true love
i’m always tempted to measure grief in the amount i have cried, but i know that’s not true. but it’s the most documentable sensation of grief i can think of. everything else feels too invisible. there’s that great mary ruefle essay* about menopause where she finds the slips of paper where she used to document each day if she cried, for years. and she wrote the amount of times she cried that day: c x 4. the cryalog, she says, would be funny, if it were not an archive of her deep depression and thoughts. (i’m laughing now, too, looking at my swollen eyes the next day after writing this and i look like a gremlin.)
i’m brushing my teeth in the bathroom, and then i’m dragging the toothbrush along my molars, mouth agape in silent wail, tears spitting out of my eyes.
cryalog: several days ago i almost cried because i was jealous everyone was at the big show at rob’s garage in st. louis and i wasn’t. and tonight i cried and cried and cried, more than i have all year, thinking about my best friend henry. how i wish so badly to have more time with him, just me and him, before i leave.
this grief feels so suddenly huge for me. even though it shouldn’t, i’ve been thinking about this grief for awhile now, knowing of my leaving for awhile. i’ve been planning on leaving this apartment and my chicago friends for almost three years, ever since i got here. even writing this now, i can’t stop crying. when the crying confuses me, i come here to write it out. i don’t really know why writing and crying are so correlated for me. an author on a podcast said, “i write because if i don’t, i will die. i write for my survival.” do i think that by writing about the crying, the crying will stop, or mean something bigger? to make the crying archived forever, the self becomes archived forever. is crying for survival, too? processing the unknown, the things that i’m fearful for, the big holes.
i know i write in here a lot about walking around humboldt park alone, but i want to acknowledge that sometimes henry is there with me, too. while we were in school during the pandemic, we would get out of class sometimes and walk through the park for an hour, continuing our classmates’ and students’ discussions with each other. sometimes we would work out essays we were writing on the walks. a lot of the times we talked about our romantic relationships or troubles or feelings about our friends and family and the world. i remember one day it was misty and it had just rained. i have a picture on my phone of henry walking out on the long wooden dock towards the lagoon and the big weeping willow tree.
last summer and this summer, we would pack up the plaid blanket and henry’s hammock and walk to the park to our spot where we like to read books. last summer i was reading “writers who love too much” the new narrative anthology, having some of the most spiritual experiences in reading a book that i ever have. my most treasured friends are my friends who want to sit near me in complete silence and read our separate books. just being. then we would pack up the blanket and walk away, discussing what we just read.
platonic intimacy is hard to describe, maybe because it’s not often described in literature or media or movies or songs. there’s a bunch of comedy movies in our culture about best friends, and it’s true that when i’m with henry we are the funniest people alive. maybe my brain has been rotted to think that “best friends” means happy-smiling-laughing people on a screen i’m scrolling through. i don’t know why there aren’t more depictions of friends just sitting on the grass, or cooking dinner together, or sitting on couches playing phone games. sometimes being a friend is very quiet.
at the same time, my friendship with henry is very related to language. one of the first mornings we lived together (maybe the first but i don’t remember), we ate breakfast and then continued to talk for two-three hours. the stories we wanted to tell each other naturally spilled out, and we couldn’t stop. we still can’t stop talking! some people thought we had been good friends before we lived together, but we weren’t. it started then, three years ago, at the breakfast table just talking.
i’m across the apartment from him right now in my room with the door closed, listening to some “scary” ambient music that he doesn’t like, crying and crying, really reddening my face and eyes, and smearing it all with this paper towel i found in a paper bag by the coffeemaker.
it sounds weird, but sometimes i think henry and i know most things about each others’ bodies. any kind of ache or pain either of us are having we relay to the other. henry helps me not eat expired foods (sometimes) and helps me with a lot of practical shit that i have no idea how to do even though i’m 29. sometimes he thinks he’s right and i’m wrong, when i’m actually right. he’s driven me around a lot in his subaru. we take each others’ old clothes. we’re big time meal-repeaters and love to cook together, mainly a vegetable + a pasta meal. he has dealt with me playing the same songs on my ipod speaker deck almost every day for years, and we have had a lot of good times listening to the shins. we are the biggest supporters of each others’ art - often showing each other rough drafts and demos before anyone else. sometimes i hear henry’s new songs before anyone else simply because i am sitting in the same room where he creates them. we love to watch reality tv and form opinions about these tv people. we have good opinions. one halloween, we went out dressed like a pumpkin (me) and a sexy bdsm cupid/angel? (henry) and it was one of my favorite nights in the city.
maybe the circumstances of the past three years (both of us “starting anew” in a new city, my dad’s tbi, the pandemic, etc) have made me feel extra attached to this person who i live with and spend so much time with, or maybe we have had similar experiences in our lives (we are youngest siblings, played shows since we were teens, etc.)~~ there is a unique understanding and trust and unconditional love. i’m moving away from chicago to go back to st. louis to be with my family, but henry is my family, too.
the grief i am experiencing tonight is not grieving henry as a person, because obviously we are still alive and we have the rest of our lives to be best friends (and i really can see us as old guy and old lady, still talking), i’m grieving the physical closeness and ease of our companionship. most days, i can walk out of my room and say “good morgey” to him and we can vent and chat and lean on each other for comfort. i think “comfort” is a key word. just his presence is comforting. we have comforted each other through a lot. just like writing is survival, friendship is survival, too. i’m tempted to run down the hall and bang on his door and make him comfort me through my grief of moving away from him, but i know i need to comfort myself; work through this grief alone.
of course it’s okay that we aren’t going to be roommates anymore. we are both moving in with the other most important people in our lives. it’s okay that we are leaving this apartment, leaving our small-ass rooms, henry’s with no closet and a broken doorknob, and our kitchen where i just found a cockroach in the cabinet. i’ve moved away from other best friends at other transitional times in my life; i know that friendships live on, change and transform, never disappear completely. i’m so grateful to have friends like i do, to continue to make new ones, to continue to live with my friends in closeness. you know, how lucky am i to have even found a friend like henry in my lifetime? how lucky am i that my heart can be so broken by the thought of moving away from my friend? and it’s really just the grief of wanting more time.