Two weeks ago, I woke up empty like I hadn’t been in years. I know what does this, and thankfully, it’s mostly chemical. That's what I said to my friend, when she asked me what was wrong. She placed water in a cup beside me and blueberries on a plate next to that. My mind was going places I had recently told it to stop going. I had made a promise to myself and I was actively breaking it. I missed you, in an urgent way, in a way that made the distance indescribable. My friend is making me laugh now, and at a certain point, I have to tell her to stop. I tell her I’m not going to speak for a while, and I look up at the ceiling. The sun is coming through her window and I want to feel the wind. I ask if we can go outside.
The city is still new to me, so I let her guide me around. She takes my hand and pulls me toward things. She’s the kind of friend who I want to kiss sometimes, and push over others. I can tell I am annoying her. She doesn’t feel bad like I feel. She does actually, she just doesn’t right now. I know I am supposed to see my other friend that night. I send her a text to let her know the kind of state I am in. I say I don’t mind if she doesn’t want to deal with that right now.
My friend says she would love to take care of me. We plan to watch a movie and have some dinner. I know the movie needs to be one that could save me. She suggests we watch a favorite of hers, August in the Water (1995), directed by Gakuryu Ishii, a deeply metaphysical film about Izumi, a young girl who feels drawn to the outside forces of nature after a diving accident. If it’s your favorite, it’s gotta be perfect.
This will end, I whisper to myself on the train home. I know I have two Ativans at the bottom of my backpack. I know they will settle me out. I feel guilty about taking them, but everyone needs something, right? I try not to think about it too hard, but I also try not to lie about it. I count the cigarettes I smoke each day. Monitoring if it becomes more or less. It’s becoming more, so I stop counting. I drink a lot of water and I walk most places. I call my friends on the phone and I ask how they are doing. I’m telling you the good things I do, like reaching within myself to say the things that feel bad. The pain feels essential; it always has.
On my walk over to her house, I notice that the smoke has rolled in, or something is going on. I know the directions by heart now, and that strikes something in me, the familiarity. The light is off, and the trees look new. When she turns on August in the Water, I feel myself sinking. The sounds of the movie start to feel like they are coming from outside of her room. I am worried that I won't wake up tomorrow. I ask my friend beside me, Do you also think this might be the last summer we are alive? She shakes her head no, she doesn’t feel like that. When the girl in the movie takes her final leap, I notice she is free-falling. When the girl in the movie hits the surface, it’s hard like rock and she is changed from the inside out. Izumi is no longer tethered in the way she once was, and now she can hear things no one else can. I think, This is how it feels to fall in love, and by the end, This is how it feels to let go.
On your birthday, I call you and I cry. You have to remind me when I push too far that it is your birthday, and I promised I wouldn’t do this. Silence for minutes; I think things over quickly. This is really hard, you say. I think, Of course it is, but you seem unaffected. I tell you to drop it and you threaten to hang up the phone. Now I’m back to August in the Water and I can’t decide if I am lying or you are. Izumi said, Can you hear that? He said, Hear what?
When I was younger, I felt guided by a force through the trees. Long walks across the highway and then through the mess of young forest and small creeks. I always felt like I could see something, hear something in the distance. My legs are moving and I have no mind. When I find myself there, at the edge of the river, on the mountain's steep curve, I breathe slow and I remember. I remember the soft ways I learned to touch the world, and I remember what it felt like to know you. If I come back home, will you love me like you did when we were kids?
She rests her arm on my leg as we watch. Thank you, thank you, thank you for existing. She looks safe in herself and I love that about her. She has room to care for me and I love that about her. She shows me things I didn't know existed. She knows how to live.
In my fantasy, I care more about the way you touch me than I do about you answering my texts. I look for ways to detach myself and move into the other place, the place I find sometimes when I follow the sound. The place that shows herself when you rest on the floor and finally close your eyes. I turn my phone off, I take the train far, and I dream and I dream. The dreams are almost always still of you, and you are almost always looking at me. In my sleep, I feel attached to the earth, and when I wake up, I feel like I am fading away. Is it you who’s moving towards the light cast upon the water's surface? Did I swing too far and now you don’t know how to recognize me? The rain pours and you feel rested. This is the life you wanted, and I want to know how it feels.
