Making Peace with Renewal

All of a sudden on the Pacific Coast Highway, I imagined myself kneeling down before the black ocean in prayer, my knees digging into the sand. I saw three Mustangs lined up to drag race in a parking lot. A song played I’d never heard before and somehow my whole life was captured in one sound. I imagined Fear as a human being. I walked to them, gently placing my hands on their shoulders, pressing my forehead against theirs, and looking straight into their eyes. Fear exhaled into me and I took a breath.

The 10 freeway felt familiar to me again in a way it hadn’t since I lived on La Jolla and Pico, the red lights staring at me in their familiar way. The heat began to dissipate off my neck. Getting out of my car, the salt of the Pacific Ocean covered me instantly. It was more familiar in that it really felt like the salt of the Atlantic, like home, like foggy mornings on Nantucket where water vapor hangs low in the air.

I stepped outside into the air soaked with jasmine which just started to bloom. For a minute I was elated. Los Angeles felt like mine again. I wrote Belle and said I feel alive again, a reclamation of a certain kind of faith which she encouraged me to keep.

On top of my sheets I laid down in my jeans. Something I never dared do before. This time there was a pebble lodged in my chest, close to the center but veering to the right, just one finger away from the center of my breast plate. The pebble started to feel more like a sharp piece of glass, piercing through me and coming out my back. I imagined bleeding out, turning onto my back and feeling the glass penetrate deeper into me. My pillowcase smelled of frankincense and the birds chirped outside, speaking in tongues.

I fantasized about finding my way to a bottomless canyon. Taking my limbs and carrying them, climbing them up from the valley, and laying down in the green, green grass on the side of a steep hill. I thought about being vertical there, feeling my body about to slip and feeling afraid.

I remembered dancing with Devon in our kitchen on 6th Street, the brown and black marble counters, the tea cabinet, the camomile drying in the window sill, watching her long blonde hair twist and twirl around the small kitchen we filled endlessly with love in forms of pasta dishes, birthday cakes, passion fruits, sweet potatoes, pomodoro sauce, coffee grinds, and honey. I wanted to be back there and spin myself around the living room, making myself so dizzy that I fall over. Thankfully, she saved me in that dining room. I recall the sensation of her right hand on my left shoulder—a healing I’d needed since I was a little girl.

Now, laying in the evening glow of her living room, the sun peaked its head through the branches of the big tree out the window. I laid on her yellow velvet couch, the same one we’d had at 6th Street, and closed my eyes, falling asleep to the coo of a mourning dove, a familiar comfort. Repeating herself every few minutes, reminding me she’s there.

On Valentine’s Day, I woke again to the mourning dove. Now it felt like it was taunting me, reminding me of him. I walked to coffee, passing arched Spanish doors and wrought iron gates.

Lamp posts adorned with purple flowers and overhanging eucalyptus trees. I looked at my lone shadow on the pavement, disappointed. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, I say to myself. I look down, dragging my feet, noticing the grass becoming greener as spring nears its inevitable corner. A few girlfriends text me Happy Valentine’s Day, a kind of apology. What they really mean is I’m sorry I can’t take this away from you. I could not help but feel a sense of a gaping hole. A shadow following me around that when I turn is no longer there.

Then came a sun shower. I stepped outside to the overwhelming scent of a chimney. I stood in the middle of the street, right where the blue and grey skies seemed to meet and watched as the clouds moved slowly by, and breathed in. In my rearview window, I saw the West completely in blue. I pictured him there, standing tall, relieved that we were at least standing under the same sky. I drove East and understood yearning.

The navy that we had reupholstered the swivel chairs in in November had started to fade by mid-March, the arms appearing sun-bleached. Turning the chair towards the South facing windows at dusk, I watched the neighbors across the street walk from their car to the front door and into their home. I remembered marveling at it to him when we first saw the apartment. I said it looked like a castle, what with its coned roofs and all.

Standing on our stairs by the back door, I noticed a long cloud in the sky to the West. It was a particular shade of deep purple, like a color you’d pick at a nail salon, but what I mean is I could sense exactly what it would feel like to be standing in Malibu looking up at the same cloud, my feet placed firmly in the sand. I knew after seeing that cloud, that in Point Dume right now there’d be a sliver of light left, especially on the shore line. The blue kind of light, the crystal kind that comes in spring and stays through October, at least here in California.

In the evening at home I hear laughter all around me, conversations with friends, the hum of electric vehicles in reverse. A hose outside turned on which to me has always sounded like someone vomiting suddenly. I feel dizzy, perhaps because of the long cloud, the longing to be further West, closer to him. Perhaps because the light had gone and it was dark in the apartment except for the streetlights. I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly, wishing the vertigo away. Hoping that feeling would fade with each day that passed, him no longer here.

I didn’t need as much coffee as I’d imagined I would on Sunday afternoon, after not sleeping much the night before. I drove to buy lilacs because it’s finally the season and talked to a friend on the phone for an hour. I have been doing that, talking to friends on the phone for hours, something I never did before.

I sat on the floor of my bedroom by the window where I could watch the moon rising in the East. Her full face coming through the branches of the eucalyptus trees outside. I placed my laptop on what was once his bedside table and wondered how much Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems cost. The ones that detectives use in a crime scene. I wanted to see his in a blue light. I resented myself for not remembering every single moment, as I know those memories would be useful to me now.

I have sat most nights by the windows looking out and oftentimes will notice myself kneeling. I watch as day turns to dusk. I’d rather sit with the transition of day to night than be afraid of it, startled by the darkness and silence that now fill this apartment. I remember the tree across the street a full red object in October. I’ve watched it turn to the fullest green, a reminder that the days will keep going, despite my wishes to stop. I am anticipating the bloom of the jacaranda tree outside what was once our but is now just my bedroom window. People keep asking me if I plan on staying in the apartment to which I respond of course. I ask myself often now about if and when I will feel unafraid.

Then I forgive myself for being afraid.