Volume 7, Entry 31: Resembles

[[ “If you don’t have kids ]]

There are feelings that can be translated and feelings that cannot, and you suspect these are the kind that cannot, that can only take shape as teardrops falling on carpet amid footsteps, because these feelings sprawl like a massive colony of ants thrumming below a city, the insects so plentiful their movement becomes fluid dynamics, like that which blurs your vision. Silent, happysad (yes, one word) tears that say nothing except the everything that would be viscous gibberish on tongue and fingers alike.

You try anyway.

What you felt wasn’t heartbreak, but it was shaped like heartbreak. It wasn’t heartbreak because seeing an unblinking, untethered, unencumbered smile landed a sucker punch of joyous relief like none you’d seen before. The greatest outcome from what happened was that smile, that bliss, that presence; it’s what you prayed for that night as a beleaguered non-pray-er who humbly asked the old Boss for a favor if He was so willing. No promise of further groveling or reimbursement, but you asked because that was the desperate in your chest, thumping in hiding below your knowing steady calm exterior, because you never want to ask for favors, especially for His grace, but Carey said that one time the best people are the ones who ask favors on the behalf of others, so you did grovel in the dark, grinding your knees into the carpet fiber gravel to seek His light to illuminate a path back to precisely this very moment in which you once again hid your truth below, but this time it was the kind of grin that would stretch so far up your face it would pop your eyes out of their sockets. Steady calm exterior, part deux, but secretly elated this time, not panicked, not crushed, not exhausted by the cost of projecting firmly casual certainty. Do you know how hard it is to hide the terror of praying in real time to a Him who might not exist to give you the calm as if He did? Well, it’s infinitely harder to downplay the joy when you stare at laughing, relaxed proof that He came through for you. For old time’s sake, you suppose, or perhaps from your persuasive plea when it was only you again. You try not to smile when the only prayer you’ve prayed—the only sincere, authentic, desperate enough to poke at spirituality prayer you’ve prayed in years—gets answered out of fucking nowhere. Good luck to you, Atlas freed of his Earth and Sisyphus freed of his boulder. Good luck playing that shit straight.

But it’s shaped like heartbreak, too, even though you wished it wasn’t, because the immaculate crystal beating behind your ribs has a razor-sharp edge to it, and you’re so busy beaming on the down low that you don’t even wince when it slices a thin line through the flesh beside your sternum. Your dark shirt and the sweaty air obfuscate the maroon soaking into your polo; it’s a wound to tend later when the divine satisfied smile wears off. You’ll notice the cut then, the slight pink-puff of infection, and curse your tender sheared skin for betraying the automatic selfish sombra of what your joyous relief means.

You heard “We’ve got a long, long life ahead of us” that morning, a generously optimistic sentiment, and making that statement hold up would be another of His gifts, but it would also mean such a long time to have become obsolete, to have been healed out of mattering, to have met the moment so heroically and selflessly, to have used only words, emotion, and sheer good will to lift someone out of their valley without breaching even one single inch of the strict four feet maintained between you, to make peace with the fact that you met your moment—past tense, long ago, ancient history, forgotten about—enough so that another might smile broadly, might find and hold love, might shed tears but independent tears, to have been so good at defusing the bomb that another forgot about bombs while you didn’t, you couldn’t ( , or wouldn’t).

No! No, no. No no no no no no. You misunderstood, you plead. You’re not hearing me, you insist. The serrated edge on your diamond-hard heart doesn’t wish for a return to that moment, to the revelation of pain, to the chokehold of immolation that rendered happiness so close to extinction that even Cornell wouldn’t search the Everglades for it, no, no no no. It’s nothing like that. Your. Prayers. Were. Answered. That laugh wasn’t possible, yet now it radiates before your eyes until you look up and meet the eyes that might as well be someone else’s because they’re so free and alive and sunny while the sun slides behind the houses in the distance, and that’s all you want(ed). It is. There’s a difference between “You want hurt” like you’re hearing and what’s here, in you, as you see a trampled plant triumphantly upright again as though they’d never suffered a soulless shoe.

It’s just that you see in those vibrant eyes and brilliant smile and dynamic animation everything that you could have wished for, and did wish for, nay, did briefly return to religion so you could pray for, the incontrovertible proof that everything will be okay for someone you love, and that’s the end of the sentence, it is, ignore these commas, I swear it’s over!, except that you also see proof that you will never ever ever ever ever never ever ever never never never ever never ever be as close as you were for those hours, and again, THAT IS OKAY and THAT WAS THE GOAL and YOU NOT ONLY WOULD HAVE GIVEN A PART OF YOURSELF FOR THIS but also YOU DID GIVE A PART OF YOURSELF FOR THIS because not a day went by in the interceding interval in which you didn’t nod to the Boss, just in case He’d forgotten about it. Because not a day will ever go by without the peril of those 48 inches squeezing you and knowing the stakes might never be higher than these under fluorescent lights. Because you shaved off a tender cut of your heart that day, seasoned it to gentle perfection, garnished it with a fetching mint leaf, and slid it 47 inches to a famished soul, which is the most morbid way to say you sold another plot at the sharpest discount possible so that you could serve that ravenous crumpled being for merely one fleeting meal, and now there’s no growling stomach—REJOICE!—but there is a little less heart in your chest, whether it’s diamond or tissue or steak tartar. And, for the last time, THAT IS OKAY AND EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED WHEN YOU WITHDREW THE CARVING KNIFE AND PEPPER GRINDER, but it still hurts somehow, okay? The righteous joy still stings, alright? To love someone so much that they never so much as think to love you again, to engineer your own obsolescence with the precise hand of a master surgeonchef, is the greatest pain that He invented. But it is pain, because—say it with me!—pain is honest, and you’d be lying if you said your joy at that unflinching smile and those in-the-moment eyes didn’t resemble pain. You’re sorry, but it does hurt to love someone so effectively that they don’t need you to tell them you’ll love them until your heart stops.

[[ , you wouldn’t understand.” ]]

There are feelings that can be translated and feelings that cannot, and you suspect these are the kind that cannot, that can only take shape as teardrops falling on your pillowcase amid the glow of your phone, because these feelings ebb and flow like the tide while Godzilla stomps toward shore, the crests and valleys so unpredictable that their movement becomes statistical randomness, like that which governs Las Vegas. Silent, happysad (still one word) tears that say nothing except the everything that would be residue on a dirty pot made of language.

You try anyway.

What you feel isn’t distance, but it is shaped like distance. It isn’t distance because everything you see makes perfect sense as you stare at a face you either haven’t seen in seven years or haven’t ever seen before but nevertheless recognize joy on instantly, immediately, warmly. The greatest outcome from everything across all those years was that pleasure, that confidence, that arrival; it’s what you molded your purpose around for so long that when you extricated the thing, it held that shape permanently, like your purpose had been designed that way all along. Its form felt so natural you forgot that it was effect, not cause, that you couldn’t shelve it away anymore because it wouldn’t fit in the box twisted up like that, because it no longer resembled putty but God damned fucking art, the kind dexterous fingers mold while channeling the Boss’s divine eye, but so many people said so many times that a person like you wouldn’t understand or couldn’t understand, so you wedged it into a Rubbermaid, so you tucked it under the bag of jerseys to keep it out of the way, and you ignored the box like it didn’t contain a masterpiece, because it couldn’t contain a masterpiece no matter how often the sculpture caught the light and prismed a fan of color across the darkened wall with nary a light source in sight. But that joy was such a familiar joy that years of exposure tattooed it onto the back of your eyelids, meaning you immediately thought, not of the box or art or talented fingers, but of the person whose contented smile you could find in a Where’s Waldo book in record time. Fervent honest calm, part dos, but secretly vindicated this time, not hopeful, not motivational, not aspirational, not with a flitting glance upward to Him for help to make your unyielding (“)belief(“) hold up. Do you know how tricky it is to hide your morbid pessimism in real time for four years to make something real that you’re beginning to understand can’t simply be earned as you’ve been instructed all your life? Well, it’s infinitely trickier to send nothing, even 165 minutes past your bedtime after clicking the wrong tab, tapping the right name, and staring at satisfaction, unburdened proof that your specious speculation about opportunity wasn’t rendered a lie. For old time’s sake, you suppose, or perhaps because the world couldn’t hold a candle to that sort of tenacity. You try to swallow a message when you find the artwork you commissioned—the chaotic, accidental, engrossing enough to blind you to your role in the world artwork—gets a pedestal in the Louvre. Good luck to you, Van Gogh gifted a time machine and John Kennedy Toole forwarded a dissertation. Good luck keeping that shit to yourself.

But it’s shaped like distance, too, even though you wish it wasn’t, because you confess to being as nearsighted emotionally as medically, and although you recognize the elation posted sans filter, you nonetheless need binoculars because your eyes both recognize this person beaming at a ring and don’t recognize them, time and transformation leaving you squinting and straining your pupils. Your glasses sit on the bathroom counter until tomorrow becomes today; it’s fatigue you’ll try to blink away with sleep, imagining that the earth’s orbit will relegate the whimper to a lower league. You’ll ignore the ache, the throbbing that comes only when you remember, and you’ll race through the slideshow while imagining the transformative person transforming you, but who is no longer that person but the beautiful happysad source of your ache.

You heard “We’ve got a long, long life ahead of us” this morning, a generously optimistic sentiment, and making that statement hold up would vindicate the optimism you once broadcast, but it would also mean such a long time to exist on the periphery, to embody demoted-to-nothingness Pluto, to have watched that sculpture mold itself around this love that felt eternal, to have typed that name on that account as a permanent promise, to have cheered on so full-heartedly a miraculous change with such love that you missed the realization—the obvious realization in the metadata—that freeing the person previously trapped inside would permanently trap you and your love in the past.

No! No, no. No no no no no no. You mishear, you argue. You’re not understanding me, you retort. That blurry detail in the distance isn’t a curse I wish to lift, isn’t a burden to shoulder, isn’t some lamentation like when David heard that Absalom was slain, because no one was slain, because this is the angels trumpeting with joy echoing through the kingdom. It’s nothing like that. This. Was. The. Goal. You envisioned happy, fulfilled, loved, free, and now it whoops at you from an Instagram album teeming with wholeness, and that’s all you ever want(ed). It is. There’s a difference between “You miss then” like you’re hearing and what’s here, in you, as you see a drought-stricken tree birth ripe fruit as though it had always had the water it craved in abundance.

It’s just that you see in that blossoming life and nourishing love and radical affirmation everything that you could have wished for, and did wish for, nay, still do wish for, the incontrovertible proof that everything turned out okay for someone you love with so much of your heart it defies anatomy, and that’s where the period goes, it is, disregard these other words, I assure you we’ve stopped, except that you also see proof that the segment when you were central to them is over over ended ended over ended ended over over over over ended over for good, and again, THAT IS GREAT and THAT WAS THE DREAM and YOU GAVE THAT PART OF YOURSELF FOR THIS and even YOU LEARNED HOW TO SERVE YOUR HEART FOR OTHERS WHILE POINTING TOWARD THIS VERY MOMENT but also YOU IMAGINED YOU WOULD NEVER NEED INSTAGRAM TO KNOW THIS HAPPINESS because you were close enough that you called from the edge and offered your life not to His judgment but to the steady calm of the person who shaped the best parts of you that He never could. Because not a day has ever gone by without the awareness of those 48 months sculpting you and redefining you and transforming you from mess to monument under fluorescent lights. Because you butchered your heart and placed the prime cuts in the display case with such affection that no one noticed the gaping hole in your chest that you emptied to the first person who ever buried their head in your shoulder as if they belonged there, but that was the past and neither one of you resembles the two who hugged in 2010—HOORAY!—but it’s so disorienting to have skipped so many steps to arrive at that feeling, at this feeling, at this nostalgia cast in the most immaculate fucking bronze you’ve ever seen. And, for the final time, THIS IS PERFECT AND EXACTLY WHAT YOU WISHED FOR WHEN YOU HANDED OVER THE SECOND-LARGEST CHECK YOU’D EVER WRITTEN AND SAID GO BE HAPPY AND HAVE FUN YOU DESERVE IT AND NOW YOUR PHONE CONFIRMS IT’S HAPPENED AFTER FOUR CLICKS but you’re still sore somehow, alright? The glorious obsolescence still burns a bit, okay? To love someone so much that forever isn’t enough but a decade is what you get, to guide someone toward success and happiness with all your heart and know that they got it so thoroughly that you become a superfluous relic in the sterile back room of a musty museum open only on Wednesdays, is the most wonderful beautiful satisfying pain you can imagine. And it is pain, because—you know this part!—pain is honest, and you’d be lying if you said your pride while you listened to their music for an hour, the only sound in your universe that which they expertly engineered into a grand celebration of the love in their life didn’t resemble pain. You’re sorry, but it does hurt to love someone so completely that you listen to that sixty-minute song knowing not one of those notes is about you and have it end with you loving them so much that you didn’t even press the heart because you can’t bear to risk disrupting what they have, which is what they want, which is what you want, because so fucking much of your heart wants nothing more than for them to have what they want.

[[ Are you sure. ]]

If you read this one as one big song, it works better. But I can’t tell you what that song sounds like.

Sometimes, I carefully inspect a feeling and methodically record the results of thorough interrogation.

Sometimes, I open my sails and let a feeling grab my boat and hurl me wherever it damn well pleases.

Guess which one this one is.