prime numbers
He is only 23. At 23 I was letting strangers ruin me in stairwells of dirty apartment buildings. At 23, I was re-mastering the skills I’d learned sneaking out of my mom’s house at 17: the art of tiptoeing down hallways, turning ancient doorknobs silently, opening doors on rusty hinges without allowing a single squeak or creak to escape. I learned to wake at dawn even through blackout curtains, in basement bedrooms, leaving at first light in last night’s makeup with heels in hand. Barefoot, I sidestepped sidewalk cracks and syringes and used condoms, unflinching. I scanned street signs and corner stores, triangulating landmarks to place myself in the sprawling city, sometimes incredulous at where I’d disappeared to the night before. At 23, Sunday morning meant wiping cocaine boogers onto the bottom of a taxicab backseat. I’d recite my cross-streets like a tired toast, To Franklin and Sutter! and then silently slide across cracked leather to sit behind the driver, where there was no risk of accidental eye contact in the rear view mirror. I’d pay with crumpled or, worse, sometimes rolled up dollar bills and shy away from the tinted window of the falafel shop, where I knew the owner would be getting ready for the day, placing pre-made sandwiches into the cold case with hands like my grandfather. I avoided my reflection at all costs, leaving mascara motor oil puddles pooled under my eyes until Monday morning, when I’d get cleaned up for work.
I think of myself at 23 and I know, I wouldn’t have been ready for myself now.
I would have tried. I did try, and I think A could probably see before I was able to that, as badly as I wanted to be in a healthy, serious relationship, as badly as I wanted to give him what he wanted, there were dark places I needed to go to first. There was a rock bottom I hadn’t met yet, stories I needed to write out of myself before I could distinguish ready from wanting. There was shrapnel from wars of my childhood that I needed to dig out from under my ribcage before I was able to heal. You can’t get healthy with just green juice and carrots and beets – heal is the root of that word that matters most.
I think now, many years later, that maybe A was right in how he ended things. I probably could have given him what he needed, but in doing so, would have been denying myself what I needed, which was maybe to remain broken long enough to figure out that I needed fixing. Rejection, like chicken pox, you can only appreciate in hindsight. His answer was you are not ready but all I heard was you are not it.
At 23, I thought there was something romantic about a mess, something beautiful about a bird with a broken wing. Glorifying your bad fortune made it better. Romanticizing sadness made it less sad. None of these things are healthy. Healthy is I will be good to you, and for you, and you will be good to me, for me. I still sometimes read sentences like I am a beast with a broken heart and I think, ooh, yes, me, but I’m getting better at resisting the pull of self-deprecation. I know now there is nothing attractive about wearing an Out of Order sign like a badge. At 27, my heart is Open.
He is 23, and he is wonderful, and wanting, and trying so hard to be everything I want. We are not each other is what I keep trying to tell myself. 23 year old me is not 23 year old him. But even if he can give me what I want, is it selfish to accept this love, this 23 year old devotion? By loving back, am I denying him those years of figuring it out, those precious years I so needed to turn into who I am now?
Just go with it, I am telling myself. Just let yourself be happy, for once, this is what you’ve worked for, I am saying, and it sounds right, and nice. But 23 year old me was also a liar, she was selfish, she was deceptively destructive, and just go with it sounds so like something she would say.
