be honest, she says

after a disgruntled shopping experience where everyone stares at me and i buy juice and bread and palta and wonder where my appetite went, afton and i share a plate of greasy fries at a little typical chilean restaurant where the tv blasts chile's recent win over honduras and i get to thinking.
the people who say traveling abroad will be the most amazing experience of your life are usually the people who studied abroad, who traveled with money, who were unattached, who were running from something. they are usually not the people who chose to leave everything they love to live somewhere alone. who move somewhere under a certain impression, with expectations, with promise. because i feel like there would be such a different story. i want to hear about the hard parts. the scary parts. the long, long nights. the attempts at a new language, at new customs, new friends. i want to hear about when you fell apart, when you questioned everything, when the people who were supposed to be your family, your support turn their backs on you. i want to hear about how living abroad is the most difficult experience in the whole world. thats the story you never hear about. i guess ill just have to keep living it and let you know.
today there are riots in the street at 10am and i sit on my window seat and take photos and smoke cigarettes even though i shouldnt and i dont want to but i dont have any reason not to. i cant breathe anyway. the streets are littered with paper and carabineros throw tiny explosions, making popping sounds echo across the courtyard of the university and when i do finally leave the house, the sting of pepper spray makes me sneeze for blocks. i feel anxious and restless, i feel lonely and ugly and like someone i dont know.
today i had plans and they all fell through when tanks rolled down alameda and made it impossible to run any errands. and its cold, like really cold, and i dont have the proper clothes as usual and all i want to do is stay in my apartment and look at santiago from above, like a cat and plan my next move.
all my plans have been ruined and i cant bare to face the idea of having to make new ones that only include myself. i shouldnt have been so sure, so giving, i shouldnt have. i couldnt have helped it though.
in my classes i am teaching about regret and i try to tell this woman who is going through a divorce and has a 6 year old daughter what regret feels like, that its such a heavy word and when she asks for an example i want to say, where do i begin.
but i cant regret. i can only adjust, i can scour the past two years for where, when, why things went wrong. how all my previous choices led me here and what i would have done differently but it doesnt change anything. i am still living in some crazy city where french fries are a food group and my heart is broken. i dont see any way i could have escaped this. the choices i made were ones i stood behind at one point, i thought i had gotten so good at seeing clearly, at thinking with my head and my heart. and maybe thats your problem, maybe things got too confusing in one area or another and so you just chose. you just made a decision. i cant judge you for that. i can be angry though. and confused. and i can only hope that at some future point youre not sitting in some far away country counting all of your regrets. or maybe i hope you are. i dont know.
people say when you leave you will change, that you leave to go find yourself. but i just keep thinking about the changes here. how as of late i am becoming someone i cant look at in the mornings. someone i dont trust alone with myself at night. it has been a series of days of waiting, of being quiet, of staring out this goddamn window. and this is not to say that i am not living. i am fully packed every day. i am embracing everything, i am trying here, i really am, i am sitting with myself, i am learning, i am growing, i am changing. but i am resistant. i liked the girl in san francisco. most of the time.
shell be back, in phases, in stints.
right now shes looking out the window of a strange city that shes trying to make her own. alone.
and everyone says san francisco will always be there...but you said youd always be there for me too. you said you werent going anywhere...and well, i dont see you. are you there?
so maybe san francisco will sink into the sea while im gone. and maybe i couldnt care if that city burned to the ground. its dead for me...save a few monumental places, face and streets i kissed you on.
but if anything, this has been good for the writing. but people dont tell you that, no ones honest anymore. no one tells you how this will really be. no one tells the truth.

with love, from santiago

tonight i walk to work and its freezing, but the air quality is better, i can breathe and it has begun to rain. i wish for something on all the tiny drops i feel against my face. one, two, seven, fifteen and i count how many i feel in the time it takes me to get to los leones from providenca because its the first time i have felt anything, anything at all in five days.

i feel exhilarated and guilt ridden all at once. i don't want to feel any of this without you. life is richer with you.

but here we are. here I am.

pop pop

today feels like last night
just different shades of darkness
i sleep only a few hours
restless on my back sleep
and imagine you, where ever
you are, resting peacefully
sleeping with your mouth
half open
like a little bow

and this makes my stomach
churn
a mix of longing
and disbelief

sleep doesnt come

this room will be the death of me.

i was always so grateful to move before. every couple months was like flushing away the old, the bad, the sleepless nights (you can only count the panels in the ceiling, the cracks in the molding, the ribs under your flesh so many times) of some apartment, some home i couldnt live in anymore because of the memories it held of you. and now this place, this place i couldnt wait to show you ( i dreamed of sleeping beside you in this bed, of looking at the castle view from my window seat of showing you my writing desk, dont you understand?) this place has turned dangerous for me. at night i count car alarms and bottles breaking and i try to will you back.

now nothing exists. plans i had made, a life i had ahead of me, my dreams, because that is what they were, my dreams, are gone.

this does not swallow easily. i like to get what i want. what i am promised, i like to be given.

im spinning out of control up here, down here, in here.

(in my head, this country, this room)

and even here you are in everything. so intertwined with my life. little parts of ourselves had begun to cling together, had begun to flourish. i thought we had finally found our spring.

nothing is safe. not music. not food. not words. and especially not night. long, quiet night, i cant close my eyes because there you are. there is the life we arent living. there is everything we made.

we are driving in the rain from bodega after eating oysters out the back of your truck, jumping off a dock in cape cod at someones private beach, you drying off and getting dressed after a shower, over candle light last new years when we had the perfect meal, we toasted 2010, waking up and taking vito on walks, the smell of your skin, the night you said i love you and could barely get it out, its summer and bike rides and buenos aires and love notes and making you a tea was one of my favorite things to do, looking at you from across the room at a party and catching your eye, it was like we had a secret, it was the safest place to be. and then there is everything we havent done yet. its just floating around in my head. still there, still desired, mocking me, some cruel horrible joke. some secret garden and i cant get in.

it is life. it is LIFE. i cant believe you gave this up. everything else will continue, but you gave up love.

i take more pills. i pace my room. i go to the bathroom and stare. i try to write. i try to watch something. i try to go numb and then my body starts aching. i am literally in pain from being without you. my limbs arent my limbs. my skin hurts. my eyes burn. the missing of someone you love is difficult but the missing of someone you love who doesnt belong to you anymore is unbearable. no, no, thats too nice of a word.

it is hell.

speechless

saying any of this out loud
to anyone
would be too illicit
the biggest secret
the most profound
lie
blasphemous, really

saying it out loud to anyone
would make it true
im not ready
for this
truth
i have been hiding from it for awhile
dont you think?

ever my muse
my inspiration
a subject matter i am familiar with
but hadnt visited recently
because its so much easier to write about sad
when youre happy
when you have distance, that sadness
isnt yours

but it will never be easy
to write about you
in past tense, like
when you were mine

my favorite game

my sister says im going to be okay.

and i know shes right.

because ive played this game before, and no one wins and no one loses.

soon, it will just be something i talk about in the past tense, like a lesson i teach.

loved, lost, lived

or something like that.

espera, espera

the waiting makes me want to puke