The Year of Living Ferociously

When we last left off in our story, my long-term non-boyfriend had unveiled information so painful to me that I wanted to hammer my heart shut.

And then it got worse.

The day after Christmas, he called to say that he was going to England for a week or two months, or however long.

"Fine," I said. "I could use a break."

"What an awful thing to say," he replied.

Then, he called me from London, asked if I still felt wrecked.

I did.

He wanted to know my New Year's plans, and I said I'd be alone, wallowing and drinking, as usual. He said he was skipping some wild party to catch a train out to Wales, to be alone by the ocean. It wasn't good news, but did I want to know why?

Punch me, I said. Go ahead.

So he told me. His last medical tests showed there was a good chance his stomach cancer had come back. He'd tried to tell me a dozen times before. He didn't tell anyone else, not even his family.

There's a very good chance he's going to die. He told me that, too. I checked the statistics, and I'm afraid he's not exaggerating.

He also says it would be foolish for me to go to London, in case you were wondering.

While I was driving through the night to my parents' house, I had decided that this would be the Year of Living Ferociously. To flee my rural Virginian outpost. To explore strange and new locations, to aim for goals I didn't think I could achieve. To write and live and love as if on the edge of a precipice.

And now I'm so full of rage and sorrow that I don't know what to do but attack, build up my muscles, to hone the razor's edge inside myself. To become as beautiful and dangerous and sharp as I always dreamed I would be.

And staring down this cliff, dizzy, face in the wind, I'm surprised. There's nothing holding me, but I know I'm not going to fall.

a thousand endings

It was just that I made a self-destructive choice, and I didn't want to talk about it.

And I felt stupid, for falling in love and being tossed aside a week later. Because I couldn't make him love me back. Because I felt somehow that I should have known already that I'm not someone to inspire passion.

Because the night I met him, I knew he could wreck me, and I chose it.

Because I kept talking to him, nightly, even knowing how he didn't feel, nestling into the comfortable web of his words, even though I knew I was offering myself up for injury twice.

A decade later, I keep doing this, allowing a man to be my best friend. My epidemic. My sweet little contagion.

By now, I should know better. When I can hear my tiny disasters creeping up the front steps, I should greet them and breathe, invite them inside. I shouldn't flinch when the walls begin to crumble.

I know what happens when a man who doesn't love you takes up residence in your heart, how fragile it is. I know that sometimes, suddenly, he'll decide to love you. But usually, you wait, knowing one day that you will look down and find his little space in your heart vacated, all the windows boarded.

Nailed-up little heart. The hammer in my hands.

Dear Pittsburgh:

These thoughts for you, from one of the world's most pathetically non-updated blogs:

Today I remembered walking through the South Side, peeking into the shops, feeling the energy that comes up from the river. You know that little hot dog shop on the corner where you can get any kind of ridiculous toppings that you like? It's just that I was thinking of you, darling Pittsburgh, and suddenly I wanted to walk with him into all the secrets your streets hold for me.

He wouldn't appreciate the hot dogs, since I've turned up yet another vegetarian. But he loves you, Pittsburgh, knows you from some restless months of driving the country, investigated your Indian restaurants and movie theaters. We love you, dear city. It is something that we have in common.

I am being unfair, really. I could have told you every little detail about him, every sentence or thoughtful gesture. I could have told you how he teaches me boxing, or dances with me in the kitchen. How he wonders if the man who left me behind knows about him.

It's just that I want to keep him to myself. Or perhaps that being too excited, feeling too much, might just drive him away.

I'm being unfair to him, too. In my heart, there is a terrible, sudden spring, exactly when I expected some dramatic desert in winter. Sometimes, a fragrance, one errant bloom, will escape, and that's all I'm willing to tell him now. I spend my days negotiating eighth graders blooming into social butterflies, and this sense that I contain a rare treasure inside myself.

In the plainest English, it's spring in Virginia, and I'm falling in love, whether I was ready to or not.

i rilly lik him! by Radr

Hay evrybody! This is Radr! Im a litle dog!

I no i havnt ritin in a wile, but ive bin bizy with feching and my othr hobys. I thot mebe i wud rite abot my mom and how shes doin.

she is gud! yesterdy she wint to a cwier festivel with 150 middl skul studints and playd peeano. She wuz tird wen she got home! And sez shel never ride on a buss with stidents fer to houers agin. Wun of the judgis at the festivel thot she wuz a studint. Thats funny.

And thin she got a lot of fone calls. i think it wuz the man that come hear last wekind, and the wekind before that. I hop so! Sumbuddy calls evry nite but i dont no hoo it is sins im def.

but i wanted to rite abot this man becuz i rilly lik him! and this iz the luv projict and so this iz wut we rite abot hear!

he throhs the bal for me and plays tug and givs me treets and pets me i rillly like him! he brot a cake and mom made us lunch and i sat on my chare and wated until i got sum to and it wu zgud. Latter i got cake too. But thats a seecrit.

I stol the nife an licked it. Thats how i got cake.

I lik cake!

wen I met him frist i liked him rite away becuz he piked me up and i got him muddey and he wasint mad! he sez i am a superhero and a athleet.

enyway, mom sez its importint to not lik him to much becuz we onlie met him a month ago. but its hard! i lik to put my hed on his chest and stair at him becuz he is nice to me. And to mom!

So I want to no wen its okay to lik him a lot! Becuz I don't no! And can it be tommorow.

I Miss You, Uncle Robert

Coming back to Pittsburgh remains a bittersweet experience for me. It's where I received my first kiss, got drunk for the first time, fell in love and out of love and into love and out of love and into love again. It seems as though every corner of every street is imbued with some hint of a memory, a scent you can't quite place. No matter when I arrive, I think it will always be home for me now.

Before I left for Pittsburgh on Friday, I knew two things were inevitable about my visit.

1. I was going to a wedding reception.

2. I would have to talk at length about my ex-fiancee.

There was also an outside possibility of The Ex attending said wedding reception, but I didn't think it was likely somehow, even though I felt he had more claim to the friendship of the bride and groom than I did. (He would be invited to their parties, and I would tag along, bearing macaroons.)

I didn't care if he came or not, honestly--except that, had I known he would be attending, I would have worked yet harder to look absolutely fabulous.

As it was, he was a no-show. This is a shame, since he would have really enjoyed the frosting on the cupcakes.

After a long afternoon rolling around on K.'s floor, coating myself in dust while helping her pack her belongings and move in with her charming boyfriend, I put on my favorite dress and maid-of-honor heels (from my younger sister's wedding), and drove off. I valet-parked my car for the very first time, and felt like, at the very least, a C-list celebrity.

When I got to the reception, no one had arrived yet. I should have learned this lesson long ago from countless MFA parties: no one in Pittsburgh is ever quite on time. But soon, everyone began to trickle in, and the storytelling began. I think that my Ex is under the impression that I am vindictive and cruel, waiting to lash out and eviscerate him, that I am secretly concocting screenplays that will portray him in the worst possible light. It's just not true. I'm over it--somehow, quickly, miraculously.

But I did have to change my thinking a little in Pittsburgh about the character of my loss. In my own grief, it hadn't occurred to me that I wasn't alone in mourning the man I had intended to love for my entire life. I wasn't the only one who had to watch his warmth dwindle and vanish, wasn't the only one unsure whether I should try to embrace him or not. In talking about him, I discovered that I am not alone in missing the person that he once was.

I still have a few tears to shed for him.

I don't know whether he will regret losing me for the rest of his life, as one of our mutual friends posited. I am glad that he is communicating with the people who care about him; learning that brought me a little bit of ease, because I knew I couldn't have born having no one to rely on in the past month and a half.

A month and a half later, and there I am, straightening Uncle Robert's tie and hearing, in the back of my head, as an echo, The Ex mocking me for my "old man fetish." A month and a half later, and I'm dancing badly among the people I love and left behind in my old city, Prince is singing, and everything just might be right in the world, if only in this place, if only for a moment.

And yes, back in Virginia, I'm doing exactly what I do worst/best--holding out my messy heart to see if he might like it. He might, I think. At least, he said so. I would afraid if he weren't showing me a messy heart of his own.

More later on exhibitionist love tactics and how to make candles fly.