the past three weeks

It’s 12:03 a.m.

I should be sleeping deeply right about now; caught in phase three of my nightly REM cycle. I got up early, spent all day hauling firewood from the ground to the wheelbarrow to the truck while my pops and his neighbor, Jesus, actually did the chopping, and then I came home and worked for a few hours on m’laptop. By all rights, I should be tuckered out, shleepy, snoozing, growing Zzzzzzzs outta my eyebrows where tiny gnomes toil by night to inflate those Zs with helium. They’ve obviously never read about the Hindenburg.

Sorry. I’m in an odd mood. Anywho,

I’ve kept the writer chained too long and she is restless. So here I sit, once again, in the dark, typing. There’s something a little Miss Haversham about it.

Which is funny, because the past three weeks have been a sort of idyllic bubble of unadulterated happiness. Why? Well…yeah, I’m gonna have to answer “Phil” on that one.

Four months is a long time to be away from someone. And even when I came back to Azusa, there were some rather pressing things to take up everyone’s time: film premieres, last-minute assignments, and oh yeah—graduation. Not for me, but for half my friends, as well as the One Who’s Name is a Species of Crustacean. So even though I was among everyone I wanted to be around—and let’s face it, there was a certain someone at the top of that list—I wasn’t really an active part of anyone’s life. I was just kind of there…waiting for someone to have five seconds to breathe or sleep or eat, let alone just sit and chat. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t, and am not, upset that everyone was busy. It was just weird to be the only one, for a change, who had time on their hands.

Point is, coming back to Seattle with Phil was like my selfish, delicious little reward for enduring four months of separation. We had no responsibilities for the time he was here—no jobs to worry about, no films to work on, no assignments to turn in.

I can’t remember the last time I was this happy. And I knew it had to end. I knew Phil had to go back to California to start working, and I had to stay in Seattle to find a job, and we’d have to be separated yet again. But I didn’t count on how hard it would be to watch him go. I stayed outside the security checkpoint, watching until he’d waved one last time and disappeared around the corner, and then I staggered back to the parking garage and bawled in the car until I ran out of napkins to cry into and my parking ticket was about to pass the hour mark and charge me another three bucks, which I didn’t have, and my car was running on fumes and I was sure it was going to stall on the freeway and the traffic was a nightmare and Phil was gone and he would be gone for another two and a half months and I hated it and it made my stomach hurt to watch him walk away and it was just ridiculous to love somebody this much.

In Oxford, there was nothing to remind me of Phil except Facebook and the one Polaroid I had of the two of us. Seattle was the same, until three weeks ago. We went to so many places and saw so many things, that virtually everything reminds me of him. It’s hard to even sit in my car and not cry because I keep expecting that when I look over, he’ll be sitting there humming along with the radio, or encouraging me as I fail, yet again, to parallel park downtown, or declaring with no warning, while it’s pouring down rain, “Let’s get ice-cream.”

Who eats ice cream in the rain?

We do.

People stain your life. They change the color of things. And when they leave, very little remains unaffected.