3/20/26 & 3/21/26: old coffee from yesterday.
3/20/26
I loathe the idea of being a reminder of guilt or regret or powerlessness or any other negative emotion to someone. It hurts. I want to remind them only of sweetness and comfort and love and compassion and safety and joy and inspiration and happiness.
My day felt so expansive yesterday. I love this kind of day. Where time feels so large.
I hate missing people. It feels like a deep sting.
3/21/26
I was thinking yesterday of a moment many years ago when I first visited Prague. I went there with someone I loved at the time. We had just flown in and we were walking to the computer programmer's apartment we were going to stay at for the week. I was jet-lagged and so we took a break on a bench and I fell asleep on their lap for a bit. And when I woke up I couldn't believe I was waking up in Prague and I was just so in love. I remember all of that so vividly like it's a juicy, ripe fruit I'm peeling open right now. I wish certain memories were time capsules we could walk back inside of and curl up in and feel again, freshly.
When people fall from my life, for whatever reason, for whatever length of time, I think of this. When a man disappeared from my life rather recently, I imagined living inside every memory that involved hearing his voice, looking at his face, holding his hand, kissing him. Such soft and gentle moments. In my utterly sweet excitement I admittedly imagined a much bigger life with him. I couldn't help it. I'm imaginative. I got excited at the possibility of him and this feeling I had with him. Being around him just ineffably enlivened me in a way no one has before. I've been thinking a lot about that feeling he gave me. I've been putting it into some of the big paintings I've been working on.
If I didn't have art I'm unclear where all my passion would go.
It doesn't feel like my passion has a cap. I have never felt that passion reciprocated toward me with such beautiful focus until he came along recently. It felt like we were two newly dam-free rivers falling into each other. But like a complicated gust of wind, he receded from me in a burst of few words.
It's odd for me not to poke at my anxiety like a scab and make it worse. I've been trying to just sit with it, look at it for what it is, and feel it out. I like to lay somewhere cozy and warm, close my eyes, and breathe and just let the anxiousness be without judgement. Let it be whatever shape it is. Now, has this been helping me? Yes, I think it benefits me a gargantuan amount anytime I am able to focus on creating calmness around things that make me feel out of control.
I wonder about the mistakes I made. I wonder if I didn't treat the connection I had with him with enough gentleness. Did he? I tried because I know the fragility of everything and this felt especially special to me. It felt precarious from the get go because of the circumstances this connection arose within. It wasn't able to fully be free and naturally roam as it should have been able to. I could feel what that true, full freedom in our connection would've felt like and possibly would've flourished into. I got glimpses.
And I had faith in the strength of the connection I had with him regardless of circumstances but maybe that was just me being too simplistic, naive, or hopeful.
Whatever that was with him, it is now lost to the machinery of time and memory, no longer touchable. And I'm left to wonder what it could have been.
And yes, I admit I can't stop writing about this specific man. I ponder things a ton that are meaningful to me. Even if I want a day off from thinking about it, my brain just always wants to investigate. I feel like this investigative part of my brain has annoyed people in the past. But maybe they were just the wrong friends.