I woke up at 3am last night to the sound of a fly buzzing around my ear. I opened my eyes to nothing in particular and swatted the thing away. It was gone but left something like a presence.
I’ve been wide open for a long time. I tried shutting down, putting up all these little walls, but I’m cursed with a sensitivity I can’t shake. I’ll leave Montréal in a couple months. I’m not sure why. There are mundane reasons, of course: grad school, immigration issues, proximity to family. But the mundane isn’t everything, of course. I’ve thought about moving to a small town in the South to try and get my accent back, but that’s not how it works. I made a decision when I moved here four years ago. And that decision resonates. I’m living that resonance.
I’ve thought about staying here, too. Everyday, actually. There’s an undeniable comfort in Montréal, a comfort I’m afraid to leave. More afraid than I’ve ever been in my life. Maybe that’s why I’m leaving. Because I’m afraid.
My best friend in high school was a darling blonde girl we’ll call Diana. She was from an old southern family with enough money to finance a small nation. They were lovely and treated me like a son. And I was a difficult son. I dyed my hair blue and tattooed my stretching skin. I rebelled against nothing, created my own problems in my life.
I remember taking Diana to Mississippi to visit my sister when she was in college. It was a home game. We shared a double bed in an Airbnb in Oxford, a sleepy little college town between Jackson and somewhere else. That night after the football game, Diana and I retired to the cramped bedroom. I remember we talked about boys from our classes, our teachers, the musical, assorted moments from teenage life. I don’t know what changed, but after an hour or two, Diana started to hold her palm to her chest. Her breaths shallowed and quickened. Panic attack. Though, at the time, I didn’t have the language to describe it, I knew it was bad. I gave her the space she asked for, retreating to the bathroom down the hall and talking to my parents in the next room over about the game, my sister, whatever. Then Diana starts screaming. Wailing and yelping. The sounds you make when you find a dead body in a parking garage. The kinds of screams that can only result from one facing their mortality in real-time. Looking at it as a thing.
Diana had told me stories from when she was in middle school, how she couldn’t sleep for months because she obsessed over the idea of sleeping. It totalized her mind like a billboard in the night. Way out on the highway. “SLEEP”. She knew she needed to, so she couldn’t. And that’s where we were, on that highway of obsession. The billboard read “YOU WILL ONE DAY DIE”. I held her into the early morning. Trees cradling our little home. Two friends being unto death.
A few years later, we graduated from high school and went our separate ways, sure of an unsure future, connected by digital convenience. In that distance, something fundamental changed. After a few months in Montréal, her daily texts slowed to weekly, monthly. I lost her entirely. This person I’d grown into. This girl who’d loved me at my worst. The girl I held until the sunlight. That screaming, beautiful girl. It’s inexplicable. I lost her in nothing. Just gone. I visit home, reach out, and nothing.
The circuit is open, darling. I’m pouring out all over. I’m missing things I can’t remember.
I haven’t heard from you in years. I love you, no matter what. You hold me within you. Like it or not. We’re blood.
That loss left me open. And it happened again and again. Friends I love, leave. I’m left questioning my sustainability. I must be intolerable. Or perhaps just too potent. Like a concentrate. I need to be diluted. Experienced occasionally. Always at risk of cliché, pastiche, burden. Of course, dread me.
Maybe that’s why I’m leaving. My friends date and disappear. They spend their weeks in bed or in bars murmuring to those girls. Hushed tones for no reason. You can speak up. Tell the world you’re in love or it’ll go away. But you know that, of course. And you know I’m leaving.
What I know:
You love me, sure.
You will call me on my birthday.
You will mention me in passing. To people who remember me better than you do.
I will be that guy from 2025.
I will write about you.
You will say you liked it.
There will come a day when you realize, how I’ve realized, that you will someday never see me again.
You will think of me once before you fall asleep.
You will wake up one morning and remember my voice.
I will haunt your songs.
I’m an exposed nerve from a knocked-out tooth. Everything hurts. Sensitive to the point of numbness. Quietly grieving completely inexplicable losses. Predicting future loss and grieving that too. Creating narratives of loss and picturing myself in them. Writing stories out of that loss. Two boys, usually. Because that’s how I see my life, how I see the world, and you. Me between those worlds. The actualizer of grief. The grim reaper of everyday goodbyes. The one who points to the dead calf and says, “remember me?” And I’m coming, that reaper. You will have to say goodbye. And I won’t be there to hold you when you cry.
Do you remember me? In the night? In the morning? Do you remember how I loved you? I will leave you with enough of me to share. Because that’s what I do when I love you. I leave myself. Will you hold me? Can you? Like a baby. Like a little boy. I’m a little boy. Staring up at the tallest building in the city. Wondering how it got so high. Who built it. And, of course, why.
I’m in that narrative of loss. You can find me there if you look. But you’d have to look. I’ve learned that’s a lot to ask of someone living a whole life. I can’t tell you this, but I want you to know that I’d die for you. You can run downhill from a love so sincere. You can climb the tallest building in the city and look out and still see me. The me I’ve reflected onto this place. I know this because I’ve tried. I run for a living. No one is better at running than I am. I’m doing it now. Running down this paragraph, writing thoughts I haven’t quite formed. Because that’s what it means to be. Forming and running. Something like that. Making sandcastles as the tide comes in. You will die soon. Sooner than you’d like. So love me like you mean it.
I remember you, Diana, holding me in the ocean. Just far out enough to be scared. The coastline dilating with distance. We hugged to stay warm and talked about our wedding. Our future together a guarantee. Something to laugh about. I see now my fatal flaw. I see the thing that will kill me: I expect this world to hold me how you held me. In the cold water. That horizon. But this world will leave me how you left me. I can’t be held forever. My jaw is clenched. I’m incompatible with the world I inhabit. Unable to live how I need. So I’m leaving.
Ouch
so beautiful