i have had
a weekend full of joy and love and revelations and i want to tell you all about it
but i want to start somewhere heavier, if that’s okay
it’s the summer of 2020 and i am in the suburbs, celebrating a friend’s birthday. i remember the sunset that night, i remember sitting cramped in the back of an suv, music loud and midnight breeze on my skin.
we pit stop at a boba shop and it’s here that esha looks down at her phone and i remember her pulling me aside, the panic and confusion in her voice when she tells me that someone in her volleyball team just passed away. that this is all she knows.
i have no idea what i said to her or how i handled this and i know it is so different from anything i would say now. i am so sorry, i hope i said. tell me about her. what are you feeling? what do you need? should we leave to be somewhere quieter?
we stayed and i tried to be there for her as best i could, in the corner of the boba shop. i remember trying to imagine the grief that esha was feeling in that moment. i try on different shoes. teammates, classmates. friends. family. i try to imagine the grief that she felt, before she passed.
this is something that changes people, shapes a community. i wonder what shape this grief will take for the people in her life.
what a privilege, for my memory of this night to be so vague. to be picturing the grief rather than experiencing it.
i meet someone on halloween of 2021. she has curly hair and bright eyes and a laugh that sounds like an enchanted forest. she teaches me so much. she teaches me how to sign yes and no and i love you and i miss you. she teaches me references from old barbie princess movies and lyrics from hamilton, hadestown, phantom of the opera. she teaches me that refined white sugar can be processed with animal bone char to make it look whiter and this is why she’s looking for the vegan symbol on this bag of sugar. she teaches me to love someone enough to hurt when it ends.
it’s january of 2024 and i am feeling the grief of a relationship ending, losing a friend and a lover. solitude comes first. i let myself rest and isolate and grieve.
and then, slowly, i seek out joy again. through conversation and play.
this is how i spend my wednesday— a nine hour conversation with someone i’ve only just met. a friend of a friend. it’s kinship, i tell her, when we marvel at how easy this is. grabbing tea and sitting by the lake and deciding what to eat, which kombucha to drink, what’s for desert, where to go next. i save sophie’s name in my phone with a sun emoji because i think she is sunshine embodied, radiant and warm. we talk until 1am on a work night and i wake up on four hours of sleep, feeling full.
on thursday, i stay in and facetime kathy and kimmy to make summer plans. the rain has cancelled their weekend camping trip and i am sleepless and energized and want desperately to spend time with them before they leave.
i’ll host something tomorrow
the vibe is raveena aurora album listening party
i invite six people— half of whom i don’t know very well, friends of kathy and kimmy.
kathy hands me a wellness shot that she brought me when we set rained-on paper grocery bags on my kitchen floor and i feel so cared for in that moment. sophie, catherine, evelyn, and kayli come bearing cherries, oranges, kombucha, chocolate, bread. all my favorite things. i feel so seen.
they settle onto the floor and tend to each other. i am high and assembling a charcuterie board like i’m painting a canvas while kimmy washes all the fruit and feeds me cherries. i am locked in and i realize, in hindsight, that i forgot to hang their coats.
it’s over. the board is made and it’s time to indulge. i light an incense and ask sophie to play raveena’s new album on the speaker they brought over.
and then, over food and music and aromatics, we talk about so much. there is so much care in the room. attentiveness, joy, good conversation. we cry and hug and eat and laugh. all of my senses are engaged and pleased.
it’s here, again, that i am reminded of the love of community. what it means to gather and be in each other’s company, take care of each other.
at 2am, kimmy lays down and catherine rolls up her jacket into a pillow for them to rest on. i watch kimmy curl up and close their eyes and my heart grows at the thought that they are comfortable enough to do this, stretch out and rest in my space. i am reminded of something that katherine told me the other day, that kimmy is usually the shy twin, takes their time to open up to people. this was such a jarring revelation because i have always seen kimmy as someone who bursts into song to fill silence, someone smiley and energetic and talkative. someone who’s eyes speak when they choose not to.
i met the twins through my ex. and, now, i meet sophie and catherine and evelyn through them. a parting gift, sophie and i decided. katherine and kimberly are leaving to study abroad for a year and meeting more people who love them only strengthens the love i feel for them.
it’s community, it’s interconnectedness. it’s a theme in our conversation and in our lives.
they leave at 4am, after packing the food and dividing up leftovers and sorting the trash for me. with me. i see them off and sophie waves goodbye to me until she’s down the block, turned the corner.
i sleep at five.
i wake up on saturday morning with something underneath my tongue— small and white and solid. how funny would it be, i think to myself, if this is part of my tooth.
i set it on my nightstand and go about my morning, lazy and slow.
later, when i squeeze toothpaste onto my toothbrush, i bare my teeth at myself in the mirror and see that my right canine looks sharper. like more of a crescent.
i laugh, immediately, because— yeah. that was my tooth.
are my teeth that brittle? i wonder how it happened. i know i grind my teeth but i think back to the night prior and a part of my suspects it happened when i bit into the pit of a cherry that kimmy plopped into my mouth but i don’t know if i can ever confirm this theory.
i place the piece of my tooth from my nightstand into my night guard case and return to the mirror, smile, trace the new shape with my pinky finger. i’ll have to get used to this, the chip in my tooth.
kayli and spencer come over to install the water filter that’s been sitting on my kitchen counter for the past month. i tried my hand at it once and decided i couldn’t do it. would rather boil water and wait for it to cool three times a day than try to figure it out again.
spencer sets his toolkit down and gets to work. it takes him twenty minutes to make my life tenfold simpler.
i say goodbye to them and bare my teeth at myself in the mirror again.
i think that when i see the chip in my tooth, i will forever be reminded of this friday night and this saturday morning. i will look at my chipped tooth and i will think of the love that i share in this space, the care i have found in community.
rebeca is coming over soon. i walk to the market down the block to pick up a pint of the tofu that she really likes and i stumble into a table serving free vegan carrot cake slices. it tastes like good karma. i pay it along next door, when i drop off leftovers from last night with former coworkers. is this walkable community?
there’s a sudden downpour on my walk home and i regret smoking because i am wearing sunglasses and a sweatshirt and noise-cancelling headphones and i am fighting for my life in this thick, seattle, summer rain.
we’re wearing the same thing,
rebeca deadpans at the door when she takes in my black pants, black top, black leather jacket.
dustin come over ten minutes later and looks at my outfit and says
is this what you’re wearing?
should i not be?
i’m wearing the same thing
triplets
cassie comes over to pee and we are out the door, down the elevator, into the uber in record time.
i thought we were late, made it just in the nick of time, but the fashion show starts twenty minutes late, so we end up early. the room is very seattle. people who care to dress up and people who don’t. people here to celebrate the art and the artists and the creative visions that gathered us here today.
i feel pride when i see vinnie walk down the runway. i am taken back to the couple of months that we worked together, how they would saunter around the floor, chin high and taking up space. the world is theirs, in this moment.
we smoke after the show and the next thing i remember is being in a booth with dustin, who is staring out into the bar.
i like people watching, he says
i love imagining people’s lives, i agree
i look around. there is a disco ball hanging from the ceiling and two big animal heads on the wall closest to us.
do you think they’re fake? god, i hope they’re fake. what do you think their lives were like?
we decide they might have been lovers, the deers. god. i hope they were fake.
five new people join us and i love meeting new people but i am knee-deep in a conversation with rebeca about my taste in women. she reads me, humbles me, and ends the conversation with this: this is just my opinion so do what you will and i will support you no matter what you choose to do. i ask rebeca for a hug and i think this is the first time we have ever hugged in all the time that we have known each other.
we migrate to a different club and pass another joint around on the way. i have no idea where we are or where we’re going. someone leads and i simply follow.
if i wasn’t so high, i would be extremely overstimulated. bodies bodies bodies. i hold my jacket in one hand and someone’s hand in another, excuse me please through the crowd.
they take shots and i spy an empty seat. someone beside me, one of the five new people, asks out loud if we can sit. i didn’t realize i wanted to sit until the person on the bench nods.
i’m thankful for the break and reintroduce myself to my savior. her name is sarah. her friend joins us too. leia, who is family friends with dustin, whose paths happened to intersect tonight.
tonight, i had no expectations to have meaningful conversation. i have had enough conversation over the past few days to shut me up for some time. but
leia and sarah are unbelievably easy to talk to and of course they are. it’s that sense of kinship again.
i’m not sure how long we talk over the music until someone suggests we step outside. again, i am led through the crowd to the other side of the club where the rest of our people are dancing. jackets are exchanged and then i lead the way, through and out.
the music fades to background noise and i don’t realize how relieved i am to be out of there until i realize we can actually hear each other.
sarah hands me a blue lighter and a joint and leia tells me about red string theory.
but first, let me tell you about leia.
leia reminds me of a disney princess, which i tell her at some point during the night. she reminds me so much of my cousin, kind and patient and interested in what you have to say, a kindness that’s born from loss and hardship. i can see that the way she takes care of people is intentional.
so, when we open instagram to stay in touch and i see that we have mutuals,
and one of the mutuals is my ex,
i ask leia how she knows her
and leia’s eyes brighten under the streetlights and she tells me:
she was friends with my little sister.
my ex played volleyball and i still remember the permanent bruises on her knees, the shape of them. one side was worse than the other.
it came up, in passing, that she had lost a friend in high school. i realize now that we didn’t talk all that much about this. the grief that she carried, so fresh into our relationship.
i wonder what the shape of those bruises were. often, i have wondered what exactly it was that ended our relationship. if it was anything i did or said. now, i am wondering if it was all the things unsaid. about who she was before we met, that pain and loss.
because here, with leia, i am reminded that my ex lived a life before our paths crossed.
something about leia and the way she moves in this world shows me that her little sister has passed, that the grief in my ex’s life is a loss that leia must share and
today, i realize that it’s the same grief that my friend carries
the one who pulled me aside in the middle of a boba shop, almost four years ago now, to tell me that someone on her high school volleyball team had just passed
teammate. friend. sister.
i think if you put all this grief together, tie all these strings of all these shoes to each other, the knots of care make visible the shape of the impact that this person had on their community.
and i am so grateful to trace these threads, be a part of this web of interconnectedness.
leia, i will remember your sister through the people who were in community with her. i have seen her in their silent grief, in their joys and their interests
most of all, in their love.
leia drives us home and i make her promise to come over some time.
an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance
this is red string theory
making those strings visible, i think, is community. the love that binds us all should be made visible through care— affirmations and actions.
kimmy feeds me cherries and spencer installs the water filter on my sink, rebeca tells me hard truths in the middle of the club and i wake up to a picture that sophie sent me of a pretty sunset and dimensions of kathy’s futon to see if it will fit in my apartment.
this is community, i think.
this is love.
what a beautiful and reflective piece ~
thank u for being a part of my life <3 love you