i want to feel things but mostly it is all a little muted.
five years ago today, diogo left my house. five years ago today, i woke up in the morning and he was lying with me. he had been there for two weeks. we would make dinner and drink wine and he would spoon me in the night. we would come home from work to each other and talk about our days. five years ago today, i went to work at smart alec's in the morning and cried the whole way because he was leaving for brazil and i had said goodbye. maybe five years ago minus an hour, he came into smart alec's to say goodbye again. and he took pictures of me across the counter with a disposable camera. i wore my cat-eyed glasses at the time and lots of gummy bracelets because i was 20 and moody. i can only imagine how those pictures looked. maybe they are still waiting to be developed. in a camera somewhere in sao paolo. a strange delay of reality. maybe if those pictures have not been developed yet, then diogo is not yet dead.
we went out to the delivery door, where my boss always smoked her skinny cigarettes with her skinny fingers and talked about which purse she should buy next, and we hugged and i sobbed and then he said he had to go because he couldn't look at me anymore. i can clearly remember watching him walk up durant avenue. he was wearing his grey zooyork t-shirt and shorts. i watched him until i couldn't see him any longer. when i got back to my apartment, there was a story on my refrigerator that he'd written. at the top it said, "beth, this is on account of my loving you forever, diogo."
i loved that he always used my name. it was not general. it was me he was loving.
today diogo is dead and i think it scares me most that i am nowhere near that experience. that i think about him and love him, but i struggle to hold onto parts of him in my mind. sometimes i recite them. a laundry list of qualities. sometimes i wonder if there is even any life left in my memories, or if it has just become memories of memories themselves. i write them down. i recite them. he put salt on everything. he played the tenor sax. he always used proper grammar, even if it sounded strange in conversation. he had a knot in his lower back. he liked to tap my nose and tell me to be careful. he had a box of tapes in the back of his car. my hand fit perfectly into his. he always carried a portuguese/ english dictionary and a just english dictionary. he was diogo, not diego. i am getting frantic as i think about it. it is too many things.
now his words are tattooed on my arm and i tell the story too often and i rarely actually think about it and maybe it is better. tonight i will go to jazz again and someone will ask me. they always do. and it will be fine.
five years years later minus a month, i moved from san francisco.
and i gave away his typewriter. it was an electric typewriter and it wasn't beautiful but we bought it together. he had asked me where to get a typewriter and i obviously knew and i think it made him love me.
we gave each other writing assignments each month and his always ran from one side of the page to the other without margins. the day he died, i tore all the eraser tape out of the typewriter. he had deleted whole lines, which i read backwards. like some strange mirror into death. inverted and discarded. i hung his deleted words from my ceiling like lights.
i saved that typewriter for years and never used it.
i saved it and then i gave it away.
i told myself, it is just a typewriter.
i told myself, diogo is not in a typewriter.
and i took it to goodwill with all the other millions of things i decided i didn't need anymore.
today i've realized i barely need anything. i have too many clothes here, too many lotions, too many socks.
i don't even wear socks.
i am in berlin and i don't wear socks and my first love is dead and life just continues.
the week before i left san francisco and everything felt like it was falling apart, i just started to say, and so it goes. i didn't mean to, but somehow it kept coming out of my mouth every time i didn't know what else to say. that i'd resigned to, or embraced rather, the fact that the only real option is to just keep going.
i feel sad. i suppose sad isn't even the word. i feel reflective. i feel consumed by the idea of endings-- the end of class, the end of our relationship, the end of life. endings of every kind occur at every moment, but they do not stop us.
i guess i felt like coming here i was losing something, that being away from people i love means i don't matter anymore, that if people could deign to survive without me, then it must mean i am not important.
then i realized i'm an idiot.
i loved diogo with my whole, infant baby heart. and he is gone and i am living and so it goes.
i feel really lonely suddenly. but i don't think it's for lack of people or love. i feel lonely because i've spent most of my life trying to not be me, or to change me, or to distract from me, or to cushion myself with people so i can't see me, or to just not be at all. and now i'm here, sitting with myself, and for the first time i feel like maybe that was a mistake. that i am not so bad. and i think the most important part of realizing i'm not so bad is that i can let myself not be as wonderful as people like to tell me i am. that i look pretty unkempt and i have not baked cookies in a while and i haven't gone out of my way to help anyone, but i'm just a person and i'm regular and that's fine.
it's fine to just be regular.
i am crying. i am sorry this is not a happy post. it is not unhappy. i just feel really overwhelmed by life. how much it is. how far away from it i've been. how much i have to learn. how i'm responsible for my own life.
today our teacher handed back our tests and said they were mostly good, and one was very good. and then she gave me mine and said "sehr gut bess," which she calls me because she cannot make a th sound.
very good.
i got a 49/50.
i suppose i am a little special.
