I’ve put off writing about May because I knew I’d fail in really capturing its weight. Can I just be honest in public and say it scares me to be happy? I guess with my experience with grief and loss, either very personally or through empathy and sympathy for my loved ones and through exquisite fiction, for all the times I’ve been gutted by loss, it magnifies my fear of being happy and feeling loved and loving. It’s knowing that every story has its end and the more I fall in love with a moment, a person, a friend, the more overcome with joy I am, the bigger of a hole it will leave.
I’m so happy it scares me. And it’s a constant struggle to be present. To not worry about endings. To let joy lap at my feet or crash into my heart and smile for the experience of it all.
In May, I celebrated the beginning of a marriage of two of my friends. One of whom I forged a fast and intimate friendship with at the end of 2013 when she and I had simultaneous #lifechanges. Me the ending of a long term mostly unhappy relationship and her the beginning of a happy engagement. She offered me her condo to serve as my literal shelter and then provided me the figurative version of shelter through her generous friendship. In just a little over a year, we’ve had countless brunches, traveled to Greece, and by the end of my lease with her, I felt restored. It was an honor to be a guest at her fifth and last world-touring wedding reception. At her wedding reception, I was reunited briefly with my previous roommate who also lived at the condo I mentioned. We were seated at the same table and she met Sugarface and I made loose plans to visit her soon in Chicago.
I had a sort of last supper with Treavor. We had tacos and sat outside on a patio and said “til next time” as he embarked on an international trip.
I had my yearly reunion with girls I used to share a Youtube channel with. We drove 7ish hours from California to Utah and climbed Angels Landing. (Link to the blog post down below.) I returned to Texas to have a two day work week before borrowing a Cadillac from District Drive and driving 9ish hours with Sugarface to visit his siblings in New Orleans. One thing not depicted on Instagram was sharing a take out meal with him in the parked car right outside of Houston. They say one way to challenge a relationship is to be stuck in a car together for long stretches of time. I’m relieved that we do okay cramped in small spaces and with achey backs and legs. Our drive was dotted with a few bridges, each one promising to be THE BIG ONE. I’m still not sure where that big bridge stands.
In NOLA, I met Sugarface’s siblings and a Katrina refugee beagle. They’re all kind and witty, which didn’t surprise me. We traded stories and I tried to commit their stories to memory. I ate one of Sugarface’s favorite sandwiches and introduced him to one of my college friends at brunch. Two full days enjoying the humid air and the magnificent oak trees flew by too quickly before it was time to drive 10ish hours through scary storms and back to Texas.
Not depicted on Instagram was the record-breaking rains we had in Texas and the long uncomfortable wait for beignets.
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