July is a surrealist prototype of reality. From the moment I wake up, I live my life for someone else — someone who doesn’t even recognize me some days. But that’s okay because this is July and July is not real.
The walls in my grandma’s living room warp. There are pictures of me from when I was three and eight and some years in-between. Happy, silly smiles and bashful, guarded smiles. I push up one picture frame and press my index finger against the wall behind it. Rings of ripples spread outward. My finger falls in. I push my arm through the wall and then my whole body and now I’m walking on the waterfront towards the Verrazano bridge and where did the time go? Who am I now?
I go for several-hour walks in the heat, pass underneath mulberry trees by the highway, linger by arched two-sided stairs and algae-d rocks that smell of sharp salt and putrid waste. The river is scintillating, a thousand-crystal glimmering slope of blue curves, and the sun is a popping yellow gumball; a prickly fog covers the sun and the space beneath the Verrazano bridge, and all of this is beautiful and yet I am still not present. I’m still writing this in my head, documenting my life as it’s happening. I am a balancing act, on the verge of unraveling as I’m putting all my pieces back together. When do I get to be whole? The extremes are far more subdued these days compared to a year ago, but they’re still extremes. I’m still trying to find the middle. I’m still trying to find my presence in the present.
There is no permanence to my days. Only my body stays, that and the concept of my existence and my very existence itself; otherwise, my mind changes, my reality changes, and so do all of you. Everything is in flux.
My summer is an evasive firefly; here one second, flickering out of sight the next. I’ve seen a handful of fireflies this summer, but none have let me catch them and then set them free. I was so close to catching two, too. But they slipped out of my grasp just as my fingers clamped down against the base of my palm to hold them in. I think they know something about me. I think something about me has changed.
A lot has.
This past week, butterflies started following me. Small white ones with spotted black wings fluttered by, guiding me toward an unknowable future. My butterfly spine is still intact, hidden tight below my human back, waiting for the right moment to open up. Not now, though. But soon (I hope).
I can’t tell you what is happening because I don’t know. I’m living in a nonsensical life. My life is happening outside of me — and without me. I’ll start doing something, like taking the elevator down, and then thirty seconds later when I come back into my body I am disoriented. Where did I go? How did that happen? I’m existing right now. This is peculiar. Jarring. Is this what everyone else feels like? I’m not disassociating anymore, yet I am doing something akin to that but not that. It’s like I’m learning what it’s like to be in my body by leaving it, letting my body change on its own, then coming back into it and adjusting to the change but how can I adjust to a new body when I’ve been my own body for twenty-six years. That doesn’t make sense to you, does it? I’ll figure this out.
For several days, I had tar-covered hands; my sticky fingers got stuck to hefty garbage bags that were filled to the brim with canned goods and smelly aged papers that had my grandma’s cursive writings littered across them. Handsome garbage men named Michael — with a stolid gait, a reliable smile, and a straight friendliness — reassured me that it was okay to throw these heavy bags down the garbage chute, that I wouldn’t break it. But I still worried that I would. “I don’t want to cause any problems,” I told him. “It’s 20 gauge, don’t worry,” he told me. I didn’t know what that meant but I nodded. He appreciated my concern. His reassurance soothed me. This was a bright spot in my day.
In the laundry room in my grandma’s building, I met a 69-year-old woman named Annie with grey hair styled into a larger-than-life pixie cut; “I’m so happy to see you,” she told me. “You’re beautiful.”
She unwinded her life story. Her childhood in Taiwan. Washing clothes outside in the cold. Her 33-year-old son. Her numerous (was it 5?) brothers and sisters. Her husband who passed (or did he?). Sadness, death, and sorrow rippled across every thread she laid bare, but she had the sweetest light in her face and voice. I kept pointing it out to her and she kept complimenting me instead. “You’re very beautiful; you’re very sweet.” We were playing on a seesaw of compliments. She was so happy to see me.
Last week, I took a cab to my grandma’s building. I never got the driver’s name but we talked about kids and having kids. He was 55 and already had two grandchildren. His daughter was born when he was twenty-one. My body shirked at the thought. He asked me if I wanted any kids. I told him no, but it was a wavering no. He was surprised.
I told him: I’ve been sick my whole life; I don’t want to spend a year being pregnant; I have control issues; I care too much, I’ll lose my mind; people have an idealized version of the kids they’ll have, but it doesn’t mean they’ll get that; it’s too much chance. I am selfish.
Oh! He liked that answer. That’s it! Selfishness. Egoism. Ego.
As I walked towards my grandma’s building, he remarked that he really enjoyed our conversation. I smiled. Me too, I told him.
This keeps happening. I keep having conversations with people I will never see again. But I have these little bridges, these little pockets of happiness I get to carry with me while everything else falls apart. While everything else is not real. I stick my hands into these pockets every day. They’re the only consistency I have when everything’s in flux. When everything is not real.
There’s something happening behind me. I can’t smell it, I can’t hear it, but I can feel it. There’s something behind me and I wonder if it’s my life happening outside of me. But that can’t be it when my life is also happening in front of me. Either way, my life is still not happening through me. I am still a gap in the in-between.
My grandma doesn’t remember me some days. But that’s okay because neither do I.