lost and profound.

• not american.
• if smoker, will consider quitting.
• someone who won’t abandon me when i need him.

after eight years, it’s all over.

peter left me. on gchat. i didn’t even get the chance to fight for us.

it hurts worst knowing that he wasn’t the man i fell in love with. the man i loved would fight.

i don’t work; i’m broken.

but i’m almost ready to grow up, guys.

i miss my best friends. all of them, yes, but the one specifically i pushed away. i miss my man, my soulmate…i miss the person who made me believe in so many things i otherwise would have never believed. i miss the man who believed in me and loved me in spite of myself. ha. i am updating from my phone on my friend’s grandmother’s couch, crying silently to myself. what have i become?!

and if my six months of neglect has granted me the penance of another six years’ wait, then wait is what i’ll do.

but please. forgive me. believe in me one more time. please. let me come home.

and it is more amazing how many ways in which i am resisting…

though we are always living in a state of grace, so i just pray i am right where i’m supposed to be.

i can’t exactly call myself “homesick,” as i don’t really have a home, per se. (though in my heart of hearts, i belong in london. i’ll never be english. but i’ll always be a londoner. and let’s be real, everyone in london — english or otherwise — hates the english anyway.) but i’m definitely getting roamsick. missing bits and pieces of places i’ve lived.

cincinnati…to state the painfully obvious, i miss the playhouse. i miss being an actor. i miss being a part of something that still makes theatre for people who care. i miss the delicious santa claus beer from the comet, jungle jim’s (i only went once, but i just like knowing it’s there), dusmesh, the esquire and it’s cheap movies and nice tea selection, friday night amol dinner after kurt’s yoga adventure class, mt. adam’s pizza and deli’s vegan pizza, crowley’s (where i came to eat my vegan pizzas over a pint), the wine bar, doing my “walk of shame” up the hill, bowtie cafe, and melt (not my south african friend — the sandwich shop). i miss my couch surfer friends and how they always had something going on. i miss my mattress on the floor, my nice little desk, my urban outfitters bedding. i miss books on a bookshelf and curry cooking in the kitchen. i miss an oven…even though that oven baked everything unevenly, and we had to rotate the bread loaves.

even in canfield, i miss the bread chef. :) ely and her delicious sandwiches. aladdin’s and zenobia — anything with za’atar, really. i miss mill creek park’s three mile jogging trail. i miss my mom and dad. (i do not miss everything i own smelling like smoke, though.) i miss studio oxygen — melissa’s thursday night class.

in stuttgart, i miss the open air market, the irish pub with its irish bartender and monday night folk night, the hostel where i always stayed up the big hill, andi’s apartment that overlooked the entire city. i miss my expat friends who ate dinner together. i miss sitting in coffee shops writing letters, shopping on konigstrasse, passing so many shops i could never afford on my au pair salary. (ok, that part i do not miss.) i miss breakfast rolls and a back yard. i just miss walking around, the buildings so beautiful, the town almost provincial. leaving kornwestheim was so fast and hectic, it feels as though the experience was robbed from me. i really, really hope to go to germany again.

fuck, i miss too much of london to name. it breaks my heart. but let’s be real, it (mostly) comes down to dim sum, the national, and the victoria & albert. more dim sum than anything else. (ok, peter too. and dina.)

and i don’t miss paris or los angeles at all. :) well. that isn’t fair. there are fleeting little moments, more for paris than LA, the smell of garbage mixed with french bread, enjoying a cheap rosé on la seine, la tour eiffel appearing through the morning fog of paris…i don’t know. there is a certain filthy romance to paris. it isn’t the city for me, no, but it has its charm. (and los angeles will always have vegan mexican food and real food daily mashed potatoes…)

but so much of what you miss when you reflect on your travels is who you were when you were there, and for the most part, you can never get that back.

so let’s just keep moving forward. xo

i will say anything to hold onto something i can’t understand. my feelings all blur, and i’m caught in this ridiculous ebb and flow. nothing rings true to me right now, nothing resonates. i delete more than i type, and as i do so, imagine myself crossing out the words in thick, red ink. smearing across the page. and i think about people with real tragedy, living with real pain, and it breaks my heart. and then i’m angry at myself for having my heart broken because really, who the fuck am i to believe i could ever share in someone’s grief? my teddy bear, matthew, doesn’t smell like armani diamonds anymore, but my friend, chris, does. i saw tongyeong and jeju, and when i came back, daegu still wasn’t my home. i’m going to south africa over the winter holiday, and then i’m going to london. and then i’m coming back, and i think i have to stay another year because i don’t have enough money. no matter what i do, my apartment is never clean. i want to throw away everything i don’t need, but all of the trash bags are too small.

i’m not sure of the point of this entry; i think this is what i have a journal for.

if i took out my eyeball from my eye socket (by the way, why is eyeball a compound word but eye socket is two words? fuck english.) and handed it to you…like, you didn’t even wash your hand…i just took it out of my head and gave it to you, if i did that, i think the most ridiculous thing i could say would be, “please don’t hurt my eyeball.”

of course you would. it’s a fucking eyeball. all slimy and unprotected and in your clumsy ass hand.

sometimes i think loving someone is like that.

once, in 2007, i was living in paris, and i was flying home. dina was supposed to call me at midnight her time, or six in the morning paris time. well, she fell asleep instead. as a result, i woke up late, and i started screaming and throwing a tantrum because i was going to miss my flight. i rapidly packed the last of my things and ran — a 50 pound suitcase in each hand — down the street to catch the RER to the airport. i called dina and told her how angry i was, and in the midst of my rage, the doors of the train opened. a man threw my luggage off the train. so furious i couldn’t even think of french words, i asked him in franglish quel le FUCK he thought he was doing…and then i understood. i was supposed to change trains to get to the airport. i jumped off the train onto the platform, and after a lot of trauma/tears/more franglish, i did make my flight. and dina and i are still friends.

i still remember that man. and as pissed as i was that he threw my luggage off of a (slow) moving fucking train, i am still grateful to him.

and tonight, after another draining conversation with another draining yet wonderful friend, i realized. i am that man. (in the proverbial sense, mind you…)

i know what it’s like to meet me. to be my friend. and to be loved by me.

it’s exhausting.

i am abrasive. i am unflinchingly honest. i won’t ever allow you to settle for less than what you owe yourself. i will see you as you are, as you could be, as your best self, and i’ll never allow you to shy away from that awareness, no matter how afraid you are of change. i will believe in you more than you believe in yourself. i will give you more than you think you deserve. and when you push me away and treat me like shit and resent me for showing you love that you don’t believe you deserve, i will continue to love you. i will be there for you when no one else is or when no one else knows how to be. i will know you better than others faster than others, and i will see through your bullshit and call you on it. i will put myself at risk of losing you as a friend because you will be so angry with me for never giving you “a fucking break.” and when you want to lose me as a friend, when you are ready to throw in the towel and tell me that i cause you pain and give up on me, i will tell you with complete certainty that it will be your loss. that i’m not selling anything. that i want nothing from you. that it is worth it to me to show you that you are worth it.

angel and peter are the two most prominent examples of this in my life. two people who hurt me by hurting themselves, by not wanting to love themselves, by not wanting to take a chance to trust me…finally did take that chance. and from the moment i met both of them, i knew they would be worth the wait. over the years, i felt frustration and anger and betrayal and what seemed like bottomless fatigue. but i never felt like i should “give up.”

and i am a woman of faith, and i do ask god why he puts these people in my life. over and over again. why i have to be the vessel, the mirror, the person who hands someone all of their shit on a platter and says, “look at who you’re being. and look at who you could be. let me believe in you. and let me love you.” and in selfish moments, i wish i didn’t carry what sometimes feels like this burden, and i know that if i cared less, if i didn’t love so crushingly hard, it would be so much easier for me.

but despite my suburban ohio upbringing, i don’t actually take the easy way out of anything.

and at the end of the day, i am so blessed to be surrounded by such beautiful, strong, delicate, vulnerable, incredible people. so lovable. so loving. so worth every argument and every tear. so grateful to be even a tiny part of their growth and transformation.

i will try my hardest to inspire you to inspire yourself by any means necessary. if that means throwing all of your baggage off of the fucking train and making you cry and hate me before you finally jump off the wrong train and continue on your path, then so be it. i know you are worth it.

once your fear subsides, i know you will see it was the right thing to do.