love triangle I had with the guy I worked with at Hamlet was more my speed. It was a fire that made me cry more than it made me think, but when I actually allowed myself time and space to forget about it, it disappeared quickly, like a candle being blown out.

But from the moment I started getting to know you, I had more questions where I was used to having answers. Hamlet guy made me wish for Max to be closer, but you make me wonder exactly what it would be like to have him further away. Not in literal proximity, but more in regards to emotional dependency. Last night I hung out with someone new, a new friend who also just moved here from the east coast. At one point I found myself talking about how I want nothing more than for Max to find someone else, as much as that would hurt. I want to push him away, because I know that I can't be what he wants, what he deserves, who he can be so perfect for.

I've never gone through a bad breakup. I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, but we didn't stop talking regularly, he came to my college graduation, he met Max, he helped my mom and cousin move me out of my senior college apartment. He's one of the first people I told when my dog died this summer. I know people say you can't be friends with your exes, that no matter what you do it always ends in fire. But in my experience, that isn't what happened. Sure, when I came back from being abroad and saw my ex for the first time, it was palpable in the air just how much the power had shifted from him to me. And he told me that his heart had belonged to me in the months after I had broken up with him until now. But these things didn't make me change the way I acted, we still hooked up, and I wrote something about feeling sorry for him, about not understanding exactly why he suddenly felt so strongly about me, at a time when I felt like I had no feelings for him at all.

What do you picture, if anything, when you think about us dating? Do you wonder about how I would act if all of a sudden I decided to make the jump and tell Max things were over? Do you think about how you would explain things to your friends, or to your ex-girlfriend? Ultimately, I don't know what you think about, and these are only things I can conjure up. But from personal experience, it's always been really surprising to me to realize that someone has felt a desire to kiss me, but wasn't sure if they could do it or not. Do you ever feel that? Do you ever wish that things weren't complicated and that you and I could do something like hold hands or kiss simply and sweetly? In the middle of the day, somewhere random, just because we could?

I know that I am the relationship type. And I know what I'm like when I'm in a relationship. Do you ever wonder about that? I've probably said something about what it's like to date me, hopefully more than just what I've told you inside the context of my dating Max. Do you hate it when I talk about him? I hate it when you talk about your ex, the same way I feel prickly when someone I feel a certain way about starts talking about someone important from their past. There's nothing I can do to combat history with another person. I bet you understand that.

Thanks for not being weird about me hanging out with you and your friends so much. I know that might sound ridiculous to you, but back home, I'm used to really strongly developed cliques, and people who know their place inside of them (and aren't looking to make friends with a stranger.) And also thank you for not being pushy about what kind of physical relationship we've had. It's been nice to get to know you without that pressure. I don't know if saying this will make sense to you because you only know who I've been since I've been in California, but I was a really different person at home. I fell into things headfirst, got attached too quickly, found myself constantly being the one that was more emotionally involved. I guess you'd hate to hear that, seeing as how I haven't really been that way with you, but I genuinely think that the way I've been with you is specifically due to timing. When I first came out here, I held on to Max tightly because everything was new, and I wanted a safety net to fall back on, someone who would tell me he loved me at the end of every day, no matter what happened during that day. Even with the thing with the Hamlet guy, I always had Max to fall back on, someone who would always be there to treat me right even as I had sex with someone else regularly and against his wishes.

Definitely not cool right? But I'm not perfect.

But you, you're different. You make me want to be more honest, to try and be a better person. And as much as I could lie to Rod (Hamlet guy, I forget if I told you his name?), I don't feel comfortable lying to you. You make me want to dive headfirst into something, the way I always have. But I'm afraid of doing that. Partially because of Max, partially because I came to California because I wanted to be by myself, partially because I'm scared that I'm going to make a mistake I've made before. You, you're great. You're sweet, and fun and you care about your family in a way that is really important to me, and I genuinely don't understand how or why I could meet a person like you, a person that's right for me in many of the same ways that Max is (but also in lots of different ways) at such a weird time in my life. Timing is cruel, at least at this point.

I want to go back to Merced with you, meet your friends there, see what your life is like when you're a long train ride away from San Francisco. I don't want to meet your ex, because I know that no matter what, she couldn't like me because of who I am to you, and because I don't want to ever be on the bad side of anyone who has meant something to you in your life.

I can't promise you anything. But if it makes you feel any better, I can't promise anything to Max either. And in all truth, he's only been in my life about two months longer than you have. That's pretty weird, right?

One day I might disappear halfway around the world because I found a job or something, and I wouldn't expect you to come with me, but I also wouldn't expect you to be too invested in the idea of me staying.

I'm not a difficult person to get to know, but it is super difficult for me to trust anyone (that isn't my mom.) I keep waiting for you to get back with your ex, or wake up and get tired of me just sleeping in your bed and not much else, or stop inviting me to do things with you and your friends. I know what it feels like to be pushed away, or to all of a sudden not be good enough anymore. Even though I don't think you'd be a cruel enough person to do that to me. You're good at protecting yourself from getting too emotionally involved in situations like this right? Me too. I didn't used to be. But I am now.

When I was little, I used to spend a lot of time at my paternal grandparents' house. There are pictures of me in a little yellow outfit, sitting comfortably and looking straight through the camera, positioned on a wooden swing, one of those super old ones that had wooden bars to keep little kids from falling off. The swing hung from a huge old oak tree in my grandparents' backyard; the thing was so massive it completely overshadowed the house, and the gardens, and the office in a separate structure attached to the carport.

I always maintained a close relationship with my grandmother, but knew little of my grandfather--he died when I was in fourth grade and I remember sitting on my mom's lap in the church at his funeral, thinking about the messages we had all written on golf balls and placed gingerly in his casket, and wondering why people were crying so hard. It wasn't like we would never see him again, right? I was in Catholic school, and we had been consistently encouraged to remember the closeness and care given to us by God and Jesus (and sometimes the Holy Spirit, if there was time). So Papa had just moved on to another place, for now, and we shouldn't be in a purple church with upbeat music and everyone dressed up, just to cry. At least that's how I felt at the time.

I don't think I ever saw my grandmother cry in the short time between the discovery of my grandfather's cancer, and his death. She's always represented this strong, unmoving person to me, this German woman who uprooted everything to follow a black man to a town where they found a burning cross in their front yard on one of their first nights in a new neighborhood. She didn't cry at my grandfather's funeral, and she didn't cry in the few days he was in the hospital, or when he moved quickly into hospice at their house. At least not that I saw. He wanted to die at home, he insisted on it, and though my mom tells me now that his last hours were in the hospital, I remember that as backwards. I distinctly remember early November, and sitting in the warm emptiness of my grandparents' living room, cleared of everything but a hospital bed, all of us surrounding my grandfather as he took slow, steady breaths.

My mom tells me that one of her proudest moments as a parent was when we went to visit my grandfather in the hospital for the first time. It wasn't her parents, but she still took me out of school early; I don't remember seeing my father there though I know he came. We walked into the hospital room, it was cold and sterile, and there was a stereotypically crackling old tv mounted in the corner, and uncomfortable chairs dragged into crooked angles. My grandfather was at the point in his sickness that most time spent with him was just dedicated to watching his breath move slowly with the help of machines, but when I walked in, he noticed. He opened his eyes just barely, and called me over. My mom, worried about the reaction of a naive nine year old in a room clearly dedicated to death, watched as I let go of her hand and walked over with no qualms, pulled myself gently onto the side of his bed, and offered my cheek up to him for a kiss. If my mom's and my roles had been switched, I probably would have cried at the mixture of innocence and maturity.

Everyone in my family tells me now that my grandfather loved me in a way that was special, and apparent. Although I really never got to know him that well. I remember him sitting at the head of the kitchen table, I can picture the way my grandmother so clearly loved him, would do anything for him, I even remember his small smiles, but I don't remember why he might've considered me so special. Perhaps it has something to do with the way that I have qualities of my dad, but manifested in such different ways.

When I think of my grandfather, I remember the way the kitchen of my grandparents' house looked from the top of the fridge (my dad lifted me up there sometimes). I think of his glasses, picture my grandmother diligently picking up golf balls from the huge lawn before she mowed it, remember how much my little dog Bob would shiver on his skinny legs and bark at him. He was such a mystery to me, and yet my family's assurances about his fondness for me as his oldest granddaughter gives me the confidence to believe that I knew him more than I understood back then. What does a child know how to do better than be herself in front of adults, anyway, right?

It's only been in the years following my grandfather's death that I've begun to understand the significance of relationships, of deaths, of beginnings and endings. I get little glimpses of memories sometimes, feel surprised at the depth of relationships I never really understood as existing back then. I guess sometimes we just don't know how visible we really can be.

lion park

A few days after my mom had left me in South Africa to continue with the second half of my study abroad journey, I found myself in an apartment building that was strangely empty, as it was spring break from studying at UCT and all of my friends had gone on spring break trips to impressive places like Victoria Falls in Zambia, and scuba diving with dolphins in Mozambique.

I had gone on a four day long safari with my mom and her friend from college, then we had returned to Cape Town, exploring the city, taking a wine tour, etc. But my mom had eventually had to leave, and with a few days still before everyone returned from spring break, I binge-watched Fuller House under the warm but sandy comforter on my tiny South African single bed, eating Pringles and fried rice from my favorite Thai restaurant, and going surfing each day in the late afternoon.

In a way it was a really nice vacation, though it quickly got to be more lonely than entertaining. My computer did a weird twitch sometimes and had to restart, but other than that my days were simple. It’s amazing how we can get used to living a life within such a small area so quickly, and so it was pretty surprising to me how easily I found myself agreeing to go to Johannesburg with one of my friends the very next week, to spend a few days with a friend of her brother’s who had picked up and moved there from New Jersey to work for some soccer nonprofit for eight months.

We got drunk the night before, slept maybe an hour or two, then left for an early flight carrying hastily packed bags filled with random articles of clothing. It wasn’t yet eight in the morning and yet when we got to the airport, we both went quickly to KFC (KFC is inordinately better in pretty much any country outside of the USA) and ordered fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I had never felt like more of a mess, but also more of an adult than I did that morning.

Although, doing things with my friend Gianna always seemed to feel that way—things typically would fall together in a way that wasn’t entirely by chance, but the amount of luck still would make you feel as though you deserved everything you were given. But anyway, we finally ended up at her brother’s friend (Jacob)’s apartment, tired, thirsty, in need of wifi and glad to be somewhere as a final destination.

The first day wasn’t really very eventful, but there was a certain kind of magic attached to Jacob—he seemed so cool and both put together and messily young that I trusted him immediately. Even now, the memory of him comes to me as striking. I really didn’t want anything more than for him to like me, just in the most general sense.

One of the most fun days of my life was the second day Gianna and I spent with Jacob. We went to a lion park a few minutes away from Jacob’s house, and, ready to spend money, paid for a package that included an interaction with tiny cubs, young lions, a cheetah, and random other safari animals like a baby giraffe and some meerkats. Not entirely the most ethical place, I guess, but it is absolutely one of the top things I have ever done. It felt like Gianna, Jacob and I were a tiny clique, getting our pictures taken with animals, basking in the sunshine, and all clearly having exactly the same level of enjoyment in the afternoon. I never wanted it to end, but of course it did.

goodbyes

I think the first time I really understood the difficulty of goodbyes happened a few weeks before I had to leave Cape Town. Things had already begun to change, relationships had developed themselves in a way that inspired separation, and I realized that if I wanted to climb Devil’s Peak, I would have to go and do it on my own.

It was in taking an Uber blindly to the start of a trail up a mountain as the sun threatened to set before I was done that I realized the gravity of making meaningful friends in a temporary situation. I guess we all have those experiences that give us endless moments of clarity, and for me, those moments started when I moved abroad to live in South Africa for a semester. On my solo hike up Devil’s Peak, I realized how quickly I would be moving home, but more importantly, how far away some of the friends I had made would then be living from me.

I guess what I’m trying to convey is the fact that I’m starting to learn that goodbyes don’t ever get easier, and the more you travel and meet people and understand the way that difference can become similarity when you take the time to understand the context of people’s actions, the more goodbyes you have to say. I came home from Cape Town, and I missed friends in that way you ashamedly miss people you know you will probably never see again.

I don’t want to think that for the rest of my life I will need to constantly say goodbye in order to keep myself sane, but I can’t think of a life in which staying stagnant will keep my happy. I prefer to understand the world as constantly in motion, and this life as unabashedly short. It makes it easier to justify having to move on from being close to people.

07 August 2017 nonfiction, guitarist

It’s dark and I’ve walked carefully into the sleepy orange light of a little bar called “Naked Lunch”. I look at the bar menu, enjoy the way my hands fall gently to the bar’s counter, and ask for a glass of something labeled the house white. The glass is iridescent, a white wine seemingly lit by a carefully crafted bar ambiance.

I finish my glass, walk back outside, and let the cool breeze slip through my jacket and behind my ears. My cousin is on a hill that has been cut into to make stairs. We stand there awhile; his friend has been picked up by his mom, and we have time to kill before an Uber arrives or we decide to go home on public transportation the way we came.

In this waiting period, two guys that can’t be that far from my age set themselves up in front of Naked Lunch, one of them holding a guitar gently like it’s something soft, and the other pushing his hair out of his eyes, and setting down an old hat to collect money. At first glance, I can only notice that across from the guitarist is a girl and her two friends who can’t take their hands off of each other. She sways and pushes her eyes right onto the guitarist, generating an enthusiasm blended with a feeling of longing so deep I can feel it myself.

He ends his song and she claps quickly, then makes a show of putting several dollars into the friend’s hat in support of the performance. She leaves with her two friends and I start to feel a little uncomfortable; my cousin has gone inside Naked Lunch for a glass of water, and I’m now the only one on the street who has been present for the music and has not offered anything in support of a young musician just out to make it in this world.

And then he starts playing a song that I know. It’s old, it’s not a song I’ve heard in a long time, and to be honest, his rendition leaves some of the best parts of the music to the imagination. But in this moment, I don’t care about any of that. I picture myself on this same street, but with Max. I picture how different my life has been over the last six months, then I picture how different my life has been simply in the last week.

And finally, I realize something—this boy on the street corner in front of a bar called Naked Lunch, with his dirty blonde hair, and his douchey-looking friend with the hat, and his guitar, and his subpar voice, he really is no different from me. He’s here, in this city, and he’s doing something brave, just sitting on a street corner playing music that he clearly loves.

I used to think that all I really needed from this life was sunlight that made my skin glow orange and gold and pushed my eyes to feel green like a one dollar bill. I used to think it would be enough to simply exist, waiting for people to realize what good I’d be. I would have beautiful pictures in my imagination of elephants and whales or a sky more full of stars than any picture I’d ever seen, and I would close my eyes and believe wholeheartedly that the beauty of the world was contained right there in my imagination, and if I pushed my mind to think of things hard enough, they would appear right before me.

But in this night, I realize that the beauty of dreams isn’t everlasting, at least, not the way I used to think. What’s more beautiful than the total uniqueness of reality? I’ve been to Africa now, and I’ve seen the way it looks when elephants cross the horizon, and it doesn’t look anything like the pictures I’d created based on episodes of Planet Earth, with time moving in slow motion and the moon and stars rotating in a circle perceptible to the naked eye. The real earth creates beauty that we can manipulate to look like traditional art, but at the end of the day, what is more beautiful than the dirty fingernails strumming a mediocre version of a song I used to listen to when I was fourteen? What is more real than that, right?

Elephants and whales are endangered, and it’s nothing within my imagination that prepared me to look at the scarred old skin of an elephant with crooked tusks, gently chewing on leaves while I watch from under a scratchy old blanket in the bed of a safari jeep in the arresting cold of 5:00 in the morning. Life can be beautiful, but I’ve begun to learn that it’s the scarred, intimate details that matter the most to me. Those are the ones with a story to tell.

I ended up giving a couple of dollars to the aspiring musician. It makes me feel good to coexist in a city where people are showcasing their dreams so trustingly.