74. The Week in Me
I actually think this isn't very good.
I once left a man who thought my love was a renewable resource.
“I’ve seen the beauty of your heart and it holds multitudes.” My love was pure and had been given purely. I am immensely deserving of love. “Keep your heart open and shining1,” he texted me on a March day quite like this one.
The love I gave him made him realize that he now had to love himself, too. He wanted to venture towards loving himself. This is a walk he could have taken before ever taking my hand. But.2
Where does the love go, when you can not give it to someone any longer? When you’d need a shovel to the frozen cemetery dirt or repeatedly to the back of the head to love them to their face?
When they just don’t want it anymore?
When they want it, but don’t want to give it back?
I do not think my love is not a renewable resource. It is not new love, I feel, in this moment, that I am bringing to the people I hold near. It is the love I have carried from the day of my birth, the love given to me in charm bracelets from aunts and bedtime stories from my mother and burnt on 6’2” disasters with edgy magician beards and friends who chose receding husbands over the loyalty of women - often, too often, without being asked to choose at all.
Love is recycled, regifted, reupholstered.3
That perhaps is why I have been led to the belief, in rejection, in abandonment, that the love I offer is not good enough. I am not good enough. The love I extend is too heavy, too grooved with currents of crying, too shattered to kintsugi without just making a gold vase entirely. And my unemployed ass is too broke for that right now, thank you.
That love is sung heavy with grief. It is offered in the red, heart-shaped hat I wore to bury my grandmother at Holy Cross. It is condensation on my bathroom floor, the bathroom floor I collapsed onto when I learned I would never hear my best friend’s voice again. It is the chords of the songs I wrote about a boy who has, to my amazement, not yet drunk himself to death. It is the same love I thought would flow naturally between my mother and I. It is the love I thought would flow with ease across my veins. It is the love I should be giving myself instead.
Where does the love go?
Apparently, into storage. As the slope of that man’s beautiful nose has been prodding at the membranes of my mind lately, I noticed that there is a shocking lot of him around my home. All this in four months. The postcard on the fridge. The book on the wildlife of his home state, edited by his friend Liz. The Tyvek wristband from the Late Night with Seth Meyers taping we attended, with the guest who wouldn’t stop laughing while insisting this was her first ever sober talk show appearance. The bobblehead that broke during my flight back, its own beautiful nose now replaced with a gray putty, never painted to match the skin because the relationship ended before I had time to mix the shade. A tambourine. The rock painted like a curled cat, pilfered from the set of his television show and FedExed to me, his real name on the return label, the name I worry fits him more and more each day. The vial of sand from a black beach in Greece, foraged with care, the complimentary hotel breakfast jam label soaked and scraped off with intention. It had been a loose plea ahead of our first date, while he was still traipsing through Europe: “steal me some beach." He did. His first promise kept. When his generous palm left his backpack and held it out to me over a slice of Veselka pumpkin pie, I decided he was a man worth falling in love with. So I did.
Was he? Were you?
I am looking for two more t-shirts buried years deep in the lanky closet reserved for my band tees, sleeves ripped off like the scumbag ginzo I am. And then this box will be taped up, I will decide what to write across it for minimal future angst, and it will be driven to my storage unit with some Christmas decorations I bought on December 26 clearance. And I will breathe in the negative space newly harvested in my home, like love back into me.
And now we move onto the recs, with a special thank you to
, my newest paid subscriber. I am so grateful. Thank you.To listen:
With Beyoncé dropping a modified “Jolene” on Cowboy Carter, a reminder that I TOO put a new lil’ spin on “Jolene” once upon a time:
Dropping this thanks to a reminder by
:Sam sent me this and if my heart wasn’t already broken, this would have done it: I am vehemently against AI…except when Frank Sinatra is covering ABBA, I guess.
This song makes me, every time, want to grab my baseball bat and run up on a friend of my choosing’s shitty ex:
Every. Word. Applies.
To read:
My friend and father of my favorite nieces Mike Duquette wrote two exceptional pieces recently for his own blog, one on his role in the Ghostbusters revival:
“My ambitions to preserve and contextualize the entertainment of the past was, outside my purview, curdling into a desperate attempt on behalf of pop culture to fit into old pants and sink into the warm grip of old favorites while the new world struggled to be born.” Old pants!!!
And one bitchy little screed about Jack Antonoff that made me laugh OUT LOUD with the phrase “random sack”.
CT Jones interviewed Regina King, and the way Regina speaks of her son’s suicide is so healing to someone who often dangles one foot above the grave:
Holy fuck, by
:
‘The Boondock Saints’ Are Back; Norman Reedus, Sean Patrick Flanery Return As Boston Vigilantes As Thunder Road & Dragonfly Films Take Reins Willem Dafoe cameo to make up for the fact that he had to appear in that dogshite second one or we go Wyatt fucking Earp.
Thank you to
for sharing this Twitter thread about my favorite Rat Pack member, Sammy Davis Jr. (Especially the tap duet between him and Gregory Hines!)A post I have been meaning to share for a while by
:
To watch:
Thank you, Steve. I did this. I felt better.
Thank you Mike for sending this and RUINING MY DAY!!!! (I’m kidding. I love you!):
A recent moment of joy - Sheryl THEE Ralph singing one of my favorite songs on Abbott Elementary:
This is literally just Simone:
This is literally just Lugosi:
Actually my babies:
Various and sundry:
Have not stopped thinking about PATRICIO:
The only two moods I have:
From
:
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How I’m tryna be:
Love you bitches,
TG
For others. He stressed, numerous times, that there should be others, others that were not as broken as him. And of course he did: that I could have moved on to a happy relationship exonerated him, no? That the damage wasn’t so incontrovertible. You are not my pimp. I will not kiss others for you.
Said, of course, exactlyyy like this:
Yes, I have been listening to like SO MUCH Bright Eyes. It is positively Nebraskan over here. It has been bleak in these streets.
I’ve been down this path. More times than I care. For me, I don’t know about love being a renewable resource. Time is. I get a new 24 hours every day. And in that I use some of it in acts of love to those around me. Or myself. And to receive acts of love demonstrated by others. But that 24 hours has its limits. As I was reminded - time is the most precious thing to give. Once given it cannot be recovered. And one day, the resource will stop being renewable. And I hope I can leave behind other acts of love created by my existence.
I feel you. So much.
"Where does the love go, when you can not give it to someone any longer?"
Oof – felt that line massively. Thanks for sharing it out into the world <3 xoxo, someone else who feels love never leaves but is instead like the Earth's hydrologic cycle.