August 5th, 2024 - Attila
Dear TNY,
Another Monday and I’m in Colorado again, having just finished “Attilla”.
I don’t care for it. The scene at the beginning needs compression. And after that the story spiraled into a huge section of backstory that was so long that I forgot where the story was going by the time I got back to it, which meant I was bored. And the rest was more boredom. And the ending was absolutely predictable.
Whatever.
Another summer is in the books. I’m in a hotel room and fly out of here on Wednesday. Back to languishing until next summer. The car was built and made the drive with no issues. The boys are happy they are home. I dropped them off at 1430 yesterday and cried in the hotel room for hours. My ex wife thanked me profusely for providing them with another adventure. She said, “That’s what you do, adventuring.” She said this to me as words on a phone while I was alone in a town I hate coming to and have done so alone for more than a decade. Always alone, in service to others. The keeper of the interstitial space between people. Master of the liminal. The Watcher, as a friend is so fond of calling me.
This is me feeling sorry for myself again. Sorry about that.
Anyway, I wrote the following yesterday because it felt important. I don’t care if you, TNY, think it’s important. You are unimportant. I vetted it through a friend to be sure I wasn’t crazy (same friend that calls me a watcher). She confirmed that I am, in fact, crazy. But that if there were more of me (and she assured me the world would be a more beautiful place if there were more of me) it wouldn’t seem so crazy. More sane, in fact.
I’m exhausted. People are worried about me and that makes me sad. I don’t want to be someone people worry about.
Anyway, I’ll stop wasting your time. Here we go.
J,
I’ll never be able to. I’ll never be able to, with this. You know? I’ll never be able to reconcile you. You’re too much. You’re too beautiful. You’re all the questions I never thought to ask and you’re all the answers to them.
I miss you. I miss you in such a specific way, though. It would be cliché to say, “like the air that I breathe,” so I won’t. It’s more like…one of the things I miss most about freediving is that after one wills the panic away, after one pushes down the fear, after one learns to equalize and snort air into one’s goggles and there’s no pain anymore, there’s no reason to swim back to the top right away, there is this…presence. It’s like the opposite of breathing on land. Like, instead of a reflex or a something one wouldn’t notice, every intent to not breathe is noticed. It’s the infinite becoming finite, as it were. Measured. Slowed. Almost stopped. And when I would settle in, 40 or so feet down, I’d relax. I’d listen. And I’d breathe. I’d breathe in that moment, that calm. I miss you that way. I miss you the way that I miss going Home.
As you can imagine, that’s really, really, really fucking painful. And it causes all sorts of mechanisms to initiate that create words or actions that I don’t fully understand or intend. I’m sorry for that. So sorry.
Months ago, after Youtopia, we went home and tried to emulate the scenario that occurred in the treehouse of Chuck and it didn’t happen the same way. In fact, it kind of fizzled. And I was mildly miffed by that for reasons that we don’t need to get into because, at the time, I didn’t see the thing behind the thing. I wasn’t too upset though, because something magical happened in your living room when we quit trying to do the other thing and we just existed. I laid on top of you on that super uncomfortable couch and I told you that I saw what I was here to do, at least to the best of my knowledge. I said, “What if I’m here to be with you, to have a daughter with you, to change the way that you imprinted what a father and a partner is, so that you could become whole again, and erase the trauma of your childhood? What if I’m here for you? What if this is all about you?”
I think this is true. Still. After everything. And I’m beginning to understand why this is so difficult. This being us.
Andrea used to tell Ben all the time that he was abused. That he had some horrible trauma happen to him to make him the way he was. And he denied it up and down. Said nothing terrible happened to him. That she didn’t understand that because she had a childhood where she was coddled and loved and never went through anything difficult (until she got cancer). And that’s because he believed his childhood was normal. I believe my childhood was normal. I related to Ben on so many levels, and this was one of them.
We did NOT have normal childhoods. We were abused mentally and physically as children. I cannot remember hugging my mother or father. I cannot remember, as a child, my parents saying they were proud of me. I cannot remember trusting my parents because I knew they loved me, I remember trusting them because I was afraid of them. I don’t have a relationship with my mother now because I finally stood up for myself. I pushed back against “honor thy mother and father.” And that’s just my parents. I also watched the person I loved the most in the world die. At a very young age. That has altered how I see time (again, the infinite becoming finite). So, while I can’t totally remember or understand what happened, I can look at my adult life and say that yes, I have developed a series of defense mechanisms that 100% ensure that the person I’m with goes the fuck away if they are hurting me. And, worse, I also have an almost life-or-death need to be with the person I love. So when people hurt me, I eat it. I eat it because I want them to stay. And I eat enough of it that I get overwhelmed and melt and all the resentment comes out. We have covered this. With you, I actively tried not to. Why? Because…Jesus Christ, bud, you are it. You are IT. I knew from the moment I met you that you were the One. I still know that and I always will know that. Like, I can feel you. The way you move your hands. The way you float through a room. The way you laugh. The way you kick your little feet when you leave a room, like a little pony prance. The way you zhuzh your hair and suck your cheeks in on a video call. The way you sit on me instead of the couch. The way you want to climb all over me is the result of me desperately calling for you to do so, but in my mind so you can’t hear it. The way your feet are perpetually dirty and the cracks on those heels. The way you incessantly finger my beard. The way you are so happy, like a little kid, when there is anything exciting going on. The way you abruptly end a video chat or conversation when you have to shit. The way you correct me from “less” to “fewer”. The way you dug that goddamn hole for Boo Bear when no one else would or could. The way you turn the kitchen into a fucking nightmare when you cook just to church up a Vietnamese sandwich to perfection. The way you, and I know this will sound incredulous, created a fuckton of problems at your house so they’d be there when I walked into your life. The way that you found me in every place I put myself in The Moosehead and made me want to put my arm around you (and I didn’t even know you, but I fucking knew you). The way that you laid down with me on the concrete at Hammy’s house when my knee was busted and I couldn’t sit in the chair without being in pain and you turned to look at me and I was so fucking in love with you. The way that you cut your split ends while I drive. The way that you sit so hard on the toilet seat that it moves backward over time. The way that you smell when you sweat, which is almost sweet with a wisp of the normal onion smell. They way that you gave me hope. Hope. When there was no hope.
I could go on. I can always go on.
I think, hell, I’ve heard from you and have evidence in messages to prove it, that you also had a rough childhood. I imagine, like me, that you have built a host of mechanisms to protect yourself. Ways that push other people away or close yourself off to keep your most vulnerable self whole (just like me). I say imagine, but I’m not imagining them. I have seen them. And those mechanisms push me away too, when I hurt you. And when I get pushed, you get pushed, I get pushed, you get pushed, I get pushed, you get pushed. And I know you know this: We wind up at other ends of the room and we both want to come back and we don’t know how to get past it. And then, and I don’t know how this happens but it does, we make it back. And you have said these exact words: Oh you’re back! I’m so glad you are back! I missed you!
You say we are incompatible. I do not. In fact, I think we are the most compatible people we could possibly meet…for each other. We have more to learn from each other than any other person. And it’s because of what happened to us. It’s because of our connection. It’s because we offer challenges to each other that others do not. It’s because we have always been together.
Remember, 9,327 years ago when you were a tree and I was a rock and we bullshitted all day about the goddamn pronghorn shitting all over our little spot? Until those dudes came along and made an axe out of me and cut you down? Remember 200 years ago when we were two women who ran away from our plantation together? Remember when we were amoebas? Remember when we were tailors on the Siene pimping buckles on shoes before it was cool? Remember that time we were caribou and we never saw a human the whole time? Remember when we were snowflakes? When we were a little girl’s shoes? Remember when we were autumn leaves, floating away from each other? Remember when we were water? Air? In the womb as amniotic fluid while a baby grew in us?
That’s what I’m talking about. We have known each other for all time. This time, though, we have these mechanisms to keep us safe. Both of us. But those things are keeping us from each other. I imagine it like holding my hands in front of my face, all fingers splayed. If I push those fingers together, the tips meet and the hands can’t join. If we shifted, and shifted the right way with respect to each other, we wouldn’t have to do this shit alone anymore. We’d blend. I’d get to do it with you. You’d get to do it with me. And I could fulfill those mushroom revelations about your father. And you would not leave. And we could be whole.
I see you. Yeah, I see all of it. It’s intense. I’m sorry. I don’t know another way to see. What I’m telling you is that all those things that you learned to do that push me away and keep me from the vulnerable parts that you keep hidden, which I have definitely seen (and thank you for letting me see them), I have boxes and boxes of bandaids for every one of those cuts. I love that little girl you were that your parents shit on. I will, always. I am up to the task. I can do this work. This is the work I was born for. That person needs protecting and I can nurture that person. I believe you can do this for me too. I believe.
But I’m not perfect. I’m also defending myself. I know I’m hurting you and causing your mechanisms to happen. We have to put our weapons down. We have to open our chests. We have to risk it all. Which is fucking difficult. We have to take a hit. We have to do what feels like regressing. But it isn’t. We got hard along the way. We protected too much. I don’t think it’s serving us anymore. I think it kept us from staying with other people so we’d be here when we found each other. We did that. Now we can begin what we are supposed to do.
Honey, I think we are here to go Home. And I think the way Home is through this. Not around it. Not avoiding it. Not to rationalize it. There is no rationalizing it. This kind of love can’t be rationalized. It has to be felt. Allowed to wash over. We have to take each other hands and fucking do it, baby. Like really fucking do it. Be vulnerable and build the kind of relationship that cannot be broken. Cannot be shaken. Our story is a narrative that ends in transcendence. Through each other. Because of each other. Held up by each other.
Bud, I love you. I’m stripping my fucking clothes off, my skin, my vasculature, my marrow and bones, my ego, my life choices, my goals and aspirations, my past and future, my everything. It’s not about anything anymore other than us. I’m putting it all down at your feet.
This…this is the Love we were supposed to find. It won’t be easy. You are fucking powerhouse. I’m a fucking powerhouse. But if we can align those convolutions in our hands, we are everything. We are all the crackling energy that we are supposed to be. I feel that’s our purpose. To look inward, within each other and with each other. To hold hands. To sing. To dance. To push. To give and to get. To pull each other up. To fucking LOVE.
We are meant for this. It’s a hard fucking path. But we are hard people. We don’t deal in easy. That’s light work. We deal in something much, much deeper.
I have all these things I can do. Can say. Write. Build. Fix. I am a force of nature. And I don’t want to hide behind that anymore. I have nothing to give you. It’s all stripped away. This skinless boneless thing, this fucking nothing. This is, I am, without all the things, I am this warm ball of energy that I made, rather, I don’t know who made me or it, but this fucking ball of energy is made for you. I have nothing but this, for you. An eternity of nothing but this energy, all of this, for you.
Nick
