Fixed

Janus

It was only the cusp of summer when Rachel and I agreed, albeit on separate occasions, that splitting apart would be best for the both of us.  It was planned that I would finish my work-study position in the library of the university I had only just graduated from with a Bachelors degree I doubted I could do anything with, and then I'd be gone.  The little yellow house wasn't by any rights mine, however many times Rachel argued this with me, and so it seemed obvious that it would be me who would be going.  Where was still the question.  Options opened up from all angles, and though there was a part of me that wanted to flee to the city, perhaps reclaim what I had found there when I was nineteen, I couldn't quite bear the thought of leaving trees behind.  Still, I kept Anthony and MJ's offer on the table and mused to myself about what life would be like living with an Italian and a Gypsy, though I think everyone involved knew that it probably wasn't the best environment for me.  I was ready to tiptoe into the shallow end of the pool, not dive off a cliff into the ocean.  Second on the list was the fact that Brandon and Amanda were looking for a place and might be needing a roommate, but truthfully, I wanted to keep that friendship intact far more than I wanted to room with someone I knew and trusted to be able to pay their share of the rent.  Plus, and also the reason I had to politely turn away from the offer from Nick and Rick, being the third wheel around a cute couple moving in with each other to their first place sounded slightly disastrous.  I had done the "let's move in together" thing and would be the first to smile and say to both of these couples, "Have fun," with sincerity as well as a little bit of sarcasm.  Rachel and I had lived well together, never had to fight about chores or ask the other one to take a turn making dinner, but there's something about being around a significant other all the time that can make the magic of having found each other in the first place a smidgen less appreciated.  I didn't really want to be a fly on the wall when they figured out that one.
Then, on with the list of offers for my relocation, there was my mom and sister in South Carolina.  As tempting as it was for all the material I'd gain for nonfiction pieces I was determined to finish about each of them one day, I wasn't sure I'd actually be able to get much writing done with the likelihood of screaming, tugging, attention-seeking children and consequentially frustrated adults.  My sister was due with her third child the first week of October.  That meant that if we were to split up the responsibility, at least two of us needed jobs if the third was willing to take over all household chores, and dividing it up, there was one child for each of us to watch over.  As much as I love being an aunt, I'd been spending the entirety of twenty-three convincing myself that it was perfectly acceptable that I was so selfish as to want to only be responsible for myself. Until I got Seth that is, my ever-growing mutt puppy who fancied himself my baby and demanded I hold him as often as possible even though a growing number of people were commenting that he looked a lot like a Great Dane.  

I already had my hands full.  South Carolina was a soft smile at the what-ifs of the saying "it takes a village to raise a child," but not a practical living arrangement considering where I was in life.
Sheila, my best friend in high school was another passing idea.  She had recently moved to Rhode Island and though she hadn't offered and knew nothing of me planning to move, I considered this choice quite heavily before deciding against it due to the third-wheel-rule that I'd successfully used to extinguish all others in the running.
Lastly, other than my escalating curiosity of entering some "New Girl" inspired arrangement with Craigslist strangers, there was Patti.  For those who might have voted for Craigslist roomies, know first of all that I hadn't watched any episodes of "New Girl" yet, and secondly, living with Patti had a great comedic potential.  Patti is the mother of my ex-fiance and current gay best friend, Nick.  This seemed like the least likely of the bunch, if for no other reason than because I was terrified to explain to her the situation, and even more worried that she'd figure it out herself.  I wasn't with Nick when he came out to his mom, but I did have lunch with her not long afterward.  I had planned to tell her about Rachel and I then, in some comical "So, it seems like I fell in love with someone of the same sex too!" but as I learned from the conversation that commenced instead, Patti preferred not to know about same-sex couples.  So, I stayed silent, and though Patti had been "Mom" to me for over six years, our relationship became distant.  I hadn't spoken to her - really spoken to her - since Nick and I broke up in September of 2011.  Everything since had been small talk, and there's only so many times a person can ask, "how are you?" before you realize you're an excellent liar and find yourself grieving the lack of depth that once was.

The search for a place was paused between June and August when Rachel and I thought we could work it all out.  The answer seemed simple, right in front of our noses, and yet the more we discussed alternatives to separation, the more we realized that we, our lives, or the mating of destiny, fate, and consequences for actions made in two Januarys had already decided for us.  As things escalated from unbearable to frightening, I texted Patti to find a portal out of the world Rachel and I had existed in.  If I didn't leave, neither of us would survive.  Patti's response was a "come on over," and full acceptance of everything that had happened since she and I had last spoken.  The physical transition was remarkably easy, but emotionally my life had never been so chaotic.  How well I was hiding it is another story entirely. 

A Room Full of Elephants

This afternoon at the breakfast table in our sunlit, white cabinet, beige floor, red accented kitchen, Rachel suggested that I begin writing a blog just as casually as she verbally reminded herself that she should shave her legs at some point in the day.  The everydayness of the corresponding statements struck a chord of possibility within me even when I realized that just as shaving her legs is quite a production for Rachel, staying motivated and interesting enough to keep up on a blog is more of an intention of mine than likelihood.  Besides, I wondered as she began underlining in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, the light reading she used as a break from the open and waiting GRE study guidebooks on the small table I insisted she share with me, what could I possibly have to write about? 

In a hushed conversation at The Gaming Grounds in Kent yesterday afternoon, my best friend Nick said that I would just have to make the smallest things seem interesting, and proud of himself for passing on that tidbit of divine knowledge he had grinned the smile of a trickster god.  But, I had wanted to tell him, the smallest things are already interesting. 

From the way she folds a pencil in a book and it still closes obediently for her, to the furrow of her brow when she puts book aside and opens a laptop across from me, it’s the tiny details that enthrall me so.  Somehow, the kitchen grows darker even though the sun still shines in through the window, and the white cabinets are all shades of gray.  She doesn’t think I watch her, anymore, which is probably for the best since it unnerved her so much in the beginning, when a year ago, we moved into this yellow house on Maple Street.  When she begins to cry, I’m reminded of all the reasons why I want to dedicate myself to writing daily.  The very first on that list is that I lost my ability to comfort her.  When she cries, I feel it in my veins and taste it in the mucus that collects in the base of my throat.  I feel it in the pressure that settles on my chest and pushes as it simultaneously tugs.  I hear it in the voice screaming inside me to reach her when all my eyes can do is watch.  What good is my comfort anymore?   I’d want to add here that I used to be considered a comforting creature, much like a loyal dog or a cool breeze, but as she closes all of her books and stacks them as she stands from the glass breakfast table, I realize I can no longer remember ever being any sort of comfort.

Rachel departs from the kitchen with stiff shoulders and her laptop in one hand, arm extended away from her both for balance as well as distaste for technology as she hugs her books close to her body; Books that mean she’s preparing for a world she doesn’t think she has a place in.  How many graduate school programs has she looked at, this morning alone, and read the details aloud with disgust in aftertaste?  If she could change, she told me before she left, she would.  But, I don’t know why or what it is, exactly, she thinks I want her to change.  It is me, though, of that I’m certain, when she has two Freudian slips of “you” in sentences that were meant to say something like: “I’m sorry that I-“ but instead come out, “I’m sorry that you-“.  I know it’s me, I’m fueling the grief within her with my lack of comforting remark or touch, but I’ve lost any words that could be sculpted by my tongue into any sort of apology, and in a moment of her shown emotion, all but my eyes and hands are paralyzed.

Rachel returns to the kitchen with an apology for letting out emotion, her face cleansed of truth and instead falsely reassuring that all is better.  She shouldn’t stress so much, it’ll all work out, she says, and while I’m tempted to give a sound of agreement, I refrain out of fear it will shatter the words she doesn’t believe. 

It’s lunch time in the gray kitchen, and though my stomach rolls at the thought and smell of the black bean soup I made a few days ago reheated in the microwave, I’m thankful for her presence once more.  Something about the sound of her teeth against the spoon tells me she hates me, but I ignore it in favor of the breeze outside, wishing I could look up and watch a coffee curl played with by that cool breeze that I am not, but I’m unwilling, just now, to make the afternoon any more difficult for her.

The fact that I should probably shave my legs as well could be the casual excuse I remove myself from the kitchen with, but instead I’ll probably rise and pour myself another cup from our co-bought percolator and hope that I’ll see her smile before she runs away again.  It feels like a very bad Sunday.  I poured too much cream in my cup, she won’t look at I or I at her, and we’re supposed to visit her mother today.  The kind of closeness needed for a trip to Dover is considered miniscule in comparison to other excursions, but there’s something terrifying to me about a forty-five minute car ride only to see the woman who so wrongly entrusted her daughter to me.

“Have you told Nick yet that you’re moving?”  Rachel asks me at last, the only words she’ll speak to me.

“Yeah,” I tell her, softly, feeling without looking, though I do look, that she’s crying again.  “I told him yesterday,” I tell her, and resist the urge to tell her I did  so while crying.  Right now, I can’t summon the energy to grieve the loss of the friends I’ll be leaving behind, something Nick understood even as he reassured me he and Rick would have to take a roadtrip to see me.  It’s her I’m mourning.  But, I’ve already lost her.

A photo sent from my Mom in South Carolina.  Nine puppies born May 14th.