There’s a song I’ve listened to probably 192 times this year called “When Love Loves Alone” by Madison Cunningham, and I am listening to it now. Walking home in the rain I listened to “If We Were Vampires” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. It was really peaceful.
I went to a staff party for the radio station tonight, I walked with a boy I took my training class with and it was really nice. To just talk to someone, eat a bunch of garbage, feel like I was part of a place. We got to an intersection on the way back and he said “my house is this way, but you’re welcome to come by” and my gut tightened like it always does, in fear, in anxiety, because it has been two years since I’ve fully hooked up with someone, and even if that wasn’t what he was implying I’m always afraid now.
“I think I’ll just go home,” I replied. And there were no hard feelings, I think. We just have never really hung out before this so I don’t know if we will again. But I liked him. He made me feel funny and interesting and I feel like it has been a really long time since I let myself sort of be cute and flirty with a guy, and it’s nice to reclaim that I guess, since so much of high school I felt like I couldn’t control myself.
I guess I don’t know why I’m writing this. It was just something about turning away, pulling out my umbrella and putting my headphones in. Something about the way everyone around me is looking for something, someone, how the street corners are plagued with kissing couples and most hands are interlocked and how I walk home alone lit by headlights and street lamps and the moon. Because I don’t want anything right now, and it’s weird because I’ve spent my whole life desperately fighting for the attention of other people, romantically or platonically or in any way whatsoever. And suddenly I’m happy going home by myself and watching victorious or making dinner while singing frank sinatra or dancing high in my room.
It’s weird because I never thought I would get to this point, never thought I could get to this point, and I sometimes wonder if I just told myself ‘I am enough’ enough times that it came true, or if it’s the meds. What I really hope is that I’m growing. Which I think I might be. My room here in the white house with the red door feels a lot more comforting than my dorm room, and my body feels more like home now than it ever has before in my whole entire life.
I guess I’m scared, because I know that I have been able to heal and grow because I have been avoiding getting close to other people. And as much as I want to go home with that boy, as attracted as I am to him, I still have to close myself off and open my umbrella and walk away. Because I’m scared, and nothing will ever be that easy again.
Survival is not an isolated event. In that moment, I am still seventeen and bleeding on the seat of my car. I am still sixteen and wincing. I am always scared, because even though the swelling stops there are still bruises. I don’t have the time to explain to some random guy every sexually violent incident I’ve been through, I don’t have the time to wait for someone I feel comfortable with. I tried that last year, and he left.
I am always struck by the audacity of my friends, who can move through the world so freely, be with whoever they want. My friends who complain about not being able to ‘catch hookups’ or be liked back, because I remember I was once like that. The most awful thing in the world was that the people I wanted didn’t want me. And then a boy turned my body into a complicated knot I haven’t been able to untangle; men robbed my dignity from me, boys broke me, my bones, my insides, I put my hands in hands that failed me, I loved someone who lost my heart in their dirty laundry and I swear it never gets easier. Being alone gets easier but opening up never does.
So this is me, walking home alone in the rain. Enough for myself. It is lonely, sometimes, but more importantly it is safe.