April 14, 2024 / Horticulture Park / 7:44pm
On Sunday after I got off work, we went for a nature adventure at Horticulture Park. I hadn’t eaten yet, so we picked up Chipotle and were on our way. We walked along one of the trails until we found a bench to our liking and ate our picnic there. The food was tasty, the company wonderful, and the surrounding trees a reminder that you are never too far from nature. Even in the chaos and overwhelm of classes, office hours, club meetings, and work, time devoted to being outside is always time well spent. And there is always a way to get in touch with nature–a hidden trail, a secluded rock, an unobstructed view of the stars, a quiet pond, a good thinking tree await those who are willing to look.
As we sat there enjoying our dinner and conversation (he mansplained the UFC Holloway vs. Gaethje knock-out), I felt the breeze at my back and a calmness that only the woods can bring you. I hadn’t realized until those moments just how badly I’d been needing an escape into nature. Sitting in the dusk, with someone who has become one of my favorite people on campus, feeling a quietness in myself I hadn’t felt in weeks, breathing in the fresh smell of a place where trees outnumber people, I felt immense gratitude. I marvel at nature’s universal balm for any grief, any wonderment, any ennui.
After we finished our meal, we embarked on our nature walk. He saw a shortcut and insisted we take it….I proceeded to share with him the time my dad got my sister and me lost in the woods because he, too, saw a “shortcut.” We still took this one, walking through a field overgrown with weeds. Wild violets also speckled the ground, and he silently picked one for me. I tenderly tucked this suddenly beautiful weed into my bag. This moment touched me profoundly, in a way I don’t think he realized. Nature is a gift by virtue of being itself, and when someone recognizes that and regifts it to you…well, that is special. We continued to the trail, which took us through valleys and past critters scrambling unseen in the underbrush. At one point, we saw a family of white-tailed deer. I told him I did a project on their overpopulation for my AP Environmental Science class.
We could see the sunset peaking between the gaps in the trees. We came out to an open field that overlooked US 52 (so natural!) but also gave us a view of the sunset, unhampered by telephone poles or university buildings. We could hear the cars speeding by on their fast tracks to nowhere, but still I felt, for a moment, the tranquility of nature wash over me. He put his arm around me. I felt close to him, close to nature, close to myself. I felt that if everyone made time for at least a few moments of this every day, the world would be a vastly better place.
After the sun had set, we made our way back to the car. Our fingers intertwined, the last of the sunset’s cotton candy hues fading, I felt that everything was right with the world, if just in that singular moment. He asked me what I was going to write about. I told him: this. The feeling that I have when I’m doing something I love with someone who feels like home. The sense of serenity I feel almost instantaneously when I step away from the clutter and noise of every-day life to ground myself in the balance and steadiness of nature. The breathing deeply that comes with a dip in the woods.
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I wrote this last semester for my Environmental Ethics class. The assignment: to go outside and write about it. The course was as awesome as it sounds (PHIL290 for curious minds), and I was excited for this particular assignment from the moment the professor mentioned it the first week of classes. Even now, three months later, I look back fondly on the walk this assignment brought me. The moments of reflection, the moments with him.
It was never the idea to publish it. I suppose I’m doing so now because this is part of how I move on and because I’m surprised it's still on my mind and because at the time, I had a huge grin while writing it. I'm not publicizing this to my Instagram story like I normally do; I like the idea that only those who are meant to read it will stumble across it. Unlike all my other posts–which are always written to some extent with you, dear reader, in mind–this one's for me.
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Horticulture Park is just a few paces off campus, but if you squint hard enough, stepping onto the path feels like stepping past a curtain into a quieter, greener pocket of the world. We squinted hard enough. We squinted until the weight of classes, impending finals, internship applications fell away. Until the setting sun bled into its horizon, laying to rest in a bed of indigos and ambers. Until the dusk came rushing up to greet us, leaving us to rely on the sounds of our voices and feet on fallen leaves to guide us back to the car.
I must confess this account is a bit exaggerated, but melodrama is a tune I enjoy whistling every now and then. There are things about a person I didn't know you could miss. Walking on the sidewalk next to them. Going somewhere to eat, talking about what parts of the dish you liked and what parts you would do differently if you were the ones cooking. Folding your laundry together, hiding a smile watching them try to fold a thong. Hitting snooze for ten more minutes, their arm around your waist the best kind of weighted blanket. Being on someone's mind even when you're not in front of them. Coming out of class and seeing they're waiting for you. Celebrating their accomplishments as if they are your own. Feeling, at once, comfort and anticipation from mere proximity. Knowing and being known.
This man took me by surprise. He started out as my class crush sophomore year so, naturally, I went the entire semester without saying a word and then enlisted Miles' help in orchestrating my evil plan to put us in the same group for our final project. I was instantly in love with him, but he had a girlfriend at the time so I forgot about him shortly thereafter because sometimes loving someone means letting them go. Yk we got that A tho😜. Fast forward to December of junior year: a pleasant but lackluster date at Tsaocaa somehow became six months. When we first started talking, it was obvious I was not head over heels. Cami was the first to point out the difference between him and the person with whom I can talk music like no other, who looks for water towers out his car window. Even so, I found myself growing more fond of this man as the semester wore on. He weaseled his way into my life and heart (ugh), and I found that he was on my mind often. Now the playlist shuffles "Porcelain" or I walk by the table we sat at after he bought us Einstein's on a Sunday morning, and I am both reminded of and grateful for the memories you get to keep when you let someone in, even well after they're gone.
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I spent the first two months of summer massaging the ache and preserving the good without foregoing the rest. I don't think about him every day anymore. Or even very often. We weren’t in love and I’m not heartbroken. But there are times that I miss him. His laugh and his smell (I literally always wanted to eat him) and the comfort I felt when he was around. Those lips, that smile. His shouts from my bed as I tried (and failed) to study, the Lakers/Nuggets game full-volume on his laptop. His thoughts and his humor and those curls, the absent-minded cafuné. Our movie nights and eye contact (side-eyes) and 4AMs. Six months isn't enough time to know someone's mind and body as well as your own, but I loved every day sharing mine with someone whose company I enjoyed as thoroughly as his.
So the moments we did share live warm in my mind as I take stock of who I am now; what these memories have given me; what shelves they might sit on, collecting dust but never losing value. From this, I got to know myself in a new way. Such an unwitting and unexpected gift for which I am so grateful and still amazed by. How letting yourself be known by someone else allows you to know yourself, too. How sharing something special with someone opens you up. How saying goodbye is not an end but a glimpse into what more awaits. How you learn to appreciate your idiosyncrasies and peccadillos because you've noticed that those are what you love so much in another.
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I've long been a romantic but also a skeptic of who I open myself up to, as most everyone who knows me knows. Even now, I find it difficult to envision a version of myself in a true relationship. I've carried my own bags, washed my own back, made my own dinners, bought my own flowers for as long as I can remember. I've taken care of and gotten to know myself in a way no men have, in a way I struggle to let them try. I've lived with full autonomy over my wheres, whens, whats, whos–according to my own whims, my own time, my own inconsistencies and contradictions. Who am I without this? For nearly all my life, I've been the captain of my own ship.
And yet, imperceptibly, without any conscious decision, I let him in and allowed him a turn at the helm. A familiarity with the parts I pride myself on owning all on my own. My independence, self-sufficiency, unshakability.
You can imagine my surprise (and delight) when I realized I felt completely myself in all of it. The sacrifice of who I am did not come. The loss of sense of self never hit. I felt self-assured and eager, for if this was any indication of what love could be, I wanted more. Of course, this did not come as such a surprise; after all, I've had the distinct privilege of watching my parents over the past twenty-one years. I was raised on a love that precedes, endures, uplifts, envelops. My bone to pick is with them that the hopes I have for myself have been set so high.
For this reason and countless others, I did not see myself getting into any shade of a relationship in college. (Let the records show that he and I would both hesitate to call what we had anything other than a tint. Our time together was often restricted to the weekends, and a label was never desired so never came.) And yet, I am so glad we were in each other's lives for the time that we were. That we dined and laughed and laid and studied and "studied" and cinema'd and shared and walked and slept and ice-creamed together. That I found someone who made me feel comfortable, who inadvertently allowed me to surprise myself, who reminded me to always let love in.
I am now who I've always been–perhaps a bit wiser and wholly excited for what lies ahead. How wonderful that a person can impact you so profoundly in this way, no matter how much time was spent together or how much passes apart.
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I've discovered that I am too often present with what is not here. I am someone who longs for. Who languishes in the angst (anxt). Who savors. Who stockpiles bottle caps, old birthday cards, words and lyrics and passing thoughts in the Notes app. Who, as a child, licked the bowl, the spoon, the whisk Mom used while making zucchini muffins. Who saves letters not only for the words they contain but also for the weight of another's thoughts in my hands, the fingertips that brushed the page before mine.
I linger. I want everything, but especially this, to last: the feel of campus in October, the foam art on my latte, the late walks back from Rawls on Tuesdays and Harry's on Saturdays, the dinners and desserts with friends who are really family, the freedoms and excuses of youth, the summer afternoons where I feel most myself, the Christmases at home where Dad's laugh and Mom's cooking once again fill the house, the breeze through my hair and the morning doves outside my window, the sunsets cast through living room windows and reflected off city skylines, the scalding-hot showers after long days, the flight and the car ride and the hike with convex waterfalls, the album that scratches every corner of my brain, the feel of a loved one's arms or laughter around me, the vast unknown of a life at twenty-one.
In ten years, in a month, in five days, tomorrow, I will miss it. At the same time, I know that to spend too much time dwelling is to squander the good thing we have going. We wish to document and catalogue and memorize and freeze-frame. We wish to know the why and the when. But I've realized that the past and the present, living and writing, aren't meant to provide us with those answers. They are meant to allow us to experience them. To go through the motions, to breathe in, to feel all the way down to our toes, to be comfortable with the unknowable and understand that sometimes there is no why. "Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment." Vonnegut got it right. Where you are right now, engrave your initials onto the bench. Stay awhile.
I am slowly getting it. Learning to look up, to see the forest and the trees, to live in the amber. To long and linger less. There is an ache in knowing that in a month, he and I will be on the same campus but no longer a part of one another's lives. But there is equal part happiness for myself, because there are countless more lessons to be learned, people to love, horizons on which to rise and set. Because we had a wonderful six months that aren't voided just because they're over. Because youth still affords me the privilege of doing without thinking. Because there are still handsome men, unkept promises, last-minute rainchecks, candles and ramen on Valentine's Day, yummy ciders, hiking trails, good books, snow days, unexplored discographies, new restaurants yet.
I liked this man. I liked every moment spent together, every conversation, every stupid thing he'd say that made me laugh, every movie he'd interrupt to kiss me. I liked that we were different but the same in the ways that matter. I liked when he called me beautiful and I could tell he meant it. I liked that he made me feel smart and funny and sexy and cared for (all things I know myself to be). I liked that he remembered things about me. I liked that what we had took its time, that it didn't consume me. I liked when he asked about my day, knowing he cared about the answer no matter how monotonous or mundane. I liked that every day was a chance to know him a little better. But I didn't like the rescheduling with little warning. Or his inability to communicate, a reminder that they might be in college but they've still got a long way to go. Or the two-step tip-toeing around labels and what-are-wes (we were so graceful though!). Or how quick he was to throw in the towel. Or, lest we forget, the love he gives to Drake.......Yet none of that means I’d change a thing (I wouldn’t).
We're lucky to find people who care for us and mean it. Whether it's for a week, six months, a year, a lifetime. I'm cheersing to all of this–to him and what we shared, to horizons still unmarked by the days to come, to whomever might be reading this, to the amber.
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