Loving is the hardest thing that has been asked of me in my life. Falling in love I could still manage, staying in love felt like being under a blanket in summer; Comforting out of habit but intolerable for the heat. One falls in love with a person. I couldn’t. So I broke them down into pieces. I loved their passion for work, the way they eat a burger, and that they keep travel diaries. However, it was testing to continue loving their loud chewing, some of their jokes, and the way they apologized. The first person I learned to love in parts was my mother after she came back from the hospital; A new woman with parts put together all wrong. Romantic love was easier because it was easier to discard. The love of friendship: extremely trying. But doesn’t kill.
Exclusive ‘I love you’s are exclusively assigned to other people. All the songs made special at dates, bars, or sent as a dedication on a particularly hard night are eventually resung, reclaimed, and sung to other people. Like places are gone to another new year, another corner is found at a reunion at a farmhouse.
A tiny room’s walls- painted, scribbled over – are painted and scribbled over again.
But every now and then, when you take a wrong turn, when you call someone by the wrong name, when you are part of a moment that only they can appreciate best, the room stinks up. No amount of airing removes the odor that hides under the pillow, that gets tangled in your hair. You paint, relentlessly. The smell mixes with a new distracting smell. The walls thicken, and the room closes down on you. Every time a little more.
How many layers of paint do you think your walls have? When the ground shakes, which layer do you think will show through the cracks?