Minnesota Goodbyes

Entry #64

I'm so incredibly tired. Lacy tried to convince me to go to Annie's with her and Sam, but just thinking about it exhausted me, so I made some excuses and fled with my backpack before she could question me more.

When I left, I headed out aimlessly before wandering towards the center of campus, so I ended up on the Mall. Well, I'm not properly on the Mall because the grass is still spring-soggy, but the weather has finally turned (winter swept away by warm sunshine), and tables have been brought out to line the sidewalks again. So I've been sitting around for a long time, a few textbooks and notebooks spread out in front of me like I care about studying.

I jotted down some notes and highlighted a few things in my books earlier, but my gaze keeps jumping up. A notebook can't contain me today.

Spring has always been my favorite season, even though it's flighty here. After a long winter, everything blooms again and tender buds start appearing and the heat hasn't turned oppressive yet. And more than that, people start poking out from wherever they've been hiding all winter.

So with all the students streaming out of buildings and milling about, I couldn't help myself.

Do you ever watch people and think about how many lives there are constantly rippling over each other? How we've each got our own disasters that we're dealing with, ones that we hide from each other? That's what I was thinking about. I was thinking how I was writing about blood and snow and how someone could ask me for directions, and they'd never know what a disaster everything is inside of me.

I don't even know why I'm thinking about that. Maybe I just don't want to be alone with my personal misery; I want there to be other people (people with smooth faces and bright smiles) that are struggling too. Not that I want them to be miserable, I just want to not be alone. I want to not be hollow.

But when I start scrawling down those words, the hope that I feel, something in me collapses. Because I can't feel that; I can't. How can I be allowed to look to the future when I've stolen it from myself? How can hope even exist for me?

That's when I knock over my coffee.

I've spent the last several minutes sopping it up, and my hands are shaking and there's a thick, panicky feeling crawling up my throat so I'm having a hard time. Everything has turned twisted and jumbled, and the words aren't spilling out in the right order anymore, and this mad dash to get them all out is confusing me, and it must be worse for you. (I took a breath there. You can see it in the shakiness of my handwriting, and I'm trying to go back and fix everything now.)

Okay. Okay.

The spring and the tables and the sunshine. They all lured me out, and I stopped at the coffee shop inside Walter to pay too much for their dark roast before heading back out to a tucked-away table. After I'd slid my backpack off and slumped over my textbooks, I thought about hollowness and hope. My hands were shaking then, too, because hope is such a daring and cowardly thing for me to feel. The perfect contradiction.

But when I go to write those things down, to let the words clot angrily on the page, I knock over my coffee. (Stupidly, I'd taken the lid off because it was too hot, and it gushed over my notebooks and textbooks, but that doesn't matter.)

But this. This.

My words and memories and everything drowning in coffee; that matters. Because I can only think about my memories and how this is the remainder of us, and it's drowning and I've destroyed us again, and something in me just splits apart.

The tears well up, and now they're dripping on the page and my hand claws around the corner of the paper, crumpling up the soggy edges even more. And in the sunshine where people can see me, I'm breaking down over a notebook that isn't just a notebook because it's the last piece of us and I can't even protect that.

"Are you okay?" A girl slides into the chair across from me, and through my blurred vision, I can tell she has a halo of yellow hair and a choking noise escapes from my lips. When I clear my eyes, though, I know it isn't Clair.

"I'm—" A hiccup. Palms pressed into my closed eyes. A single nod. (She's gone. Clair's gone.)

"That's okay." She grabs the napkin that was under my coffee cup and starts wiping everything up. "I started crying in the middle of my accounting final last semester. I'd stayed up all night studying, and I couldn't get my balance sheet to work, and I just lost it, right in the middle of the test. The guy next to me kept looking at me like I was an idiot, and that made me cry even more. Exams can do that to you." She smiles, but she has no freckles, and a wave of shame eats away at me.

Because she's not Clair.

And acid floods my veins, and there's a sickness in me that makes me want to push myself away from this girl, to run back to my apartment and cower someplace where no one can see me, and where the darkness swallows me whole.

Because I can't even accept the kindness of a stranger without thinking of her, without having Clair overlaid over everything I do and see and think. And how fucked up is that? I can't see this girl, this girl who has her own disasters going on under her skin, this girl who needs a person to see her. All I can see is Clair. Clair in the sunlight and starshine, Clair's bright hair and dancing freckles, Clair in front of me.

How can I do that to everyone? How can I want to be whole again if I can't even see a single fucking girl who helped me clean up my small disaster? She deserves better than me, but she helped me anyway and I—

"I'm so sorry."

Her smile quirks up a little. "Don't worry about it, honestly. You good?" She nods to my things which are already drying in the sunshine, and I nod, feeling so small.

My lips twitch. "I think I will be."

As she ambles away, I close my eyes. More tears come and when I try to blink them away, it does nothing. Because I can't keep seeing only Clair. Because maybe girls like this deserve my attention, too. Because maybe I've used up enough words and now

(This is so hard to write. I keep tearing up in between each sentence and I can't clear my eyes but it feels okay to cry now and I'm not really letting her go and I keep telling myself that. Because she was a person and I think I forgot and how do you forget that?),

now I need to look at other people because maybe that's the only way to deal with our disasters. Maybe we need to look outside ourselves and outside the dead because otherwise we forget that anyone else is human. And I can't stop crying because that feels like a betrayal, but I can't be this hollowed out thing anymore.

I'm so sorry. I'm not supposed to let you go and I'm not supposed to move on because I didn't go after you and I'm supposed to live your death but I don't think I'm strong enough to do that anymore and I don't

I don't want to anymore.

(I'm so fucking sorry. I can't— I'm having a hard time writing because I'm doubled over and people are staring but I just need to tell you, even though I'm dying and the words are choking me and snot keeps pouring out and this must be what dying felt like.)

You're everywhere and I can't accept anything else and it's destroying me and I'm poisoning everything I touch and I can't keep doing it and I am so sorry.

You deserve better than me, but other people do too.

Because if I don't keep moving on, I miss girls like that. But she can't be the only one. How much have I destroyed Lacy and Sam and Jay by hanging on to you? Should I sacrifice them for you? I would've once (and twice and forever), but should I? Look at what you've taken from me and somehow you consumed me (I let you, though. It's not just you because I wanted to be devoured and .)

I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but I can't do this anymore. I'm so sorry.

I'm so fucking sorry.