A Recap: Chapters

10 years ago Kurt Vonnegut said “I urge you to please notice when you are happy”.

This morning I said the same to myself.

And somewhat incongruously, Vonnegut offered these wisdoms in his novel A Man Without A Country and feeling like a woman without a country, it feels like an apt and welcome imploration.

So, it’s December. ‘Tis the season to be jolly (and homesick and broke, amongst other things) which means it’s coming up 6 months in the beautiful mess that is San Francisco and 12 months in the beautiful mess that is 2015.

This year has marked me permanently, and in more ways than the etchings of ink on my arms and legs or the purpling scars on my thighs and hands.

I’m wearing 2015 like an awkwardly large accessory. A satchel or a tote. The kind that flatters you but you don’t know whether to sling over your arm or place down next to you; the kind you don’t know whether to hang up (amongst others on a swaddled hat stand) or present to coat check, (in fear you may lose the ticket – or in fear you might not want it back).

That said, the bag is just a vessel – it’s the contents, this year, that makes it heavy, and awkward, and mine.

2015 lectured me on happiness, on finding the balance between self-preservation and paranoia, on the unbalanced nature of balance and, mostly, about phases.

And, now, I can’t help but think of this year in chapters, each month harbouring a message: Rungs in an incessant ladder that is neither ascending nor descending.

In January I learned that the people who leave you out in the cold are livid when you learn to keep yourself warm.

I also learned that sometimes it’s better to build a higher wall than a longer table.

In February I filled myself with anger and resentment and antipathy. I let my allegorical black dog sleep in my bed, and eventually in my veins. In February I very nearly quit myself – but I quit gin instead.

March taught me that love, true love, feeds you. March later taught me that you may not make a meal out of someone’s ego or ardor, no matter how starved you are.

March whispered to me that I will never forget him.

Sunday Drives with Mike, West Auckland, March 2015

In April and May I took my first few strides as the walking manifestation of “I don’t love him but he’s here and you’re not.”

Both months reminded me what it’s like to be lied to. Both months enlightened me on how disengaged I had become.

In May, I told him to go fuck himself. It felt good.

June was like kissing someone goodbye and then realizing you’re walking in the same direction. Shifting your weight from foot to foot at the intersection before half-arsing the actual farewell. 

It showed me that sometimes coming and going feels the same; a foreshadowing that nostalgia is a dirty little liar that insists that things were better before.

July showed me they weren’t, but only because nothing ever is.

July was fevers and surgery. My first month in San Francisco, a month scarred by brutal anniversaries but butterfly stitched by new friendships.

In July I learned (again) that you must not quiet your breaking bones as to not disturb the pleasant lives of others.

Post Throat Surgery, San Francisco, July 2015

Photo: Daniel Valencia

August was long. Long and decisive.

First, August was trying to drive a U-Haul van down Market Street at rush hour.

Then, August was putting together my own furniture and breaking my nails in a light and airy, but undeniably slanted, room.

August, in the end, was 31 days of that ‘sleep-fall’ feeling. You know, when you’re jolted awake seconds before you hit the ground? The mood of the portent resting on whether you fall back to sleep or get up; whether you text the cute barista from your neighbourhood café: “Woah, weird dream,” or whether your phone has been cut off.

In August I learned to love my own space again, my own company, my crooked room and sloping ceilings.

August taught me how to lean.

September, though, was a motel life. And it was the fucking best.

It was Jameson for me and Seagram’s 7 for dad, “On ice, please, with a wedge of lime.”

It was hundreds of miles of Redwood forests and rubbing shoulders with Sasquatch-fanatic-chainsaw-artists. It was sharing a highway with chronicled extraterrestrial beings and the beings that chronicled them.

It was weird breakfasts. Weird breakfasts, an indubitably strange analog that hasn’t escaped my mind. Weird because they consistently challenged my preconceived notion of appropriate breakfast food – in that I can’t recall the last time I awoke with a hankering for stale scones and semi-cooked tater tots. Weird because we were the only ones. And weird because, well, everything was.

September was my father and me against the world.

September reminded me that I am, in fact, a skilled navigator – in a myriad of ways. 

Motel Life Mexicans, Fortuna, September 2015

Motel lives, though, are hard to give up. As far as I’m concerned, October never really happened. Jameson, mania and a super moon made sure of that. I was a black widow spider.

Littered with what happened last night’s and what am I supposed to do now’s October broke my spirit, my right hand and my 7-month abstinence from benzodiazepines. When people asked me what I was going to be for Halloween, I replied, “drunk.”

October had me questioning whether all the lead characters in my sitcom-life were going to be killed off.

October had me smarmy, misanthropic. Questioning my self-worth and appeal in the city’s toxic dating climate: “Man, the fucking trash gets taken out more than I do.”

October was The Belljar.

By November I sweat out my fever. The days in my boots and iced coffee days once again had beginnings, middles and ends. I laugh because, to me, November is the Thursday of the year – and I stopped living for the weekend, so to speak.

The 11^th month, and seemingly the 11^th hour, I caught myself just in time.

I called the people who assumed I’d forgotten them and assured them I never could. I celebrated thanksgiving; I got stoned and filled my heart and my stomach. Both were full for days.

November hugged me and said, “Well done, sweetie,” the way my dad does.

November gingerly handed me a cracked mirror and revealed how I still smile with my eyes. My freckles always return when the sun shines. 

Bougainvilleas & Catch Ups With D, San Francisco, November 2015

Photo: Daniel Valencia

It’s been December for 4 days and it’s fucking cold.

I miss my family and I miss New Zealand but I have built a home inside myself.

It’s soundproof and insulated and level with a doorbell that only sounds for some. It’s filled with my favourite books and songs and memories, categorized just so: A bastardised-Dewey-Decimal system of happy reminders.

It’s guarded by a poorly trained black dog; he comes in sometimes but he doesn’t stay for long, he knows not to. His bark is worse than his bite anyway. I know this because he has bitten me before.

10 years ago Kurt Vonnegut said “I urge you to please notice when you are happy”.

This morning I said the same to myself.