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grad school seems a hopelessly lonely undertaking tonight. a month into my second year, and for the first time i'm questioning whether i even want to go through with it.
biking home past the lighted clock tower of City Hall, my most European landmark here, i phone my mother to ask her how she's recovering from the colonoscopy she had this morning. mom tells me she's fine, "just overworked," but i don't believe her. my repeated attempts to ease her into a sincere exchange of emotion yield only the rotely recited reassurances that have become so typical in recent years, so i take the straight train, asking her if she really wants to talk to me, or just needs be left alone, the impression that i get a lot lately, as if she weren't really speaking to me, but to some voice recording capable of registering only a few bare phrases, pronounced with stenographic accuracy. i ask her: is your life feeling liveable these days? do you still enjoy teaching, obsess over crossword puzzles, sneak craisins into every salad with a delicious half-smile tugging at your right eyebrow? where are you, who are you? don't you realize that we need to care about each other? that i need us to care what's happening in each other's lives?
it's a relief to finally ask the questions that have been gnawing at me for months. mom yields to pressure: i at least get details. she tells me about one of her four-year-olds this year, a dark-haired boy whose father calls him "the genius," but whom she thinks is just "sullen," and i point out how endearing it is that kids who are just sullen - even dull - become geniuses to their parents the moment they start tying their shoes. mom laughs. i sketch her a mini-cartography of my world in Ohio, describing the buildings in my neighborhood to her as i circle them on my bike, wanting to savor the fact that i'm not alone in my apartment yet with this photograph i framed and hung across from my bed (so that i could admire you in my sleep) and now can neither bear to look at, nor take down - and glad for the chance to really TALK to my mom. she listens, speaks too, but it isn't long before her voice pulls away from me again. i remind her that i love her and say goodbye, the sadness of my words more audible to me than to her, and her sadness obvious to both of us. she's trying, i think, but resignation is getting the best of her. we reach for one another, but we never quite connect. it hasn't always been like this, and it's not her distance - to which i have already grown far too accustomed - that's really troubling me tonight. it's more than that.
it's you.
c'est vrai, Gé (there's little consequence to this disclosure of the obvious, your identity, as you probably have never attempted to read this journal): i'll love you "'til blood be rose/ and roses be bygones," or some other such line from a sweeping ovation to your EXIT LEFT which i can't seem to shape into anything but an empty hand. i haven't been completely open about the fractures in my heart, the emptiness in my lungs which isn't the absence of your breath (withdrawn now) any more, but merely the absence of you. everything about me feels so fucking unnecessary. i'm either a vacant lot, or i'm full of used cars - banged-up Buicks and sleepy Mustangs parked heavy on my stomach, spilling their prices over my lips each time my mouth opens to speak of you and i remember that you no longer listen for my voice.
i won't heal my heart by swallowing it; the part of me that is broken isn't ashamed to have been broken by YOU. but it would make reconstructing my lungs a lot easier for me if you would have the courage to knock the wind out of them.
i know this isn't easy for you either: i can't imagine you enjoying watching me suffer. i really do want you to be happy, even if that means not being in love with me, but i can't help feeling that you haven't been completely honest, that you're withholding something, just as, before you were old enough to fall in love, the moon once withheld something from you, something sweet and peaceful, revealing to the little girl (look, that's you!) gazing up at it one night in France not a man, but a skull. you shuddered then, and i shuddered when you told me the story. in that moment, i wanted nothing more from my life than to find a way to stretch new skin over that moon, to coax from its cavernous surfaces a flesh as pale and lovely as yours, so that you would see for the first time how breathtakingly beautiful you are, and never again feel taunted by your own strength or mocked by your weaknesses. i still want that for you. i understand that really, you have to find that moon for yourself. i can't force it on you. still, your silence hurts me. in spite of it (by some miracle of the Lord of the Flies, i suppose) i'm pretty sure i made an "A" on my first French exam. i want you to smile for me - i wouldn't even mind if you boasted a bit, then scolded me, in your way, for enjoying the praise. instead, you leave me the moon's skull, keeping its skin, like your cares and your struggles, to yourself.
help me understand this?
biking home past the lighted clock tower of City Hall, my most European landmark here, i phone my mother to ask her how she's recovering from the colonoscopy she had this morning. mom tells me she's fine, "just overworked," but i don't believe her. my repeated attempts to ease her into a sincere exchange of emotion yield only the rotely recited reassurances that have become so typical in recent years, so i take the straight train, asking her if she really wants to talk to me, or just needs be left alone, the impression that i get a lot lately, as if she weren't really speaking to me, but to some voice recording capable of registering only a few bare phrases, pronounced with stenographic accuracy. i ask her: is your life feeling liveable these days? do you still enjoy teaching, obsess over crossword puzzles, sneak craisins into every salad with a delicious half-smile tugging at your right eyebrow? where are you, who are you? don't you realize that we need to care about each other? that i need us to care what's happening in each other's lives?
it's a relief to finally ask the questions that have been gnawing at me for months. mom yields to pressure: i at least get details. she tells me about one of her four-year-olds this year, a dark-haired boy whose father calls him "the genius," but whom she thinks is just "sullen," and i point out how endearing it is that kids who are just sullen - even dull - become geniuses to their parents the moment they start tying their shoes. mom laughs. i sketch her a mini-cartography of my world in Ohio, describing the buildings in my neighborhood to her as i circle them on my bike, wanting to savor the fact that i'm not alone in my apartment yet with this photograph i framed and hung across from my bed (so that i could admire you in my sleep) and now can neither bear to look at, nor take down - and glad for the chance to really TALK to my mom. she listens, speaks too, but it isn't long before her voice pulls away from me again. i remind her that i love her and say goodbye, the sadness of my words more audible to me than to her, and her sadness obvious to both of us. she's trying, i think, but resignation is getting the best of her. we reach for one another, but we never quite connect. it hasn't always been like this, and it's not her distance - to which i have already grown far too accustomed - that's really troubling me tonight. it's more than that.
it's you.
c'est vrai, Gé (there's little consequence to this disclosure of the obvious, your identity, as you probably have never attempted to read this journal): i'll love you "'til blood be rose/ and roses be bygones," or some other such line from a sweeping ovation to your EXIT LEFT which i can't seem to shape into anything but an empty hand. i haven't been completely open about the fractures in my heart, the emptiness in my lungs which isn't the absence of your breath (withdrawn now) any more, but merely the absence of you. everything about me feels so fucking unnecessary. i'm either a vacant lot, or i'm full of used cars - banged-up Buicks and sleepy Mustangs parked heavy on my stomach, spilling their prices over my lips each time my mouth opens to speak of you and i remember that you no longer listen for my voice.
i won't heal my heart by swallowing it; the part of me that is broken isn't ashamed to have been broken by YOU. but it would make reconstructing my lungs a lot easier for me if you would have the courage to knock the wind out of them.
i know this isn't easy for you either: i can't imagine you enjoying watching me suffer. i really do want you to be happy, even if that means not being in love with me, but i can't help feeling that you haven't been completely honest, that you're withholding something, just as, before you were old enough to fall in love, the moon once withheld something from you, something sweet and peaceful, revealing to the little girl (look, that's you!) gazing up at it one night in France not a man, but a skull. you shuddered then, and i shuddered when you told me the story. in that moment, i wanted nothing more from my life than to find a way to stretch new skin over that moon, to coax from its cavernous surfaces a flesh as pale and lovely as yours, so that you would see for the first time how breathtakingly beautiful you are, and never again feel taunted by your own strength or mocked by your weaknesses. i still want that for you. i understand that really, you have to find that moon for yourself. i can't force it on you. still, your silence hurts me. in spite of it (by some miracle of the Lord of the Flies, i suppose) i'm pretty sure i made an "A" on my first French exam. i want you to smile for me - i wouldn't even mind if you boasted a bit, then scolded me, in your way, for enjoying the praise. instead, you leave me the moon's skull, keeping its skin, like your cares and your struggles, to yourself.
help me understand this?