Spring Cleaning
Last year instead of taking my car to the shop, I got my hair done. Needing air in my tires is constant, but needing a bob to signal to the outside world that I am experiencing a radical shift in ideology, well that comes around every few years or so. Not wanting to recommit to another year of shorthair and shortcomings, I needed to embrace spring cleaning.
Everything must go.
Facebook marketplace became my outlet until I posted a mirror selfie and realized that depraved men have no bounds. Sir Adrian of Downey tells me my mirror is ugly but that I am “so hot.” I took the compliment and took down the listing.
Feng shui was on my side as I decided to dismantle all furniture, move rugs, and put up wallpaper. I became an expert with an allen wrench. To create a space that no one has known but myself. To create a person that no one has known but myself. Shirts once placed on display in my closet now in the bin headed toward Crossroads.
My roster windexed for the summer.
Recently I have bore witness to my own Tracy Ellis Rossification. That is coming to the realization that if a romantic partner doesn’t come then the birds will still sing and the sun will come in the morning and the tide will kiss the sand. It is not a life of emptiness and absence but one entirely mine. And that can coincide with the desire to oneday share that life, but with the important caveat that it be right.
After walking away from what I knew wasn’t right, boredom brought me back to what was familiar. I guess I have a hard time of letting go.
So when the tables turned, and it was now my time to be the injured party, I didn’t feel injured at all. I felt free. I was seeing someone else at the same time because it’s almost summer. I thought maybe I could find novelty in newness and call it love. But as time dragged on, I knew that the only person I wanted to be with right now was myself.
Part of it was maybe an overcorrection to karmically balance the universe. Like hurting someone could cancel out my hurt as if it never happened. An eye for an eye and all that jazz. But none of these trivial things are worth caring for deeply. It is infatuation that falls flat. Lust that lingers but never makes itself comfortable. Chemistry in place of compatibility.
No one to share life’s sweetness.
Right now it feels like I am my own best friend, mother, and girlfriend. Seeing myself in this way has allowed me to shift perspective and be kinder to myself. To open up the window and let the light all the way in.
It was Easter Sunday. I was supposed to be saving money, which I guess I always am. But it was a holiday after all so it felt like the only potentially acceptable time to order a pancake for the table for one. The bartender thinks that the girl to my right and I are together and I silently wish it to be true. That I had a friend to share my pancake with. Instead I haphazardly watch muted TikToks and take bites of the sweet cake.
But then something marvelous happened.
We asked each other about our breakfast, books, boys (all essential b’s). It quickly turned out that the bartender had been right and that we had been friends all along, we just hadn’t known it yet. Later that evening, it crossed my mind the significance that I made a friend named Grace on Easter Sunday.
Today I wake up to the sounds of rain and smile knowing that somewhere unknown there are flowers that are just beginning to bloom.
XOXO BH
