He said, Step on something.

I looked at his feet, at his boots.

He said, Come here. He licked the cigarette paper he was rolling.

I said, Can I step on you?

I looked at his boots and he said, You have to step on someone’s head.

He looked tall. I couldn’t possibly step on his head. Then I thought about how no one I knew would lay down on the floor and let me step on their head and how maybe I wasn’t the type of woman to do that anyway. I looked disappointed.

Sorry, he said.

Does that work? Really?

Yes, he said and put the cigarette in his mouth.

I was tired enough to believe him. I walked out the door and over to a place to get a pint. I sat down at the bar, made some calls, read some pages of “The Adderall Diaries.” I thought about how writing a blog is self-indulgent and memoir can be too, if you write it that way.

Someone asked if I wrote. He knew the answered but asked anyway. I said, I write and left it at that. I’m drinking my coffee and writing in this blog and thought I had something to say but guess I don’t.

I have a comedy show to go to at the Center of the Arts in Eagle Rock. I’m going to laugh but mainly I’m going because my friends are going. I thought writing could be foundational but it’s not. So many things come before it. So many people I love. It took me a while to understand …

I want to continue revising the essay today but I have a hair appointment, chapbook covers to print for work, a potluck I’m hosting at the writing center. It’s not much but it’s enough to interrupt.

Maybe I’ll write late at night. I have a dentist appointment early in the morning and a long day at work. I think it’s OK, I’ll have time to write at some point. I wonder if that’s true.

It took me a while to wake up and the cat where I’m housing sitting, jumped on the bed, curled up next to me and purred. I lay there, drifting in and out of sleep.

* * *

I keep  thinking of a part in “Play It As It Lays.”

“‘If you want to live that way, O.K. There’s not going to be any money and there’s not going to be any eating breakfast together and there’s not going to be any getting married and there’s not going to be any baby makes three. And if you make money, I’ll spend it.’

She said she wanted to live that way.”

I’m wondering about the way I want to live.

* * *

There’s bright red heart shaped balloons outside a bakery. There’s heart shaped sugar cookies with pink icing in a glass jar. There’s chocolate covered strawberries on display. If there weren’t, I wouldn’t realize it was Valentine’s Day. I wonder without much interest if I care and realize I don’t.

* * *

The last Valentine’s Day I cared about was a long time ago.

That year, a few days before Valentine’s Day my boyfriend bought a heart shaped cookie from a cafe in El Cerrito. We sat across from each other and he broke a piece off the heart shaped cookie and looked at me and said, You broke my heart.

He was quoting Elliott Smith at the Henry Fonda show. I knew the line and I smiled and tried not to look at him. He was skinny and gray. He was already gone, unrecognizable, someone else.

I was breaking his heart, he had broken mine.  Later when I thought of us, I thought of the song Elliott Smith’s “Half Right.” I thought of the line “Would you say that the one of your dreams, got in you and ripped out the seams. That’s what I’d say. That’s what I’d say.”

The last Valentine’s Day I cared about was the day I broke up with him. We had breakfast together in Oakland. He had researched breakfast places and found a cute brunch place. We sat near the window where there were yellow curtains. I tried to tell myself that the sunlight streaming through the yellow curtains were making the whites of his eyes seem yellow.

After breakfast I took the 101 South and drove down to Zuma Beach. When I got there I sat on the beach and wrote him a long letter on pink legal sized paper. When I walked back to my car I had a voice mail from him. His brother had taken him to the Emergency Room that afternoon. He had jaundice. The drugs had affected his liver.

When I returned from Los Angeles I handed him the letter. We sat on the old white couch in the living room and he read it.  He said that he thought he deserved a second chance. But I said no.

We sat there, side by side, holding hands. I put my head on his shoulder. We were both crying. I asked him  if I was a bad person and he quoted Kill Bill and said I was his favorite person.

* * *

I moved to an apartment in Oakland, near Lake Merritt. One afternoon I found myself driving to the house where we had lived. As I drove to the house where we had lived (the house near the train tracks and the empty lot, the house that was always cold), I told myself if it didn’t work out with him, it wouldn’t work out with anyone. I remember thinking that, I remember believing it. I told myself I would never love anyone again. I felt my heart slam shut.

I arrived to the house. I still had the key. I unlocked the front door and walked into our bedroom, which was empty. I looked at where our bed used to be, our dresser, our desk. I looked out the window at the garden. A woman who lived in the back studio kept a beautiful garden with bright flowers. I looked at her garden through the the bedroom window. I had never looked at her garden when we had lived together. We could’ve looked at her garden, we could’ve seen something nice. It could’ve been pretty. I turned around and walked out.

* * *

I go to Cranial Sacral sessions at a yoga studio in Silver Lake. Cranial Sacral Therapy is a form of a energy work that I discovered from Amy Fusselman’s 8, which was the last book I loved.

I’ve been to several sessions for a year or so. I’m hoping to heal. I think things are blocked, I think I’m holding on. I’ve done therapy. I’ve sat on the couch, I want to work with my body now.

She’s told my heart is shut down, I know she’s right. I think of that time I drove on the freeway to the empty house.

I went to a session on Friday. At some point during the session, she bent my legs and pressed them into my chest. She held them there. She asked if I had a memory related to that position and I said yes.

She asked what feeling I could attach to it.

The words that came to mind were terrifying, were trauma.

I said, Scared.

She said, How old are you in this memory.

I said, Nine and twelve.

She said, Do you think your nine or twelve year old self is still stuck there.

I nodded. I said Yes.

What would you tell her if you could?

I thought of telling her she was safe now. Things would be OK. But I didn’t know if those things were true.

I don’t know, I said.

Do you want me to leave?

No.

She pressed my legs into my chest and I kept remembering being in a room and she was not herself but someone else. I thought the body memory was already gone, I thought I had release the memory a while ago. But she found it, it was there, it was alive.

Actually, she said. I have the feeling that you need to tell me to leave.

She was right. I wanted her to stop holding me in that way, I wanted to tell her to leave me alone.

I said nothing.

* * *

A man who wants to be my friend writes me. He tells me his girlfriend and him are hanging by a thread, actually he doesn’t know if the thread is there. He tells me they’re constantly arguing.  I think he’s lucky but don’t tell him so. Some people don’t follow that kind of logic.  But I read his email, thinking of a part in “Play It As It Lays.”

“…There was an argument outside, and the sound of a bottle breaking. Maria held onto BZ’s hand.

‘Listen to that,’ he said. ‘Try to think about having enough left to break a bottle over it.’

‘It would be very pretty,’ Maria said.”

Why can’t you just let it be what it is? a friend asked me later.

I can, I said because I felt like that was the right answer to give.

But maybe I can’t. Maybe I want what I want. Maybe, at this point, there’s nothing for me to lose because I don’t value what I have.

* * *

Sometimes it’s just nice to keep how you feel about someone to yourself and call it your own. You know?

No, I don’t know.

* * *

I was on my way to Dog Eared Book, looking for someone I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. I wanted to ask him, Can we be friends again. I had not planned to do this but found myself, after yoga, wanting exactly that.

On my way to his work, he passed right in front of me and I called out his name. He turned around and I said, Can we be friends again.

Yes, he said. I would like that very much. He started to apologize, to say that I was right but I wasn’t. Because it wasn’t about who was right.

A couple of hours later, I sat across from him at Cafe Revolution and he was talking and I was listening and then I stopped listening and just looked at him, on mute, gesturing, telling a story, and I felt so happy to be sitting right beside him. I thought of shouting his name and saying, Do you know how great you are! Do you!

* * *

Can we wait for Britney? my friend asked. Just two more songs, we’ll wait just two more songs. We were at Badlands. I always end up at Badlands when I visit San Francisco.

I told him I’d wait all night.

We didn’t wait all night. Britney never came on. But we danced and danced and danced until we wanted another drink.

Later we went to the Lexington and Zeitgest but they were closed and we joked that we were sad  San Francisco shut down so early on a Sunday. We went back to his apartment and I felt guilty for drinking with him because I knew he was trying not to drink.

I keep thinking how you said that one out of ten times is really bad, I said.

This is like number eight.

I didn’t want him to have a bad night ever. Because on bad nights, I feel like he’s out there, in the dark, by himself. When I want him somewhere light, somewhere safe. I put my head in his lap and then fell asleep.

I stayed for two days and drank margaritas and beer and wine and aguardiente and sangria and early Saturday morning, we came back from the bars at 3 a.m. and I didn’t sleep because I had cramps. I got up at six a.m. to go to the airport and cried in the car.

I waited to board the plane and thought about the last man I loved. I was thinking I loved him while in that much pain. I was thinking how I should’ve given it a chance. I should’ve stayed. I should’ve said, Yes let’s be a couple, when he said, Let’s be a couple.

Hours later, still on my way to Los Angeles, my cramps were gone, I felt better and thought I made the right choice, about leaving, about not being a couple.I was forgetting. Which is true. I was forgetting a lot of it. I guess that’s what happens when I’m alone in an airport at six a.m. and want someone to hold me. What is also true is that I was thinking of him because he was the last person I was crazy about and that was years ago.

Sometimes I think of getting a tattoo of the number 8 because of the book and because of Elliott Smith’s cover and because sometimes I think those things mean something to me.

* * *

I lay on the table and I had the feeling this is exactly where I need to be. In the upstairs room of a yoga studio on Hillhurst Avenue with a woman who says, Zoe, can I touch your heart right now? I open my eyes and say yes. I close them and she puts her hand on my heart and who can say what happens except me.

I could tell you, I could tell you. But here I am writing on a blog, already leaving a lot of what matters out. I leave it out and hope to put it in somewhere better. A chapbook, a story, a memoir in little tiny pieces. A memoir about my body-all the different parts and memories stored in them and how I experience time.

She tells me parts of my body are shut down and I ask her which parts and they all make sense to me except when she says my heart. My heart is shut down. She says it’s like I have armory around my heart. That doesn’t make sense to me.

At night, on the way to a party downtown, I tell my friend and she says that is exactly how she would describe my heart and she is thinking of my romantic relationships.

You think you have a big heart just because you’re nice and like most people, even if X, Y, and Z and you’re understanding, you listen. People say, You’re a little crazy but you’re one of the nicest people they know. Never mind that all the while you maintain your distance, never mind that you don’t let anyone in. You spend time with men and all the time you’re thinking you’re late to leave. You keep lying, you keep wanting to leave, you keep wanting it not to work out. Out of habit.

* * *

On the table, at the end of the session, I felt something start to release and the something was some sort of energy and it was black and it felt like something dead leaving my body. It was strange to close my eyes and feel this death like energy release through my body. It was strange because I have stored that deathlike energy in me without my knowing, for who knows how long. Maybe centuries. Maybe it was passed down from my mother, maybe her mother passed it down to her. This is how the body experiences time.

After the session, she gave me a few moments on the table and I just lay there with my eyes closed and my body started to shake and I cried, a little, which is something I never really do anymore.

An hour or two after the session, I was at work and everything literally seemed brighter. Colors. And I was telling someone at work. She said, Does it feel good? It’s not that it felt good or it felt bad. It felt like a layer of myself was removed and what I felt was vulnerable.

Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you’re lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who’ve been around awhile know it’s just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold onto it, or you lose it, but sometimes it’s never even there in the first place.

I listen to them and want to find a love that reminds of their sound. I’m not sure what I mean by that but I mean something and I’m being sincere. When I find what I want, then maybe I’ll be able to articulate my longing.

This morning, when I got a flat tire, I was listening to “Self!” by Deep Cotton on repeat. If you haven’t heard it, you should! You should definitely hear this song. It’s so fun! I found out about this song because I have The 2010 Believer Music Issue CD, which my friend sent to me. He sent me this Believer issue because I wanted to read an interview with MIA and an article on Nina Simone. He is a good friend of mine and I was able to read the issue over the long weekend.

I was listening to the song “Self!” before I got a flat tire and happened to pull over right next to some wild sunflowers. At the roots of the sunflowers, there were dried weeds and scattered trash, and only five people walked by me in 45 minutes. Most of them were homeless men, slowly pushing their loaded shopping carts. I was near both an exit and entrance of the 2 freeway, surrounded by morning traffic, waiting for AAA to arrive. It would’ve been easy to freak out about being late to work, or maybe not having a spare. I’m surprised I wasn’t more upset about things not going as I had expected.

Maybe it’s not being so hyped on coffee, maybe it has to do with meditation and yoga. Maybe it has to do with listening to a song with an upbeat sound and lyrics that are ridiculous but apply. Maybe it’s all those things and many more that added up to a moment on a weekday morning, where I was standing near tall wild sunflowers that stretched toward the blue sky. I was surrounded by trash and exhaust and traffic and I was thinking, This is not where I thought I’d be, but here I am.

Now here I am thinking about why I needed to keep this baseball I found in a garden. I think it reminds me of  memory, specifically how I think about the days I played little league. It reminds me of my father and sometimes when I think it about it too much and try to explain, like now, I can feel the tears coming. I don’t like to think about certain things. I tell myself that type of thinking and feeling can wait until I’m at my desk, writing the book that I need to write.  That mediocre book that will bring some sort of healing.

I hear myself. I’m outside of work, on the phone, staring across the street at the bar where I was last night. What I tell her sounds like something you say and hope to mean some day. But I surprise myself because I mean it.

In fact, I mean it so much, I find myself disappointed. Suddenly I want to meet someone who in that situation makes me feel something raw, like heartbreak or anger or regret. I want to find someone who makes me hurt.

“Life could become one long dim scramble just to get the things needed to keep alive. And the confusing point is this: All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run….But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.” -Carson McCullers The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

I decided to spend my day quietly.

It’s not often I spend time in the place where I live. Today I noticed borrowed books. My room is filled with books that people gave me to read. I see Blankets, Essex Country, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Here’s the Kicker, Loving in the War Years, Airman’s Odyssey.

I think of myself as a young girl, reading.

This week I finished Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. I laid in bed, sleepy but wanting to finish. Toward the end, the character Herkales reminds me of a man I used to know, especially in “Photographs: The Old Days.” He says, “Well Geryon just another Saturday morning me laughing and you crying.”  I want to study this book. I want to understand it. I move to the next book.

My creative process seems dry. I pick up books. When I can’t write, I read.

I start Carson McCullers The Ballad of the Sad Cafe.

Here are some lines I don’t want to forget.

“There, for a few hours at least, the deep bitter knowing that you are not worth much in this world could be laid low.”

“Where Miss Amelia stood, the light from the chinks of the stove cast a glow, so that her brown, long face was somewhat brightened. She seemed to be looking inward. There was in her expression pain, perplexity, and uncertain joy. Her lips were not so firmly set as usual , and she swallowed often. Her skin had paled and her large empty hands were sweating. Her look that night, then, was the lonesome look of the lover.”

“That was one of the ways in which she showed her love for him. He had her confidence in the most delicate and vital matters.”

I am grateful for my borrowed books, for the people I’ve met here. Who are generous, who are readers. I think of us, a small group, transformed by words, by stories.

2. Last night, at a bar, a man asked if I was a nerd. Why are you asking if I’m a nerd? I asked. Then he commented on my facial expression. Then he imitated my facial expression. I was agreeable and said I had no idea I ever did something like that but didn’t see how it related to my being nerdy. He told me nerds are often unaware of their facial expressions and in this town, that’s refreshing.

3. I’m rethinking being agreeable.

4. It’s not necessarily rare that men tell me it’s refreshing that I’m not _____. It seems to me to be an ineffective pick up line. Essentially they’re asking me what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?

5. Maybe I want someone to say, Zoe, you can stop pretending you live in Montana now.

6. My writing teaching said my recent short story was faux naivete. I’m not sure what she meant by it. But what I think she meant is that the language in the story was simple and through constant repetition, the narrator seemed naive but her naivete didn’t come off as sincere.

6. I was dating some in the spring for a very brief period. He kept saying he liked that I was so nice, that I was so positive.

7.  A friend invited me to stay with him in Oregon. He had great reasons. I could check out his grad school, meet professors,practice yoga, do some writing. His first reason was: You would get to experience Ashland, a town in which I can see you easily fitting.

8. I’m not sure if I fit in Los Angeles and I’m not sure if I don’t fit in Los Angeles. I used to think the city was the problem. I used to fantasize that somewhere else my life would be better. Somewhere else, I’d be happy.

9.  Now I just kind of navigate my way through the city and meet people I like and do my best to develop relationships with these people. I often see my failures with writing, and my own personal failures, in relationships and otherwise. I focus on my limitations, I focus on what I can do. For the most part, I don’t concern myself with the question of fitting in or belonging anymore.

10. It is interesting to hear what certain people think of me, even if it’s insincere. It’s interesting because I rarely will tell people what I think of them. Maybe because what I might say isn’t positive and isn’t exactly nice.

11. Sometimes I say, I like your beard. Those are neat shorts. Or I make weird facial expressions. I laugh. I do my best to be agreeable.

11. Sometimes I worry that my writing teacher was onto something when she described my short story as faux naivete. Since then I’ve applied what she said about the narrator in the story to myself. Sometimes I wonder, if someone is actually paying attention, I may seem a certain way because of my actions but something may seem off, something isn’t sincere, something doesn’t ring true.

12. I suppose that’s OK. I tell my best friend everything and it’s not nice or positive and it’s sincere and confused and all over the place. Sometimes he tells me, Fake it til you make it. And I think, OK. Why not? At least, for now.

i listened to pema chodron on tape

did 15 minutes of yoga

meditated for 5 minutes

and I feel really good. Maybe I should implement a morning routine of a little meditation and morning yoga.

money and how it gets that way

I’m having trouble sitting down to write stories and edit stories. I’m having trouble in general. This weekend, I realized why.

big bad monster,

hello,

you’ve come back again

I’m always trying to be upbeat and when I can’t be upbeat, I become silent and listen to the people around me. Sometimes, I call my friend in the bathroom. I whisper to him about disassociation, depression, other things, too. I call my friend after work, I call my friend in the car, I call him. Sometimes he just says,

fake it til you make it

And I get nervous. Like I forgot how to be fake a long, long time ago.. I don’t hesitate to show that I’m self-doubting and inarticulate. Which may be part of the problem. It’s a passing phase. It’s just phase that’s been here for a while. Someone else tells me, in a P.S. to an email, nothing is wrong with me and I’m good and that

you don’t need to be fixed

and I think, huh. That’s a new way of looking at it. My friend, she has affirmations on her bedroom and bathroom wall, she has buddhist books on her table, she has a list of yoga studios to go to. She says, People ask me what I’m doing and I want to say, Therapy is what I’m doing. She knows how it feels to sit in her room with nervous energy rising instead of doing something else. In our separate rooms, she picks at her legs and I pick at the pores of my face and the nervous energy, it rises. So tonight, we decide to go to a yoga class together and if I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.

These characters act like this because they want to be known; even if they are unaware of it, they want to reveal their baseness; they want to confess. They want to reveal the dark shamefulness of their souls, and so, without knowing quite why, they act ‘scandously’ and appallingly in front of others, so that people ‘better’ than they can judge them for the wretches they are. -James Wood “How Fiction Works”

Note:

When I write about myself, I am a character and this quote reminds me of myself as a character. Because I  am often talking about my shame and the need to reveal–but maybe not confess. Maybe when I write badly, when I fail, I’m confessing. But what I want really is to bear witness, to shed light, to transform that feeling of shame into acceptance, into a bigger story that shows you about where I am from–in an effort to contextualize the shame and to change.

It’s not that all my stories are true. It’s that all my stories are based on things that I experienced. For the most part I write stories because there are certain things I don’t talk about. I don’t talk about them because, for the most part, people don’t want to hear what I might have to say. Or maybe it has less to do with other people and more to do with my shame.

When I write, I shed light on what I hide from most people, from friends, and from myself. Oh man, sometimes I’m writing and then suddenly I’ll start crying and sometimes bawling. Anyway– Recently I’ve left out details/settings, precisely because I don’t want people to really know what I’m talking about…which is totally beside the point of writing a story. So I guess I’m not publishing short stories on my blog. I’m just going to write them and submit them to my workshop and then one day, share them when I’m ready for people to know exactly what I’m talking about.

I don’t really know what this blog is about anymore. I really have no idea why people read it. Should I admit that?

Discipline & Commitment

About that. I’ve carved out time in my schedule for writing and work exchange and yoga. But sometimes, I do not follow through at all. I don’t know what’s up. I was talking to my writing teacher about how I’ve failed and almost started crying, which surprised me. She saw me almost crying and I felt exposed.  I tried not to feel embarrassed and did the best I could to stop talking and not cry.

Later I talked to her again and told her that I think my big problem is discipline.

She said, I know you don’t like it but if you start doing core exercises, I think it’ll really help.

Then I groaned and rubbed my stomach.

My writing teacher is also a yoga teacher, which is perfect. Because when I talk about how I can grow as a student and writer, she refers to my chakras and I know exactly what she’s talking about. Core exercises in yoga refers to exercises that help strengthen your third Chakra.

I’m not going to explain Chakras to you or expect you to believe in them or what not. What I will say is that the idea is that each Chakra governs emotional, mental, and physical aspects. The third Chakra has a lot to do with personal power, self-esteem, and commitment.  Physically, the third Chakra has a lot to do with digestion. I have problems with all of those personal and physical aspects.

Yoga has specific postures that strengthen each Chakra. Postures that strengthen the third Chakra are similar to crunches. I struggle with all of them and pretty much hate them because they’re so hard and not pleasant at all. When I practice yoga at home (which is seldom), I never include core exercises in my routine. I try to avoid them as much as possible, which probably means I need to work on them.

Okaaay, fine, I said. Also, I’ll be at your yoga class tomorrow.

The next morning, I didn’t wake early enough for her yoga class. Like I said, I need to work on commitment and discipline. Which means, I need to do what I say I’m going to do.

I never thought I had a problem with this…but apparently, I do. Oh, self awareness.

-Remember the new moon is on August 10th

-Practice yoga 3 days a week at donation based classes

-Practice yoga one day a week at home

-Drink one small cup of coffee a day

July

Dude, July I just seemed to rest. I slept in and ate well and read more. I also wrote more. It was nice. It felt less hectic than June, for sure. I also finished one of my evening counseling classes! Woohoo! It was twelve weeks and now I’m done. Which means I have 7 more hours each week to do something else (like more yoga or writing or reading or resting.)

* * *
I was on a walk with a man who I liked. Look, I said, that’s my favorite tree. I love this tree. It’s called a Japanese Maple. If you stand underneath it, the leaves look bright red.

We both stood underneath a tree I loved and looked at the sunlight hitting the purple leaves, changing them to a bright red. The stem in the leaves looked like veins. I knew if I turned my face to look at him, he would kiss me and it would be our first kiss. So I looked down and walked away from him. I thought, When he’s gone, I don’t want what I love to remind me of him.

* * *

A man held me close as we sat on a bench. He told me about a woman he once loved. He said, You remind me of her. I didn’t believe him. I said nothing and he told me about his ideal romantic situation.

That wouldn’t work out, I said. It wouldn’t last.

So what, he said. Nothing has.

* * *

There was the recently washed shot glasses on the kitchen counter, the only thing that had been washed. There was the empty fridge. The empty cabinets. There was the filthy bathroom, the sink stained brown. There were clumps of scum and hair and dirt all along the bathroom tile. There was the I’m always sick and never exercise but work so hard lines. Each week is different and so is each month but there I was, in an apartment, with a man, and it felt familiar.

* * *

A man was leaving the party and I looked at him, You’re leaving? We didn’t get to talk. He told me we could talk outside and I walked away from them to talk to him.

We sat outside and he told me about his nervous breakdown, about crying everyday, about how the doctors put him on antidepressants. He was going to figure things out, he had to figure out the money thing, he needed to hustle. He might move to New York where people his age, they knew how to hustle.

Before he left, he hugged me tightly. I watched him walk down the long driveway. I wanted to run after him and ask, Where’s your car? I wanted to make out with him in his car before he left. It’d be fun and sexy and anyway, familiar. He’d say things he didn’t mean and I’d look at him and say nothing. A day later, he’d be in another city and I’d be here. I knew what would happen so I turned around and walked back into the house.

* * *

I love you, he said.

I love you, too, I said.

I meant as a friend, of course. I meant I love you as a friend. And he meant it that way too.

Never mind all the years I’ve known him, all the times I love you might have meant something different, something more. Never mind if only I didn’t meet him the way I met him, if only it wasn’t complicated.

Never mind. Because I love that he is a good friend to me. I love that I’m a good friend to him.We give each other what we can and what we give is enough. Today that’s what I’m telling myself and maybe one day what I tell myself will be true.