Give Yourself to the Water
“Oh, hun-nnnny.” He said it with a “u,” separating the word into two syllables as though Pooh has come to life off A.A. Milne’s pages. There was nothing else about him which reflected the round yellow bear, rather he’s a long bodied musician with thick black hair with the magical ability to weave itself between my fingers though I couldn’t remember placing them there.
Nick.
He’s calling because he saw the Facebook post I made after a double dose of Ambien which ended in me sobbing that my heart was dead and I’d never love or sleep again. I hadn’t slept in days, which could very well have lead to all parts of me being dead.
Nine hundred and eighty-seven miles away.
That’s how far Google Maps said Denver and Nick were from me. It had been a month since I’d heard from him and the early morning rasp around the edges of his voice left me with a feeling I’d forgotten I could have.
I piled another down comforter on top of me from its place at the foot of the bed and burrowed in. A renegade thought pushed through the tired fog; I wondered why the warmth from my heart beating and my breath coming too quickly wasn’t making smoke rings in the frigid air above my head as I listened to him whisper in my ear from the base of some western mountain.
“Why aren’t you sleeping, darlin’?” The week without sleep and the memory of him loosened the fountain holed up around my tear ducts. The water dripped out over the rims and a bit of steam rose off my face to meet the cold morning palelight pushing through the bottom of the black-out curtains.
I told him the same thing I’d said to Micah and the whole of internet earlier in the week. “I’m pretty sure my heart is dead.” I proceeded to lay out a wealth of evidence as to why.
It wasn’t the only thing that had me worried. Earlier in the week I’d learned that my future before me was a bit wobbly.
Dramatically, I expressed the weight of it all to Nick; my impending thirty-fourth birthday, my future, and the fact that my heart may very well be dead. He tossed an inspirational quote in my direction, “You have to give yourself to the water.”
My eyes rolled so hard I wondered if they were still in my head. I wanted to ask what water he spoke of and if the fact that I had only just learned how to swim two years ago would affect my ability to give myself over to it. There was too much metaphor in all of it for me to take him seriously.
“You have to let go and lean in, Melissa.” Sure.
Before he’d hopped a plane for Denver, he’d urged me to keep dating. I rarely take advice anymore when people tell me what to do, but this time I’d listened. Maybe to spite him. Unfortunately it had backfired.
“It’s been a bit terrible,” I told him, “I can’t feel anything.” I am a feeler who feels and having no feeling towards beautiful, smart humans is something I was having difficulty comprehending. My voice drifted off in a wail, as it all escalated into THE WORST.
And that’s when he said it. “Oh, hun-nnnny.”
The warmth of his voice heated up the air around me so my frozen breath smoke rings and steamy cheeks disappeared into the toasty embrace of his timbre. “Your heart is not dead,” he told me. He echoed the words Micah had spoken just the day before. “Your heart is not dead. You just need a nap.”
Is this something someone has posted on Pinterest or splashed across Tumblr? How do they know to say this?
He wasn’t sorry to hear my dates haven’t been going well. “To be honest,” and in my Ambien laden brain the words formed a little “tbh” and danced about in a word bubble over my head, “I’ve been kind of jealous until you told me they weren’t going so well.”
This bugged me. I clenched at the pillow tucked up under my head. I heard again his words in my head about moving on, finding great love. They sounded hollow. The idea that someone or something else could make me happy appeared to make him unhappy. Something settled into the bottom of my stomach and began gnawing at it.
This is not love.
A few days passed and I called Nick one night on the way home from a date. The burger was perfect and the man was brilliant. He was also terrified of me. I had eye flirted, smiling in his direction, lowering my eyelids and saying something about how handsome he was. Blushing, he’d covered his face with his hands, saying repeatedly, “oh, man. OH, man.” Sweet. Intelligent. And awkwardly obliterated with a compliment.
Nick answered the phone and promptly gave me the news that he was home. There was no longer nine hundred and eighty seven miles between us. There were about thirty. I wasn’t sure how to feel. His voice sounded different. Older. There was less longing there. When I told him about my date, he asked, “Why do you do this to yourself?”
Because he’d told me to? Why had I? What was I seeking? I didn’t have a good answer.
Friday. The sun was shining and I was thirty-four. A package on the doorstep from Shari’s Berries arrived with a note and a command. It was from Nick. I was to “smile, dance, love, and enjoy life.” I opened it and found mostly white chocolate covered strawberries sweating beneath their aluminum blanket. The gesture was kind and it had been a long time since I’d received a gift from a man. I recounted them in my head.
Pepper spray.
Jelly beans.
A dick pic labeled, “where’s Waldo?”
Aesop’s Fables.
This was the most gentle. (Though the pepper spray was useful and I was hella grateful for it.)
Later in the day, I sat across from my parents at lunch and my mother looked at me. “Where would you live if money were no object?” Without hesitation, I replied, “Southern California,” and then I looked inward with shock. I’d been applying for jobs in various parts of the country, homes to my close friends. California was not among them. I wondered at this response and then returned to my pizza.
Thirty-four was a long birthday. It was so long the thought of remaining in Chicago for the weekend on my own sent me spiraling. I spent three hours checking Southwest’s website and finally a cheap enough ticket popped up. I bought it and thirty minutes later was on my way to Micah’s. He promised a quiet evening of friends, wine, and a movie, but when I called him to let him know I’d be there in two hours, he said, “We’re goin’ to the CLUB tonight!” I groan inwardly. “It’ll be so much fun. We’re hanging with E’s girlfriends.”
I was already on my way to the airport. There was no turning back. On my thirty-fourth birthday, I’d be up in the club. I was already wearing a leather skirt which sounds about right.
Wrong.
It was a-line and from Ann Taylor. It hit right above my knee. My v-neck sweater plunged but it was also long sleeved and comfy. I was wearing black leggings and suede booties and a plaid, double breasted raincoat, jauntily belted at the waist with the collar turned up. I look like a cross between a 1940’s private detective and a the chic librarian of my past life.
I did not belong up in any club unless it had soft lighting, wingback chairs, and scotch for me to sip.
The taxi driver who picked me up from the airport discussed his fares with me. “Drunk people are just a louder version of their true selves,” he said. “The ones who are kind, always treat me very kindly. Then there are the ones who are awful,” he paused. I looked in the mirror and caught a look of disdain on his face. “I get a lot of those.”
The rest of the night was a series of little vignettes.
E’s friends, straight out of Mean Girls. Sipping wine and pom-tinis, they stared out at me and my scotch from behind veils of stick straight blonde hair when I tried to engage them in conversation.
The lanky twenty-one year old in the club line who asked me for advice about the guy who was treating her horribly and thanked me profusely while hugging me down the steps when I told her to ditch him because she deserved to be treated with well. “You deserve to be chosen,” I told her. “You can’t force that, but expect it. And expect respect.” I hugged her back and admonished her to be safe. Yep. Thirty-four means you are officially mom status.
The endless parade of men walking by when I get separated from Micah and E who grab my body. One slapped my ass, another grabbed a breast, one took hold of my face — looked into it and then said, “Nah,” and shoved it away from him. As if they had a right. To them I was cattle, they poked and prodded to see if I’d be up to their standards. I bear my teeth and shoved them off, throwing the weight of my small frame into elbows that push through until I have breathing space.
The young bro who cornered me against a wall and questioned me about dental dams until I grabbed Micah’s hand as he wandered by and made my escape.
And Micah saying, “Yeah, well everyone is drunk tonight…so…” The taxi driver’s words about people being louder versions of who they truly are echoes in my head.
I fell asleep thinking I don’t want to go to clubs again. I never want to spend another birthday or night in a club. The next morning we woke up for brunch. Micah’s favorite spot for burgers and mimosas. I had one and sipped on a second, but they were in for the long haul. The more they drank, the more clear my life became before my eyes.
This is not what I wanted. I didn’t want to choose this.
I thought about how I wished I was walking through a farmer’s market. I wanted to be buying a perfectly ripe tomato and squash and zucchini. A striped eggplant would go in my basket with a handful of basil and a giant red pepper. It would make some glorious ragamuffin version of ratatouille with the good olive oil I’ve been saving. I imagined one of those green cardboard baskets of tiny fresh strawberries and those tough green and pink striped stalks of rhubarb and the pie I could make with them. The crust would be fluent in butter. Those mean girls would gasp at all that butter. And this is what I daydreamed while they sit there making out and drinking mimosas.
I thought about sunlight and ratatouille and pie — what I wanted my life to be.
I text Nick and told him my thoughts. Part of me imagined he would feel some kind of joy at the fact that I was beginning to know what I wanted for my life. At least, knowing what I didn’t want seemed like progress. “I’ve been thinking about California,” I told him.
He told me he wanted me to be happy which felt like just another bullshit response but then he added something profound. This wasn’t an inspirational quote. These accidental words said passive aggressively resonated in my soul.
“I’m not going to be the answer to anything.”
He was right. Those words — they set me free. He wasn’t the answer.
No one is. No one will be.
I’d been building my life around everyone else for so long, I’d forgotten to create a life of my own. I made it through a divorce and hell and highwater and all the mudhills in between. I was thirty-four.
I had survived, now what?
It was then I decided it was time to build something deep and beautiful, fill it with things and people I love; remove the unhealthy bits, make it lovely.
I flew back to Chicago and, upon my return, slept sixteen hours. I awoke the next morning and something inside me was fluttering about which hadn’t been there for awhile — hope. My heart wasn’t dead. And I don’t think it needed a nap. It needed to wake up from it’s sleepwalking state and recognize what it truly wanted.
It didn’t need Nick or anyone’s permission to do it. I was ready to make a home of my own. A home built by me.
This morning these stories came flooding back to me as I wandered through the farm stalls at the Nashville’s Farmer’s Market, ear buds in, as I took in the scene. Words from a George Ogilvie song soundtracked my way through blackberries, a pie contest, and massive piles of golden zucchini.
“I’ve traveled through hell and high water to find a place that I thought to be. This feeling of hope is something I want to hold…”
I fill my brown leather backpack with the ingredients for the ratatouille I dreamed of a year and a half ago. Two perfect tiny eggplant, three plump heirloom tomatoes smelling just off the vine, yellow squash and zucchini, a giant bundle of fragrant basil the heat forcing their scent out and washing over me, tiny golden potatoes with a bit of dirt still sticking to their skin, and a painting from a man with a smile like the sun.
The painting is glorious. A rainbow palette has woven a lion and I see myself there. I have arrived. I am learning how to make this place my home. Bit by bit.
I shove it all into my bag and stop at a stand selling gumbo with pieces of french bread. The shrimp and rice scald my tongue but I lean in, scooping up bits with the soft bread. I’m sitting alone at picnic table completely invested in my meal when the rain begins. I consider going inside because of the blowout Katie had given me yesterday with my haircut. But the food is too good and the weather is too warm and when will I ever have another chance to eat gumbo in the rain while staring at a rainbow lion that looks like my soul? It seems the answer to that is likely never.
I laughed out loud. The smile remains. Nick was right. The moment will come when you must choose. You have to give yourself to the water.
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