Wherever You Are I Love You and Take Your Time

I’m lonely but I’ll be okay.

Someone told me once you were right around the corner, so it must be a big corner. That is at least what I tell people when I want them to laugh. When I talk about love in the way you do when you don’t have it, as some enormous joke, a funny misfortune, woe is as they say, can you believe it? That anyone might have such bad luck, that anyone might be me.

But that is not really how I feel.

Despite my profession, I am not always good at representing myself to other people.

I don’t think fate is the word I might use to describe what I think. What I think is that life, as any river, is erosive. I was 20 and very young when everything happened. I was younger still at 22 when everything else happened. It didn’t have to be the way it was, but I am not exempt from suffering. I could not move away from the river. Each lapping small wave builds on the back of another, until there is a space carved out to be filled. Until maybe only one person might be made to fill it. Not meaningless though, what I think is meaning happens, but often retroactively. I am saying I created myself and that self is for you, isn’t that romantic, lucky even? It didn’t have to happen this way but it did. I’m saying this is a love letter.

That probably seems strange, knowing we don’t know each other, but I know a little about you don’t I? I couldn’t leave the river, but I might have noted the tides, and I won’t say I didn’t make my choices. I’m actually trying to say the opposite. I’m trying to say I’m very aware of the things I used to do which I no longer will allow myself to do. The things that maybe worked when I was smaller, a little more desperate. Whatever space it made was what I allowed. Whatever is gone I saw it go. Because I won’t make those choices I’ll make new ones is how I’ll find you, which is why I love you. You already feel nicer than what was before. 

And, you know, absence takes on real presence, denotes real shape, real curves. If I want to, and I often want to, I can reach across the comforter, find the shoulder, then the bend, press my palm into the boundary of where I know you belong. Which is to say, I’ve made my bed so we might lie in it. Which is to also say, I miss you.

This started about two years ago, the missing. 

The way it would creep up on me as a certain kind of envy. Everyone had someone to watch television with, to take the subway home with, to go to good restaurants, to try new things. People are here to do that with, yes. I’ve always felt a sense of right and wrong when it comes to love. A uniquely nuanceless morality, the kind that doesn’t wish to open or yield. I don’t ever want to need you. I don’t know why, feels wrong, feels rude to admit to something like that. As if I’m saying to the people already here it isn’t enough. I sorta feel at times that if I admit this needing it will make me one of those people who think love, romantic love specifically, will cure all things. But I don’t think that, not remotely. I just know that, despite all my best efforts, some things won't feel better until you arrive. Until I know how to need you, to let myself need you, to let there be something good where once there was something bad. Like salve over a burn. 

Yes, you caught me. Some things I really need to have happen with you. And I do wish you were here. I really wish it. I can’t smell you, can’t kiss you, don’t know what you look like, sound like, talk like, I just know how you feel. I know the weight needed to satisfy the place of my longing. I know what it will be like when you get here. 

But you’re not. You’re somewhere else. To love you is to love this fact. To love it sometimes, even often. So wherever you are I love you and take your time. I’m lonely but I’ll be okay. Plus I already spoke of what isn’t there. No, I wanted to tell you about what is here. While you’ve been gone I’ve been collecting things to show you. This place wasn’t meant to be barren. I’ve filed it all away, lived an annotated life. Good books have been dog-eared for you to read. Yes, recipes too, but I’m not great at cooking. Television shows, I watch them now and plan already to rewatch them. The best ones, the good episodes. I’ll tell you when you can close and open your eyes. It’s okay, I hate blood too. I’ve written down the lyrics to fantastic songs, I’ve booked a ticket for us away. Not really, but I’ve bookmarked it on my computer. I hate travel. Will you go somewhere with me? Some of my sweaters are your size as I suspect some of yours will be mine the way all men's clothes are made for my sticky fingers. I never wanted it to be imbalanced. The river made that true. The keepsakes are kept. It’s all waiting, I’ve put it where I know you’ll be. In the place on many mornings I reach across to find. Yes, I certainly know the weight of you. No the space meant for you isn’t empty. I’ve been keeping it warm the whole time. 

The good thing too is the longer it takes us the more I’ll have to give, the richer my life gets and there is a knowing that your arrival too will prompt a swell in fortune, that you too all this time have things you will want to show me. And for all that I could want, I love that this is true. That the time we spend apart is equally important to the time we’ll come to spend together. So I mean it. I wrote you because I want you to know I’m making it nice and that I miss you but that missing is not in need of any urgent fixing. Wherever you are, I’m sure it’s good, I’m sure I’ll hear about it soon. Which is as much as we can hope for. 

And listen, okay, you’re gonna do you’re thing and I’m gonna do mine. I know this because I know myself, because I would not choose it any other way. Because a long time ago when I was young I didn’t choose it that way and it changed me. It made me someone you could love. I don’t know what happened to you out there, not yet anyway, but I’m sorry. I hope it was different from what made me, but regardless, I’m not gonna be like that. 

I love you, I already love you. 

The other night after two glasses of champagne I put my hair up and the teeth of my clip sunk into the fine hair at the crown of my head. The updo was beautiful and I wished you were there to see it. And it made me miss you. I wished you were there to see it. I took a photo though ask me about it. But this space next to me has always belonged to you. Not fate, but something like it. A making like I said, of sorts, our making. 

I’m not in any rush, pick up some good books on your way home. I don’t know any good restaurants yet so keep that in mind. And if you’re going to be late you shouldn’t come empty-handed. Just a story or two is enough. A postcard or a photograph. I’ll stay up for you, at the very least, I’ll leave the light on. Dinner is on the stove. I’m no chef I said, but only because I’m waiting, because I like to think it's something we could learn together, because there is a together waiting for us when you decide to turn up. And don’t worry, really, again you can take your time. I’m not going anywhere. I rarely ever am. If anything, as of late, it seems like I’m almost home.

Funny. 

There's this corner on my block that when you turn the wind in winter whips severe and sharply. Maybe that's where it will happen. Maybe not. 

But regardless I’m not worried, I like the cold, and while this corner may seem big, I know my arms are bigger. 

I’ll catch you real soon.

Songs for imaginary lovers

Slowmaxxing: a term popularized by @robyns_quill is about taking your time and the way we can enjoy and appreciate life when we really look at it. My version of living slowly has involved mulling over the things I consume for longer. Here’s what has been circling my brain:

1. The entire movie La Chimera, but especially this shot:

   

2. This quote from the Discussion Transcript with Ada Palmer: I have graded more than 500 undergraduate papers about why Plato is an idiot and no one would ever behave in the Republic the way he has the people behave in the Republic. I have graded maybe 15 brilliant undergraduate papers about why Plato thought people would behave that way in the Republic, and the differences between Plato’s worldview and Plato’s psychology and our own, and why he thinks this thing that to us seems wrong. That to me is the much harder kind of critical thinking, the empathetic kind of critical thinking that doesn’t criticize but reads carefully, critically, prudently and with empathy and connection to try to understand the other side, which I think is something that doesn’t just apply to the academic world, doesn’t just apply to how we write a paper in a class. It applies to how we read a blog post, how we judge a New York Times article, how we evaluate when someone has posted something on Twitter that they want us to hate or like to hate, as Twitter often is, whether the empathetic reading, which is the really challenging critical element, is there.

3. This piece of art, which I found via Tumblr user Body5000 though I do not know the actual artist (please let me know if you do):

   

4. On Seatbelts and Sunsets by Hanif Abdurraqib: “God, it is just us talking now, and I worry about everything I can’t control. God, can you tell me how much longer I’ll get to be alive and in love. God, I am sorry for the times I didn’t want to stick around. God, there is a scroll of things I have taken for granted in order to survive this long, and it is endless. And it is maybe too late to want to live forever after everything I’ve seen and done. But there are freeways between me and the person I love, God. And I don’t have enough time to travel all of them. I worry that I can’t bend them all into a giant circle from where I begin to where she begins. God, I don’t know what I believe in except the shrinking of distance.”

5. This quote from Richard Kind in his Vulture interview:

   

6. This video ASMR that puts me to sleep each night and has helped me write 50,000 words (at least) during the day. I find myself wanting to listen to it the way you want to listen to your favorite song and I suppose that nature is indeed my favorite song:

7. This quote about Sharon Olds

   

8. This tweet for some reason!

   

   9. Lastly, this man, on twitter, who went viral for tweeting a series of photos showing the notes he’s taken for his self-teaching of math. And the conversation it has sparked which he has encouraged and been extremely helpful, about learning as a hobby.

   

   

   That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters

   Here is My Twitter and my Instagram is @chloeinletters  where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for.

   My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go. 

   My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me 

   My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here! 

   Here’s to you, wherever you are, however long it takes

   Chloé