Tongue Tied
"Love is a responsibility because you make a commitment. Love is that, 'I’m here for you.' or as our friend... Toni Morrison said, 'Love is a bench. And a bench is something that, no matter what—when you’re tired, when you’re sad—you can sit right there. It’s got your back.' That’s what love is: Love’s got your back.”
Nikki Giovanni
“So, what would you have done differently?”
“I would have left sooner, rather than stay and be treated with indifference. You?”
“I would’ve called more.”
‘Called more.’ That’s all? Why would he even say that?
He was a quirky ambitious thinker like Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, an aloof poet like Darius from Love Jones, and deep in his own head like Lawrence from Insecure. Memories of him were scented with his coconut oil soaked beard wafting over me in my favorite resting spot just beneath his chin.
I met him the second week of June and by the fourth week he had asserted he wasn’t interested in dating me specifically and made it clear he was not moving with intention. And yet, there I was in his apartment in November trying to retreat while reaching towards a tenuous idea of romantic possibility. It was early winter, just before Thanksgiving. I had been volunteering at the urban farm around the corner from his apartment all summer into the late fall. We had made a routine of Wednesday nights, I would finish at the farm and settle in with him for the night. Though this midweek meetup was different. The October rupture in Santiago had shattered our fragile peace.
The overcast days leading up to Santiago I was in Paris surveying black art, arrested by a Kerry James Marshall piece called ‘Black Painting’. Colored in shades of black, it captured the tranquil moments of Black Panther, Fred Hampton, in bed with his partner just before his assassination by Chicago police in the twilight hours. My Darius was in the states, drafting his analysis on black liberation actors defying state narratives. Yet something was off, I had not returned his calls while away and barely texted. Passing each other in the sky, I flew back to the states and he jetted to Santiago.
Typically reserved with his feelings, time and space had begun to chisel cracks in his shell. Anxious rumination orchestrated his fingers to type up a text sent while I was in flight and delivered hours later upon my landing.
“Hey Danika // it was hard to sleep last nite because I was wondering why you never called me back…I had to let you know that my imagination has been running wild with thoughts of why you’re not getting back to me. Has anything changed with us since we spoke on Wednesday?”
Six hours later at 4:56 p.m., I gathered my thoughts into a voice note.
“Hey, I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well and yeah I’ve been reflecting and my expectations for emotional care and what I’m experiencing with you is not fully in alignment with that…”
“Sorry for making you feel that way, Danika. When I sent that text, I was in this beautiful park here— it was so peaceful — and I wanted to share that with you…Am I right in concluding that you don’t want to see or hear from me ever again?”
“Oh wow that sounds lovely! Were the Jacaranda trees there? They are my favorite.” “I’m not saying we can never speak again, I just can’t date in a space that activates me to feel disempowered, like I am an option, like I’m not worthy.”
“It was Mahuida Park, so serene.” “And I don’t want you to feel disempowered and unworthy.” “…I’ve drafted like five sappy text but I don’t want to sway you..so I’ll keep my feelings to myself…hope this isn’t goodbye.”
By seven pm, the polite bookend had subsided into volleying resentments over the phone. The octaves of verbalized pain raised higher and higher until his frustration pried open his cool demeanor and combusted.
“You don’t listen to shit I say!”
In the burned space between us, I silently etched my musings into the ashes. Interesting, not Mr. Unbothered, actually being bothered.
“Yeah, I don’t want to do this. I don’t yell. This isn’t working.”
Reverse Uno.
“Let’s just take a beat and talk about it later.”
Later came…another Wednesday together. The threads of words unsaid tied our tongues; all we could do was smile.
The phoenix of self abandonment took flight, carrying away the final end into the abyss of ambiguity.
______
Saturday, January seventeenth, he said ‘I love you.’ Then he stopped reaching out much for weeks after, we only saw each other once between the ‘I love you’ and succeeding silence. He called three times between February fifth and February eleventh. I answered on the third try.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I called you, you didn’t answer. I thought you ghosted me.”
“I would be justified to ghost you, no?”
“No, why would it be justified?”
“You said ‘I love you’ and then didn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards.”
“Yeah, I was intentionally distant. I am focusing on my family and friendships right now and don’t have the capacity to focus on romantic relationships. We can be friends but I see you romantically.”
“So, why would you say I love you?”
“Because I do.”
Forever pushing and pulling, it was a chronically onerous detached attachment. Conscious of the futile nature of countering him, I allowed the flailing hubris of my optimism to offer one last challenge.
“Love to me is intentional and rooted in action."
“That’s your definition, I respect that. It’s a feeling to me.”
“So what do you love about me exactly?”
“I can’t say, it’s just a feeling.”
“Have you ever heard someone say what I love about them is XYZ?"
“Have you heard someone say there are no words, it’s just a feeling?”—“Do you feel loved by me?”
“I suppose when you cook for me I do.”
We tucked in the tension like we always did, leaving the restless legs of our attachment to wreak havoc beneath the covers. He called forty one minutes later, we talked for forty-five seconds.
“Wanna come over on your lunch break?”
“…………Mmmm, yeah!”
I was always down for an adventure with him and yet constantly silencing the intuitive notifications telling me I was far from home. The key to his front door worked intermittently and unreliably. Following I-95 on the seventy-five minute drive back home made the invisible distance feel tangible. My unstoppable force of resilience constantly meeting his immovable force of ambivalence dissolved the highway asphalt into mud. The whiplash of his sequential push and pull rhythm was becoming unbearable.
“I want you to share with me if I hurt you…but that’s not a good example because your recitation of facts is inaccurate…you should assume best intent…”
“I’m sorry I didn’t handle that as sensitively as I should have.”
____
“You’re so weird.”
“You’re so beautiful.”
____
“Well, I didn’t want to bring a Hinge date around my friends” — “I’m sorry for the negative impact of my words…I would’ve liked you to assume best intent.”
“I love waking up to you, I wish I could bottle this feeling.”
____
“Maybe you’re sensitive.” — “No, I couldn’t have said ‘you’re sensitive’, I would never say that…I’m sensitive.”
“I want you to be able to share your stream of consciousness with me, I want you to be able to tell me. If I can’t handle it, thats on me, not you.
Glimpses of XYZ peeked through where the mirage of steadiness almost seemed to be real.
Love is ‘I’m thinking of you even when you’re away from me’. I shipped him the art I brought back from Paris for him, even though we weren’t speaking again after Santiago co-hosted our implosion.
Love is ‘I will care for you'. We made a routine of him cooking breakfast and me washing dishes afterwards. It was the cup of tea he made me in the evenings, it was him sharing his plate of food with me as he packed for Côte d'Ivoire . It was me calling from the perfumery in Lima to make sure I got just the right scented candle he wanted.
Love is ‘how can I make your life easier’. Remembering he left his artisan bread at Saturday’s farmer’s market, I found it at a different one on Sunday and drove ninety minutes just to make sure he had what he wanted because I wanted to, because I wanted him to have what he needed. It was him picking up packages delivered to my apartment doorstep before move-in day and letting me know he had them, easing my worries.
Love is curious. He unveiled his unfulfilled wishes after my direct inquiry as to why he kept asserting that he drove me, not we, so the two of us could go on a hike together after my birthday. He desired to be cared for, cooked for, nurtured. Curious excavations led me to understanding, I wasn’t adequately meeting his needs because I lived with my mom meaning he couldn’t find an overnight respite with me, I wasn’t caring in a way that translated. He left that conversation satiated, reflecting how he valued how he felt understood and that there was no yelling.
But, the chasm between us contracted and expanded, for every action of love…
“Hey…Danika…look at me. If you need anything, call me…forreal.”
“Really appreciate you sharing…It’s honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.”
“Do you want to stay for breakfast?”
there was a reaction of disconnect…
“When you told me you were moving down the street, I was never going to speak to you again.”
“Yeah, I agree it is nice for someone to be excited to see you…But, I can’t perform excitement…if you need that, I’ll try but if it’s not good enough then it is what it is.”
“I didn’t read your essay but you know how busy I am, assume best intent…”
Love is repair. Though, I could never quite find the right needle to stitch the hurt back together. Ten times urging him to check I made it home, ten different reactions.
“Not checking if I get home safely bothers me. It matters to me and is representative of care to me.”
“You live so far away, I start doing something else when you leave and forget to check that you made it home, assume best intent.” — “tru tru, my b! sorry.” — “See! I didn’t look at your petty text and called you to make sure you made it home.”
From apologies, unmended wounds, repeated missed connections, and naming me petty for the upside down smiley face that accompanied my “made it home” text, the road home stretched longer and longer. Exits were missed and GPS rerouted over and over again until I crashed into a wall, halting our inertia.
“Were you having a mental episode around the time we stopped speaking?”
“Do you get tired of me telling you you’re beautiful.”
_____
“You don’t feel comfortable asking me for help? Have you ever asked me for something and I didn’t do anything?” — “Okay then, so that’s a you thing and ‘need to accept that.”
“How could I not know it was you, I’ve loved on you enough to know. That would be crazy if I didn’t know it was you.”
March seventh I climbed out of the car and began the long walk home. The key unlocked my front door faithfully. The house love built inside of me was in disarray. Writing and coping, I crafted the mantra “I trust myself, I trust my knowing, I trust the chaos is being ordered without my intervention.” Writing and coping, I reached out to many hands to make light work of cleaning the mess within my pages. Writing and coping, I opened to the next chapter, reading each line attentively.
By June, I was wearing cascading cream linen dresses to dinner parties under string lights extending my thousand watt smile with ease. By July, I was dancing in my home celebrating my acceptance into a Master of Fine Arts program. By August, I embraced the road less traveled as my path. And by September I was back in my favorite coconut oil scented spot beneath his chin.
Love is evolution. And when the tide of him washed ashore once more, I was no longer unmoored with him. I was a lighthouse, unmoved and steady. I was a bench of my own making.
“I’m going to make some fish I bought at the farmer’s market, would you like to come over and eat?”
“Yes.”
cover image: untitled (blanket couple) (2014) kerry james marshall