loneliness

i feel very lonely in this city. this weekend, i decided to leave the archives and head up north for some reprieve and to chase away some of the loneliness of being away and being.

milan kundera writes about this unbearable lightness of being. that in fact, there is a burden, a heaviness of things, and the actual repercussions it has in the actions we make- especially when they are fucked up choices that have affect on other people- whether or not we believe “they” know about our choices. this irony of lightness – a f*u* to existentialism – the lightness of making bad decisions is a falsity despite the illusion that nothing bears weight. how true his story, his words on me.

i was feeling there. i was bearing the solitude so i could unburden it on someone else. but of course this is the hindsight, the afterthought like the taste black licorice leaves behind. i figured it couldn’t be that bad right to choose unlonely? instead ofs, i feel alone here too. i was supposed to meet a friend here. someone with whom i’ve had -what i thought- chemistry with for years. but he also held, though he didn’t know it- a set of imprinted ideals that i kept making up about him. how heavy was his burden, especially the unknown weight i kept putting on his face and his body- who i think he was and should be to me-not is. expectations, regardless of it’s intent, is an unfair and bullshit pretense of gifting someone a betterness.

i kept pretending to myself that this set of choices i was making had little weight. that really, i was just doing something -gulp- existential like my anti-heroes – with lightness – brevity – and would not affect nada-nadie. we had made plans ages ago. but i ran into someone with their own psyche. or sike- someone who is running in their own loneliness marathon. his impatience, though disgusting to me in others, made me sing praises. his passion- a sign of deep emotion. but there is more in that well of emotive gestures and beautiful word spinning- a sense of lonely with a hard façade. a silliness inside of me wanted to shelter him- that i alone- all my children style- could do it. but he wants to be somewhere, do something, be someone. it would seem that i was neither a spectator nor participant but a marker even when we had written the script for my presence. but i also believe that he also gifted me his own set of expectations. a body, a silent muse, a canvas, comfort – that he did not expect me to talk back either. his rejection of my time is explained by a cryptic “i’ve given myself permission to be the person i wants to be.” what this means is a mystery to me. that by somehow being present meant an alternative to the choices he was able to make? yet despite my talk backs, he was able to rise above and liberate his own being? huh?

that’s how you gonna do you? what is he thinking? what choice was he really making? who is this person whom i’ve entwined my body with for a human connection? who is he? that is not the operative question though. no. the question is: who the fuck am i? who am i that i had to traverse miles and hours to figure out that the person who carries this weight should be me. that i cannot fault him because i also did not expect he to talk back to me. that i wanted him to be the vessel for my loneliness without catching any feeling. ergo this city and his arms makes me make long for myself. inside his reluctance and these streets are no answers for a question i refuse to really ask of myself. i keep thinking that if i just turn down this street corner something -someone- else awaits. that i keep looking, that i keep finding arms, and that i keep turning down dead alleyways not streets perhaps indicates there is nothing there but the empty inside me. i keep filling up this space with something that makes me lost. inside his embraces i keep looking for a version of myself that i can hold onto. i feel a bit broken by this feeling i cannot name. it’s been with me a long time.

but that’s the thing about these kinds of choices, things, m.o. – they are unbearably light and slips through my fingers even as i keep looking for them in other people’s open arms.

 

sketches

when i turned 18, i got my first tattoo in a seedy little dive shop in east la. the man took the character i scratched of my family name and etched it on the middle of my back. when i turned 19, i got a tattoo on my chest of a snake devouring itself. in the years that followed, i had a phoenix, a dragon, and then a koi marking my skin where only i could see.

i swear i am not addicted to the pain. instead these sketches have marked passages in my life. they helped me (in the words of toni morrison) re-remember the pain that i had endured to even consider getting these stamps of my approval. this year, i needed a way to mark a different journey in my life. for the past 5 years, i have struggled through words and the emotions that should have lay behind them. i made myself martyr. to what? only now i realize. to nothing. to no one. to no end. i thought in sacrificing pieces of myself that something -a dissertation, a relationship, success, accomplishment- would fill what i kept leaving behind. my tattoos remind me, makes me re-remember that physical pain is nothing compared to the ink that daily tattoos itself in my heart.

i have two tattoos that represent not any lofty ideals, symbolic imagery, or metaphoric passages but the names of my two youngest brothers. these symbols are their stand ins. the smallest and weighty-est, situated on my wrists, never concealed, and warms to the sun everyday. i carry them with me. i carry them everyday. i use them to carry my own burdens. i carry especially my middle brother on my left hand- whose voice resonates behind the bars that the state of california deem necessary.

he’s a gangster. he’s a drug user, pusher, seller. he’s violent. he’s dangerous.

he is my brother- my very same flesh and guts and blood. we have the same toes and same funny curl at the nape of our necks. my eyes brown and his softened by little flecks of green. i wonder if the state of california, the united states, realizes that scattered across the state and the country are the wastelands of communities that hunger for the arms and glances of a brother, a lover, a father, a son, a person. instead, we get gluey embraces that cling to letters received too infrequently. we do time. we are walking around with palpable bars, made strong in secrets we use to protect them and us from accusations and possibilities of further recriminations. i’ve seen both my brothers go through the system. mass incarceration. most days it invokes in me the kind of anger and rage that tear away at the words i carefully construct but can barely articulate. instead everything i see and feel is shrouded in the reality of a state complex that overwhelmingly puts away our brown brothers. today, i was told that my brother’s sentence was extended. i feel defeated, i feel sad, and I feel more etchings on my heart. my chest constricts with a pain that has nowhere to go. and i wonder, how much longer do i have to wait so that these same wrists that bear his name can carry the heaviness of him?