Committed

To deserts, ramen with veggies, love without nostalgia

Tom Tingle

Perhaps my reaction was normal and you were insane.

Does anyone win this war? Only the soldiers know the cost. No, everyone, even the most delicately intertwined in one percent of the story, bear the brunt. It is the debt of being human.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, everything rots and nothing is okay. They tell you to find the connection in the everyday and the truth is you don’t, you are forever changed and the dog still needs the milk and the laundry still needs washing and you count your blessings that at least you now have a dog.

“At this point, might as well get a real one” your last providence to me. I drive to the psychic ward and swear to believe it is the last time we will speak but when the brain is mended just a little bit and I have shiny new nails and an insatiable hunger for orion choco chip cookies and the loop around the korean supermarket store on the highway is closed in my head on one of the worst days imaginable and did I tell you I have a new dog and house and neighbor and the laundry needs washing and the detergent needs ordering and I get tanned so often here but listen listen so yeah what were we talking about?

If I could talk to you from 2018, tears in your eyes, a solemness amongst the horror of it all in mine, you would be proud, you would call me sane and you insane and say you love me for my commitment to something that was worth worshiping all along while I pick the gems from the barren ground and put them, one painstaking piece at a time, in my little backpack with the skull emojis on it. Do they like reading this? Do they wonder?

I am repulsed by romantic writing and the repulsion shocks me. It is not new for me to be repulsed, I can be madly in love and still sniff my own version of insincere characters from a mile away but at this point, hand on heart, I don’t have a good track record as a judge of character and some of the gems I picked out turned out to be stones. My backpack is heavy but beyond a few breaks, I keep walking, too stubborn to let go.

And I still staunchly believe you were a gem: shiny, emerald, valuable for what you bought out in me, lucky for me to have met and then unmet you, mine. 

When all is said and done on the planet with a straight axis, in that apartment in New York, we agree that the world loves the other blog, book, podcast, award, but this one is ours. The story of Martha at the gas station. That one is ours. It simply means too many things in a language made for two people in love and it is like I am a chef and only make my special, simple, secret aglio olio for my lover.

You are not my lover. 

This is driving across deserts with a brown carton of books and uncomfortable (stylish) cream boots and a thrifted checkered men’s shirt so large it is a dress on me. I stop for mocha but only get black coffee, it burns my throat but it is mine and it wakes me up while teenage me sits across from me, scribbling in her journal. The privilege of getting what you wanted, perhaps in too exact a proportion. If only she would have known then. If only I would know now.

“You never did like editing” it is true and you know me well in many ways and I would only take that liberty with the ones I trust but the truth is you are frozen ice and warm all at once, and we are worlds apart and strangers now. Can I admit that I don’t really care if you live or die, I only care what you think of me? What did she say about indifference?

You haunt me but not the way you think you do. You were once a diamond, no, emerald, in the rough. The sun is setting and I am in Arizona for some reason, passing by a certain gas station. As much as I detest the idea of America now, the truth is I don’t detest it deep down. It feels like home, I have spent so many stories living there. I am at the gas station and Martha is solving her sudoku right before her life is about to change.

It won’t change in an instant, and it won’t be a lottery, but there is a shift in the axis. A slight change in the warmth of the yellow that hits her face. She will go insane first. She was always normal. She will give up on the sudoku midway and spend half her minimum wage of the hour on a chocolate bar and go home and cook ramen with veggies. 

She doesn’t know it yet but this was always the path and she was always going to walk her way into contentment.