I am often required, compelled, called to places that have been previously tread. Places of fear, mostly not places of joy or whimsy. There is something left to complete, so I can prove myself different, prove that I can transform fear into love, into happiness, or maybe just into nothing. No feeling. Called back to Hollywood, after 12 years. Called back into the love of my life’s bed after 6 months. Exhausted but no longer afraid. Just there to attend my lesson. 

It’s May and I’m staying at a house in Culver City, across the street from a park. The whole neighborhood is lined with Chinese elms. I am watching a dog; she is beautiful and large but she torments me for treats and looks at me with sad eyes that I can’t fix. This time I am not staying there alone, except for the first night, when I am sleepless, frightened. I realize I haven’t lived in a house without a man for a long time– I’m subconsciously used to having someone else to watch things. I think about the last time I stayed here, when it was Christmas, and I was alone with a weight over me, similarly sleepless. The man I thought I would marry had called me back to him, and I was waiting, uncomfortable but not yet aware, but that is a different story, serving only as a mirror to this one. When I wake up I get a 90 minute Thai massage. I’m desperate after no sleep, usually, but I’m excited for N to come tonight. He is new to me, but seems sweet and adoring. I am who I am right now, but I guess my walls shine. 

I’ve watched too much Mad Men, I’ve seen myself for too long through the eyes of men, it made me want to be devoted, to cook dinner, to smilingly serve it while getting my ass grabbed. But I did this with S, and it made things worse. I have a wound where the desire once lived. I still want it, but when N asks me to cook for him the voice screams no. Is it sad, to think that the pain caused by another will have to be transmuted onto him? Or is this fated. Maybe something he has done to someone else makes him unworthy of the devotion in a loving meal, and I am just the conduit for the universe to express it. 

But I try. I do what I can. I go to the fancy liquor store and ask for Suze, for Lillet. Strangely they have Suze but no Lillet. I get Cocchi Americano instead, already having a love for all things bitter. I choose a nice Gin. Money is no object to me if it brings me joy.  

N tells me his ETA. I am reading The Sovereignty of Good to try to understand why I sometimes find myself sitting in the grass with my head in my hands trying to identify The Feeling. When I bought it this morning I also got N Richard Kern’s Other Men’s Daughters for his upcoming birthday. I time everything carefully so that when he arrives I have a white negroni ready for him. It’s our home for the night. We eat outside, we walk the dog, we talk about going to a bar or getting dessert but we don’t do anything but try to watch a movie. He takes a picture of me walking the dog in a sage green cardigan. We try to take a bath but it's too small for the two of us. I put on my nightgown and as I’m brushing my hair he holds my face and tells me how beautiful I am. I hold onto his hand and sleep soundly knowing he is next to me in the big bed.  

This was all many months ago. He’s left and come back, and so have I. I’m in Hollywood now, there are no elms around me. I’m realizing how very diligent I have become, in my writing, in my career, in my crafts. I had a miracle happen at the end of August. Loss is the biggest transformation, depression can be the best way to walk through a portal. On the anniversary of the worst day of my life I was finally able to let go of a burden I have been carrying for more than a year. I am free, I’m not fucking crazy, there is love in my heart, and sweet gentleness in my soul. I will never feel shame again for following the inner workings of my heart. I knew what it was when bad things would happen and I was glad you weren’t there, knowing you would’ve made it harder. I wonder if you know, what you really are, deep down in your soul. If any of the similarities would jump out. 

In Hollywood I park the car and drop the phone and check on the cat and walk to the store. My appetite has been bad; the cost of getting a taste of heartbreak that is an echo of more painful words spoken by someone more beloved. But I know if I don’t eat I can’t do my work, so I hit the road. I avoid the nicer street because it’s where N lives, and walk instead down Hollywood Blvd, remembering being 17 at Harvard and Stone, drinking with one friend who wanted to social climb and another who wanted to find a man to prevent her from feeling like killing herself. What I wanted felt so far away from me at that age. I wanted experience, I had a spiritual hunger. There’s something about me, where I can only see the truth through distance. I need peace, and alone time, like a week-long sensory deprivation tank, to be able to understand what something means to me. Early on N worked with me at my parents’ house, where I lived. We had sex downstairs in a hot room, whispering and quietness bringing a deep intensity. Afterward we laid on the floor and opened the french doors to the backyard, letting the cool night air in over our heads. He told me he originally thought the way we met meant I couldn’t be the love of his life. Maybe what he meant was that suddenly he felt I could be. After all, the internet is about motion, community, and finding love.  

It’s the end of August now, hot and unshaded, and I open the door to the Armenian Market. I feel dizzy, thin, a bit unmoored. Over the weekend someone from the distant past has returned unexpectedly. When I go west, something pulls me east, and vice versa. I pick up a basket and think about what I could possibly eat when it all borderline disgusts me. Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn and it's N. I’m wearing sunglasses and headphones. Is it fated? He stands about 3 feet from me, not coming closer. Time stops for a moment. Is this the same man who slept with me in that house, who wanted to open my heart to see what it looked like? Who drank those yellow cocktails with me? He looks uncared for. I still want him. He’s wearing that shirt he always wears. 

Desire is the red hot button, the one that sends off desperate cries, aching, longing. Wanting something means you’re incomplete, means you lack it, basically means you’ll never get it. They always come back, but it can’t ever be what it was, can it. There’s no more playing “I love you” chicken, where he only wants to fuck you slowly in missionary with heavy eye contact. What’s the point, really, when they feel it instantly and I only feel it with three months of stability. Love can only come when the fear dissipates.  

I don’t know what to say to someone who wanted me three weeks ago and now feels miles away, standing right in front of me. I don’t like the feeling. When I first met N he told all his friends about me, which made me uncomfortable, and then reported back that he said I was peaceful, a diversion from his usual chaotic type. But my peace at that time had been hard won, and he disturbed it.  

So I’m thinking all of this and looking at him, in the doorway. We both have baskets in our arms. I want him to do something. It’s me, and it’s him. I used to greet him with my mouth open and arms around his neck. It seems so easy. Wrap your arms around me, there’s fruit in the trees, I’ll do what you say, I know what you want. I’m your girl. So he does, and he takes me home. I stroke his cheek, I put my hand on the back of his neck while he drives. He makes love to me, I tell him how proud of him I am. We hold hands and trade off cooking dinner. I write in one room, he writes in another. We drive up to Cambria, camp, and make love on the beach.  

But really, instead, when I ask him how he is, he says he’s hungry, and nothing else. He doesn’t want to know about me, I guess. But I’m not privy to his inner feelings, and he’s not privy to mine. I walk out of the market, I let him get his food in peace. I walk and I walk, what else is new. My potential belongs to me. I still think I could have loved him, but our paths diverge now. I realize once you’ve had to leave the thing that was all consuming, it only gets easier. Maybe in all my deep devotion, in being a mother and a healer and a lover and the orbiting moon, I’ve become someone who leaves, who values freedom over all. I don’t have to care about a camera app. I don’t have to hand my soul away to the man who looks at me like he needs it. But a part of me still wants to.  

Inside of me there is a farm, with a river of light to irrigate it. It’s where I keep my inner resources, the things that make me able to keep walking when really I would like to stay in that market with you, in that apartment on Myrtle, on Lefferts, in Ojai. I believe in it all– the truth that is apparent to me, and possibly only me. There is something out there I’m meant for, there is more I’m meant to become. If I had been meant to stay there with you, it would have happened. You have let the fumbling man fumble you, if it's what he wants.  

On the eve of my 33rd birthday there is a full moon. This seems significant, or maybe not. I see that it never really mattered if I loved you, or if I could have loved you. I know what I could have been for him, or for him. But it's a beautiful mystery what I could be for myself, and that’s what I walk toward.