01/05/23

I’ve stopped to rest after spontaneously walking much too far. My (your) bag is weighed down with a 500-page beach read, water, a Survivor towel I have no intention of using, and this notebook. Not mine, or yours, but ours.

It kind of feels like everything is ours now.

I keep hoping some cute guy will approach now that I’m dressed in your exquisite ensembles, your lipstick coating my swollen lips. Do you remember when the girls at school teased me because of my lips? This was before fillers were de rigueur, when Gwyneth Paltrow was considered sexy. They said I resembled a monkey, or worse, Angelina Jolie. You told me they needed to come up with better insults, that women would kill to have lips like mine, to ignore them because they were just jealous.

You hated how mean the girls at school were, wanted me to transfer. When I got into our dream school but decided to stay put since running away from my problems didn’t seem like a sustainable solution, I think you were disappointed because this meant more torment, more tears, more panic attacks under tables. But mostly I think you were proud. You cooed that I was very mature, and I’m realizing maybe I was. No matter how bad the bullying got, there was always bedtime to look forward to. You, me, and Dad sandwiched together as we caught up on Grey’s Anatomy, Snow Patrol and Tegan and Sara blasting in the car for months. Dad stopped watching after the Denny ghost fiasco, a storyline we rolled our eyes at, but that makes sense now.

Every ghost sequence in all of cinema that once seemed cheesy becomes viscerally painful after you lose someone.

When you find yourself hungering for ghosts, it’s comforting to know that some have succeeded in their mission.

Yesterday I watched Moulin Rouge. You know this, we talked about it while I was watching, but it feels important to put it down on paper. I watched Moulin Rouge because you wanted me to. I hadn’t seen the film in years, was hit by an insatiable urge the moment our plane landed, an urge I successfully avoided for 12 days. But yesterday I caved, and as the film ended, I understood.

As Satine dies – Satine, the character I’d fallen in love with as an 8-year-old, the one I wanted to name my daughter after, the one who coughs and wheezes at the end just like you did – she instructs Christian to hold her. To hold her like I held you as you lay dying. Her final words, the ones she uses all her withering energy to deliver, are a manual for her lover’s survival.

“Tell our story, Christian. That way, I’ll always be with you.”

I must have seen this film 100 times as a child, so often it annoyed every member of our family, ‘Come What May’ booming from the television at 8AM on a Saturday. But I swear, I don’t remember hearing that line before.

As I took in her words, I was glad you’d made me watch this film. You did the same thing with Wild, sending me dozens of signs I couldn’t ignore until the book was resting on our kitchen counter.

I was also furious.

It was too much, Mom. Too painful.

I was swollen when the film ended. Crying had become painful after half an hour of relentless, violent sobs. Tears spilling out long after I was certain I had no water left to give.

I feel more connected to you than ever (not the real ever, the ever that exists in the hell that is life after you). I’m not sure if it’s because I’m here, in your favorite place, or because every day, I insist on writing to you.

By telling our story, it seems you are always with me.

There are so many years I will have to endure without you. The enormity of it stuns me, makes me think I might as well get it over with and end it now.

So I focus on today. This letter. Your dress on my skin.

Our dress.

You have a sweatshirt that says ART SCHOOL DROPOUT. I discovered it this morning. I didn’t think it was possible to love you more, and yet.

Thanks for making me a writer. For always being there.

‘I am sorry I hurt you.

I am sorry you hurt you.

I love you so very much.

Please love you so very much.’

A poem you wrote me, a portion of which I tattooed on my leg. A poem written by an art school dropout for a writer who majored in acting.

Isn’t it ironic?

(A song Dad put on a playlist he made after you died, a playlist I listen to exclusively when I write to you. That way you’re in my ears, too)