greenstorm | Entries tagged with jan

I remember this time of year. I remember spring with the sun streaming in on the carpets, I remember the air this fresh and cold in the shadows but you'd never trust that cold because the sky was so incredibly blue and bright. I remember the smell of apartment-hunting, this era and that era. I remember walking the streets when the temperature and the flowers were -just like this-. Kynnin and I were moving from Abbotsford to Vancouver for the first time that year. Jan was coming, back and forth, and I remember my heart pounding this hard waiting for that-- waiting for someone always sets my world spinning. I remember walking to the nursery down the block and I'd never have dressed warmly enough, being so dazzled into belief in summer by the spring sun. I remember things unfolding. I remember me unfolding.

I remember moving into a new place with Kynnin, I remember meeting with the landlord and jumping through hoops. I remember that we had a place together that was ours. I remember wondering what to do with the walls-- paint or fabric? I remember wondering, how do we make this a home? I remember high ceilings being important.

I remember the pit of my stomach turning over at Jan's voice on the phone. I remember cool air spilling in through the sliding door and slapping my skin. I remember sitting on the computer catching up with people and feeling so full of love and contentment and excitement that I was sure it rolled through the screen and out through the windows and left the city brimful of joy.

I remember apportioning rooms - this one the bedroom, this one the computer room. I remember graveyard shifts and never getting to sleep together. I remember lying in the lonely bed and it was an entirely different kind of waiting. I remember the click of the keyboard from the other room and how it was louder than anything because it meant Kynnin was -there- and I was here, alone. I remember the clear blue sky. I remember the balcony. I remember planning my plants. I remember the feel of the earth. I remember. I remember.

And now here I am. That was before livejournal, and the story exists only in me, scribed across my reactions. Yesterday was so sunny, it was the same cool, it was the same spring, and Angus and I had just been to sign the lease. My stomach has been all steel-winged butterflies with someone else and I have been made to wait. I have sat long talking to friends with my keyboard and I remember now how lonely that is with no voices around. So recently I was trying to sleep every day in a lonely bed while Angus went about his day. We will be moving soon. I have a person to look forward to. It is the same spring.

And so I feel like I've come right around, like the wheel has turned and put me in the same place as I was before. Whatever my mind tells me, I cannot escape the feeling of being right where I was.

And I cannot escape remembering that I was so happy there and then things fell apart.

None of it is actually the same. It's different people, different situations. I'm more independent now, Angus is not Kynnin, my crush is not Jan nor is there anything the same there really. I am not trying to negotiate the currents of a quad while dealing with two full-time poly relationships, I have a better grasp on who I am and what I want, so many things on my side are different. So many things on Angus' side are different too, but of course another human being is guessable, but ultimately unknowable. I don't recall it being my side that was the problem, though memory is a fickle thing. I remember a downturn and then the rug just being yanked out from under.

I don't want this to be yanked out from under. I have always had the feeling in my life that if I was too happy I would be punished, that if I flew too high there would be a crash. I was trained from an early age to pay attention to subtle forebodings and not place my trust in anything people could give me-- or more precisely, in anything people could take away from me. That's the legacy of my father's kind of abuse, and of my mother's staying with him. I've been throwing it off a little, I've been enjoying (cautiously) doing what I want to do. I've been learning that a lot of life is in my own hands, and I've been learning how to set a good path when it's not.

Yesterday morning I was so scared, though. Everything felt -just the same-. And though that was a wonderful thing and this spring feels like flying, I knew where that led. Last time I was so unaware of the fragility of human intention. My head may say it's different, but ghosts and echoes are skittering in the spaces thought doesn't illuminate.

In the end it doesn't matter. I do my best (I will do my best) I will enjoy the ride (it is such a lovely ride) and it will be okay (I want it to be my kind of okay).

Enough is enough. Now it's my keyboard going while he's in a lonely bed. That's no way to begin a Sunday. :>

In the beginning, the very beginning, I said: you're gonna break my heart someday, boy.

The title of this journal is watching the cycle: leaves to mulch to soil to leaves. It's because that's the only thing I can count on.

This week I talked to Eva about what-ifs, backup plans, and I tried to stay open and not close myself off to him in case I was wrong.

Last night I took the twenty up Victoria for 'a talk' that, when asked, he admitted I should have a friend around afterward for. I knew to ask that question. I was angry on the bus ride there, and I dreaded waiting for the bus because then I'd have to think. Luckily there was no wait.

He was upfront and straightforward. He made no excuses. He doesn't love me, he wishes he did, but he doesn't. He's not the sort of person who can continue on just like that even so, despite my many wonderful qualities. It's maybe the second time in my life someone's been so upfront about a breakup with me, and the first time was when I was thirteen. He held me, he cried, I cried. He said in the next couple weeks I could go to him for comfort if I needed. I said don't do this to me-- I didn't mean to say it, because he was being so good about it, but I had to, just in case it helped. He said he really wanted to be friends. I said when I get over the angry phase, I'm not there yet but I'll let you know when I get to it, so yes, comfort, but please could he not do this to me?

When I first came into the room he asked me what I meant when I said I loved him. I said no, just say what you need to say, and he did. Later I tried to put it into words: he's the shining thing that my life sudenly and inexplicably organised itself to hold up, rather than just curling and tumbling in an attempt to stay up with no particular focus. He is a reason for things. He is beautiful. He is... I don't know how to describe, it's a spiritual thing, he makes me ring. It's like a flower at the top of my head with a lacework all down my spine. Still when he smiled at me it gave me butterflies in my stomach.

He doesn't feel any comfort when I hold him in my arms. When he holds me, even now, even after that, it's still the best place ever to be.

It was seven months to the day from the date we had decided was the beginning. That was the day he came over to talk about rats, after the first family dinner where things sparked and Eva brought us together. We talked about rats for a long time, then things went silent and he looked up at me. I looked back. Eventually I went around behind him in the chair and bit his shoulders, and that was that. I took the day off work to see him get his tattoo and we went to the park and made out for hours, then hesitated before going to his place.

We waited to fuck for what seemed like forever, waiting for test results to come back (I do try to keep my STD tests up to date before the fact).

It was private. I called him babydoll, puppy, my love, sweetie, Mister, every pet name seemed to fit him. He called me ma'am and my tummy did bellyflops. I beat him with a cane for the first time and he liked it. I cried sometimes, after sex or during, because it was like god coming down. His body was built for mine-- ribcage fashioned to fit the length of my arm, his arms designed to curl around me just right to trigger all my safe feelings. His cock was exactly right. I loved the little bit of soft on his belly, the way it pooled out a little. I loved the flame tattoo on his arm, and the grapes. I loved the way he looked at me when I hurt him, his eyes got so big and soft. They were usually blue eyes, with a ring in the middle the colour of his year. He's a redhead. I notice redheads more on the street now, and people dressed in construction-worker clothes.

I didn't write much about it and I regret that now because it will slip away, but at the same time I couldn't.

I don't regret the thing, because it was spring itself. I think I'll be okay. I didn't, on the way to his house; I thought of bridges and knives. I don't do that, it's not my style. When I was there, though, the network kicked in. I thought of the people waiting for me-- Mom, my brother, Eva, Bob, and the web caught me, and I couldn't just lie down and roll over.

On the way home it was a feeling of unreality, like the last seven months had been a little miracle. They're over, sure, and I'm back to my regular programming.

I wanted to have his babies. I wanted to marry him. I wanted to do all those silly things, carve his name into my flesh, you know?

I don't really know what to do now. I still want a job that I can have children in. If men are fickle, dammit, I still want to raise a child. I have work - retail today, which may be awful but better than an empty day. It's the second-last shift, and 10-8, which is long. Then there's dinner with Eva and/or karaoke. Ryan was home last night. He held me, which felt weird -- he's so tiny compared. He let me talk, and he talked, and it was diverting. That was important. Diversion.

When people said they love me to that last post-- thank you, it helped. Sympathy would be a problem for me right now though. Love, yes. Caring, yes. Sympathy, no.

I'm a bit of a mess. I hate spring.

I never showed him Secretary, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

We never had sex in public.

When he was really sick I used to hold him and he'd feel better, but later on he wanted space to deal with it. A sign, I guess. He woke up at the same time as me, in the mornings. At night he'd tell me he was going to stay up, then fall asleep. Id' poke him and he'd sit up sleepily, trying to look alert, and say, 'I wasn't asleep'. Everything he did was adorable, odd on a six-foot-something construction worker.

He _was_ my springtime. When it snowed he'd get up, all excited, and put on his clothes and go out into it. It's snowed a lot this winter, and after awhile I started to smile too when it snowed. There's more to say, perhaps -- he was in Vegas for New Years, and I still have the message saved on my phone that says he wants me to be his forever. I want to save that message, but I don't want to listen to it for awhile.

His hair is still wrapped around the ring of my black collar.

His hands were much bigger than mine, a full joint plus some. Something about his cheekbones and lips was a song, a poem. I look at him all the time, even after seven months, just for the sheer pleasure I took in it. He does his best, he feels guilty a lot of the time over not living up to his personal standards which are high, sometimes unrealistic. He tried really hard in this, and he tries really hard generally to be a good person.

I don't know. This morning before work will be long.

I've done this to other people. Jan, I remember you didn't say much. I know why now. I'm sorry. I am so sorry.

Here I am. Computer room's arranged to I sit on the bed crosslegged while I'm on my computer-- I like beds, or the floor, better than chairs. I don't spend enough time on here for it to matter to my back. Directly behind me is an open window, and if I wanted I could lean out and touch an amelanchier or one of the weeds that's grown up around it. There's sunlight out there, but the sun hasn't swung around to beat on the window so it's still cool in here. A tiny sliver of sunlight comes in onto the bed, across my unicorn. In an hour it will be a wide streak, and then a big pair of irregular squarish shapes. After a little longer, the beech tree will block the light some, and dappled shade will come in. The leaves cast dancing shadows at the right time of year.

I can't lean out the window, though. I rarely wear enough clothing to be street-worthy while I'm insid and we're pretty close to a busy transit station, so even if I didn't get under the skin of my amazing italian neighbors there'd be a group of people passing.

I'm getting older. My birthday's never really been the occasion for me saying that with any sort of weight until this year. August 12th is coming up, that weekend bringing my birthday and that of my boyfriend and one of my best friend's, as well.

I don't feel lyrical anymore. I do, I don't observe. Words come harder to me. Situations are less this word and that word than they are simply a complex sensory experience, where my mind is a sensory organ to detect my thoughts. My actions don't spring from a long line of reasoning, so much, as they do from simply old reactions to things that have crystallised into consequences, into a future extension of my actions that I can feel as much as I feel the action itself. This, writing here and trying to carve the thoughts I'm feeling into prose, it feels jagged and blocky. I might be trying to rip a complicated picture out of the newspaper, and it tears this way and that way, cutting into the image here and leaving extra chunks of irrelevant words there.

I've been spending time with people who are younger than I am lately, on and off over the last month or two. Not just one person, but a couple, and in a conversational context. That's very rare for me with the exception of my brothers, and my brothers don't really count for anything because I love them so unreasonably much and have known them for so long that they don't *change* anything.

Now, though, something's changed. I'm carrying a weight. I had calculated the total number of years of relationships I've been in, if you were to take all my serious ones and pretend they were end-to-end instead of an overlapping mishmash. I'm twenty-five years old, almost twenty-six, and the total number of relationship years is something like twenty, easy. No, it's not the same thing as starting at six years old, but it's a significant thing. I'm trying to say that each one has graven things deep into me, and when the total result of all these engravings is looked at from right here, from this particular day and the days right around it, there's a pattern.

No person has ever been just a pattern to me. No person has been anything other than deeply exciting and new and different and interesting. Still, en masse they create this echo. The weight of the endings presses down on beginnings. The weight of beginnings sets certain things apart, gives details an odd significance or obscures them. Sometimes memory fragments whisper through, fairly often in fact, and I find myself thinking with a bittersweet whisper this one reminds me of Jan's idealism or Sasha was that eccentrically charming or, most devastating, Kynnin was this sweet.

Now I'm sitting in front of the computer crying and I don't even know what I'm trying to say. It's something to do with hope, and something to do with the weight of the past. It's something to do with seperation of people and with integration of experiences. I guess it's balanced. No ending is the end of the world to me anymore, even if it feels like it, even if it knots up inside like it is. You can't have too many ends of the world before you pick yourself up and all you have is dry tears on your face and a sheepish expression. So there, my mind has a gentler low with these endings, emotion but not a storm of identity and self-worth and broken habits so much. The opposite is also true, that's what I've been trying to get at. Hope isn't as high anymore, though it might be fuller. The sadness of endings is fuller too, I suppose, because I understand more what I'm losing (though I also understand what I am gaining).

I remember moments, lying there, where I thought to myself please let me remember these few seconds that hold such transcendant beauty and I can never be sad or lonely again, having lived through this. I even remember some of those moments. I still have them, and I still want to etch them onto the uncertain mass of memory that I carry with me. I no longer take them to mean anything about my future, though. It makes them perhaps more precious, things whose purpose is *now* and not *later* so I can immerse myself fully, but...

Where I am right now, this vaguely chaotic mid-twenties partnership in a rented sunny house with a mismash family of pets and a stable partnership that feels like a handrail on a flat sidewalk or like a hammock hanging over a soft lawn, I've wanted fiercely to be here all my life. I had thought I would be here with Kynnin, maybe with a kid, but the shell of it is the same. I thought that for eight years. Now I'm here with Bob, and it's what I wanted, what I still want, though not perhaps for much longer. I'm happy here, and I used to believe I could be neither here nor happy with anyone but Kynnin.

The individual moments are unique, of course. The feel of the hand in mind, the details of lounging around in the mornings, the way we speak and make love or just fuck, the personal idiosyncracies are all things that cannot be replicated by anyone except the combination of Bob and I.

In the end it all adds up to this enormous sense, when I am with someone, that it doesn't matter very much. That this which we share right now is wonderful, but it has a beginning and an end, and if not you, then someone else sometime else. There's no edge of desperation, no feeling of completion, no ability to fully lie myself down and surrender to the chain that begins with the feeling and ends with you are the most important person in the world and everything will be alright now.

And that, I suppose, is why I feel older. Cause I am.

You gotta set free what you love ust to bring it back.
Would you ever lose me, would you ever let go for that?
And if the love is real, you gotta let yourself go
Just to bring it back...

http://s9.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=25CIIY8DYR71G3NBKN7EQL08YB

I want to tell you about something beautiful.

Oh, how words falter here.

Put the song on. It was playing on repeat. Jan had been over from Germany, it was the first timr we'd met in person, perhaps a week or four days into his visit. It was evening.

We were in the computer room-- Kynnin, Jan, and I. I don't remember how it started. All I know is that Kynnin lay there between us, us sitting facing each other over him, and we touched him, and this song was playing. Sometimes we looked at each other; sometimes we looked at him. This song was playing, and playing, and playing. There was a hundred-watt bulb in a crappy light fixture, and rather nice carpet beneath us. It would have been silent, for all that the song was playing, because time absolutely stopped. We all three were just *there*. There was God and love on our fingertips. I wouldn't even call it sex. The evening drew in very close around us, the world contracted, and the song played. We were just there.

Understand, in the end Kynnin and I didn't get along. Understand, in the end, Jan and I were too afraid of what might happen if we gave in to each other. Understand, this had nothing to do with who they were-- they were people who could freely and joyously and fearlessly fall into an 'us' in an Abbotsford apartment and somehow hole through this mundane skin to reality so deeply in so doing that I will never forget it.

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greenstorm

June 2025

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Greenstorm's Journal

watching the cycle: leaves to mulch to soil to leaves

Entries tagged with jan

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