you loved me differently i loved you all the same

sometimes i get obsessed with lyrics, and equally obsessed with the fact that nobody else understands the lyrics.

it’s a double meaning: you loved me differently (not how i loved you, not normally). i loved you all the same (regardless)

“Well I know a place that sells martinis, want to grab a drink?” He finally sent it. At least he made some attempt to sound casual. He had to. She couldn’t know he’d been obsessing about this moment for days. Building momentum. The slack banter during late meetings. The 1:1 meetings in the abandoned conference room. The rides home from work. He’s pretending to be casual, as if he hadn’t made the speakeasy reservation 2 days ago

He didn’t know how long he’d been having the thought. Probably for months. Louder and louder the devil had been screaming “What if?”
“What if you are right”
“What if she likes you back”
“What if this isn’t in your head”
At this point he had to know. What were the downsides? They weren’t doing anything wrong yet. Sure they had partners. But it was just a drink, right? And besides “What if?” It never hurts to ask, right?

That’s how it started. Now they are walking down the soon to be well worn Main Street. It’s funny how she always takes the lead even though she never knows where they are going. Always one step ahead of him. He’ll never be able to lead her anywhere

Through the company bar, down the stairs, past the bookshelf. They find themselves in a mostly empty speakeasy. The air is already starting to thicken. Quietly he mentions the reservation to the host. she’s starting to realize this might be a date. So is he.

The idea creeps up on them. They are starting to stare. The laughs are starting to come from someplace real. Maybe all at once, maybe it’s always been there. He says “Thanks for getting a drink with me” and she realizes. They don’t even sell martinis at this bar. Is this a date?

Many hours, a few drinks later, they are forced to leave the bar. They have some stupid meeting to attend. He promised earlier they’d be home by now. So for the first time they sit next to each other on zoom. Pretending they aren’t drunk. Starting to learn what it means to pretend they aren’t together

In a moment when the meeting is muted he works up his courage. With his swarmy smile he turns to her and asks:
“Does this happen to you often?”
“what do you mean?” she insists
”That boys become obsessed with you?”
pausing to figure out if he’s serious, it seems like he might be. the only thing she can think to respond is “i’ll have to think about that”

Then there’s nothing to do but fall into it. The meeting ends. But the night can’t end yet. So they get dinner. They play secret footsie for the first time, a sport they will later master. Later it will be a secret from others, but today it’s a secret from even them.

At some point though it becomes silly. They can’t stay in town until the sun comes up. They have to part ways. He drives away and the air slowly thins. He begins to realize what he’s done. He begins to realize what’s to come

In one last final resistance he deletes slack. Just for the night. Just get through tonight and tomorrow will be easier. In the morning he has one message. before she went to sleep she sent:
“text me 2627349063”

I keep something new every time. Like my tattoo, my jelly beans, my t-shirts. This time a hedgehog on my keys. I bought it to remember I don’t need to be trapped by the hedgehog’s dilemma. Her name will fade from my memory faster than the cut on my soul.

I am someone who attaches easily. I know that about myself. It makes it hard for me to date. I don’t know how to look into someone’s eyes and not see their soul. I don’t want to learn. I refuse to die by a million tiny cuts. If you are tired, do it tired. If you are hurt do it hurt.

But, to be honest with you dear reader, I am starting to be ready for the last one. I am ready for someone who will be gentle with me. Someone who will ask and not assume. Someone who understands that I attach easily, and that it should not be taken for granted. I am ready to be loved again. I am ready to love again

I do realize how dramatic I am. I like myself this way. Don’t ask me to change please.

On my thigh I’ve got this insane tattoo of a girl I used to date. I’ve told a lot of people about the tattoo. There’s a certain type of person (because there are only 12 types of people of course) who will ask me “But what are you going to say to the next girl you date, will you get it removed?” To which I can only respond “Maybe but, I don’t think so. I don’t want to be with someone who loves me despite my scars. I want to be with someone who loves me for them.”

To me, this really speaks to the heart of getting over something. In my experience healing is not really about finding our way back to the person we were before. It’s about finding out who we are now. Healing a wound creates scar tissue where we once had fair skin.

And so, no, if you had bothered to ask I’d tell you I’m not fully over it. But only in the same way as I’m not fully over anything that’s happened to me. Gently I’ve let it become a part of me. I’ve found a way to move past it. I’ve climbed out of the hole and become a whole (heh). It’s part of who I am now, and I am proud of that

As always thanks for reading my dear reader. I love you, whoever you are

I’m not so sure what to make of her quite yet. We’ve just met, but she makes me laugh. She seems to have her shit together. She has a stable job. She is cute when she’s angry about something, which happens often. She has strong perspective, lot’s of opinions about lots of things. She talks to trees and the ghost of her grandma. She often has to think about things.

I’m beginning to worry he’s not that serious about this. He has a very unstable job. He works under a papa johns for christ’s sake. He’s mentioned trauma but I can’t seem to get him to tell me more. I’m sure he’s into me. He’s definitely cute, if not maybe a bit cheesy. But, something about him worries me. He hasn’t asked, we haven’t talked about it, I don’t know what he’s looking for. I’m not sure he’s right for me. I don’t see how he would fit into my life

I wonder what she thinks of my crazy life. I’ve joked around the edges of some trauma, but honestly I don’t feel like talking about it anymore. I can never quite tell how she feels about something. Sometimes I find out she cared a lot more about something than she let on. I guess she’s a bit guarded, but maybe she’ll warm up. She hasn’t asked, I wonder what she’s looking for. When I look in her eyes I get scared because I’m pretty sure she’ll break my heart again

I know I write these letters mostly for myself. The process of writing helps me settle and set free my insane little brain. I try to spare you mostly of the things I write, but the editing and sending has some additional effect on me that’s hard to describe. On a number of occasions I know I have tried to describe to you how I feel about the thoughts in my head. One of my strongest held beliefs is that thoughts and feelings do not exist unless they are shared with others. It’s almost stronger than that with these, I am going mad holding these thoughts inside of me. I share them to set them free.

I find it unfortunate that these letters mostly speak of me and my feelings. I would much rather write and inquire of you and yours. However, it’s been too long since you’ve responded for me to have much to say. I have infinite questions for you. As many days as there have been since we last spoke, I have questions about how they went. I still find myself obsessed with seeing the world through your eyes, listening to you talk about your experiences. Many random things in my life bring me the brief flash of your opinion. I think of you when I open my mouth in the shower at night, when I drink my coffee cold, when I curl into a ball in bed and imagine you doing the same. The list goes on and on. I find new songs and wonder if you’d like them. I talk to friends, and wonder what you’d think of their silly little lives.

I’ve never really been able to picture things in my brain. Memories for me are much more about how things felt than about what they looked like. For example, I am not sure I can picture your hands anymore but I can still remember what it felt like when you reached it out to mine. I can’t really picture your smile (although I look back through photos to find it) but I remember that it made me feel loved.

I have never doubted that what we felt about each other was real. I don’t believe that you and I are very good liars, at least not to each other. There are only a few things I held away from you, and I think maybe I was holding them away from myself too. I’m sorry this happened to us. I’m sorry I need you. I love you

Sometimes you have fine days. You go about your business and find a nice groove. Like going on a nice walk in a park at some point you realize you forget you’re even in a park. You take another wander through the winds of your life. Just like I taught you

Other days are hard days. You glance over the dusty bookshelf out the window. Right past a book you still haven’t read. The one I lent you. I wrote my name in thick black sharpie on the inside cover. It’s the last thing I gave you. The last time you’ll hear my voice

Cycles (II) , 2020 by Sean Mundy

“Now the future is here, and, if I were next to you, I’d be absurdly excited. But you’re the person who has to make the future actually happen.”

The first time I remember trying to tell this story, I was in highschool. My father was already dead, so it must have been highschool. I’d say freshman or sophmore year. I’d had Ms (pronounced Misses) Casler that year. She taught us the scarlet letter so it must have been the second year of highschool. I distinctly remember she taught us the scarlet letter because I remember her telling the class that she had never read the book. She had so little respect for the book that she didn’t even read it. She literally told us to read the spark notes. I should have read it. Maybe I would have learned a two or thing about living with the scars of your past

What I had realized, this must have been a few, maybe 3, years after my Dad’s death, Is that I would never recover. I realized that some kinds of wounds leave permanent scars.

Actually, honestly, I think to tell you what I mean I need to go back even further than that. Back to the first time I noticed. My sister had childhood brain cancer. I don’t remember how old I was, whatever age I was barely able to form memories. This lesson is rooted so far down in my brain stem, I’d bet even my motor cortex learned this. When I say I feel this in my bones, I mean it. She had brain cancer, and my family had a daughter that had brain cancer. Her life was permanently changed, she will never live a normal life. She never healed fully back to the person she would have been, and neither did we.

When I was in highschool I tried to write down this lesson. All at once I realized that nothing was ever going to be the same again. I was never going to be a kid with a father. My mom was never going to be a mom with two healthy kids and a husband. My sister was never going to be a kid who didn’t survive cancer. My dad was never going to be a dad again. Things never go back to the way they were.

Honestly for years now I forgot about this old story, this old scar. I’ve been living my life around the awareness for so long, I totally forgot I had it in the first place. I have gotten over hard things. I can do it again.

What found the story again for me was reading this essay by Bess Stillman titled “the year I didn’t survive”. This essay is proof that I am finding it hard to contain how much I appreciate Bess for sharing this story. How good it feels to find my story again.

If you haven’t read her piece I command you go read it before I spoil anything else about it.

Making it happen feels Sisyphean. The simplest tasks, which barely required a second thought when Jake was alive now feel insurmountable, if I can even remember what it was I meant to complete. I’m becoming an unlikely Zen master. Grief demands my brain sit in the pain of right now.

Her piece tells the story of the year after, her 40th year. The quiet “Sisyphean” process of re-building a life from what’s left in the ashes. Of friends who absent mindedly say the cruelest things when they tell me I seem “like myself”. Of how her cells literally contain the DNA of both her newborn daughter, and her late husband.

This made me wonder if my brain still contains some of yours. In all of the thick wonderful time we spent together I became a pretty good mind-reader. With just a glance I could read your mind. Just from the way the air felt around you. When we were together our individual selves stopped having such clear borders. The blurry lines allowed us to slip just a bit into each other. To find a place to store some of our pain. For a little while we found someone to help carry some of our burdens. I think that maybe when you left, maybe I kept some of you, and you kept some of me. Reading Bess’ piece made me realize that this too was a wound that would leave a permanent scar. There’s no going back now.

Time keeps dragging me forward, whether I can see ahead or not. And in the darkest hours, of which there are many, I try to remind myself that I didn’t know what happiness looked like before I had it the first time, either.

So what is there to do now but the quiet work. Just like Bess time keeps dragging me forward. My heart still beats. Just because I’ve seen the top of one mountain, doesn’t mean I won’t see it again.

And of course I’ll love you forever, whoever you are.

Kindness, put simply, is the awareness of others. To be kind is to consider how other people feel and, by extension, how our actions might change how they feel.

People often mistake kindness for “being nice,” but I would like to take some time to make a distinction. A nice person is someone who tries to act in your best interest, while a kind person is one who is aware of how their actions will make you feel. It’s ideal to be nice and kind at the same time, but not strictly necessary. A nice but not kind person is the classic sitcom situation where someone tries to help but ends up making things worse because they weren’t paying attention to what was actually needed. They act with good intentions but without awareness.

Some people fail to ever achieve kindness. On the surface, it seems to come with age, but in my experience, it usually comes with tragedy. We all know a 22-year-old who thinks the whole world revolves around them. We jokingly describe them as “not even aware other people exist.” If our awareness is a camera, unkind people are pointing it at themselves.

On the flip side of that, it seems impossible to always be kind. This is like the classic story of the mind reader who is driven insane by the constant voices inside their head. It’s impossible to act if you are terrified of how it might affect people. Being kind sometimes feels to me like exposing all of my emotional nerve endings to the world. Maybe there’s something freeing in the act of floating in the ocean of emotional cause and effect—sinking into the waves.

And then, of course, there is the intense kindness that we can feel when we are close to someone. When you manage to rip yourself open and connect with someone else, it can almost feel like mind reading. I know how you feel without you needing to say a single word. Even now, this many months later, I think I can feel it. The anxious worry. The accepted sadness. The fear of the unknown. The quiet self-loathing. Everybody contains a universe; our waves just happen to crash on the same beach. Who knows, maybe I am just projecting.

I am not always a kind man. I do try, and when I’m engaged, I’m pretty good at it (if I do say so myself). But I get overwhelmed easily. I let it all crash into me too hard. I fall down and freak out. I make decisions that are not kind or nice. Then I use my kindness to beat myself up for the terrible decisions I’ve already made.

You were one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I’m sorry I’ve let you down. I’m trying.

Happy Valentine’s Day 💝. Cruelly, I hope you wish it was me across from you at dinner. Kindly, I hope you are happy with your choices.