Again, Again, Again
autofiction
Lorelai is beautiful, intelligent, has calf-like short brown hair and she’s getting a tattoo of a dragonfly tomorrow morning in Los Angeles. Instead of tipping, she plans to bring the tattoo artist their favorite coffee order. Because that’s the type of sweet that is fundamental to who Lorelai is. A living, breathing, charming doll.
I’m hated by most people that I knew in high school to the point where whenever I come home from college for breaks in the academic year, I’m reminded that nothing golden in my life has lasted more than a few years. I miss my old best friend sometimes, Mary, who I made so many memories with from 7th grade to junior year. The first time I drank was with her, the first time I smoked weed was with her, the first time I had talked about losing my virginity was with her, along with the other friends in our little troop of slovenly, grimy, beautiful teenaged girls. I miss my current best friend, because we’re in a fight right now. I’m supposed to see her and go with her to her tattoo appointment in the morning, in Santa Monica — Lorelai is my one and only remaining friend from home, and we just had a fight over the phone in which she tried to convince me not to reach out to my ex boyfriend to make peace with him. We’ve been broken up for more than half a year now and I've found someone new quite a while ago. All I want is a friend in him, I told her. She knows that and she understands where I’m coming from but she doesn't think it’s possible because he hates me. And of course, all of my ex and his friends’ complaints about me reaching out will go straight to her. I hate that things are this way. Her current boyfriend is best friends with him still, and by proxy she is friends with everyone I used to be friends with in high school through my ex. Everyone is still connected. The world has kept turning down here in Orange County even though I’ve been gone for more than half a year now; for some reason I didn't expect life to go on as much as it has without me. Tonight, this uncontrollable urge took over me to fix everything back here at home that is crooked. I have a chronic fear of missing out. Somewhere deep down I ache every time I catch wind of old friends going out and doing things together on social media, because I know those people may never want anything to do with me ever again despite how close we were. I’ve been 700 miles away for 7 months and I feel like a tourist in the town I was born in. It’s been infested with awful memories and been doused with sour, curdled milk. I’ve been reborn, and I belong in Arcata now. And due to my deranged nature in the past, a handful of people, including my ex and his circle who Lorelai still is surrounded with through her current boyfriend, have a strong distaste for me, my essence, and everything that I am. To them I am a liar, a freak, batshit crazy. I don’t blame them, for the latter year of my ex and I’s
relationship I was nothing but unhinged. I grew to hate his best friends and tell him so. I used to manipulate situations to get my way. Mostly because of things I’ve said or done in retaliation to things my ex had done to me in the first place. Therefore, if I reach out to him in an attempt to become friends, her belief is that he won’t be open to being friends with me anytime soon. I’ve apologized spitefully before and I think that’s why. I wanted to reach out to him anyway, despite Lorelei’s pleas coming through the speaker phone echoing in my room, because a part of me believed that the him who told me he would never leave me in the dark all that time ago was telling the truth. “I would never just not reply to you, if you reached out to me,” I remember him once saying during a conversation concerning the distant future during our breakup back in August. He didn’t reply when I told him happy birthday a few months back. To be fair, I figured since he had told me happy birthday for mine the month prior when the break up was even more fresh that I owed it to him. But since he never replied, it just left me sad, empty — too kind for my own good. It’s been another few months and I wanted to call him. I thought maybe there was a sliver of human empathy waiting there for me on the other side of that metaphysical door between us ever since I left. A friend, a past lover who was never meant to be the one in a romantic sense but still someone who cared for me and I cared for too at a point in time. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m childish. Maybe fucking in a car every few mornings before school doesn't scream eternal soul tie, or any real platonic compatibility.
But no, I shouldn't downplay it, because our relationship really was unimaginably deeper and more nuanced than that. We learned a lot of lessons about growing up through one another; we dated for more than 2 years. He was one of the closest people to me from when I was 16 right up until I was almost 19. And while I would never, ever date that kid again, I miss him. Part of me hopes he reads this. I’m in love with someone else and so is he; we’ve found much better fits, I think. I’m not even upset that the girl he moved onto was the one he told me not to worry about all that time anymore. I just don’t understand why we can’t give peace a chance. He did things that made me hate him and I’ve since truly forgiven him in my heart and my head, but now the tables are turned and for some reason he can’t forgive me. I texted him and asked him if we could be friends, that the way I acted during our break up was weighing on my soul, and after an hour or so, his response was this: “Very hard pass.”
Understandable. I can deal with that. I don’t need you, I just miss you and your friends, the way you adopted me into your little group for a few years. I just have a hard time dealing with having one friend every time I’m home.
Lorelai is smarter than me when it comes to anything regarding anyone from high school. I hope she doesn't stay upset at me for this. I’m too stubborn. She told me not to reach out, but like a growing fetus my discontentment with where things are at with my ex took my fingers and dialed his number.
Never again.
I’ve lived in the same house my entire life, and despite that I’ve lived countless lives it seems. I met Lorelai in 7th grade, the same year I met Mary, and she’s only been to my house about a dozen times. My tendency that developed in infancy in any social situation has been to let people stick around if they please, and then hold on to the ones that do for dear life. I can’t discern at which point in my childhood that this habit developed, but it’s a tough habit to kick. I’m struggling with it to this day, wondering every now and then if I really do take any actionability in my life or if what’s happening is that I just let myself be a product of my environment, flowing with the natural way of things, being a speck of dust at the will of the movements of a draft in the room, the movement of another dust particle in my vicinity.
Part of being myself is being irrational, scared, insecure, hungry, unsatisfied. I’m afraid that is ultimately what drives most people away from me. I’ve met but one human who I don’t fear being driven away by my flaws, and that human is a man named Roland. I met him this year. He’s shockingly blonde, 6’1”, exactly in the middle between lean and pudgy, pale, and beautiful. Laying in bed with him is like standing next to an elk in the dead of winter in real life. Just in awe of the sheer impact of the sight of him on your being. And I love him. Irrevocably.
Our love is indescribable; after 3 days of estrangement following our first big fight, he won me back with a poem and a 3 hour long teary eyed conversation in my car, seeking refuge from the bullet-like rain, about how awful those 3 days were whilst living in the same building, having to avoid each other and hear faint whispers of what we were up to through each other’s open windows a floor apart. I’m glad we worked things out, because we had the same flight home from school. We sat next to each other on the plane, and he let me read his copy of Money by Martin Amis the whole way. Roland and I have a lot in common. We’re both anxious. He needs a Xanax before coming within 1,000 feet of an airport. We both love Pavement. My favorite song is You Are a Light off of Terror Twilight, a song we both loved before even crossing paths. I had never met someone who that song meant so much to, too. We both make jokes that don’t land among our friends, but do between us. We both love to do crafty things; he likes to sew and write and paint, I like to write and play guitar and sculpt clay. We both love the town we go to school in. We both love going on dates to the Finnish private outdoor hot tub place in town. We love being outside in the sunshine. He loves that I like to make daisy chains when the sun is out. I love that he likes to get cozy and pirate old The Simpsons episodes on his computer when it rains. Our relationship is a dream I’ve always had that is suddenly a beautiful reality with him. In high school, when I used to daydream of something more than what I had and listen to Rock Bottom by Modern Baseball on repeat on the bus, this is the life I had always dreamed of. Snuggling on twin xl dorm room mattresses, hearing his comedy bits that he has written down, murmuring what shade of green our quaint little house will be as we fall asleep, listening to David Sedaris tell stories about his life as we drift to sleep, collecting and throwing away the beer cans strewn around the dorm room on rainy Sunday mornings, doing laundry together, watching nearly vintage cartoons, playing ps2 games with our friends surrounding us on all sides on the used flat screen television he picked up for $30 a few towns away last semester, complaining about homework, doing homework side by side, knitting, reading, living, eating, breathing, laughing, listening, playing. I think he’s one of the most interesting people I will ever meet.
We fell asleep on the telephone and I’m listening to his snoring as he’s dreaming of the clattering of my keys as I write this. I should get some sleep. I have to be at Lorelai’s by 8.
Lorelei’s tattoo is just darling. Venice beach is beautiful in the pouring rain. I imagine that’s what New York is like, as I’ve embarrassingly never been. I will always be a West coast woman. Her tattoo artist played PJ Harvey and The Sundays as she worked. She graciously drank the black coffee Lorelai arrived with, even though it had gotten cold because the artist showed up late. We all had some good conversation over the course of the 2 hour session, we talked about almost going to art college, we talked about writing. If you’re reading this, you’re super cool, Ziggy.
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how everything happens again. Again and again and again, the world keeps turning. Again, someone’s getting her first tattoo. Again, it’s 4:20 p.m. Again, I caught a glimpse of someone on the street who looks like him. Again and again, I can’t find parking in the Cal Poly Humboldt general parking lot, making me late for Native American Studies. I circle over and over and every spot is taken. Again, I’m home, in a fight with my mom, walking for miles and deciding to take the bus to the beach. I got on 3 separate buses and now I’m sitting in a coffee shop wrapping this up, half because I need to charge my phone as I will be over the course of my lifetime, thousands of times over. Maybe one day my friends at college now will be 25 year old me’s high school circle equivalents, though I hope that’s not the case. I love my room mate and our friends and our little group. I can’t wait to keep doing all of these things and loving until I die. I’m so excited. I love Roland Knowlton.
obsessed