This Is What It's Like: An Eleven Block Walk On A Night In June

This is what it's like.

It's only finishing half of my drink because we're at a restaurant on the corner of your street and I can't risk drinking more than a few sips. It's being proud of myself for siting there and only giving an occasional fuck about it, but mostly none at all.

It's nearly tugging myself up the street when I want to do nothing more than run directly to your apartment.

It's feeling proud of myself with literally each step I take toward my home.

It's less than two blocks in and passing the place we would meet at to grab a lemonade for me and a grilled cheese for you and feeling satisfied and sad in seeing the chairs have changed, like it was done in acknowledgement of our parting. I imagine management holding a meeting about it and laugh.

It's another two blocks up and passing the mexican restaurant where you fidgeted around as you spoke with frustration over this business, your insecurities bright. Where, outside, you wrapped your arm around me, tugging me in to you, still on the phone with your brother, whom I already loved without ever meeting. The place where I passed on seeing you later and wondering if that was The Night.

It's the place right next to that where we ate the last meal we had together. Where I insisted on dining with someone else soon after just so it wouldn't look like you anymore.

If I turn my head away from this place and look to my left, my eyes land directly where we sat and had one of the most important conversations of our time together, and probably the realest. A place I take myself to almost daily because it is my favorite regardless of your existence. Proof that you, nor anyone, can ever take away anything good in my life as long as I claim my joy to be mine.

It is just a few feet away from the spot where I saw you last, the amount of tears on your face only outweighed by the amount of pain and confusion covering it. A place where I walk my dogs up and down and back again and don't think of it as I laugh over their antics and say hello to the people I've grown to know there.

It's hitting my block and remembering you just spent all of last week working right here and not once did you walk the three minutes to my door. It's hating that I don't get to hear about the experience.

It's coming inside and distracting myself with social media and seeing one of your best friend's face pop up on my newsfeed, and another on my instagram, because I'm finally now aware that I'm an artist and our communities are overlapping far too often. Namely because they are the same community.

And this is just one night, one walk home, less than an hour's time.

This is what it's like.

It's choosing myself over you, every day, every minute.
It's talking to God about you every morning, praying that He works in your heart daily.
It's walking on other streets, other blocks, turning left instead of right, purposefully.
It's walking wherever I damn well please.
It's listening to old voicemails from you every time another boy kisses me, your voice coming through my phone like a blanket wrapped around my heart.
It's knowing, absolutely knowing, you think my newly acquired, varied, and consistent success and happiness actually has something to do with you; being self-centered enough to think you can make or break my career or life, confusing loving someone with thinking you know what's best for them, instead of recognizing the truth or asking me about it.
It's the amount of things I'm dying to tell you, share with you, ask about, piling up so much in my head that I would never remember them all.
It's finally learning, in the most awful way, how to undo the belief systems that told me I couldn't have you and my career, that told me I wasn't good enough, that told me what I was supposed to do and be and say with you, that had cluttered and covered me. It's unlearning all of them at the expense of my heart.
It's caring, it's not caring, it's caring, it's not caring.
It's the beautiful recognition that every time I said my happiness is within me is actually the truth. I had only mostly believed it then, repeated it often to soothe you and motivate me, but now basking it it like God has plucked me out of the darkness and threw me into the light. Because He has.
It's every random, crazy, never-thought-this-would-happen thing that is happening now that tells me each day that I do not know the outcome.

It's not knowing the outcome.

This is what it's like.