It’s hard to explain but

I recently encountered a younger version of myself.

She was exactly sixteen and she was crying in her childhood bedroom, a bedroom which was recently obliterated to bits by some indifferent man on an indifferent bulldozer, by someone paid to destroy what was in order to make space for what will be. And her tears were hot and stinging.

Math and science and english and art — they are all just ways we explain what we sense. they are all just lenses through which we see the world. they are all just maybe leading us to the exact same place. we go in circles. we live between negative one and one, any calculus teacher will tell you. and we find nuance in between black and white and we probably won’t free ourselves from samsara this lifetime if we’re honest and we forget and we remember and we must always remember to forget but never forget to remember again.

and there is undeniably something infuriating about ending up exactly where you started

it’s like when coach used to make you run those bleachers but the pattern was

two up, one back;

two up, one back.

it takes forever to get to the top and it’s painful and terrible and whenever you do finally make it to the top, you have to come back down and do it all over again because anything that goes up must come down, any science teacher will tell you.

we always end up exactly where we started. and maybe it takes a long time and you don’t even recognize where you are because it has been so long since you were there and so much has changed between then and now but maybe you see a butterfly or you get your favorite parking spot and it’s like someone is trying to tell you

“see?

it’s going to be okay!

trust yourself and where you are!”

If there are not so many true things in this life, it makes sense that as we seek truth, we are essentially reaching into an increasingly light bag.

is your bag of truths getting lighter or heavier as you age? do you feel you know more or less with each day? does your loot increase in a linear fashion? do you empty out the stuff you no longer need?

what i’m trying to say is

one of my circles very obviously starts and ends in my hometown. And returning home is taking my pride for the ride of its life. I am experiencing discomfort on a physical level; I am itchy on my arms and legs and when I spend too much time around people who like to ask me things like

“So, are you here for good?”

(and it’s somehow everyone who thinks this is a fair and intelligent question to ask me)

I feel like I may just drown in a pool of my sweat and shame. What I hear in that “question” is,

“you had the audacity to think you could travel across the world and process all your trauma and maintain connections with your family and friends and make money and find a hobby and maybe meet someone who cares a lot about you and fall in love with rivers and mountains and stay healthy and write a book and find joy? How silly of you to think you could do all that while I stayed here. How embarrassing for you to be back here with me, someone who never had to leave to figure it all out.”

but i think maybe embarrassing is good

as in

I am embarrassed to say that I loved high school.

In Byron Bay, I sat with some friends, friends who I’d be pleasantly surprised to ever see again, and one of the questions in Hollie’s deck of cards read,

“What do you think I was like in high school?”

And when it came my turn to address the speculations, I definitely lied

because no one wants to hear that I had heaps of good friends; a group worth protecting; and I threw parties with my brother in a house with an ocean view and I had a perfect GPA and I got an athletic scholarship to my dream school and so I never was stressed about getting into college and I never had to wonder whether there would be food on the table and my parents paid for my gas and

I mean no disrespect to high school Alex and her struggles — they did exist but

from here, from the other side of it all, I am tempted to say she had it pretty good.

Is this what growing up is meant to be? Will my faulty, human memory ever be able to settle on,

“it was what it was and it’s actually not fair or true to trivialize what was.”

*Nothing ever ends poetically, It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.

and when you’re with strangers, you’re basically supposed to lie about that stuff. people want to hear that the blood was beautiful, not that it was just red

i mean,

boring

when I’m with strangers, I am not accountable to my past. I feel free to create my own reality. Although liberating, this delusion is dangerous if you ever choose to return home and open your ears to the friends who knew you when you were young.

Perhaps there is a piece of me who would rather not see this town change, would rather not allow myself to be old here. There is a piece of me who wants to hold hostage my memories of my hometown and who I got to be the first time I grew up here and so that piece of me feels turned over sideways at the mere thought of being old here.

I feel too old to ride my skateboard to nowhere — too old to not have anywhere I need to be. Like the bird above, just riding the wind. Just enjoying the current.

I feel too old to remember what it was like to be free with ex-boyfriends, people inconsequential to my future, years ago skating down these same roads after school.

I feel too old to walk the neighborhood and remember a highly-anticipated kiss just between that house and that one

was it actually ten years ago? was 13 ten years ago?

And that night drive to the gas station was 7 years ago

lucky number 7

i feel too old to write myself messages on the steamed glass of the shower

i feel too old to be here

i feel too old to not be paying any rent

I feel too old to

It was here in this town that I first decided no one could be the boss of me

now all I want is for someone to tell me where they want to go for dinner, god forbid I have to make any more decisions

I watch lizards chase flies in circles on the sky

flies taunting lizards in circles

I look for birds

I hear them in the hedge that separates me from yesterday

I sit comfortably with my head in a book, less conscious of myself in public spaces,

and I don’t feel like I need to go to the beach or to the restaurant because I know, from experience, that it will still be there tomorrow.

I have proof.

I am proof.

I take more risks, small risks; like entering new stores and chatting with the person under the Pride tent at the farmer’s market

and I just keep telling everyone who will listen that I’m having a hard time and

I think it’s good that I want to be honest and vulnerable, yes AND some things are meant for those who can hold them with care and what’s true about being back where I started is that today I got to sit and speak honest things for hours and hours and hours with a friend who knows me

no,

a friend who is part of me

And even here, I get to wait for water to boil and I get to see bright red cardinals and I get to wake up on Saturday morning and go outside and inhale the humid heaviness of May and the smell of bacon frying in the house next door, a weekly celebration for a young family whose schedules align only on this one morning every seven days

And so yeah, maybe I am here for good.

Give me all the good.

That’s exactly what I’m here for,

thanks

xx

Great Artists Steal

*someone called Kalt Rokowski wrote this and the algorithm spat it at me and isn’t art really something? the way people can create things and we can experience them and say oh, wow, there are others who experience these things, too?