Build a bear

I walked down a street I used to live on today, and this vivid memory of a friend I’ve since lost touch with and the night we first tried those electric scooters flooded my mind.

It was so tangible that I felt us rushing past me on that street, as if the movie of that night was unfolding in front of my eyes. Do you ever experience that?

We were zigzagging down the street, a bit tipsy because I put too much vodka in the penne alla vodka we had earlier and didn’t let it evaporate long enough. It’s warm outside and we’re laughing because the sky is full of stars and the street is empty and these scooters go faster than we thought they would.

And we’re going to this party of an ex I’ve since made peace with but was still hung up on at the time. A party at which I’ll wander up into his room, drunk crying and looking for signs he may have not forgotten me yet. A party at which I’ll flirt with someone else, who’ll ask me what I’m doing Monday for the day off, to which I’ll respond “nothing” because I am too busy trying to see what my ex is doing to realize that guy is asking me out.

So I’ll go out with him for a walk around the lake on Easter monday, because walking is what you do when the sun graces our country, and because I’m too much of a coward to say I’m not interested. But the guy will only talk of himself and of how much muscle weight he’s gained and the book he wrote but won’t tell me what it’s about. And I’ll only think of all the ways the conversation is not flowing, all the ways in which it flowed with my ex. So a friend will call me and I’ll ask her to call again in 2 minutes because my bus will be arriving and I can feel muscle weight guy will want to kiss me when we say goodbye, so she’ll call at just the right time and I’ll tell muscle weight guy that I’m sorry but I should take this. And I get on the bus. And I forget his name as soon as I sit down.

Because the truth is, I didn’t think love was for me in that moment. I didn’t think I’d ever love someone again. Because the last time I was on a bus on a sunny day, I thought to myself how I’d finally found it, how I finally felt that pinch movies talk about, that when you know you know moment. On that other bus on that other sunny day, I told myself that all the pain and back and forths of that relationship were meant to build something greater, how it was impossible that someone whose brain made the same jumps as my brain could be anything else than my forever person.

But today, when I think about that ex, the ex whose party I cried at then puked at then snooped at then got asked out on a date by muscle weight guy at, all I can think about is that one time when we were lying in my ex’s bed and he told me of this friend who had a threesome with his girlfriend and how she left him for the girl. My ex thought it had been risky anyways because the girlfriend had always been a little bit gay.

All I remember now is how jealous I felt of her.

That ex broke my heart in so many pieces that some turned to dust, never to be recovered. He shattered me so that I had to make a new heart in some kind of gory build a bear experience.

But oh the ways in which my new heart can love.

New scars have been added since. And sure, sometimes old ones still bleed. But each cut is a memory of someone who mattered to me. So, by the time my heart pumps blood through my aching body for the last time, I hope it's as covered by scars as my arms will be in tattoos.

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