You’re back in a city that you know and love and that is imprinted on you, finitely and indelibly, and though it feels familiar in presentation and form, it is fundamentally changed. You knew this would be the case. You spent months telling yourself, “Even if it’s not my heart’s calling, where else wants me?” So you sucked it up, you made your plans, you sold your things, and now you’re here. But are you really?
The streets smell the same and sound the same but there is also a quiet that has settled on the city. Maybe it’s a real quiet or maybe the friction of youth that once carried you through late-night train rides and into damp bars has gone after some other girl. Maybe now you are the woman in the neighborhood bodega with lines on her face buying organic soap that you once looked at with something like yearning and pity, knowing she was inevitable, romanticizing the peace in her eyes and fearing it too. Aware of the quiet life coming for you, the one where you’ll have nothing to listen to but the voice in your head filled with regret, the possibility that we squander because how could we know any better?
One night, a few weeks after coming back, you sit on your couch and find the girlfriend of an ex on Instagram. You see their pictures together and you realize she looks just like you, especially the you of seven years ago who dated him, and you wonder if it’s a coincidence or if he was looking for you in other people’s faces after you left. And then you feel annoying for being so selfish, for projecting importance and romance onto yourself because you’ve watched too many movies where that’s the case. Still, you can’t help but wonder. And the more you look at her and read her photo captions, the more you realize that she isn’t just you but is a more palatable you. A softer you. A you unburdened by the thing that burdens you, the thing you can’t name but that is there on your shoulder always, even now that you’re better, who can’t let you be truly happy, who tells you, “Ruin this”. You look into her eyes and you miss yourself, a version of yourself that never existed, and then you hate her for being what you’re not even though you don’t want what she has. You never did. But you hate that she has it anyway.
You start watching the shows and movies you used to watch when you were last here and start listening to the songs that played in your ears on the bus, songs that remind you of certain streets and places on the beach. It’s odd, recalling all of that while you move like a ghost through the same space. You think maybe you actually did die those few years ago when you wanted to and now you’re here in this copycat world where nothing fits right, where even the people you’re happy to see again can’t quite wake you up, where you are suddenly blisteringly aware that you are old, that time has come for you, that you can no longer slink into clubs and take shots of clear liquor and make yourself important to a stranger just so he’ll want you for a minute. That time is gone and even though you’re happy that it is, you can’t help but miss it. You realize you’ll have to make do with not being wanted in that way again, and even though it’s for the best, even though it never made you feel good anyway, you can’t help but mourn it.
You sit on your balcony at night with your book and your kombucha and see the moon blotted out by a phantom fog, the same fog that has dulled the city in other ways, snuck into its crevices, altered the skyline impressionistically. It’s rot from a souring climate and you think it’s odd that no one else comments on it, that they have learned to live in this Hades, and it makes you sad in a way you can’t name, to be mourning the planet as it dies around you. You realize the rest of your life will be this same slow grief. You also realize you already know it, that in fact it has been there all along. Your mother died slowly and it’s the same muscle memory, a slow-motion melancholy.
You love your apartment but you also wonder: is this it? A series of revolving doors, no grounding, just an anchor you pay to sit on while you sink and the world sinks around you? At what point do you synchronize and sink together? Will you welcome it or fear it? You can’t say but it sounds nice, sinking with something else. You’ve only ever sunk alone.
Stunningly beautiful. Thank you so much.
Your writing is incredible and I’m very grateful for it.