It smells wrong, all the eucalyptus and sycamore, the desert aromatics hidden out of sight by all the planted shit. The trees are sparser than I like, the sun too bright even underneath them. And of course if I look closer, the shapes are all wrong, I have to read the little placards to figure out their names.
And of course there are placards, and the trails are two people wide and pavement, not narrow lines of earth well-worn by deer or coyotes. Garden hoses entwined with the roots, because nothing like this really grows here.
But I take a deep breath all the same, I tune out the sound of the sprinklers and the people out for a casual stroll. It’s still there, underneath the layers of life support and all the differences from home.
That feeling of calm, of better, of more. That sense that whatever I need is really out there, that there’s an answer, that even if it’s not here it’s a nice place to be, searching.
I could spend hours wandering the woods back home. There was always a trail, somewhere, tucked away from ordinary life. Something sacred for whoever could find it.
At university, there was a path behind some of the buildings on the edge of a ravine. A river flowed through, burbling, and the side of the building and path was covered with ivy. There was a bridge over it, where you could stop and stare and just let the water go by.
There were lots of places in my old home town. My forest was deep. And there were parks a little further afield, hidden waterfalls and rock pools, mountain ridges and crevices and caves.
Here, everything’s different, and it’s hard. But it’s the same.
…
It’s hard, you know, because there are all these things that are you, all these things that are inside of you and make you up, that are deep and important but, at least, safe.
But then there are all these other pieces of you which don’t belong to you, which aren’t yours to keep, but scattered out there in the world.
Places, people, music. Things with deep connections, things that go right through you because they’re already part of you, somehow.
And then you can lose them, you can go far away and not know how to find them again, these pieces of yourself, these things that are really also you.
I miss who I was in my little forest groves, the person I kept going back to remember.
…
It’s the worst thing about being alone, I think. Not loneliness, not boredom, not struggling to come to terms with yourself. Those things hurt, but they fade. You learn, you adjust. You figure out how to like yourself and what you want to do.
But there’s all these pieces of you that aren’t you alone. All these things that other people, strangers you might never meet, are holding, unknown. Buried in places you might never think to visit. Drifting through a few notes of music you might never come across arranged in just the right way.
Heartbreak, Epiphany, Solace, Doubt. Questions you’d never think to ask yourself, answers you wouldn’t consider.
And, most importantly, anger. That feeling that something is wrong, that it must be changed. That something must be done. The best reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Ask your alarm clock, it knows.
…
Once upon a time where the months I called the worst in my life. Once upon a time I was Lazarus, risen from the dead, and the only thing that pumped in my veins was bile and rage.
I was the worst version of myself, and I miss him most of all.
I wanted everything, I needed anything, I was drowning but I didn’t need to breathe. I struggled because I knew I could stop and sink to the bottom, because I didn’t care if I did.
Because I’d rather thrash blindly in rage than accept it, accept anything, be quiet and go to my room and do as I was told.
My life was a bloody crusade, my smile carried teeth and didn’t reach my eyes.
Except I never found what I was looking for. Except months stretched into years and searching turned into waiting, because even anger can be patient.
They say times heals all wounds, but they’re liars. Time is just time to pretend, time to act like someone else, time to make believe that you’re not the smoking ruin of something that used to be a functional human being.
It’s easy to pretend, lots of people are doing it. If you catch them alone out of the corner of your eye, sometimes you can see the mask crack and the blood seep past the bandages. And those rare glimpses are the only time I ever feel anything like kinship with my fellow man, because the rest of the time they’re either fucking liars or too goddamn pointless to have ever gotten properly hurt.
But hey, I’m a liar too. It’s all still down there, even if I’d finally fooled myself.
Even if I thought I’d lost it, forgotten the way back, didn’t know where it was.
My ex didn’t have it. The spell broke, the illusion lifted, and it turns out she’s just a friend running from a past she can’t accept, and all that misplaced anger really had nothing to do with her.
I was missing something. That’s all it was, the break up, me asking her out in the first place, all my stupid decisions in between. Looking, thinking I’d found it, or something important, maybe, and then being disappointed.
Remember how I said anger can be patient? I lied.
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