Moments of Separation

Dec 5. I'm on the train. You were supposed to be here with me and I'm angry and hurt. I think it's time to let go, to let go. I need to use the bathroom, but the one in my car has a sign that says "Bathroom broken," with an arrow and handwritten text at the bottom, "next bathroom, four cars." I bring my bag, evacuate my seat, and follow the arrow, through car after car, barely holding my balance as I make my way to my destination. When I arrive, the bathroom is occupied, so I wait. I put my hands in my pockets and realize my gloves are missing. I must have left them on my seat and I panic. You gave me those gloves, and I'm sure they're replaceable, you said you bought them on the street, but I am not ready to let them go. When I make it back to my original seat, the gloves are still there, waiting for me, and I am probably more relieved than I should be.

I try to sleep. In bed, I breathe deeply and try to become calm. Why am I this way? My body relaxes, or wants to, but my brain won't stop, won't stop, won't stop.

Dec 6. I'm in Pathmark. I don't even realize I have a ritual of texting you from there, until I am not allowed to. My stomach gurgles, and hurts, and the pain moves, predictably, to my chest, to my heart. The register is broken in the checkout aisle I've chosen, and I wait, and I wait. I keep looking at my phone and it betrays me.

Dec 11. I'm in a stranger's bed, trying to rest, pretending to rest. The man next to me is sleeping, and the man sleeping next to me is not you, but he has his arm around me as he snores, and he holds me tight like he knows me, but he never will. I squeeze his hand like I've known him for more than six hours, and stare at the window. There's nothing to see but I stare anyway. I wonder how I got here, and I wonder if you'd be upset if you knew I was here, but I think on some level this is what you want. I won't get what I want, but for a moment, the stranger gives me what I need.

Dec 17. It's been over a week with no communication and two weeks since I've seen you. I've taken vague solace in that my roommate has been going through a similar withdrawal, but he just got a call from his other, and as we wait for the subway to Manhattan, he beams, so pleased that the silence is broken, and I want to be happy for him but I'm a little jealous, and I see my own situation thrown into sharper relief, and I want to cry. Now I'm really going through this alone. Maybe you'd remind me that we're all alone.

Dec 18. I rush for the train, heading upstate again, and I remember, the last time I rushed for this train, I was coming from meeting you for dinner, the last time I saw you. And I remember making this same trip, this same weekend last year, and that you were with me, and that we were together, and I was oblivious of the storm, the fierce winds that would tear us apart over and over. We watched the snow accumulating from the train and maybe you'd known what was coming but I didn't. There's no snow now, no storm, only an eerie calm.

It's the silence that gets to me. I understand that we can't continue the way we have. I grasped that part quickly, but the silence bothers me. It bellows around me, echoing and intensifying.

On the train I see a woman taking photos through the windows, and of course I think of you. Later, when I get up to line up for the exit, I find a lens cap on the floor, and I look for the photographer, but she's gone. I put it in my pocket. She's gone.

Day Two.

When we last talked, it was snowing, and the realization comes to me like that, that first snow, swirling around me and settling, then swirling some more and settling again. I will not be seeing you again soon, or even talking to you, and when I do, it will be different. The time we had together, fraught as it was with difficulty, is gone, like the snow that vanishes as quickly as it came.

This feels like punishment. I know it isn't meant to be, I know that, but I also know what I feel. On some level I feel like I'm being punished for being the person that I actually am and not the person you wanted me to be. I've been rejected for this same reason many times before, and it's almost a compliment to see that I always lose out based on one aspect of who I am, not for any of the other things I think might be wrong with me, but as far as compliments go, well, it's not the best one I've ever gotten. I know you're doing this because you need to, or think you need to. That's what I know, not what I feel.

It's probably harder for you, I think, to have to go through this as the party who initiated the separation. I imagine you are tempted to call me up and just go back to the way things were, but you stop yourself because you think this is the best way. The reality is, I have no idea what's going through your head. There's a lot about you that I never saw, or never understood. My ego wants you to be suffering, missing me, but every other part of me supports you in this decision, every other part of me just hopes you're happy.

I address this to you but perversely, hope that you'll never read it.

I'm at that most difficult moment, at the beginning of a separation, when it seems impossible. How will I make it through another day without any contact from you? But I will. Of course I will. At this moment, however, as I sit and look out the window, I wish it was snowing again, wish the snow would come and cover everything, erasing the world. I would go out into it and let it fall over me again, inverting me, erasing me too. But there is no snow, and there is no you, there is only me. The rest will pass, but I remain.

Dogs and Rabbit

Talking with my roommate tonight about near-death experiences, or experiences where we've confronted the possibility of death anyway, I remember a surreal moment from my childhood.

I was in second grade, seven years old, in the early months of my time at a new school. I can't remember why I was arriving late that day, or why the person who was with me was there, but everything else is clear.

My school -- and this is something probably not a lot of people can say -- was next to a graveyard. We couldn't see the graveyard, really, as a large hedge enclosed it, but we knew it was there. The school was part of a larger campus that included a college, a defunct high school, and a convent, and the graveyard was for the nuns.

It was fall, I think, early fall, and I was arriving late with a kid named Todd who I barely knew. Todd didn't ride the same bus as I did, so I really can't think why we'd be two stragglers making our way towards the special door on the side of the building reserved for the first and second-graders, but we were. As we walked, our path was suddenly blocked by three wild dogs, who growled and took attack stances. I knew not to run, somehow, and somehow, my instinct was to slowly raise my duffel bag to my protect my throat. I may have suggested to Todd that he do the same.

The stand off probably only lasted a second, or two. My mind must have raced, though I can't remember anything else that I might have thought, though I'm certain that it never actually occurred to me that I could die. I don't think death was in my vocabulary, but fear certainly was, as we waited for the dogs to make their move or let us pass.

Suddenly, out from under the hedge, appeared a brown rabbit, small. It doesn't even look real, I remember thinking, as if it was not a rabbit at all, but a mechnical toy being controlled remotely. It made a few perfect hops and then disappeared again under the hedge. The dogs, distracted by its movement, turned and ran after it, forgetting all about Todd and me.

We made our way inside quickly and never spoke of it again.

It seems so unreal but I know it wasn't a dream, as much as I can know anything.

New / Old

I was writing a blog, on and off, for a few years, when just a few weeks ago I decided to repurpose it as a photo blog. A good idea, of sorts, and I've been posting much more frequently, but I quickly realized that I was missing having a place to post my other outlets: fiction, poetry, political ramblings, and over-shared snapshots from my tortured brain. So I decided to move all the old posts from my original blog to a new one, and it took me about two seconds to settle on a new name. "Notes from Underwater" was the name of my personal website from 1995 - 2001, the first website I ever created, so while in some ways I've become a totally different person than the twenty-three year old who first came up with the name, I'm still that same guy and I still have some of the same struggles. So here I am again.