I guess it’s pretty common for people to be getting married or engaged, left and right, in their mid-to-late twenties. I guess it makes sense.
Still, I find myself surprised, almost shocked, when I hear about another one “biting the dust.”
And so, this past week, between time with my dog, I began to notice the role of “the ring.”
It started with our dinner out, which included two friends who have recently made the big commitment and got engaged. The minute they sat down at the table, it was all about the ring. People wanted to see it, people wanted to hear about it. And then I found myself noticing it. Not my style, but pretty understandable — a typical, large diamond.
The theme seemed to continue, as I noticed other married couples and their rings. He’s got the simple, thin, gold band. She’s got the elaborate set of diamonds wrapping around her finger.
Just recently, another friend posted pictures of her newly gifted engagement ring on Facebook — a picture of the ring on her finger, a picture of the ring in its box, a picture of the ring on a small pillow.
And then there is the “counterculture” couple. The one whose wedding I attended only months ago. We met them for lunch and their fingers were ring-less. I am not surprised. I get it. I admire it.
I’ve never felt the desire to get married. Mostly, this makes sense considering the experience I had with my parents’ divorce. But it goes deeper than that. The ceremony, the institution of marriage, has never appealed to me. I never saw myself in a white dress, walking down the aisle. I never thought about how he might propose, or where I would want to spend my honeymoon. And I still don’t, even now, even after finding someone who I can imagine spending the rest of my life with.
Yet, the ring. The ring is the only thing that makes any sense to me. Not necessarily the diamond, or the band of diamonds, but the symbolic presence of it, the romantic significance of it. It’s something that I get, something that I have imagined. We all interpret it so differently.
I could have cried myself to sleep last night. I could have cried for hours. The minute my head hit the pillow and the lights went out, she was all I could think about. She was all I could see. I’m not crying for her. I know she has lived a long and very happy life. I’m crying for me, for my loss. The loss that seems to surround me every minute that I let go of my to-do lists, of my distracting daily thoughts. I try to remember the last time she slept in bed with me, the last time we sat on the couch together. But I can’t remember.
You never know that the last time is the last time. And here I am, left with these vague remnants and memories. One day, I’ll go home and she won’t even be there. Her hair will have disappeared, seemingly overnight. Her bowl won’t be in its place. The baby carriage that overflows with her chew toys and squeaky dolls…it will all be gone.
I could cry every day. I could think about her all the time. I could relive the moment I said goodbye, unsure if I will ever see her again. It was one of the most painful moments in my life.
I want to hate my parents for adopting puppies in the same year, within the same months. But I can’t hate them. These puppies were my only siblings, my only sisters. And they’re both so old now. They’re both dying. And I can’t really imagine going home without her. I can’t imagine being there in June and not having her there with me.
I worry I’ll be crying myself to sleep every night this week, every night until she passes, and then for countless nights after. I am so thankful to have had her in my life, to have had this sense of sisterhood, of friendship, companionship and loyalty. But, as thankful as I am, as much as I know she has lived such a wonderful, full life, it doesn’t make this any easier. It won’t make being in that house, without her, easier.
For we are all travelers on the wheel of life.
We halt, we pause and take new births.
Samsara Dog lived many lives.
Some of his lives were long.
Some lasted only a few days.
Dog never remembered them.
He lived each life as it came,
until he learned the most
important lesson of all.
–Samsara Dog by Helen Manos and Julie Vivas
I’m back from my internet break and making more changes with regards to this “project” (I’m beginning to hate the word “blog”). You’ll no longer see me on Twitter. I just can’t bring myself to participate in that way any more, though I definitely enjoyed it, for a brief while. Every now and then, I just need to take a few steps back and refocus. I’m not sure how much refocusing I’ve really done this past week. Life can get distracting. Loss can be even more distracting. May you learn the most important lesson of all.
You know when you talk on the phone for an hour or so, with a good friend, and you hang up feeling high and wonderful? You feel like you’re on the same page as someone. You feel loved and understood. You feel not-alone. You feel you.
I have spent so much time being untrue to myself over the past few years, since I left California. I stopped pursuing my dreams. I stopped reading or writing. I settled in to waiting tables. I slept on foreign couches and in foreign beds. I drove home, regularly, as the morning traffic was beginning. I woke up at one in the afternoon, consistently hungover and disoriented. I spent an unhealthy amount of time sitting in a dark, crowded bar.
I was a stranger.
And now that I’ve begun to return to me, I find myself having to confront this other version of myself, I find myself having to admit that I was untrue. I find myself having to face the choices I made. It’s impossible to escape your recent past in a small town. Yet sometimes, I’d almost prefer to. It wasn’t me, I keep thinking. And yet she keeps following me.
When I get on the phone and dial a California area code, I sigh with relief and I am answered with comfort. I am me. I am being true now.
It’s hard to leave your life behind and start over. Perhaps that is what I have been struggling to do these past few years. Perhaps I just dealt with it a little differently.
But now, I feel true. And when I hang up the phone, like I did today, I feel completely happy, I feel at peace. It’s as if someone is reminding me that I’ve been me all along, that the mistakes I made are okay, that these are the moments I want to remember.
There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a… a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know… a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle… and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.
My senior year of high school, we used to ditch during lunch and drive to the beach. It was always beautiful. We’d blast music all the way and stop at Starbucks for iced coffee. It felt like pure freedom.
Every now and then, I revisit these pleasant memories and think fondly on high school days. It’s amazing how positive everything seems in retrospect. In the actual moment, nothing felt right. Like many teenagers, I never felt that I fit. I agonized over my outfits every morning. I suffered from extreme insecurities and the plaguing notion that I just wasn’t desirable. The boys never found me attractive. I was never the one they wanted — a typical, self-deprecating, teenager train-of-thought.
My freshman year of college, I cried myself to sleep every night of the first week. I began to realize that, if I thought high school was bad, I had no idea what was coming to me in college. I wondered if I would ever be happy. Even during my second quarter, when I got my job at the coffeehouse and subsequently made a wide variety of friends whose company I actually enjoyed, I was still followed by my insecurities, by the belief that I just wasn’t wanted, romantically or platonically.
Sometime, after therapy, after medication, after nutrition-counseling, I started to find my sense of balance. I started to feel okay. The balance wavered, particularly during my junior year abroad in Chile, and then, again, after graduation. I’ve come to believe that it’s pretty natural to feel unsettled and a bit insecure when you’re in a new environment, under new circumstances.
Yet, years later, I moved to a small town in which the only person I knew was my own mother — not someone I could rely on for social activities. I never felt uncomfortable here. I never felt like I had lost my footing. Even during my debaucheries and fairly self-destructive “adventures,” I felt balanced. I felt like I was me even when I wasn’t necessarily acting like me.
And now, everything in the past has a beautiful ray of light on it. Every horrible feeling has dissolved. Every discomfort and period of depression seems to have melted into some hidden place in the back of my mind, where I can hardly even feel its presence. I know that I was once depressed. I know that I once thought more about food and what I ate than anything else. I know that I once preferred to hole up in my house, in comfortable clothes, and watch a movie. I know that I once chose to drink cheap red wine from Trader Joe’s by myself on the weekends and clean my kitchen with music blasting. I know that, in high school, I never “fit.” But it’s as if you can’t think about those things any more. It’s as if, at some point in your life, you have to digest it and then, to a certain extent, you have to let it all go.
So here I am, reminiscing in my own mind about the many days of senior year that we ditched class and took PCH to Malibu for iced coffee.
I said, in a recent post, “Like every thing else I do in my life, eventually, in some sense, I find a way to miss it.” This is the proof. This is the evidence. These are [some of] the memories I currently idolize and rewrite in my mind.
I step outside. It smells like rain and the air is moist. I avoid my GRE studying — how can I spend my only free time studying? I lean against the post and light a match. It’s from a Fish Market matchbox. I am instantly pushed back in time, to all the meals I ate with my grandmother. Every. Single. One. I feel the tension and the awkwardness. And then, suddenly, ease. And hilarity. I wave out the flame on the match and watch as the ash falls to the ground. I pick up my phone and call the now unfamiliar number to be answered by a familiar voice. A voice of such memories. I know that she probably can’t talk. It’s amazing how difficult a one hour time difference can be. Still, it’s nice to hear her voice. It’s as if she is around the corner or ten minutes away. I can hop in my car and go. It’s as if the actual thousand miles between us is surmountable. I think I miss my people.
