surfacing

 so, journal. it's been another year.

i can't even remember when i wrote here. somehow i did. who was i writing about? i can't remember. why do i have to be so fucking cryptic all the time? it was june. last year in june. who did i meet in june? whose laugh did i hear in june? i can't remember.

june, june, june. was it j?

another year rolled by. this morning i was taking measurements and realized all of my dates were incorrect. i wrote 2021 on them. all of my notes for the past two months have been incorrect. this would be laughable if it wasn't so sad and real.

another ghost from the past surfaced recently. it's like we are ships passing in the night, every time we meet, fleetingly, drawn together by chance paths. only this time i am a castaway lost on the ocean, desperate to cling to something. i feel ashamed of how desperate i am now for human contact, i who used to pride myself on my solitude. i, who used to be terrified of forgetting, gave up after awhile and even began to embrace it. but when i briefly surface from the dark, emotionless depths, how desperate i am suddenly to remember when life was filled with wonder, and happiness, and peace, and calm, and naivete. that brief, glorious summer of understanding just enough - not too much, not too little. after that the scales tipped and i went under again.

god, how i'm so tired of being underwater.

we both marveled at how technology allows us to come together in ways we never could before. last time i found her.* this time she found me. last time i was too shy, too embarrassed about my own state of existence to do anything but type at her. this time we spoke. it was so strange and yet so incredible to hear her voice again, thirteen years later. unspoken life had been lived, memories formed apart, we had grown up so much since then, but her laugh was the same. we all laugh the same, when we let ourselves loose. her voice was a little lower. a little quieter. still soft, each syllable so carefully enunciated, as her culture does. still achingly beautiful. i don't tell her that, of course, how i could listen to her for hours, in any language she chose. i always could, even back then. the first time we spoke again, we stumbled through our words and then our minds began to fly and i forgot about all of my insecurities. all the things i hide inside. when i am with her i feel as though i have to hide nothing, because she knew me when i knew myself. 

now i cannot sleep. i want to reconnect more. i want to know more. who is she now? there is an ocean between us. the memories we shared are physically, mentally, temporally and spatially so far away from the reality we live in now. and yet i yearn for them. i think we both do, in our different ways. and that is really the only thing pulling us together. logically i know it is dangerous and stupid to open myself like this. when i start dreaming of things i cannot control or hope to achieve, i just set myself up for bitter disappointment. still, at the end of our first spoken conversation in thirteen years i said, wouldn't it be cool if one day we met up again in finland?

and she said yes, let's do it next summer. i'll see you there. it'll be our treat to ourselves. i laughed and said, our light at the end of the tunnel.

i think she'll be there, whether i am or not, because the place meant so much to us individually that returning would be some sort of pilgrimage. i feel drawn to it, too, but it also terrifies me, because it must have changed. everything must have changed. i've changed. maybe i will just be ruining a beautiful memory if i go. i don't know if i will be brave enough. i'll come up with a million excuses. i'm a coward of the heart, when it comes down to it.

even when i dream about it and long for it and write about it i don't really dare to believe i'll ever see her, or that place, ever again.

i sent her a recording of myself playing violin, anyway. i told her one of our shared memories that it represented. of a conversation we had while sitting on the banks of one of the little lakes. moss all around us. water tickling the shore. through all of that endless expanse of nature, still hearing cars on the highway and a plane overhead. idly wondering about noise pollution and its effects on nature. and then i thought about, keenly yearned for, my violin so that i could play it there for her - for everyone who could hear us - in the forest. back in high school i was so arrogant i thought i could turn people's heads when i played. i don't harbor that illusion anymore. these days, i just hope they don't laugh. i picked up my violin that night with that image in my mind and, with my thoughts at last emptied and ripped away from the virtual reality haze i have been living in, i played, played, played my heart out. massenet came out haltingly from my fingers and i recorded it twice. the first time, full of errors. the second time the errors were still there but i was no longer laughing at myself but contemplating, instead. i didn't tell her that the last time i shared that part of me was thirteen years ago. that i'd thought the music in me was dead. that i'd long ago given up on ever feeling again. 

there, i thought. i put my virtual heart on the virtual plate and offered it to her. then to disguise it from myself, i passed it around to everyone else and pretended it was just for fun. one of the others called me an onion. so many layers, the other said.

no, don't look there, i should have replied. i don't really exist.

she thanked me for my little treasure. my heart melted. my mind went ablaze. i offered her more music and accidentally let myself slip.

what have i done? push me back underwater, quickly, before i regret waking. please, please, please, be oblivious to it. listen with half an ear. 

don't hear me. don't
hear me
don't hear
me

my mind beats and beats against the uncertainties like the bird we buried together in the forest. in reality what does this matter anyway? it is all in the ether. a nebulous, easily forgotten thing, as am i. one or both of us will forget the other soon enough and it'll ebb again. we always do. this time only looms so large now because my life is so gray and empty. 

still, though.

still.

you woke me up.

i'm still here.

* i went back through my old entries to find the truth, because i could not remember. in fact i've recorded each time we spoke, because i wanted to remember. my memories are all questions. i can't depend on myself, other than what i write down. she found me last time too. she's the one who keeps remembering me and finding me in the dark.