In Los Angeles, it rains. The light is a dim shout. I try to think about the year, but all that comes up is mist and aeroplanes, death and tasks. Tasks! Everyone is suddenly older. The kitchen always needs cleaning. They are lying to you and calling it marketing, calling it politics. Yesterday, I walked the outdoors all the way into the house. There was a gust blowing outside, and the wood floors creaked. Each time I call my brother, far away, in Northern England, he answers the phone in a minor key. He reminds me that life is hard - no, tough, and most people are not to be trusted.
He is right, of course, and he is wrong. I am trying to live in the kind of honesty that blows through glib, blanket phrases and asks all the complex, necessary questions, but this practised cadence between us does not allow for the ‘new me.’ I am trying to be myself, but I’m too used to locking parts of her away in old company. I keep thinking I might say something that will make us turn a corner and find the promised truth lands, but I am not yet brave enough. Instead, I nod a lot whenever he says ‘it is what it is’.
I have been nodding for years.
This faux-loving action and many others make me think of the split self, the constant negotiation of who needs what and when, and who can’t handle what right now and what we need to shield from whom - this is a death dance. I am flailing. This is me clawing for validation, for sameness, where none exists. How egotistical is it to always decide how someone will react and temper or adjust your personality so as not to offend or challenge theirs? Isn’t this a manipulative act, a kind of hiding? And isn’t it just tiring?
What are the things that we will never say/ask to/of the people we love? What are the grooves we are lost and hidden inside?
What are the things they will never know about us?
What are the ‘facts’ we will never challenge?
What are the secrets left untold/ undiscussed?
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