I had to let go of nearly everything that meant anything to me in North Florida because I didn’t have any choice at the time. No real one. Many people I knew then are dead or in jail. So many gone. I averted that fate by leaving, joining the army, avoiding it as much as I could. But to quote Lorde, “The only problem that I got with the club is how you’re severed from the people who watched you grow up.” I had to sever myself from the place, and I did, and thus I survived and prospered unlike so many I know. Knew. But it’s a hard choice. I understand why some people could not and did not make it. I don’t regret my decision or what I had to do, but I won’t pretend like there weren’t consequences.

Today, I found this by Bianca Sparacino, which I think I needed to hear:

If you are trying to forget someone who was once a beautiful part of your life, the answer is — you don’t. You don’t try to sanitize your experience, you don’t try to cut the pain from the bone. You don’t downplay it. You don’t try to sweep it under the rug or hide it away. Letting go of someone you thought would be in your life forever is difficult, sometimes circumstance gets in the way. Sometimes, no matter how much love is there, you have to lay it down. You have to walk away. You have to accept that sometimes you get too big for it, or you want different things, or you cannot pour yourself out for it any longer. And that is okay. But if you managed to find someone who cared for you, who saw you, who heard all of the horrible and haunted things you did in your life and still loved you harder, still thought it all shone like gold — that is special. You shouldn’t forget that. You should be thankful for it. Be thankful that you got to feel that way about someone. Be thankful for all of the mornings, and all of the nights, you got to wrap your limbs within theirs. Be thankful for the way they cracked your heart open. Be thankful for the way they challenged you and calmed you and made you believe in the person you were becoming. Be thankful for the fact that they saw you in ways you didn’t see yourself. Be thankful for the fact that you risked for love, that you unhinged your ribcage and opened yourself up in a world that sometimes favors playing it cool over leaping towards connection. Be thankful that you found this person, in a world of billions, and for a moment in time, even if it was fleeting, you got to dive into the soul of them. Just be thankful, and walk away with grace. Walk away with gratitude. Walk away knowing that you felt something, that you experienced something, a lot of people haven’t, and in that way — you were changed. Love is not meant to be possessed. It is meant to be felt. Be proud of yourself for feeling so deeply, appreciate it for what it was, and let that love go off into the world and change others the way it changed you.

My friend Tia, just as my partner does now, did challenge me and calmed me and made me believe in the person I was becoming. When I told her I joined the army, it was a gray cold day and I’d literally just come from the recruiting office to drop by her place to let her know. It was not an easy conversation because she knew what it meant: all that was close and ours would be sundered by distance and my desire to escape. But still, she was happy for me, encouraged me, understood what I was doing and why, told me it was the right thing. The day I left she was there with me at the Greyhound station. It was not the last time I ever saw her but it was really when the connection was riven and we both knew it.

Again, I don’t regret what I did. I’d do it again. But I do walk away with gratitude for whatever it was she saw in me. She made me better than I was and I think I did the same for her.

What else is there?

This was my friend Tia’s favorite song when I knew her.

I have not listened to it in 20 years. Lyrics are great, better than I remembered. I understand so much better why she liked it now. Hindsight without time travel is a curse, but better than the alternative.

For readers tired of me writing about her, I have to. The void retreats before the word, and creation is a spell.

Almost all people in the Developed World believe that really, really bad things only happen in fiction. katrina was not real to most americans. earthquakes aren't real. 9/11 was, somehow, barely, just barely real, for reasons anthropologists will tear into in the far future

— Gravis, fortunately (@gravislizard) December 11, 2019

Absolute truth. You see this in people’s non-reaction to climate change. It is naïveté and Pollyanna-ishness on a scale that is almost unbelievable. I wonder how much fiction affects this and by what method. Is it because there most disasters look like a fun adventure, with nearly always some happy ending?

Buncha people are going to learn about reality the hard way.

Oh wow, this is a beautiful project.

Was today trying to remember some of the works Tia and I read to each other. This was one, at least part of it. We liked the prosody of the Mandelbaum translation. We also read aloud a lot of Robert Frost, Adrienne Rich, and she loved Edna St. Vincent Millay (I read that whole linked poem to her at least twice), whom I had never read before meeting her. It wasn’t just highfalutin stuff, though. Not at all. Plenty of Dave Barry and song lyrics and errata and abstracta we made fun of (such as reading part of Little House on the Prairie, but trying to change it in real time to match our new title: Little Crack House on the Prairie!).

In 8th grade, I did the math and realized that I could just quit working in one of my classes and still pass/graduate. My teacher was fuming mad when I explained why I wasn't turning anything in, but I still graduated.

I've never regretted quitting anything. I've never quit me.

— 🐗 (@fu9ar) December 10, 2019

I did this at about the same age when I calculated I could never do homework or turn in the folder crap, and still pass my classes if I aced all the tests (which I did, except math).

From that day on I never did homework, and told almost all my teachers in advance that I did not and would not do homework. Still passed every non-math class handily.

solid poll https://t.co/7y6A99eObO

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) December 11, 2019

The one who does not — therapy exists to perpetuate itself. While people do sincerely believe they are being helped (and maybe some are), mostly therapy intensifies and increases manias and fixations, surfacing negative emotions, thus requiring more therapy.

Be suspicious of that for which the treatment never leads nor can ever lead to any cure.

I had a dream that my job was digging potatoes…and I was paid in potatoes.

Not the best dream.