When Love is a Question

My love is a question. It seeks answers of understanding, tolerance, interest, amiability... and initiative, bounded by consideration and careful wisdom.

My love is a question and the answers are multiform. They come in words and music, in images and touch... in action, or inaction.

My heart exalts when it is answered artfully. Some eyes reflect comprehension of the depth and tone and timidity of the question I'm asking. Some eyes, some hands, some lips... in some moments... answer me firmly, and my world is, for a moment, resolved.

Some times, eyes are averted, hands fidget, lips purse and strain, and the answer is feeble or flinches away. It is a symptom that love has become sick.

Some times it falls to me to cut through ambiguity and excuses, to stand broad and stolid and confront plaintive cries of "I don't know!" by answering the question for myself, and answering it, "No."

My heart staggers when I stand grim in the bloodiness of a question silenced; when I have at last taken some answer as final, and resolved to ask no more.

I Like Being This Person.

Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?

And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.

We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.

But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.

I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.

Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.

Wait... What happened?

And then, everybody laughed.

You're healing, he said.

Okay, crying. Crying again.

I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.

I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.

Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.

Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.

We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.

With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡

We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.

I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.

And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.

And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.

I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.

My Stars want me to stay here with them.

Everything is different now.

And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.

The Rainbow

It's been a while since I've come back to write here, but maybe it hasn't been as long as it feels like. For a while I was thinking from time to time I should come back just to mention that the heartbreak is fading and although the challenge of trying to get by here on the budget I have available for it is a big one, I think I'm getting more of a handle on it.

A couple of weeks ago, I think on the day I last wrote, now that I think of it, I applied to Rev after looking through some articles on more unconventional ways to make money, as opposed to a regular hired job. Rev is a captioning and transcription service and work space; they hire freelancers who can use the online tools they provide to claim jobs as they come available and type captions to videos and audio from clients. I went through some testing and was approved to join.

It's been exciting to have something I could do with my hours from home to make money on my own terms, and although I'm not currently earning at a rate which is going to solve all my financial problems, it's work that I like and I think I can get better at it over time.

Yesterday just for example I wrote captions for a weird music video, and started work on an hour-long documentary I'll need to finish today. I get exposed to a lot of different media I probably would never have watched on my own, and the variety makes this job interesting. I'm glad to have something that takes advantage of my precision with words and good typing speed, although in this case, it's precision in listening to hear exactly what words someone else used, not choosing them myself.

As often happens, I've found solace in love from those around me by deepening my relationships into romance. There's a degree to which I feel uncomfortable about that, since it's happened so many times before it feels like I'm turning predictable or something, becoming a cliche. It's frustrating that that meta-awareness messes with my appreciation of the moment, because the thing itself is beautiful anyway.

So once again I've had a wonderful time talking endlessly to one of my friends and finding that there is potential for us to be closer, and it was all appropriately delicious. I've drawn a few pictures, hit by inspiration from the new relationship energy and finding with pleasure that the skill I've accumulated over the years makes it much easier for me to depict what I want to reasonably well, and I've been producing work I can be proud of in just a couple of hours.

The thought to see if I can try to market that as well does come to mind, alongside the long-standing intent to try to set up an online shop for my macrame bracelets. The way things are going so far, it'd make me an all-around crafter-freelancer, and you know what? That could be pretty cool.

Sunday night this week I pulled an all-nighter hanging out online with this relationship that's changing colours in my life, and so yesterday I had trouble staying awake in my classes. I gave up and went home to sleep after the first two. I slept again last night, although not ideally long, and walked to school today listening to a variety of renditions of "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". There was one instrumental version in particular that I reflected would sound just about perfect if I could have added the sound of rain into it, for an atmospheric connection to the sky and fields as they are, I suppose.

Well here's where it gets a bit strange, because not five minutes later it started raining. I'd finished the song by then, but the timing was remarkable anyway. I had been admiring the many colours of silver in the clouds, as there often are in Ireland, and it's not as though it seemed unlikely for it to rain, but just that it happened right then, as opposed to fifteen minutes earlier, struck me as somewhat uncanny.

But what was moreso was when I looked up and almost jumped to see the change in the sky; where there hadn't been not five minutes before when I took a photo of the lovely silvers in the clouds over the green field I was passing, there was a rainbow, full across the sky and not the slight half-bow I'd sometimes seen in rain in Canada.

Over the next little while, the rainbow got brighter and brighter by the moment, not only a full arc across the sky now, but apparent right to the ground on both sides, even casting its colours in front of the distant hills on the horizon. It looked as though you could have guessed to within a dozen meters or so where exactly it seemed to touch down on one side. Looking on with awe, some of the old legends of searches for leprechauns' gold made a lot more sense all of a sudden.

For a period of not more than ten minutes or so, the rainbow brightened and brightened, clearer and more vibrant than I had ever seen a rainbow in my life, with a second, dimmer arc beginning to show outside the main on the sides, and then began to dim and fade away. I caught a few photos of the rainbow before it was gone, and the sky returned to gray as the rain continued lightly for a while longer and I went on my way toward the college. The whole of its appearance may have been contained in a quarter of an hour.

I thought back to King of Dragon Pass where the appearance of a rainbow was considered to be among the best of omens, and to other similar things, and felt rather a lot as though the sky had smiled at me, 'like forgiveness' in a way, I remember thinking. There's a certain cheshire-cat-ness to it now, looking back, that leaves me feeling curious and portentous. Perhaps it smiles on the progress of my new relationship, or to reassure me that my efforts are good enough, for now; or that I may be soon rewarded for not giving up on my time here. Who knows, but there is that in me that wonders, even while its being silly and seeming misguided is also felt in my thoughts.

So there, anyway, is the rainbow which greeted me this morning, and the trend of my activities these past few weeks. Health and fortune to the ones I love and to all those who love me, if I may spread it out to them, for their fortune is also mine after all.

And good day.

Dear Memory: A Love Story (The End)

There was a time that we were lovers,
through March, April and May.
I went home in the summer,
though I wished he had asked me to stay.
The ocean was very wide,
and it got in our way.
So I came back from the other side,
to see how much had changed...

The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Today.

He always was a gentle man.
He is a gentle man still.
He met me at the train station,
like he'd said that he will.
We had a long, awkward conversation,
head to head, eye to eye.
I had lost his heart some time ago.
I may never know why.

The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Goodbye.

Does he regret
the time he loved me
today- I promised I'll be okay,
so I'll be okay.
Though I loved him- Maybe I'll hear from him,
and I can be his friend,
who loved him.

The End.

Dear Memory: The Games You Play

Hi, Eoin.

I feel very close to you today, dear memory. I have been listening to your voice. It has been... over five months, I think... since the last time I listened to your voice, and that sound, so familiar, carries an amazing weight of nostalgia now.

I know you must be doing okay, for now, because you're part of a podcast now. Maybe later, I will come back and add a hyperlink to it into this post, but not yet. Not today. I'm a little afraid that you'd see the back-link somehow, and find me here, watching you, and that that would make you uncomfortable. So as much as I would love for you, for this person you are now, your voice still familiar, your jokes told with the same friendly sass... but not to me... As much as I might love to see you turn and see me watching you, I do not rustle the branches. I stay quiet and hidden and permit you not to be any more likely to notice me than you already are, for I've posted links to my blog sometimes on Facebook and I think once, the preview line visible from there held your name.

It's so good to hear you laughing again. And Gearoid and Troy, too. I miss hanging out at your house, listening to you banter with them like this, at home and happy and comfortable. I miss listening to you talk about the games you love, and shows you love, and things you do. I hope I will one day be welcome again to stand awkwardly at hand, listening. Trying sometimes to find something to contribute by saying. Even feeling self-consciously out of place there, but still allowed to be there, listening, enjoying the stories... and talking to you about them afterwards.

Maybe someday I will play games with you again. I hope so. You're so fun-loving. It's... relaxing just being around that, sometimes. It... was, I mean.

While looking through Steam today after nabbing a game which was released for free as an anniversary promotion, I stumbled across something I had remembered only dimly for some time. The Beginner's Guide... And I remember, like vision, like the physical world coming back as a dream fades. I remember sitting and laying on your bed and exploring it, rapt with attention. I remember the prison cell which ostensibly would originally have trapped the player for hours. I remember the trick-door which kept coming back or something, although I'm not sure I remember the trick to it. I remember three figures with blank faces, asking questions about how I got there, and how to move forward. I remember a huge room full of bubbles with comments in them. I remember a combination lock without any clues to the combination. I remember a man standing at a podium. I remember a red curtain around a stage, and a gun which shattered the scenery into blank whiteness... I remember a house full of little things to fix. Little chores to keep up, maintenance to be done. I remember liking that part. It seemed... peaceful.

I remember sitting with you and speaking aloud back at the narrator about the point I thought he'd missed. I remember... rising above the maze. Do you know, Fish...? I still keep that screenshot among my wallpapers. And whenever I see it, I think of you.

I listened to your podcast while I took a long walk today, and bought some ramen. Many times, I laughed at your jokes. Not just yours, Eoin, I mean Troy's and Gearoid's too. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're talking about things that you love. I'm glad that I can listen to your voice without getting in your way. If you keep doing this, then there may be a way that I can have your good humour and your cheeky cleverness in my life even if you don't want to talk again when I land.

When I land. Dear memory... I haven't written this here yet. But last week, I got my first offer of placement back from an Irish college. Dear memory, the only condition set out in that offer is that I successfully finish my diploma and hand in my transcript by May 30th. Dear memory, I don't even have to get good marks in my classes, I only have to pass them. Dear memory...

I am coming.

I hope I will get more than one offer. I hope I will have a reason to contact you and ask which one I ought to choose, a lapse in the silence that's existed between us for more than five months. But even if this is the only choice I am given... I am coming. It's gone from "hope" and "maybe" and "trying" to something more solid.

The day after I received the email, I woke up in my bed, and squirmed gradually to consciousness, and my first conscious thought was to repeat, in my mind, I could buy my plane ticket today. I'm going to Ireland. Where to head after I land may not be set in stone, but I have my confirmation now. There is at least one answer available to that question. I'm going to Ireland. Coming to Ireland. I'm coming back, and I'm coming for you. It sings in my heart so intensely it turns almost to a shriek when I think about it. Like a perfect tone, sweet and high and pure and so loud it could shatter glass.

There is still much to be done first, but the greatest hurdle, the most doubtful issue has been cleared. The rest is details. Details which will fill my days, my nights, my schedule, until mid-August.

And this is why I felt it was now an acceptable time to look through your Facebook page again, and see a couple sorta recent pictures. And I found your new podcast there, and I've been listening to it. It's close enough now, somehow. It doesn't feel distant and stalkery the same way it did once before, because I expect I may have cause to actually be in touch within just another two weeks.

It all comes down to this... and now I hear you laughing and joking with your friends, just like you used to. And something in me that had worried that you might be somehow a very changed person now, someone less likely to like me... something of that fear melts away. You will very likely have changed somehow... but you laugh the same. In your most recent pictures on Facebook, your smile is as I knew it before I left. That's Eoin alright. And that's something right about the world. Something happy. Right now, it must be night time in Ireland, though it's yet early evening here. Goodnight, Eoin. May you rest healthfully and wake happy. I love you.

Dear Future: Remember to Be Awesome

This post isn't written to Eoin, it's written to me, Serp, in the future when I look back over my blog, with someone else or alone. Hi, Serp.

I've been doing pretty sweet, despite a long stretch of repeatedly very little sleep. Today, I found myself listening to a very cheerful song I like on repeat, and went a surprising length of time without getting sick of it. Instead, I built a happy fantasy around the song. And like last week, I decided that instead of chiding myself for my fantasy and the expression of something I cared about but might never achieve... I would see where I could follow it. In this case, I followed it into the big empty football field near my house where I could expect other people not to hear me talking to myself, imagining something delicious, and deliciously plausible, if not necessarily likely.

I paced, and thought, and recited, arranging the words of a speech. And then I turned back to the song and practiced singing it, until I got through the whole song once or twice, along with the short speech. I came back home, and wrote the speech down.

Serp, I don't know whether you made it back to Athlone or wound up somewhere else. I don't know whether Eoin is with you, or whether he ever will be. But no matter where you are, or who you're near, remember how delicious that idea was. Go back and reread it, if it helps. You have the capacity to dream beautiful dreams. And I know that someday, if you keep trying, you will be able to make some of them a reality.

Maybe the plot I schemed up today doesn't work for you where you are now. Maybe you've seen a flaw in it that I don't see. If this particular one never happens, that's alright. You can think up something else. Something better. Just... remember that it's not a waste of time to dream beautiful dreams. It's not. It gives you ideas about how to get to them. You just have to be willing to look at them in the right way. You need a little hope for a brighter day. A little love to find the way.

And remember the vlogbrothers. Remember ToadyOne. Remember Elon Musk and Eliezer's Harry and Dave Moreland and all the other people who have inspired you. Remember that you don't need to be afraid of them. Follow their lead. Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

Dear Memory: Back and Forward

Good morning, Eoin. I've had a pretty crazy week. If I were to presume I were bipolar, I would conclude that I have begun to shift back into the manic side of my cycle. I have slept relatively little recently... Although, naturally, it doesn't help that yet again I am in a house where I have grown to resent some of my roommates, and just about every noise I hear from them, which frequently happens late at night.

On the upside, much of the effect comes from happier things. I am attending more of my classes now... Although, still not all of them. I have grown closer and more intimate with some new friends, and have done some batches of writing. A sequence of three posts here which were explicitly about rationality for once. I plan to repost them at LessWrong (I can do that, apparently; it's a community blog now, with many contributors). A short story, a little over 900 words, which captured an idea that I got caught up in my head while I was out walking. I have been out walking a lot again, too. That also feels good. I have been very happy with the success I had in capturing and conveying out the idea. I got a prettier story out of it than I expected. It's viscerally violent, and yet transhumanist and optimistic.

I joined a bunch more Discord servers, and have been actually spending some time discussing things with some people who confuse and intimidate me with their high standards and down-to-business modes of communicating. I have been managing to resist the temptation to stop and ask for reassurance that I'm actually wanted there. Partly because one of the most no-nonsense of the bunch told me frankly that I was too valuable to discard just because I was weird, and was also very open about being annoyed with me a couple of times. I haven't always understood why. But he's not making a habit of hiding it if he has an issue with me.

Besides that, I find myself thinking... If I were to ask, and he told me that I was appreciated and welcome, it probably wouldn't help me for very long. If he were to tell me I wasn't, or that it was a stretch, it wouldn't help me at all. It may simply be that he projects an attitude of such greater knowledge, and engrossed preoccupation with greater and more important affairs, that I find myself instinctively assuming that it would genuinely be a colossal waste of his time. Or perhaps, more accurately, I would expect him to find it annoying again and get another minor swat to the ego because I ought to know better. And I kind of do.

I still think it's still important I have friends I can be vulnerable with, away from this high-tension scene. And again... I do.

I finally submitted my college applications to five of the six ITs in Ireland that I had planned to. Just to wait for responses now, on that front.

I think of you often. I have often had trouble getting a half-hour of work into my applications, because facing the task brought you to mind as thoroughly as ever. I imagine singing duets with you. Dancing with you. Cooking with you. Walking with you. Do you know what I remembered, the other day?

When I first showed you my little facial expressions ice breaker game, and you decided to read your subjects first, and the first one was "OK Go". And I think I must have looked magnificently baffled. "What? I thought you were going first...?"
Do you remember it, Eoin? Ah, such fun and silly times.

In... about three hours, at 10 AM, I have a Law test to write. I actually spent a couple of hours studying for it, for once. Although, to be fair, we have a really good practice resource for this course, in the form of a bunch of content quizzes with questions of exactly the same sort as will be on the exam, which auto-grades itself and can be taken as many times as we might wish. We also get a single page of notes we're allowed to bring in with us. So I did all of the quizzes relevant to the content, and I took notes on all the questions I had a hard time remembering the right answers to, or got wrong the first time around, and the principles on which they were based.

I haven't slept, although I am tired. I might actually manage to get some rest for two of those three hours, and then more after the test. I tried laying down, but my back was stiff and sore and my mind not particularly conditioned for sleep. I had been searching through my paperwork, looking for documents relevant to filing my taxes... That may have had something to do with it. Or, then, perhaps it had less to do with that than some of the things I found that had nothing whatsoever to do with tax.

I still keep scribbed notes and poetry, and especially drawings, from many years ago, even some of the ones that just seem dumb to me at this point. I happened upon a piece of writing that wasn't fiction. It was a little bitter reminder of just how insane I've been, at my worst... the times when I felt myself and my control, slipping, slipping. If we do get back together, and I read you these blog posts... Remind me, sometime, to read you my notes from The Day Everything Changed. It is not a pretty story. It is not a proud story. But it is a true story. And I remember hearing you voice your fears to me once, when I was in one of the worse fits I ever had while I was with you, that you weren't good for me. That you might be making things worse.

I think, perhaps... you will not think so anymore, after I tell you a story, not from memory, but from a record written on the same day, and never edited or changed since, about how bad it really was, once, quite some time before I met you. And yet, still not really all that long ago. You cannot realize how far I've come, until you can see the depths where I've been. I have to admit that I had almost forgotten how very little time has passed, and how truly awful it used to be. The feeling of slipping, slipping... and being afraid, a kind of visceral, in-the-moment dread, that I might not be able to maintain control of my own actions. Not even in my usual fallback manner of shutting them down entirely.

It's amazing to me how far I've come, these past few years.

Dear Memory: A Little Return to Code

Hi, Eoin. Hi, blog which is a symbolic representation of the potential of talking to Eoin.

I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.

I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.

I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.

I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.

Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.

I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.

I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.

Dear Memory: Night Vale and Daytime Dreams

Dear memory...

I have been bingeing on Welcome to Night Vale, as well as the Sims, lately, as I have shifted into a state of rest and reluctance to apply myself to anything. However, and perhaps unusually, I am mostly enjoying the rest, and the opportunity to let my mind and body be comparatively still. Perhaps, I have been overextending myself recently, and it is important to allow myself a time to pull in on myself.

I think of you often. Night Vale reminds me of you... since, of course, you were the person who originally showed it to me. I am up to episode 74 now, and when I heard the announcement describing the dog park, repeated almost exactly word for word from the pilot, I went back and listened to part of the pilot again to confirm that it actually was almost exactly word for word.

I remembered hanging out in your bedroom. I remembered commenting that the segment featuring advice to parents while bringing their children to play in the scrublands had some very genuinely sensible advice in it. It felt strange to remember so vividly a thing that happened about three quarters of a year ago, but then... My memories of my time with you are vivid. More vivid than usual, and my memories and imaginings are usually... vivid. Emotional intensity, I am sure, has a significant amount to do with memory formation and retention. That which a person feels strongly about, in any way, their brain will register as important, and reinforce.

You have always been important to me.

I think of you much, recently.

I have had strange dreams, the past couple of days (I had four days off of school in a row, and started sleeping during the day again; I have been unable yet to stop sleeping during the day, and this has contributed to my recent retreat into myself). Twice in a row... I think... My dreams involved getting to know a person, and winding up lying with that person and kissing them. The person was not you. The person was different in each dream, and represented a real person that I recognize, and sort of know, and have sort of liked, but not someone at all close to me. A YouTuber I occasionally watch, and a classmate I never really talked to much, but had a slight crush on for a time.

It feels strange to have my dreams repeat themes so strongly like that. I miss kissing you. I miss kissing anyone, really. It's been quite some time since I have. None of the people I know that I would want to kiss and feel comfortable trying to do so are here in London with me. Perhaps the dreams are simply an expression of desiring that kind of physical contact again. And yet, there was something about both of them that seemed as though they were trying to retell the story of my meeting you, and becoming involved with you. In one case, I asked the dream-partner to let me have a moment to process my feelings, after I had somewhat unexpectedly wound up kissing him, and I thought about you. In my dream. And whether I was okay with this, given how much I still miss you.

I have been very passive lately, but aside from a sense of slightly concerned pressure about an assignment which is due in two days, I'm not worried or upset about it. I was working hard for the first few weeks of the term, and we really didn't get much of a winter break at all this year. It's been very tense and active at school since the strike ended three months ago. It seems I am well able to forgive and tolerate myself taking time off to just relax for a while. I believe with some quiet, non-dramatic confidence that I will be able to pick up and start working again, once it becomes necessary for me to do so to keep pace with the course and continue to perform at my high standards for myself.

When I listen to Welcome to Night Vale recently, I snarl and giggle more often and with slightly less care to ensure no-one is close by to notice. I feel fairly peaceful with my own acknowledged, adopted, personally delighted in creepiness. I feel happy about my friends, who know that it is part of me, and love me no less. I have one person in particular who tells me that they really value the fact that when they talk to me, some of the things I say reflect a darker side to the world that they don't notice until I point it out. But he appreciates being able to see it, like a shape on the other side of the water, behind the clearer reflection of his own light, his own experience, his own face. Enlightening, endarkening, as he says.

It is... beautiful... to have contexts available to me in which this tendency of mine; although it arises quite naturally out of my perspective, and simply sharing the way I see the world and what things mean to me; is acknowledged and appreciated as a service.

I miss you. I hope that you are well. I look forward hopefully and with quiet, distant excitement to the time when I can speak to you again.

Dear Memory: Tempted Closer

My plan to beast through my Cost Accounting quizzes has been met by an unexpected obstacle. When I logged onto the publisher website to study again, I discovered it. Access to quizzes five through ten had been taken down unexpectedly, while apparently the course administrator adjusted which questions from the question bank would be on them.

I had not been confident I would do well charging ahead anyway, and it was taking a lot out of me to try. After all the recent stress I had been under, I was not altogether unhappy to surrender to this sudden enforced change of plans. Instead of working on Cost Accounting quizzes, I worked with my team on the finance project in a more relaxed state, knowing I could give as much time to it as the task might take, and enjoyed laughing with them while working.

Again I feel the strange sense of suddenly being surrounded by more reasonable people. In this case, people I can work with, who are willing to work with me. Even though I do wind up doing a lot of the primary processing, having company who are making useful comments makes a great difference. We sent one of our number home, because he was too sleep-deprived to be of much use and had only insisted on dragging his body to our meeting out of a sense of duty. He blessed us quietly for being so understanding when we insisted he should go sleep instead.

I have also spent long hours and majorities of days playing The Sims 3, and have been quite surprised that I continue to find it so engrossing despite bugs that make it through ErrorTrap, a mod which fixes most known glitches. I am not sure I'm done on my stint of it. But, yesterday (I suppose; I am writing at 1:30 or so in the morning after waking up feeling restless and alert after only a couple of hours of sleep) I took time out to do productive things; a bit of shopping, put away the laundry I'd done the day before, and pushed myself back to the gym.

I re-listened to Irish podcasts about the federal budget, and found myself thinking so much of you that I stopped focusing on them entirely, so I switched to listening to The Seldom Seen Kid again instead. My heart whirled and I felt and fantasized many different things, and snarled a little to myself while I thought no-one close enough to notice at the almost painful intensity of my want for you, and of how it might feel, when I see you again, to fear that that meeting may be the only one I ever get, if I present myself poorly...

As I thought might be the case, I performed better at the gym for taking a bit of a longer break, particularly on the strength elements. I upped my weights on several exercises and powered through them happily enough after willingly jogging (or something) my cardio for 20 minutes with more resistance than before. For the first time yet, every exercise I did, I did for three sets (I started with two sets each, and have started going on to three when I felt able on some particular one). By the end, my shoulders and arms felt gently stiff with muscle soreness.

I also listened to Savant while working out, and I thought of you, and showing off my strength to you. Also to Coda; I remember with a little crafty smile that he has a particular attraction to strongly-built women, and I feel it would be fun to meet him again with some confidence I may look sexier to him.

...The question of how to manage polyamory is one of those that I imagine could be a bit of a problem for us, dear Eoin. I put it off while I was there last time; the temporary nature of our relationship then offered its own answer. I was unlikely to find someone else during that time to get romantic with anyway, and was too much enthralled in infatuation and new relationship energy with you to have wanted any such distraction, so beyond my offering not to see anyone else for that period, and the mention of it as something that would need to be talked over if we were ever to want to have a longer term relationship, it was not really discussed.

It is kind of nice to feel so dizzied by thoughts of you again, although it seems to contradict my theory that the time of it were over. Perhaps my quest in Cost Accounting and the various stresses of becoming acclimatized to a new term had suppressed the phenomenon? Perhaps blogging stirs it up more than I generally acknowledge, and having spoken of other things without getting to you led the way for my mental habits?

Perhaps that thought of six months made it seem so much closer, so much more real, that I began to feel about it again. I almost wonder if I should after all break the silence far ahead of schedule to tell you, so that you can help me plan. So that you can weigh in on the question of whether I should come to Athlone IT again, or rather go to one of the other colleges. I don't know.

Changing such an integral part of the plan is unsavory to me, and the thought of breaking my silence to you when I had promised it far more so. Although... Whether I were to talk to you a couple of weeks before I expect to be there, or a few months... Perhaps the heart of it would be much the same..? Perhaps the factor that makes a difference is whether it is already set up that I will come back to Ireland? In that case... I should not, at any rate, until I have bought my plane ticket, I think. But that may be much sooner than anticipated, if I decide to make it my constraint.

Dear Memory: A Turn to Hope

Today, I did some research into Irish accounting organizations and immigration. I reached out to someone at Fanshawe whose card was given to me by a pathways advisor, and recieved pretty much the best possible news I could have hoped for regarding my plan to return to Ireland.

OSAP does offer support for people studying outside of Ontario, outside of even Canada. There are already a couple of Irish institutions on their list of approved colleges and an appeals process for adding more. I feel... a little embarrassed. I had been so intimidated at the thought of this being difficult that it took me quite some time to really work up the courage and get past the procrastination to do some looking... and find that this may indeed be much easier than I thought.

For most of today I have been in an energetic cloud of hope and happiness. Fantasies rush upon me of announcing on Facebook that I would be returning to Ireland. Of being able to make the journey less than a year from now. Of meeting you again...

Last night, I stayed up late chatting with two of my friends, and we had an awesome conversation, discussing everything from the community management snafu surrounding Roko's Basilisk, some theory on the nature of dimensions and different kinds of infinity... And lots of asides and jokes and... Damn, it's good to have conversations like that. It's been so long. I should get those two to hang out with me more often. ♡

So even though I was woken up early by a roommate's phone call... I didn't really mind. I like my new roommates, and am more inclined to make allowances and feel tolerant towards their impact on my life. Besides, I knew she would be getting up early, and I had stayed up late. It's just a pity these friendly girls will all be leaving in two weeks.

Classes today were fun. Conversation Circles was easy, and as always a valuable exercise in exposure to other cultures. And I even finished my daily checklist. Well, almost; the shop I went to to drop off some electronics for recycling had closed down, but that isn't my own fault; I give myself credit for doing the thing. A setback will require me to do it over again, that's all.

And at the end of the day, I am altogether too proud of myself for a horrible pun I managed to put at the end of my short Microeconomics assignment, about the direct distribution razor company, Harry's, needing to continue to manage their brand positioning as new companies try to copy their distribution model, to maintain their 'edge'.

Visiting Facebook briefly to post a song of the day there which happened to be in my head, I scrolled through my history and paused at your name. I followed it to see a few more recent pictures of you, dear memory. However, I feel it's something I probably shouldn't have done. It felt creepily stalker-ish, although there was really very little to see. I think... Until my plan for return is set up and in motion, I should keep myself away.

When I have my plane ticket, my approval for funding, and it is time to break the silence... When I get the long-awaited treat of greeting you and asking whether you can meet me in a couple of weeks, when I will be there... Ah, hasten the day. Four years, I would despair of. Eight or nine months... I think I can bear with much better grace. Ah, if only. If only you could see me now, perhaps. If only you knew I was coming back for you.

But I am not allowed to tell you, and I cannot know that it would be for the better if I could.
Someday, I will come back, and probably look over any tracks you have left recently as of that time. Hints that you are, or are not, still in Athlone. Hints that you are, or are not, in a new relationship. But that day is a long way off yet. My heart has been crying desperately through much of the day, but not so much in sorrow. It is a desperate, dizzying hope and joy-of-hope, and it repeats: I love you! I love you! I love you!

I must retain my composure, and keep my head about me. My heart, though, flaps about in giddy circles like a bird on a leash. Here, and with my friends, I can speak of it honestly. Here, I dare to express my inner melodrama. Those who do not want it have no reason to come.

Goodnight, distant Memory. I still have not made up for the lost sleep. But I am happy, with the affection of real friends. It is great solace to remember, to experience, that you are not the only one who can listen with love, who can make me laugh, and invite me out to laugh at myself. I am happy, and that is better than sleep. I will catch up on it tonight, or the following night.

Dear Memory: Stirred on the Breeze

Good morning, dear memory.

This last few day, I have been, instead of the oppressive fatigue, instilled with a greater brightness and whimsy. I am more easily caught up in emotions both grand and fearful. I sit in my classes attentively and answer brightly, but I worry more that I am annoying those around me by speaking too often or giggling too much.

In the same wave, you come to mind more often and more strongly. I yearn for you gently, and push the feeling away gently if I am set to a task, or turn into it for a moment, wistfully, if I am not. But I am not sure what to do there.

The land has been gorgeously white. I have walked so much in the shallow sidewalk snow that some muscles in my legs ache, for the walking is more difficult on this purchase. I often imagined bringing you with me. I would love so much to show you what winter, real winter, Canadian winter, is like. Walking on the shallow sidewalk snow is a bit like walking on beach sand. It churns away slightly under the foot, rather than giving a solid surface off of which to push. I do think the shallow snow trodden into a path by bootprints is a bit more difficult than beach sand though, because it is also inclined to be slippery and inconsistent. Some areas are loose, and some are dense, and it is not always evident which are which, so that the churning under your foot might take an unexpected direction, or turn into a slide sideways instead.

The snow is deep and white and gorgeous, fresh from its recent falling. It formed banks up to meet the hoods of cars in the used car lot I pass to and from school. Icicles hang in sheets from roofs and signs. Here, let me show you some pictures I took:

The last few days, I have also been suffering frequent irritating headaches, and keeping them at bay with painkillers. I misplaced my bank debit card Wednesday, and intend to go in to my bank branch today after classes to replace it.

I have been getting back to my studies steadily, an hour here, an hour there. So long as I gently push thoughts of you away into the future when they come to me, and push aside other intrusive thoughts like momentary conceptualizations of eye horror with patience and endurance (those do come to me sometimes when the work is dull and invites reluctance) I can focus well enough to perform well.

Today, I had put Heroes of Might & Magic soundtracks on as my background music, seeking something fresh. The strains of one song, I think it was the one called "Searching for a Dream," (although I think this one ultimately carries the feeling better) sang a reminder of you and of Ireland into my heart that was particularly stirring. I faced the dilemma for a moment. I was busy working, and was not to be distracted, but I did not want to neglect or entirely ignore the beauty of remembering you in a poignant moment, feeling as though a dry leaf fluttered in the breeze, looking toward a future I hope dearly to see.

I wrote "write love letter" on my list of things to do that day, as a promise to myself not to forget, not to neglect that beauty, nor the part of me that insists on acknowledging how it moves me.

I dearly hope that this is alright. To feel, and embrace that I feel, for you, my dear memory... I hope that this does no harm. I might worry that it is something that might someday offer pangs of guilt to you, if you were to consider turning me away. But I feel somehow that in this particular context, in this frame of mind, it is right to remember you with a wistful tear on my cheek and an uncertain but hopeful half-smile on my lips, looking to a past I cherish and a future I hope for. Hope for, but intend not to demand. Surely, that must be alright.

So here has been my love letter. It seems likely my blog will be crowded with them in the coming months, but I think that is alright. It is usually quite barren here, after all, and I am happier to populate it with whimsical love letters to a memory than not to populate it all.

Besides that, when I speak here, as though whispering to a plush toy perhaps, I spare the energies of friends who might be fatigued of my endless obsession with you, or my difficulty in maintaining or regaining an acceptable balance of self through the fits of intensity and patches of slump that I am prone to.

And again, some distant day, perhaps I will share them with you, sitting on the edge of your bed and turning often to look upon you, admiring the beauty I saw in you in that self's past, and which I still see, but may be brought out in a special way in the light of these memories.

Vivid Fixation and the Next Thing

I woke this morning in the dark and quiet and the cool air. In my sleep I had kicked all the blankets into a heap on the left side of my bed, and become naked and unprotected against the cold. In that way, it was just like every other night in recent memory.

It was still dark, though, so why was I awake? I curled over, picked the blankets back up again, and closed my eyes, but although it was pleasant to do so, sleep did not return.

I felt more awake than I have enjoyed much lately. I have been going through my days oppressed by fatigue since the weekend at least. Sleep did not come, but memories did. Vivid, bright, full memories, as though the moment played again before my eyes. A certain face. A certain closeness. A certain sofa, in a living room with broad, open windows toward the college. A certain voice. "I'm not saying no. I'm saying, not today."

Too vivid. Too bright. I grew mad and somewhat frenzied inside my skull. To the dark and empty room, I said, I love you, I miss you. I hope you are well, Eoin. I hope you still want to see me again.

The memories, bright and blinding and all-consuming in their vividness.
I turned on my laptop, looked there, and found someone to talk to.
I told kitten mother the story of Eoin, patchwork and out of order, out of a crazed suspension: I don't know if this is okay.

Kitten mother listened. She heard. She understood. She's good at that. Offered some soft advice, once it was asked for. I go away calmer, soothed for now out of the madness, brought back to the strategy for moving forward, so simple and obvious that it seems odd to have been confused. Except, of course, that I was in a state of madness and confusion, so that too is obvious.

Tell the future to stay in the future. Do the next thing next, not the last thing next. That is impossible, and so of course it will only leave me with fretting. Do the next thing next, and with stubbornness, until that which belongs to the future is willing to wait.

I practice returning for a moment to the vivid memories, and then pushing them away. There is bending and echo in my mind when I try to push them away, but I am able.

Think of anything, absolutely anything, except a purple elephant. Next thing. Next thing next. Old fashioned boombox. Yellow floral bedsheet. Canoeing. The elephant looms, but is told off and told to return to its corner. It is quite like an excited dog. It is not at all that I don't love you, it is that you are in the way. Go. Hide your face. I still love you, and I will tend to you later.

I think I can do this. I will worry that I might fail. Fine. Mistakes are mistakes. Mistakes are of the future. I'll deal with them when I get there. I worry. But I think I can do this.

I have an accounting assignment to work on. That, at the moment, is the next thing. Perhaps food first, and then that.

Forgiving Mentors, Relentless Longing

It is the second day of classes resuming, and much of the miserable doubt and worry of the empty time during the faculty strike is lifting surely as our professors reassure us, cut out small pieces of the courses, and focus the first week largely on review. Every gesture shows understanding and mediation for the difficulties of resuming after such a long interruption. My intermediate accounting professor, having read an email I sent him telling him that my morale and confidence had been very low trying to navigate his online course with the textbook alone, thanked me for my refreshingly candid words and invited me to sit in on classes in person. It is all a soothing balm to my troubles.

Sadly, the professors themselves may have had little relief from theirs. The strike's disputes were not resolved, and there is some worry that this might all repeat in another four years, after the new contracts expire again, and they must meet to agree on terms of renewal again.

My spirits are higher, and I look forward to moving into a very nice house directly across from the campus, the nicest I have lived in... Looking back, and looking back further, it may be fair to say that it is the nicest looking and most modernly appointed house I have ever lived in in Canada. My parents' houses were a welcome home to me, but simple. My new room will have an ensuite bathroom, and the kitchen has a central island and two big fridges to accomodate I think five female tenants.

Through all that, though, my thoughts remain restlessly and inexorably drawn back to Eoin and distant Éire. It feels to me as though the memory of him stands always behind my shoulder. When my mind wanders, it wanders to dreams of return, and meeting with him again, with much tear and hope and fear, desperate to know what his answer will be...

It has been three weeks since our last goodbye, and since the law of silence has been set between us. These last few days have tested my will to adhere to that law. I felt that I was doing fair well, for a little while, at looking to my own life alone, although it was a miserably empty stretch of life indeed with neither love nor work nor school to sustain me. I took up to make a game to run for friends, which I have nicknamed the SCDP game, a Super Casual Drop-in Pick-up game of Pathfinder such that I can run it and invite people to play it without a set group or a set schedule. I finally finished writing all the stats for available player characters to the website I'll be using just a day or two before the return to classes, and I have not played it yet. I am not certain I will even get the chance, but the project was something with which I might hope to enjoy the social attentions of friends.

At some point, perhaps a week ago... I lost track of the empty days for a while, so I am not sure... I was re-watching a bunch of video reviews, and one of them ambushed me with the high, haunting and familiar voice of Loreena McKennitt and the sweet melancholy violins of Irish tradition behind her. I knew the song, The Old Ways, I had heard it and loved it and felt magnificently drawn by it from my early youth. It hit me like a hammer blow, and broke open yet again any thought that I could deny my desperate want to go back there, back over the bounding waves to the distant shore of a land I have always loved, in music and legend, and the man I loved who lives there.

Eoin could not promise me any answer. It has been three weeks since I last heard his voice, and now at last doubt begins to creep back, and I begin to worry and wonder. We knew each other scant three months, and it is already past that long ago. Even if I do make my way back to that great isle, and see his face again... If it is a year, if it is several, how could I expect him to look on me as other than a sad and obsessed woman whose storms and ferocity he may have been glad to be rid of?

But. I know with enough confidence to say that I know... whatever may happen in the coming years, at the time three weeks ago when he bid me leave him be, Eoin was yet undecided. If he had in his mind any certain answer, I know with confidence he is too good and honest a man not to have given it. When last he spoke to me, there was love enough in him, and perhaps also longing of his own, that he was not set against seeing me again someday. He was not sure what he would feel. If it had been more honest to tell me he would rather never see me again, for all the pain it may have cost him, I am sure he would have said it anyway.

So. What his answer will be, I cannot know until I have heard it from his own lips. I cannot hear it until I go there, for until I am there, he cannot know himself whether he will be willing to bring me close again. As I walk out from my house into the cold, bare young-winter, gazing up at the steely light where the sun shines through the thinnest parts of the grey clouds, returning at long last to my studies with the weight of my work things at my back... As I walk the cold and formal halls of my college, which now seems too large and too impersonal... I know that Eoin is not the only or the first man for whom I have felt this utter determination, the deep and aching sense that I would be willing to do nearly anything to see him smile at me again. I feel rather as though I will set my determination to heading there, but do it all with a sheepish apology to him, and hope he will not feel my devotion cheap because he has not been the only one to inspire it.

I know my will, though mighty, is shifting. I know I may look back on these words with embarrassment and a shake of the head that I was so caught up in love and grief. Still, from here, as of now, I am determined by all the madness of my heart and a relentless longing in my bones to go back to Ireland, to distant Éire, and find out what his answer will be. I know that to do any different while I feel as I do would be to rend apart my nature, to bury my desire and smash my compass, and live as someone I am not. It would not be a story worth telling. Better to go, full of all my courage and wild strength, and profess myself to him as simply and as gently as I can, even if the answer I find is to be turned away as a nuisance, and go back to the rocky path of lonesomeness, to stalk on like a restless ghost and seek on anew for someone who will at long last stand and travel by my side.

So every day, whether I resist it or not, my thoughts wander back again when I am not looking, and I imagine living in love with him again; or I imagine troubles there might be in trying to get in touch after I land; or I imagine cautiously studying his eyes when he first sees me again, asking how things have changed, what shape his life has taken, and trying to learn whether there is room for me in it; Or of being greeted with a kiss and falling into desperate tears, begging to know if he meant by it that I would be given a chance to stay this time. Sometimes I imagine talking to a border guard of my intent to immigrate. Sometimes I imagine talking to a representative of an accounting firm for which I intend to work in Ireland in an interview about my reasons for coming. But it is always something, and it always pulls my view East, across the ocean, with the call of the bounding sea.

To Love Left Behind

My perspective, the shape of my life in the context of memory and priority, bends around you like a center of gravity.
The time before I met you takes on the aspect of a prologue, the content of the story a few short and treasured chapters I wish I could relive.
When I lay down in my bed, and am not thoroughly exhausted, I am disappointed by your inevitable absence, and accompanied by your memory.
However, the ghosts have grown more peaceful. I will not say they haunt me. In reflection...
My heart is sore, but it is a pain I can live with and appreciate, like the ache of muscles after exertion.
I am okay.

I remember your face, contorted in judgement and revulsion; not at me, but at the wounds in my mind which have hobbled me. Yes, that is one of the memories that stays with me. I cherish that understanding, seeing you sickened by that which stunted my growth; that you saw it as an awful thing is a tender and cherished measure of your respect for me.

I also remember your face smiling, as I so often saw it, and the context that gave this so much beautiful light. No, you told me, you were not someone who smiled a lot. But you often did when you were looking at me.

There was so very much that you did for me, and now...
You are a memory, to me, and a distant unknown actor. Somewhere, you are something, and it is not for me to know what.
Laying in bed, not quite exhausted, and keenly aware of the empty spaces under my blankets, the silence in my ears, the empty in my hand where I wish your hand would be... And I don't regret a thing.
Only perhaps, that it may take a lot of searching to find someone to fill those empty spaces now, after your legacy.

If by some chance you wind up reading this... Yes, it was probably the right thing to do. I have been recovering much more cleanly of late.
I am sad, and I miss you, and I can live with it.
You left me far healthier than you found me, old friend.

The Sun-in-Rags has its tribute for now. I am distant, I burn, I am not as I was.
I continue along my path, moving more slowly for a while.

October; Natural Cyclical Endings

A chill rides on the quiet wind, what some old friend of mine once called a "culting cold". The ground is littered with leaves in yellow and red, although many yet remain green on the branch.
The temperature is just the way I like it most. It has an edge of cold that might grow uncomfortable if I were tired and had no protection against it, the better to hide in a comfy sweater or a warm blanket. The sky grows dusky around six, and grey with cloud. It is not bright enough to hurt my eyes, though I still see clearly and in colour. Meandering through the campus grounds, I take in the beauty, alone. I allow myself to meta-think about my heartbreak, still not fully healed, and to notice and embrace that I am capable of enjoying this autumnal atmosphere, the beauty of cyclic endings, alone. It is not too much to bear that no-one stands with me. Perhaps it would be too much if there were no way for me to share my appreciation of it with... But I can write it here. I can mention it to friends in passing.
Alone, I can walk across paths laden with fallen leaves.
Alone, I can feel the chill of coming winter foretold on the breeze, but not, as yet, here.
Alone, I can walk away from those things I must leave behind, without knowing in any certainty whether I will ever see them again. This is life and mortality.

I remember the similar chill of mild Irish winter, and smile fondly. In the coming months, that mildness will make way for the harsh and savage ice winds. I will walk through paths carved in deep snow... probably, anyway. I wonder if I will feel more or less lonely then. I wonder if I will spend my time with new friends. I wonder if I will build a snow sculpture on some day when the snow comes plentiful and wet enough to inspire it. I wonder if I will take an opportunity to slide down hills as I did when I was still a small child.

I have a test today. I know the fact, acknowledge, accept, and then hold it at some distance, although I do not push it away so that I might forget. I walk through the chill air, admire the campus clad in autumn. This is one of my favourite times of year, and it is good to relax before a test.

I feel well. Parts of me are certainly still grieving, but overall, I feel well. I am beginning to imagine ways that the future might be acceptable even if I never see that person again, although I should hope I will. I am beginning to imagine that I may be happy in other places, with other romances. I reflect on age and maturity, on the continual process of growing up. I consider that I seem to have a much better time meeting and keeping friends than I used to. I consider that my radical views have, to a large degree, mellowed out. I tend to give more credit to those I disagree with these days. My mind wanders, philosophical, serene, reverent. I write half from memory and half as a lucid stream of consciousness. I feel I have written enough, for now.

Common or Garden Heartbreak

If you've had any romance in your life, you probably know all the symptoms. An obsessive compulsion to listen to songs that remind you of Them; the mind turning irresistibly toward Them in every idle moment; the transformation on the context of every song you hear; the feeling of guilty wrongness upon seeking the company of other people which may be pleasantly distracting, but doesn't fit the craving for Their company.

Every part of it is predictable, as reliable as the tide; what fills me with joy leaves me with sorrow. I've certainly been through it before. This iteration is better in a number of ways. We did not part angrily, but honestly and with respect. There is no other new partner to blame, only distance. The spirals are looser, less clinging. All the questions about self-worth have easy answers, because our parting did not reflect badly on me.

But there's no dulling the sting of that core blade. Whenever my mind is idle, songs and memories and a desperate hope that I will see Them again fill it up. I cry silently in public, and wait, patiently and impatiently, until the tears will finally run out. How many months will it take? And more importantly, what I actually fear... Will I be able to get over this heartache without letting go of the hope that I will see Them again? All sense tells me there is no reason I can't. Desire is the partner of sorrow, but if I can make that desire light enough not to crush me, that doesn't immediately mean it will fly out of my head altogether, and what could possibly convince me that going back to such a fine thing, if and when it becomes possible, would not be wonderful?

But still I am afraid to let go too readily.

Beyond the Emerald Isle

I've left Ireland behind me and moved on to Vienna. The grasses that fly by the train window are green, but dark and dull, not the exceptional brightness I often saw in Irish grass. Why? What is so special about it? Is it a different species of common grass?
I feel loss and already miss the island itself, not to mention the people that I grew so very fond of there. Vienna is interesting and huge, full of young punky people at first glance. It is the first city I have visited where signage is everywhere, but does not speak my language. I stare at public notices dumbly, instinctively trying to read them, wondering what they say.
I immediately feel great pity for those in North America who don't have much English and are at every moment at a disadvantage. I, at least, have a friend by me who grew up here and can help me navigate.

The first morning, after the first night, I wake up and I feel grief, low and soft and lapping like muscle ache. I wonder why, and try to imagine if there is any other reason but the obvious ones (I miss you, I miss you, I'm sorry...). But then, I am naturally and habitually prone to grief. Perhaps the habit and the stress of a long day travelling on little sleep is all the answer there is. Perhaps the answer is just as simple as it seems, and why am I trying to deny it?

Ah, of course. I am looking for something I can do besides waiting for the grief to eventually subside. I want to be good company to my host, rather than crying mournful for all the time I planned to spend here.

I miss you. I miss you. I'm sorry.

Somehow, writing those words presses on the grief more directly than anything else I had tried thinking about or looking at, and pushes tears out of my eyes. This may be some kind of progress. It may be... Important to express it.
My host asks me if I need some tissues. He can see me crying. He might not know what they are called in English, but he holds them out to me with his question, so it is clear what he means.

I miss you, Ashlynn.  I miss you. I'm sorry that my travelling and polyamory was too much for your heart.

I miss you, Coda. I'm sorry I had to go so soon.

I miss you, Ireland...

Distant memories of every love I ever mourned for march solemnly through my head. I feel tired. I feel tired of walking away from people I care about.

I miss you, Alex... I'm sorry, Jack... I miss you, Kitten... I miss you, Damon... I'm sorry, Jason... I'm sorry, Pieter... I miss you, Di... and Zi... I miss you, Robby. I'm so sorry things went that way. I miss you, Zephon. I'm sorry I hurt you... I'm sorry, Fancy... I'm sorry, Wolf...

and now, the latest in a long line joins the list of bright links, fragments of time when someone else shines through the veil of life's general impersonal darkness and pierces my outer skin to reach my heart and shake it... one of those bright as primacy, and sweet, and seeming to promise endurance.

I miss you Eoin. I'm sorry I left. I will try to come back to you. I want to come back to you. I'm... so sorry. I miss you so much.

No doubt, I will miss Sen too, by the time this journey is over.

At every juncture, turning back to the long, long road again.

You may remember me saying this, Eoin; perhaps someday my path will lead me to a place I can really see as home.

On The Plane from Iceland to Ireland

Written in the air on 6th of January, 2017

My breath hitches a little. I am on the last leg of my current journey, by air at least. There is an hour or so of bus yet. Irish security, whatever that turns out to be. Some waiting, of course.
After I arrive at my lodgings I plan on going out to local thrift stores to buy some of the things I elected not to bring from home; sheets, a towel, perhaps a pair of shoes or who knows what else might catch my eye.
For now, I am in the softly shaking belly of the great metal bird. Flight attendants dressed in brand purple have been showing everyone about, packing up the plentiful luggage wherever they will fit in the overhead luggage. The surge of speed when we take off scares me, reminding me of my old roller coaster nightmares, but I recover well, and now I am relatively comfortable. Crowded, and feeling the occasional aching and popping of my ears, but relatively comfortable despite that.
My first mp3 player runs out of battery and I switch to music on the second. Sarah McLachlan, her haunting I-miss-you winter songs. It occurs to me that long journeys have always been emotional to me; I have a habit of taking them for romantic reasons. This time is an arguable exception. At least, I see it that way, although I do look forward to meeting my dear friends in Europe. No primary romantic obsession this time though, just good and valued friends with possible benefits to be negotiated.
On the other hand, McLachlan's love songs have often caught at my heart. Ashlynn's recent musing about long-distance travel as a group only encourages me further to pine somewhat for her company beside me in my journeys.
Someday, my love, will we go together, side by side like the seeming partners who share my row with me? I look forward to that day, when you prove against all the world's biases that I don't have to leave love behind when I move on for adventure, for challenge, for fulfilment of potential or whatever else I may seek.
"This is how I see you, in the snow on Christmas morning; love and happiness surround you..." Sarah sings in a whisper, and my breath hitches a little again.
I try not to think about the delays of my RESP cheque, the one thing I am still very worried about in preparing for my term here. There is not much I can do about it now. Instead I think about Dublin and Athlone; the train I will take; whether I will be able to find a payphone to call my new landlord, since my phone will likely not have service in Ireland; whether I will be able to get a temporary phone or plan or something.
My ears crinkle, and the roar of the engines seems much louder all of a sudden. My mind wanders, wondering about astronauts and how riding a rocket bound for space compares to riding an aeroplane bound for the other side of an ocean. I think of the fair where I deliberately challenged my fear of fast rides, and the tree planting camp where I challenged my fear of failure in the face of hard work, and somewhat unintentionally, my claustrophobia. On the first flight into Iceland, I had a window seat, which meant the curving wall against my arm was close and closed-in, giving me an entrapping lack of space.
In the crowded and claustrophobic plane, I nevertheless managed to nap intermittently through much of the flight. For one moment, I think I suffered sleep paralysis again, that struggle to reclaim my body from dreams, to twitch, to so much as open my eyes. I was surprised I slept so easily.
In Toronto Pearson before we left, I dropped my boarding pass somewhere and panicked a bit about it, but the staff reassured me that it could be re-issued at my flight gate; all the data behind it was still there, and I still had my passport.
My sturdy work boots surprised me by setting off the metal detector. I hadn't thought of that. I thought the toes were composite, not real steel. Perhaps it was a protective shank. Anyway, taking off my boots before walking through again was not that much of a hassle. There was a place to buy power adapters at the airport as I suspected there might be.
Between the landing of the train from Union station and the terminal I needed to go to was a quite fast train suspended on high rails (on the subject of being reminded of my fear of roller coasters). Taking it was somewhat uncomfortable, and somewhat fascinating. It's not as though I had much choice.
To get through security, I had to let them throw away a Monster drink I had brought with me and my other water bottle, to buy another drink on the other side of security. I finished eating all the food I'd packed before leaving Iceland on the plane to Dublin. I packed well. The sandwiches were a little repetitive, not to mention deformed by the pressure of other things in my bag my then, but I had enough to eat and the fruit was a delicious side too. I can grab myself something to eat when we land, I suppose. It will be soon. The lights have already been dimmed for landing. It seemed short. It was a pleasure to pass the time by writing here. I look forward to sharing my little stories with my friends.

-----

It turns out, I was mistaken. The lights were being dimmed temporarily for turbulence or something. We still had some hours to go. Nevertheless, I present my record at the time here.

An Open Love Letter

To my darling Ashlynn...

As I rest here and contemplate the day we've had, listening to you occasionally begin to snore... My feelings are complicated and uncertain. But then, they always are, aren't they? It is not as dramatic as I'm used to. I have a mild headache. I'm slightly tired. I guess I'm content. Nothing flashy, just a gentle, faintly smug feeling that things are all right.
The gratitude was real. The satisfaction of rubbing your feet and knowing that you are appreciating my hands. I am confident that I am doing reasonably well, and that you will miss me when I have to leave, and look back on this time fondly. There has never been any question whether I will miss you.

I am a creature with an extraordinary perspective, and I carry an extraordinary weight. She who helps me shoulder it? That is just one of the things that makes her, too, extraordinary. And yet, we are ordinary within the frames in which we live. You chatting with your friends and co-workers. Me playing Binding of Isaac in idle moments. Sharing music, sharing videos, eating pizza and ice cream. I am reminded of Doctor Who commenting on the beauty and freedom of regular, everyday people, and for once, for a little while, I feel just a little less afraid of age and dying.

I think I will still be afraid of losing you until, one way or another, the last goodbye ever said between us falls on dead ears. In the mean time, fear is balanced and comforted by your presence and your bizarre devotion to this restless wanderer. I dream of journeying with you and do not know, now, what will or won't happen. I have my dreams and so do you, in this strange world of cynicism and conveniences built up on other cynicisms and conveniences through year after year, in this cute little old city, part old and part new. I lay next to you and type. You lay next to me and sleep. You'll work tonight. In another week I'll go home and then it will be months upon months before I will likely touch your face again, but for now I'm here, and the world isn't perfect and dramatic just because I'm here. I am not quite able to whisk you away into a fairytale as much as I might like to.

But you tell me you needed this... Well then, it was worth it, and that's that.

Rest well, my darling.
Perhaps some other day I will hold you to my side when I go, and you will go with me. Not this time.