Dear Nobody,

Because every truth deserves the chance-safety that someone might not read it.

(Written October 2023, sitting in drafts, I like to read her late)

Dear Nobody,

I write from a mid-morning bed, in a boxed-up country, population: one. Last night the first in my new place and already I don’t want to tell you anything. I don’t know what crosses my own borders or boundaries with you because I don’t know you, but the bigger something is that I don’t know me anymore.

Back when I had a life, there were other people to attend to, roles to cling to, schedules to hang on - and as I look back there is a small whimpering grief in my child chest - that I’ve spend much of my life begging the world to please tell me please tell me what I am. I will be it! Just tell me. I will be it. And I will be excellent at it! I promise.

No place is this more evident than right here, in this exact moment, on this exact day. Saturday. Oh the weight of a Saturday, when you aren’t sure you have the limbs for it, the gumption, the idea about what you are.

(You’re also just really fucking tired and don’t even know how to give yourself that.)

Some people go for walks. Some like to ride their bike. Some people go to breakfast alone, or brunch with friends. What do I like.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I have a book here on my bed that I thought to read. I grabbed my guitar and played it for a few seconds, like I was looking for something. Anything.

I’m looking for me. Just as scared to find her as I am to know her.

Ok.

I fear that if I shed every single thing I thought I should be, there will be nothing left.

I’m scared there’s not a me in there.

I’ve just recently come to the realization that I’m a real human being, with a body, with a mind and feelings and fears and emotions that are mine. That I am allowed my own. That I actually have them in the first place. And I’m supposed to. What? For example, sometimes I look down and just stare and think “these are my feet. all of these toes, they are my toes.” I will press and squeeze my hands onto my legs and close my eyes and say - “these are my legs.” It feels revolutionary, and simple, and brilliant, and sad.

I’m just getting here.

On top of the crawling around on the floor, scraping for semblance of life or self or some small mercy … on top of all that, I miss him.

I miss him like I’ve never missed anyone. A soul aching to catch its own tears. There is nothing for this pain. I sit with it, and stare over the boxes at a blank wall.

And so this is missing someone. And so this is.

One day maybe I will be able to speak more of it, write it. Write him. Write the love that so extraordinarily rewrote me in real time, to only just shatter. Ok.

A gift in that. But I can’t see it yet. I have to wade through the blue tears, the black pit.

I have to let the music play. Or anything.

I have to be a person. It’s not good news yet.

Ok.

And play. There is a very part-time something I picked up, which involves wandering around and playing in a children’s museum. I feel like learning to be a kid is helping me learn to be a human.

Anyway I wandered into the exhibit on water. There’s a whole carwash station in there - bubbles, hoses spraying water, a dryer. There are all sizes and types of brushes to scrub the car with.

I went into this exhibit because it was empty. Like me, lately. Like a womb. I started drawing things in the bubbles with my finger on the side of the car. I grab a brush.

Just as I was starting to scrub and feel the rhythmic soothing of the back and forth, of a sudsy brush on metal, a toddler poked his head around the car to my right. He stood there and smiled at me. Almost shy, almost to say, there you are.

He took a small step toward me, and we smile at each other for just a second too long. I hand him a brush, ask him if he wants to help me wash the car.

He takes it and squats down next to me. We wash the whole side of the car together in silence, in motion, hands moving brushes.

We were there on that side of the car for about 10 minutes. It was simple and sweet and something bigger was piecing us together, placing us there.

We had just fallen into our rhythm when his mom came and found him.

She started laughing and scooped him up quick, clearly he’d been missing. He stared at me as he was carried off. I took my brush off the car and held it in my still hand. I stare at his small brush on the floor. Warm bubbles fizz around it.

I don’t know anything.

But I know I want my small friend to come back. And even if and when he did, it wouldn’t be the same. I know that too.

We had our moment and the moment passed.

Life is like this.

I don’t know what I learned. I don’t know what I am.

But I know that something felt right about scrubbing a car with a toddler who was brand new and somehow no stranger.

I know in that moment, I didn’t give a damn about who or what I am.

I was just watching the bubbles move, feeling the brush in my hand, watching his little hand brush the car next to mine.

Dear nobody, I don’t know what we are.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe forgetting is the only true arrival.

As ever,

Nobody (Amelia)