But there’s someone else—that’s what I should say to him. That would shut it down. Only…he’ll ask who it is.
I could lie. I could say it’s Nathan. I could make someone else up.
But the way he’s looking at me…it’s almost the way A looked at me when A was in Alexander’s body. There is something real there.
I’m starting to falter. I pull away from him. Face him squarely.
“I’m trying to break up with you!” I blurt out.
He laughs. “I noticed. Grape?”
“This is not how this conversation is supposed to go.”
“How did you imagine it would go?”
“Tears. Anger. Understanding. Or maybe anger, then tears, then understanding.”
“I guess I’m trying to jump to the understanding. Look, I know I’m a weird dude. The artiness hides some of it, but at heart—I’m pretty weird. But you’ve never seemed to mind that. And it may be presumptuous of me to say, but I’m not getting a sense that you think I’m bad for you. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“So…what this means is there’s something going on with you, something that’s causing you to question your life—and I’m definitely a part of that. I’m not saying I can make it all better—I doubt I can. And I’m not saying that our dating should be top priority over everything else—hopefully that’s never been a message you’ve gotten from me. What I’m saying is: How can I help you? If it’s by going away, okay. If you really think that, sure. But if you’re worried I’m going to be devastated if you’re thinking of things besides me—sorry, but that’s not going to happen. I want you to be thinking of plenty of things besides me.”
“Everyone says that!” I counter. “But when push comes to shove—”
“What pushing?” Alexander interrupts. “What shoving? Look at me, Rhiannon. Look at the person in front of you.”
I tell him, “The pressure isn’t you. But you’re part of the pressure of everything. I know that’s not fair to say, because there’s nothing you can do about it, really. I’m just really confused right now. And trying to be a good girlfriend only adds to the noise. I’m not going to be a good girlfriend right now. You’re right—I’m not thinking about you. Not as much as I should. And the things I’m thinking about instead—they get in the way of me being the person you like. I’m sure of it.”
“And there’s no way for me to help?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t believe that,” he says. “Or at least I don’t want to believe that.”
I am now completely unsure of what I am doing. I am running away from a person who cares about me—and I’m running toward someone who will never be able to be here in the way that Alexander is here.
I’m on the precipice of doing something stupid. And all it will take is one wrong move on Alexander’s part for me to fall from the precipice, into the regret. I want him to push. I want him to shove. Because then I would have at least one answer.
But instead he says, “Let’s go do some homework. Let’s not say yes or no right now, because this is an essay question we’re facing. And we’re not even halfway through. The good news is that there’s plenty of time left.”
He puts the grapes back in the bowl, then picks it up from the counter.
“I’m serious,” he says. “Let’s do this.”
This is the moment to exhale. The moment for the benefit, not the doubt.
But instead I whisper, “I’m so sorry—I can’t.” And then, before he can say anything else to make me want to stay, I leave him behind.
M: My real and your real are not the same.
Someone: I think they are. Even if our perceptions skew us, we all share the same real.
M: I’m not sure I can get there.
Someone: You can. Because we live in the same world. We all live in the same world. Over time we’ve tried to fragment ourselves away from understanding that, and at times it’s very easy to privilege our own perceptions of reality over others’, to ignore the fact that we’re living in the same world. But unless you are writing to me from another dimension, you are as real as I am, and your life is as real as mine is. Even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
M: But you don’t change every day.
Someone: Neither do you.
M: How can you say that?
Someone: If I came on here tomorrow and started chatting with you, would you sound different?
M: No. But only because you can’t see my body.
Someone: I am not talking about your body. I am talking about who you are.
M: Your body IS who you are.
Someone: But you always have a body, don’t you? Even if it’s not the same one.
M: You’re saying that like it makes sense to you. It doesn’t make any sense!
Someone: I am taking you at your word. Because I trust your word. The body has nothing to do with that.
X
Even though I wake up in the body of a young woman, I still feel the need to celebrate. It’s the adrenaline rush of a close call. I could commemorate my survival with something major. Maybe tonight she can get pregnant. Or drive a car into a store window. Or one and then the other. The body is once more at my disposal. Especially since I’ll only be staying in this one for a day. I have no use for anything under 140 pounds. I aim to be more than that.
I am tired of waiting.
I need to force the situation.
A
Day 6107
A,
I think I broke up with Alexander. I say I think I did because I left before it could be confirmed. It just wasn’t fair to him to say we were together when a part of me is still clearly feeling something for you.
R
R,
Are you sure you want to do that?
A
A,
No. But how can you ask that?
R
R,
I knew I would make it worse.
A
A,
I don’t want to keep going back and forth like this. Call me.
R
* * *
—
“Hello.”
It’s her voice. I cannot believe I am hearing her voice.
“Hey.”
Of course, she’s never heard this voice before. Kristen’s voice. Calling from the house’s landline, so hopefully this call will just blend in with the rest of the phone bill.
But still, there’s recognition.
“Hey.”
“It’s wonderful to hear your voice,” I say to her. Then I realize it’s impossible for her to say it back to me.
“It’s strange,” she says. “Talking on the phone. We never talked on the phone.”
“This is so 1985.”
“Thank goodness you didn’t get my answering machine.”
It feels good to be joking, but then it feels awkward, because neither of us knows what to say next.
“I missed you,” I tell her. “I just wanted you to hear it out loud.”
“I missed you, too. I’m still missing you.”
“I’m right here.”
“I know. Exactly.”
I have made an awful mistake. I have led us to the same spot we were at before.
“I want to be there,” I say. As if that matters for anything.
“What are we doing?” Rhiannon asks. “Not to jump right to that, but every time I write to you, it’s what I’m thinking. And every time I get a response from you, it’s what I’m thinking. And most of the time in between, I’m thinking it, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because what else can I say?
“Stop. At this point, I’m doing this to us as much as you’re doing this to us. We could spend our whole lives saying
sorry to each other and to everyone else around us. But I’d rather find something else for us to say.”
Words fail me again. Because what else is there to say? I’m sorry is natural. I love you feels more like a challenge than a declaration.
“I want to see you again,” Rhiannon tells me.
“And I want to see you.”
She hesitates for a few seconds. Then says, “So get on a plane.”
“It’s not that easy,” I say immediately, reflexively.
“I know.” She sounds annoyed. “But you did it once. You can do it again.”
“Yes, but the last time I did it, it involved a teenage girl waking up in a hotel room in Denver with no idea how she got there. I tried to get back in the morning, to come up with some story that she’d believe, and to help her catch her return flight. But by the time I got there, she was gone. Hopefully she saw the ticket I left her. Hopefully she wasn’t too freaked out. But I have to live with the fact that she’d have every right to be freaked out. What I did was wrong, Rhiannon. I know I did it in order to get away, because I felt I had to get away. But that’s not an excuse. And I don’t plan to do it again.”
“So do it a different way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure! But maybe you wake up in the body of someone who’s traveling east. Or who has family in Maryland. Let’s try to figure it out.”
But will it really make a difference? I want to ask.
Only…I also feel that asking won’t make a difference, either.
The course is already set. There’s no way off of it. I tried to run. It didn’t work.
Now I have to try to get back.
MONA, AGE 98
Today is the day. Dear Lord, I know today is the day.
I have traveled so far and seen through so many eyes. Now I can hear the final notes of the lifelong hymn. I know this body is the one that will bring me up to You.
I am sorry this woman is not here to witness this, to see the grateful pain in her daughter’s eyes. She is holding my hand, Lord, and I feel You in that touch, just as I feel You in this body’s undoing, my life’s release.
I knew this day would come. There was no call for me to be an exception just because I have lived my life within the lives of others. Lately I have been feeling their pain more than their joy; as the bodies cultivate the pain, only the minds can offer the joy. I spend most of my time in hospitals or hospices or under the tender care of nurses whose fatigue nearly matches my own. (They have the decency to cover it better, most of the time.) It is a mercy to be leaving this Earth from the comfort of a home, in the bed where this woman has slept for decades, the mattress bending its springs to the memory of her shape. It is not my own home or my own bed—no such thing, Lord, no such thing—but I am still enfolded in the signs of life that a hospital room cannot offer. I am grateful to You for that.
Breathing is hard right now. Soon it will be too hard. I have been close to You before, but never this close. I hope that when my spirit rises, You will greet me with open arms and wisdom. Why have I lived like this? Were the choices I made the right ones? Was there something special I was supposed to see? Was there a special way I was supposed to help?
I have failed and I have triumphed and I have failed and failed and triumphed and failed again, but I have always kept going, even when the world gave me no encouragement, when the only voice I could hear was Yours, clear as glass and loud as thunder at some times, faint and unknowable at others.
For many, many years, I fought on the side of fairness, but that struggle took its toll. I could change people’s minds when they were under my power—but the deeper challenge was changing their minds once they were on their own again. I have endured this life by seeing the unbelievable expanse of what others can endure. I have held on to my stories by understanding that each of us contains a multitude of stories, and none of these stories end up saying the exact same thing. Each of us holds at least one story within us that breaks our hearts to tell it. Each of us holds at least one story in which we are surprised by our own fortitude. Each of us holds at least one story that never came true, the story we most wanted to be able to tell. A lot of the time, it isn’t our fault that this story never came to be; a lot of the time, we were stuck when we depended on the stories of others to match our own. All these stories—I have been honored and sorrowful and aghast and awestruck to know so many of them, in the short time You allowed me to know them.
As all of the senses are pulled back into this body, as vision and hearing and smell and taste and touch all retreat beyond, I struggle to play back the days I cherish the most. As this body shuts down, it’s like someone’s moving through and turning off the lights room by room. I am awestruck not by what I have experienced, but by my persistent desire for more. I am tired, Lord, and I am ready, Lord, but if You offered me another day, I would take it. Not to say any of the words I never got to say. Not to see someone I will no longer see. More than anything, I would like one last time to sit in the sun on an April afternoon, a good book in my lap, a song coming over the radio. To have one of those days when we get to feel the pulse of life underneath everything—that pulse a glory that reflects in every cell of our bodies, expressing itself in an inner splendor we are often too busy or hard on ourselves to acknowledge. You give us the simple pleasures because the rest of it is so hard. I understand this, Lord, because of all You have allowed me to see. It is an honor to You that I am ready and that I want more.
I hold the daughter’s hand. I don’t have the strength to find her name, and even less strength to say it. This woman will be missed in a way I will not be missed. This woman will be remembered in a way I will never be remembered. To love and be loved is to leave traces of permanence across an otherwise careless world. I must rely on You, Lord, to know what I have done, to give some worth to my devastated, hopeful heart. For ninety-eight years, You have been my sole constant, my companion, the only one who knows the things I’ve seen and sees the things I’ve known. I hope I have aided You in some way to understand the truth at the core of Your fallible, vulnerable, remarkable creations. I have liked to think of myself as Your eyes, Your ears, Your translator in the sum of our ways.
I have loved these people as best I could. I have tried my hardest to leave them better than they were before they met me. I have tried my hardest not to leave them worse. I have worked to remain open to every possible definition of who a person can be, even when society didn’t agree with me. To do this—to understand the full extent to which people can define themselves beyond their bodies—I have had to learn and learn and learn, and then learn some more. And by learn I mean unlearn…and then learn and unlearn and learn some more. I have made mistakes, but I have never been hateful. I have made faulty judgments, but I always sought remedy when I discovered my faults. I have asked for forgiveness, even though You are the only one who knew I needed to be forgiven. I have tried to lead a life of good, because it is the only way I know to lead a good life.
If I had a last wish, it would be to say to You: Don’t give up on them. By which I would mean: Don’t let them give up on each other.
I always wondered if, when my time came, all their lives would be shown to me again—if all those people I’ve been would somehow return to me, if I would see how all of these single days have added up to a single life. But now I understand: They all fall away. It is only me now. It is only me and You.
I hold on to that hand. I breathe for as long as I can breathe.
Every traveler returns home.
I am
M: I don’t know why you’d trust me.
Someone: I was lost in my own life. To the extent that I didn’t even recognize it as a valid life. The first step was understanding something was wrong. The second step was sharing that with someone else. The third step was giving it a name and trying to understand it as much as possib
le, as a way of getting power over it. The fourth step is living with it, and knowing there will be good days and bad days, and that sometimes I will lose control and other times I will regain control.
The fifth step is understanding that many of the people around me are going through some variation of what I’m going through.
I know this might sound obvious. But you have to understand that empathy is not something that comes naturally to me. It is something I have to remind myself about. Because if nothing in the world seems real, other people can also seem unreal. I must remind myself they are real. I must remind myself they are, at heart, like me.
Why do I trust you? Because you are, at heart, like me. You feel your life is wrong. You must discover it’s not. You must live with that and work with that and share that with others. I trust you because I recognize you. I recognize your soul. And you have given me no reason not to trust you.
Let me say what I said above a little differently.
I know what it’s like to be lost in your own life. I know you can get so lost that you want to end it. Or you can get so lost that you retreat into a carapace you’ve constructed in order to keep the rest of the world outside. I felt both of those impulses. But now I no longer want to be lost in my own life. I want to step outside of it. I want to know what other lives are like. I want to connect instead of retreat, even though there are days I think I will die in the attempt.
Someday Page 16
