Coming back from winter break was incredibly difficult, in that I was heartbroken.
It’s draining to miss someone. I can recall my fatigue—my body’s utter physical exhaustion. The slight sadness and aching for that person’s body and presence while taking a forty-five-minute train ride to Brooklyn. Running to scribble out paperwork for a new job on a Monday morning. Running to the L train after a 6 p.m. Science Fiction class. Running away from the feeling of missing someone.
I wrote about the nostalgic emptiness I felt when returning to the city in my journal:
“Now that I am back in New York, my heartache has begun to mock me. Streets tease of the strolls we took, parks laugh at the times we sat, or Hey, when that old guy harassed us down 13th? Or the night we saw that woman throw up next to Chipotle? Or where we were when we threw blueberries at each other, remember? The steaming halal from food stands reminds me of hugging her on the street corner where she would get lunch, and it doesn’t help that I have to walk past her home everyday to get an education.”
I remember the morning after we touched each other for the first time. She had an aura of joy. She didn’t need to smile or say anything. I could tell she was lighthearted, fulfilled, as though she had accomplished some feat. But it was a good moment: a genuinely sweet and tender moment. She lay on the bottom bunk of a wooden bunk bed, humming, watching YouTube videos with her legs folded.
I, on other hand, felt… uncomfortable. It’s ridiculous to me now that I was being so difficult and dramatic, and I suspect that she must have thought the same thing.
I asked her,
“What do you think about what happened last night?”
She responded,
“You already know how I feel.”
That was heartwarming: the ease of being wanted, loved.
In my childhood I had watched the women in my life criticize each other for their decisions. All I could think of as I awoke drenched with shame in bed next to her was the negative judgment my family would have against me. Shame. Shame, due to all the things they expected me to be. All the things my neighborhood expected of a “cool black girl.” All the expectations my mom had of me. Everything they thought I was, and which—now, in this room, in this bed, with her hands in my pants—I wasn’t.
We were in two completely different worlds, her and I.
As I sorted through my guilt, my hummingbird floated on a euphoric high. In a room with a girl that hums, I am not confident in my own decisions. I was loving a person I knew my family would criticize, and would criticize me for being with. But that shame had nothing to with her, and everything to do with my own ingrained fear and shame of self.
I sat down several feet away from her on the floor, my legs folded and my arms wrapped tightly around my body.
She laughed.
“Am I the first girl you’ve been with?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“That makes so much more sense now!” she exclaimed, then rested her head back on her pillow and continued scrolling through her phone.
Three months later I said I could do better, but—who am I kidding—you’re the best. I know that now: that walking through a dark night, under the moon, feeling my heart twinkle, is—special. That not everyone will call or text five, seven times a day. That not everyone will sing Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” outside the bathroom door as I sit on the toilet (even if it’s not meant to be romantic). That not everyone will listen to everything I have to say—with heart, soul, and mind. That not everyone will give me everything, or has everything to give.
When you left, my fear was that you’d find someone that had everything to give. Someone without daddy issues and abandonment issues, a mom that called them “retarded.” Someone who wasn’t sprouting from a culture of dysfunction.
At my kitchen table one night, I sat with head in hands in front of piles of homework, and wondered about her. Who taught her that? who taught her how to love with all her heart? I had never in my life seen that before. And then I asked myself: What couples had I seen? What relationships had I known?
I had watched my mother. Watched as she dated men in jail and sprayed perfume on letters. Waited by the door as she sat at the kitchen table and read five page letters. Letters from prison. Watched as she took marshy kisses from men who hugged with their eyes open. Men that didn’t really love her, but wanted to use her.
What love had I seen? My father. I watched as my father abused women my entire life, and then abused me.
I was so afraid of stepping into the world a stereotypical bruised girl with daddy issues, unable to function, and what did I do? I did what I knew. I did what I saw. I acted the way I had seen them act. In “relationships.” In “love”. Love, the best they knew. This self-loathing, proud, deceitful, aching love. I set out to do all I had seen.
When I was about six or seven my dad took me to a woman’s apartment. In the unlit parking lot he shifted the gear into park and said,
“Listen to me! There’s no more Eva, no more Mr. John, no more Ms. Violet. You understand?”
I nodded my head and clenched my small hands.
Inside, a woman with long, teased, fake hair and a bathrobe made me a pallet of blankets and pillows on the floor, and then proceeded into the bedroom with my father, closing the door behind them.
This was a companion to the love I had known: the shutting of doors.
My dad had perfected the art of abandonment. Emotionally, and sometimes physically. I watched him cheat on girlfriends, talk to other women—then come home and lie and use me as a cover. I watched him dance and Dougie in the living room after telling a woman for the final time that he just “didn’t want her like that.” That was what I’d seen, that was my template, that was what I’d experienced.
I’d never seen someone give their all to someone else in a raw, pure, loving way.
I watched my mom settle for a man that was willing to give her the bare minimum. And, while I knew this was wrong, I never got to see what was right. Instead, I saw my dad buy flowers and perfume, give women kisses, then cheat on them. I watched him surface love. He taught me about long hair, earrings, and designer jeans. I watched him lust over appearance. But I never saw him hug for thirty seconds. I never saw him kiss a woman’s hand or rub a woman’s feet. I never heard the words “I love you” slip from his lips.
But I did hear him laugh. Cheerfully, drunkenly, one hand holding a brown bottle of Bud Light, the other lilting toward the TV screen. Only to mock the singing Avant, gasping for air, chest extending and depressing, chasing after a woman down the street, because he only had “4 Minutes.”
Even though I don’t have that person anymore, in new relationships I think about where I went left. Where I denied myself love, and where I wasn’t loving. That moment introduced me to the better ways in which I can love myself, ending an old paradigm and commencing a new careful, thoughtful existence, both self- and outwardly loving.
With my new person, I work to be patient. I work to listen when he is grieving the death of a high school friend. To be kind when he shares his insecurities about a paunch stomach. To be loving when I am tired. To remember that this is someone who loves me, not hates me, is not my enemy. To give him all the kindness and love that he gives me.
I also remember to believe him when he says he loves me. To love myself, most importantly. To say kind words to myself when I am walking to the train station. To say kind words to the reflection of myself in a photo. To remind myself of my good qualities and believe in myself. To stop my dad when he tells me that I am crazy or weird. To remind myself that it is okay to be me when he is chastising me for not picking up the same sneakers as every other person at Footlocker. To remember that it is okay to be me in this body. To remind my parents that it is okay to be them, and that they don’t have to put me down for being their mirror.
Letting go is about leaving the person you once loved behind, but still taking away the good. Although I am not perfect, I have possibly learned that love is action. That love is progression. And that, each day, to get away from the old paradigm of self-inflicting and outwardly-harming love, I must work out of this old way to love myself—and give to those around me.