rot

the path to renewal

I.

i cried lifting my mother’s yellow kitchenaid from the counter and placing it into a big brown box. it seemed excessive, at the time. but there is a way objects begin to feel like evidence. evidence of a life you believed would hold. evidence of a version of yourself that required it to.

in california, jacaranda petals stuck to the soles of my shoes. the gardener played vicente fernández at eight in the morning, the radio cracking with static. the house filled easily with light.

i told people i was leaving because i had always wanted to. colorado first for work. then new york.

this was true.
it was also not the whole truth.
there are always at least two truths running alongside each other. sometimes more.

this did not make the leaving simple. change is often a process easily mistaken for loss.

II.

at LAX, an older woman in a flowered coat asks me for directions in spanish. her voice is quick, breathless, as if she is already late for something.

the only word i can produce is boleta. she searches through her bag, receipts and tissues folding over each other.

her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, secured with a thin elastic that has stretched out over time. i feel, in that moment, a familiar embarrassment that i grew up in los angeles and cannot respond in the language that shapes so much of it. she hands me her ticket, the paper slightly creased. i trace the printed letters and point toward the gate. it is the same gate i am going to. and she is seated next to me.

before takeoff, i notice the woman’s body is trembling and sniffling as she looks through photos on her phone. a small boy in a soccer uniform, then others, a larger family. grandfathers and grandsons, nephews. faces that seem to belong to one another. i wonder if she is also leaving a life behind.

III.)

i devoted my summer to living in contact with reality. in practice, it felt more like exposure therapy and less like enlightenment. there is great discomfort in facing the discipline of staying awake.

in the mornings, my dad and i drove to the river. his knee still stiff from his surgery, my body restless in a different way. the water was so cold it burned at first. we stood there anyway. dusty sage mountain air filling our lungs. the current pushing lightly against our calves. after a few minutes, neither of us could feel our feet.

“this is good for it,” he said, tapping his knee. i nodded, though my “it” was different.

i was trying to fall in love with the person i was becoming. i thought this might be a matter of chemistry or habit, of retraining the body toward pleasure that didn’t collapse in on itself. after the river, i’d go to the gym and lift weights to Gunna until my arms shook. i was looking for a feeling that would hold.

i worked long hours on my feet at literary events. folding programs, adjusting chairs, taking videos, speaking to strangers about their lives. mostly, i listened.

in my writing class, something became difficult to ignore. i kept writing myself into the work. people i knew appeared too, only lightly altered. my professor said, “you write what you know.”

i wanted to work on forgiveness. i had thought forgiveness would be an act of will, a decision made once and then carried out. it wasn’t. it took place in smaller gestures. i deleted a paragraph i had written about someone. i let a memory pass without tightening around it. i stopped rehearsing what i would say if i ever saw them again.

anger was heavier than i expected. it followed me into bed, sat at the edge of the mattress while i tried to sleep. i would wake up already mid-thought, heart slightly ahead of me.

forgiving myself was slower. i stood in the shower longer than necessary, water running over my scalp, waiting for some shift that didn’t quite arrive. the same thoughts returned, unchanged.

then, gradually, there were other signs. some mornings, i was hungry again. not just metaphorically, actually hungry. i ate standing at the counter: yogurt, chicken sausage, toast, fruit, avocado. the food was simple. i lost fifteen pounds and it felt like evidence my body was releasing something.

i started looking people in the eyes when i spoke. not always, but more than before. i dyed my hair back to the color it had been when i was little (then later cut it off).

i kept expecting to feel like her again, the person i had been before i was hurt. but she did not reappear. there was no intact version waiting for me.

it became clear that what remained was not recovery but selection. i would have to decide, again and again, what to keep and what to leave where it happened.

each night, the geese passed overhead. i could hear them before i saw them. i would step outside barefoot, tilt my head back until my neck ached.

IV.)

one afternoon in october, running through central park past the reservoir, dodging tourists and their cameras, it occurred to me that something had shifted.

i missed parts of what i had left. this did not contradict the necessity of leaving. both remained true.

there is something about rot that resists repair. something about unraveling that cannot be reversed.

and yet what breaks down does not disappear. it changes form. it feeds what comes next. the path curved back around the water. i kept running.