It’s a luxury to revisit past pain, as that usually indicates there’s nothing present going on to fill such a void. In this case, I’ll leave the artistic expression to Taylor Swift‘s re-release of ‘All Too Well’ (Taylor’s Version) which comes with a raw video that some have speculated is about her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. It brought about a rash of online heartbreak memories and break-up ghosts. Who needs that shit when so much else is going on? Who knows. And who cares. We all have those memories. They still cut, they still sting, and when they claim you like the ghosts they are, they leave the same chill they did before.
In my case, it was a January or February moment in Chicago, that was just as cold and brutal as everyone thinks Chicago is. The city was never quite that way – but the circumstances were. On this Saturday morning he accompanied me downtown, but left when we were only halfway there, and I didn’t have the courage or strength to fight it. I got off in some neighborhood I didn’t know, stumbling to some pretty storefront that looked like it might have a little piece of beauty that might prove a balm on my heart. It was all I could do, it was my way of survival: to find a sliver of beauty that made it worth living in the world. To keep me alive… just until the next day, the next hour, the next minute. How would I go on beyond that? Why would I want to?
A potted group of paperwhite Narcissus was in bloom there, sending up their star-shaped blooms and their pungent perfume. They were hidden in plain sight, in a green-house-like room fronted by wavy panes of ancient glass, where it felt like I could be hidden in plain sight too. My grief rendered me suddenly invisible, a doubly-debilitating and cruel trick that preyed upon the very insecurities which had me constantly doubting whether I even existed.
