Note:

anted to share this with anyone who would be interested. It’s crazy because I wrote the original back about 8 or 9 years ago and seeing what I wrote and the changes I made are ironic. Anyways, I hope you like it; if you happen to read any.

My name, is Al.

It was summer time, and I was alone. Not many people to talk to; and not many more who would listen to my drunken blunders. Makes sense, considering I slurred words and said obnoxious things like “she’s a real bitch, your wife”. Things that drunken men say when they have an audience, even if no one around is really listening.

My drinking problem wasn’t my only issue. The voices that circled around in my head never seemed to like letting go of the past. Often times, they would manifest themselves into objects, like paperclips, coffee mugs or TV screens. I’d drift away into lands of make believe, and I wouldn’t even realize it. 

I made a trip to Texas in August. No destination in mind, just drove until I felt no longer like driving. No care in the world for what happened to me, as long as I could just escape my normal surroundings, I was happy to be somewhere else.

“I’ll just sleep in my car” – I told myself; and some nights I wouldn’t even sleep. Now, certain things about nature that I noticed during this:

• How much warmer it is to sleep in a house
• How much easier it is to go to the bathroom in a house
• How much easier it is to eat in a house

However, somethings, when sleeping in a car really find a way to stick out. Let me add, I looked through the sunroof during the night to try to sleep; watching the stars disappear behind clouds or how the moon peaked. I also don’t think I could ever do this (sleeping in a car) in a third world country. I’d be scared out of my mind, too far out of my elements and unsure how I would even use the bathroom without the convenience of a proper toilet.

Had I never left, and went on this adventure, me; and my voices – I would never have met the woman who changed everything. She pushed the clouds away, and made all of my days brighter. 

Her name, was Ashlee. 

It was a cold Tuesday (at least, in Austin), around sixty-something degrees and low paced winds. The sky was blue and silver, as if it was going to pour. Walking through the city, I was looking at places I had never seen before, head tilted slightly to the sky and looking at the hanging store signs. I didn’t really pay that much attention to details as I was still fighting off one of the voices in my head kept on insisting I take it for a drink. Wound up inside a bar, didn’t know what it was called, just saw that they had Miller on tap for a buck fifty a glass. 

As I sat down, our eyes met and I quickly looked away. The bartender immediately had something to say about my unfamiliar face and I had a moment where I blacked out. My fear of being around others has long disabled me from just conversing with strangers. I sat there, and came back to.

“I’m sorry” – I started. “I uh, would like a tall one.” And I looked over my shoulder and saw that beautiful woman sitting there “Excuse me ma’am” I called over. 

“Who, me?” She replied, shy but warmly.

“Yes, would you like another drink?” – looking back now, I almost think this was one of the voices that vocalized the question, because I never really had the courage to ask a stranger, especially a beautiful woman if they’d like a drink on my tab. She went ahead and took my gesture. 

I think it was about a half hour before I really spoke to her again, and when it did it started off by noticing her glancing over at me, and I had this inner feeling she wanted something to do with me; but we didn’t speak. After a while, I paid my tab after I had thought she left. As I walked out the door I saw her standing by the door putting out her cigarette. 

“Oh hey!” I said almost loudly, as I was startled by her presence. 

“Hey there!” She replied (she replied! I was screaming to myself inside) 

Awkwardly, I put my hand out, and almost in a confused manner, she met it with her own for an unfamiliar handshake.

“My name is Ashlee, though, most people call me Lee. It kinda sounds boyish” she spurted out embarrassedly. “Who are you?” She asked.

I paused, I was still in shock that the conversation even got this far.

“My name, is Al.” I said back. My inner voices though, they fought back. “She wants to know why you are here” they said or in other ways “she wants to know ‘why you are’ and ‘here’” – I gave them grief “give me a chance” I told myself internally. 

I started to explain the answer to those internal questions without her prompting me. And maybe if she was anyone else, this would have been enough to scare her away. But she was Ashlee after all.

“I’m not from around here” – I started.

“Oh I knew that, by your voice and your clothing.” She came back, “Where are you originally from?” She asked.

I have struggled a lot in life and have lived all over the midwest, but I didn’t want to really dive that deep four questions in to knowing someone. 

“Well, I was in Detroit, until recently. And uh, well…” I hesitated. My inner voices that usually scream at me not to speak didn’t rear their faces. “I uh… am somewhere at sail psychologically speaking. See, I had a girlfriend for ten years. This girl named Mandy, and she left me a few months back. She found a guy with a fancy car, a fancy boat, the whole nine yards. And one day while I was at work, she and her mom packed up her things and left. The letter she left only said goodbye. I had to find out the rest from her friends…”

Ashlee quickly came back and said “Well, some girls suck. She won’t be happy and I guarantee that.” Stunned, if not shocked, I just sat there as she continued “They’re all stupid even me. But she is definitely the stupidest.”

It’s one thing to be smart enough to call yourself stupid; yet completely insane to say things that are vicarious to where only the true reaction from anyone else would be nervous shock.

As the next ten quite minutes passed by, I felt like I was leaving something in the air; like an invisible ribbon we had agreed to hold onto that moment of shaking hands.

And again, the voices had completely faded. All of the walls I had built up around my heart just fell like a bomb went off. As we gazed into nothingness, I realized that we hadn’t just been talking. We managed to go for a free-formed walk around the blocks nearby. And we wound up at my car. 

“So,” she started – “where do you live?”

The voices slowly crept back in. Unexpected as the last several hours had passed without them and it was my longest break, in the same way parents of young kids feel once they get to the point where the child sleeps for more than just a few hours. 

“Right now; here.” I said, and the voices swiftly went back to sleep; though really this response gave me enough anxiety to just explode. Like a dud, there was no explosion of laughter; dismissal of my lack of property. Just acceptance. I hadn’t felt like that in a long time; if not for ten years probably longer. 

“Because of her?” She asked, referencing Mandy.

“Yeah. Kinda. I couldn’t afford anything on my own so I let the lease run up and I…” and I blacked out again. No, no voices. No thoughts either. I was paralyzed talking about it because I hadn’t discussed this with anyone and again it was extremely hard to let out. Each word felt like it was tied to an anchor. Hell, even some felt like they were tied to razors. 

“I am from Michigan, where the things people care about are: cars, water and camping” I said. All three of those things are intertwined and fun. Camping, wilderness, randomness and inconsistencies are to me the most beautiful things to me… and yet like bats. Bats in the cave, thoughts that scare me because that is where another love was lost and discovered, one to me and another to another.

“If I could recall my previous life, I’d tell you everything that happened that got me here. But; I can’t” I muttered, feeling the pull of the anchors and bleeding from the razors. The weight of reality sunk so deep into me that I felt myself trembling. “Something about love, something about pain.” I ended. Quickly, thinking I just killed the spark; cut the ribbon; I asked “So, where do you live?”

“Right now? Here.” She responded in a less elaborate way than I answered her same question. “Al, there is something about your carrying brown eyes. Something that I believe is inside and hiding a monster. Something about your mind that glows within you.” 

Again, from the abyss the voices presented “watch out man – she’s going to end it already.” It was one of those breakup moments (or so I thought) that ignites a plume and kicks you hard in the chest.

At this point, another several hours had passed us by and long ago we got in my car. Seats fully reclined and looking through the sunroof. 

As we neared our exhaustion and even the sun was on its way back up, I asked Lee “why do you live?” And I got nothing. And that is where it stayed.

Several months passed us by; and it turned out she wasn’t from Austin either. She was from Chicago. So that is where we ended up. As Ashlee would say ‘it’s not about loving another’ but ‘losing ourselves’ in another rather.

Allowing somebody be consumed. Allowing somebody else to be the heart in your chest, and closing their eyes to see something beautiful. That level of openness was a new norm. 

When she said she had to go to Florida for a week – some seminar that I wasn’t able to go to, I heard the old voices come back.

“Maybe she’s not really at a seminar” and “What if she never returns, dummy?” On repeat. And after a week she still hadn’t come home. Her phone went straight to voicemail. Her parents wouldn’t answer my calls either, as we had never met and I still don’t think they ever cared for me.

And weeks turned to months.

“Why was this happening to me?” I wondered over and over again. 

I started to ramble, so I pulled my phone out and hit record. Not something I often did.

“Did you ever notice how invisible the sun has been? How dimly lit we have all become? We hide in the shade of a world, where we almost find comfort in being invisible. Without today, tomorrow becomes an illusion. And without illusions, tomorrow never comes. This time, everything will be better. Seriously. So ask me God, what man can I become if I keep dreaming. Can I even become anything?”

Seven years collapsed on me, and again I forgot who I was. 

I was helping out at a work party with getting everything set up and a photographer came up to me and asked if she could take my photograph. “Sure I said” as the voices started screaming “give up a part of your soul when the light flashes, dummy” – I don’t know why they always call me dummy, but be assured – they did. And as she put her camera down, I felt as if I had known her for years. 

“Who are you?” I asked – I demanded. To which she replied “My name is Ashlee, but you can call me” –

“Lee.”

It was her.

She pulled out a note, and handed it to me. It wasn’t to me, but rather, from me. A note that I had written her years back when she went to Florida. I had sent it to her parents address as back then, I guess, I had hoped that whatever transpired between us that ultimately caused her not to return could eventually be clarified.

All of the time that has passed and led us here; next to another. Nothing in my entire life ever made me as happy as this moment. And yet I felt scared. I never wanted this moment to end. 

“When I fell asleep, you sat on my mind’s corner waiting for it to get off work. Waiting for you to come back. And you left me there, in the cold, and alone, as if I never mattered to you. You meant everything to me. I stayed until I could no longer stay waiting for you to come back. I couldn’t get any help finding out what happened; I couldn’t get a simple answer…” 

“I wanted you to chase me, but you didn’t” she said. Apparently, she wrote me a letter somewhere she thought I would find but didn’t. None of this really made sense because I tried everything else. 

And that’s not all. Lee went on to say that she had returned to Chicago not just once, but a dozen times and she couldn’t find me. 

I had moved away from the apartment we had, when the lease was up. It was hard to look at her things that just needed me to place them somewhere else. I kept a few things that reminded me of her. After all, I had a lot of love for her. And as we stood here I recalled the box I hid them in.

We started talking about what we lost out on, the adventures we had and the people we met. I told her then about Audrey, my wife. Before I went down this road with her my mind starts asking me questions like “How can someone be sorry for the journey they chose?” And “How does regret even work?” Do I regret choosing to move on? Never before had I questioned it then this moment right here. When I finally said “Her name is Audrey” as I held out my phone to the Pictures app. Quickly I went to a photo of us at a friends birthday party. “She’s from Michigan too. Hates cars, and camping. Boats too.” A moment burst in my mind, as I then continued to slowly recount “We were both waiting in line with my sister for Pictures with Santa. My four year old niece, she needed to ask Santa for a Barbie doll. We got to talking about how long the line is, and what we wanted for Christmas.” And the moments flashed again of the first time I met Ashlee. I remembered saying to her what I thought about my home state. Slowly I picked back up on finishing my story and realizing that I was lost again. “So we finished talking about all of that and more…” and I stopped.

“I wanted more than anything else than for you to find me. And today, you did. I love snow, I love this time of year; the way snow falls slowly, and when it comes down hard to where you just can’t see anything. Sometimes we get lost because we get too busy admiring what it represents. Whether it is your lack of warmth to get you through the night. The hunger of wanting to be full. The convenience of going somewhere to be clean of all of the dirt and anger that clings to you until new layers start to form, and fall off. If you had found me back then, you wouldn’t have been here, right now.”

She was absolutely right. And as we were walking around outside in the cold, snowy weather, I noticed her shivering. There was plenty of conversation that happened between the moment she said those words and the moment I offered her my coat. 

“No, no, no… it’s okay. I’m okay.” So I put my coat on around her and rubbed her shoulder. I knew that she was going to be a little warded off but I still wanted to be strong for her. 

Her favorite color was pink. Her favorite band was At the Drive In. She lived on her own. In Chicago, near me. She loved abstract art. She still smoked cigarettes. (I had honestly hoped she would’ve quit by now, but still she smokes.) She lived in Chicago, near me.  And yet somehow it took us this long to cross paths again.

I went back home and discussed what happened with Audrey. She of course was pissed off with me.

“Are you seriously going to entertain this clown?” She screamed out at the top of her voice “Come on, tell me now before we move any further ahead in our relationship.” 

I really didn’t know what to say or how to feel. I told her I was going to go get a hotel room. I was initially surprised by her reaction “You gonna have Lee come meet up? So you can leave to just go cheat on me?” I hadn’t actually thought of this perspective yet. 

“No, actually I was thinking that you just might not want me here.” I replied.

“Just sleep on the couch. I still love you, I just don’t trust you right now.”

I struggled all night. Why could she not trust me? Voices scrambled with numerous answers “her ex cheated on her” and “she thinks there is more that you aren’t telling her” or, my least favorite “maybe she’s cheating on you and is looking for her easy way out”. None of these voices, or realities made it any easier for me to understand how to make the right decision. 

Not just with Audrey, but with Ashlee as well. And then it hit me. I saw a possibility of a future with both. I saw the possibility of a future with neither.

And then I got the text that ultimately set the tone. And it was horrifying. 

Ashlee said that she had recently been in the doctor’s office for a routine check up and they took a blood sample. One thing led to another, and they found she had lung cancer. She really wasn’t that old, but that is the thing with cancer. It can find you at any age. 

And it found her. I cried. The many months that followed her diagnosis she and Audrey become good friends. Until the day she did pass away. Just before her final days, she gave me a final kiss goodbye, and a note that I could never let go of.

“The hardest answer to get is the one you are afraid of. Look at someone you love in the eyes, after they hurt you and see how long contact lasts. Tell them how you really feel and see how long it takes for abandonment to set in. What does it take to open the eyes of a bland man and correct his vision? Correct her vision? Why do we love people who do not love us back? Why do we fall for people who are open traps? We don’t hold ourselves in high enough regards. We lack intuition on the secondary aspect of love. Hate. Where we don’t understand our past. Or our futures. Or how narrow the bridge is between. And how many bridges cross that gap. I want nothing more than a motive. A motif of my hearts thuds. To the melody of believing. I want to live like I plan on, but I have complicated plans. Complex dreams. Twisted visions. I am again today, not who you think I am. I am today, who you do not think I am. Again. And the limber words we use daily to define God are as follows: God.” Signed, with love, Lee.

The meanings took me long and short to understand. A few months pass, right in line – in accordance with dreams and magazines; we never slept apart. We looked at each other every day. We slept in motion. Woke up in action, took long, full lungs worth of air and slowly released them. When we needed another, we had another. 

Ever since she came into this world, I’ve seen her less and less. And I don’t think it is unreasonable to want to see the both of you at least once a day, for a little while. You are always gone before I wake up, and sometimes you wake me up just to say goodbye. There is no good in it. It is wrecking me, and I think it is recking you too. I just want to be a father, how am I to do that when she is never home with me? It’s not that I’m not capable of caring for her, you just wouldn’t know until you actually give me a shot.

I will get another tattoo one day, the one I have wanted for many years now. The one that embolden the ones on me, as the puzzle is yet to be complete. When will you fall asleep and conjure up what has become of us? Become of me? I work every single day for every single hour possible to support you and her. The fridge is empty, the cupboards are only half filled with items that need more to complete them, mostly with items from the fridge that aren’t there. And I think to cook a meal it’s only proper for two people to be there. You know, so you can say “somethings not quite right” or otherwise, it is just self doubt. 

Two months before Ashlee died, Audrey and I adopted a daughter who had a name already. 

Mandy.

Audrey had always wanted to be a mom and I always wanted to be a dad. Mandy was eight, jet black hair equivalent to the color of asphalt. She was a skinny kid, only ate healthy food and loved to sing. I felt normal, or like a normal person now that I had proper responsibilities. Mandy was protective of me. Not willing to lose her spot in my heart, we were all walking together and she went haywire on Ashlee. “You can’t just walk back into his life and expect his life and leave again.” She said, finding out about Ashlee’s cancer. It was hard on an eight year old who had been through her own journeys. (Mandy was right to say that to Lee in a way, though she also didn’t understand that addiction makes getting out of those habits extremely difficult.)

That was the moment that flashed a lot as I dealt with losing Ashlee once more. It traced me around the house day after day. I saw flashbacks to hallways with fists full of my own hair screaming out wondering why she left. And I was doing the same again. Audrey had noticed that it was a lot harder on me than either of us could’ve imagined.

“How many sunsets have we lost?” I pondered. This life is a puzzle, complex and incomplete. I cannot find myself in such a lost place. I can stay emerged but not indulged. Maybe the question I should’ve asked could’ve been “What sunsets have I missed?” I felt caged up. I felt locked down. I felt beaten, detained and as if my limbs were falling off. All of the while, living under the night’s sky. I dreamed of a world where I was alive, inside and out.

Many days of my life haven’t contained the material to be considered daily, but as life blurs past and through us, many nights I’d watch the moon light up and dull down. It was like falling out of love, except it was faked the whole time. She had me under her spell. Under the belief that we’d last. And then she fled. She would say that what we had was real. That we would get married. It was all lies and it utterly destroyed me. In every segment of my life. And being in love, to be honest, is what was killing me. We lost that when Ashlee came back in my life for that brief period. 

How soft could the world be when she cries? I’d find myself backed up, vulnerable to the voices outside of my head to a wall. Against the ceiling. Against myself.

In the end of something beautiful, how do you save a life with words? At every broken sunset, I pray God would return the sun to my sight. I’m here in Alaska, and dark. Where she is; it is Chicago and bright. Windy.

Some days, I think it is the regrets talons crushing my heart, and other times I think it is just nervous fears clenching my fist to my chest. The inner voices won’t tell me which it is. Months past while I replayed other moments with Ashlee. 

“Wishing will get you far” Lee had said to me, with a discerned look on her face. “How far away is a wishing well? Or what do you wish? Let me in, let me know. Let me answer your calls. Prayers. Beckon me in the middle of my sleep, call me at any moment of the day to wish me well.” 

Mandy, myself and Audrey welcomed her in to stay with us during hospice. It was extremely hard to see her like that. Frail, distant. Audrey didn’t want the day to come either; their friendship and stories I’ve never heard somehow built the value of the relationship between Audrey and I, at least until these moments I am describing.

It took sometime, and yet again, Audrey and I reconnected emotionally. She after all did lose a friend too. So many stories that I have erased from my memory in between all of these moments that I’ve got zero interest in recalling here. 

This is the lesson I had to learn;

I had to accept that you would never be coming back. I had to learn how to move on, and appreciate the things that I already have. How to tell voices that hid in corners of my own mind to mind their own business. How to speak without feeling the weight of my words.