Like a River Runs and Runs and Runs
I feel like this one is a little spicy, but it could be so much spicier.
I went on one of the most convoluted trips in the summer of 2021. I have always dreamed up schemes for travels and adventures, but the few times I have followed through have been memorable for sure.
Bo Burnham had just dropped INSIDE on Netflix a couple of weeks before leaving on my first trip since the pandemic (still in the early days of “what is normal?”)
The song, “All Eyes On Me” will forever be imprinted in my mind with the smell of the hotel hallways of the Venetian on Las Vegas Boulevard and the cozy terminal at the Ontario Airport in California.
The week before I was set to fly out to Las Vegas to meet my best friend flying in from Denver, to then have another friend drive in from L.A. to stay at the Venetian for the weekend, to then ride back to California with friend #2 to fly out the next day to Denver to meet back up with my best friend, to then road trip with her two year old daughter all the way from Colorado back to Florida…*deep inhale*…my back seized with pain. See, I told you it was convoluted.
I couldn’t sit, could hardly stand up if I was sitting, and all I could think about was all the sitting I was about to do across multiple flights and two different road trips in a two week time span.
So I went to the chiropractor for the very first time. And I cried to the petite, strong woman who would adjust my back and talk me through how to tend to myself during my trip.
The pain, the discomfort, the stretching and the stiffness, that I don’t remember much.
But I remember listening to that song in the hotel, in the airport, driving across the country, stuck in stand-still traffic less than 2 hours from home trying to keep a toddler entertained and really, really needing to pee.
It’s funny how songs embed themselves in our minds, even entire albums.
When I lived in Las Vegas, I was 21 and I essentially ran away from home—away from heartbreak, away from failure at college, away from my life—I listened to a lot of music, but what I remember most is Bleacher’s first album, Strange Desires.
Driving back from a coworker’s house at 2am on the emptied out desert roads, windows down and the dry air whipping around my face, the lyrics of “Wake Me,” “Reckless Love,” and “Like a River Runs” etched themselves like a core, vital memory into my fractured little heart.
Your light it follows me in darkness
I'm trying hard but I can't win
And I've played the victim for a long long time
And I wanna grow up
From the rhythm a young, from the rhythm of a younger heart
It leads just like a river runs
Like a River runs. My life has been full of strange signs and symbols.
I listened through Bo Burnham’s INSIDE album again the other day, and I thought about my trip, my odd way of going about things, about how I still dream up—to put it politely—mildly absurd ideas.
Then I thought about what I am doing now, how I am going back to Denver in a few weeks as I seem to do now regularly this time of year. And how I extended my trip with a detour to Las Vegas for a few days before flying back to Florida.
Then I thought about being 21, being in Las Vegas, and am I running away now, again, almost a decade later?
There’s still weirdness in this breakup on the horizon—moving into a new place, eventually running into some old mutual friends, some old argument or button once pushed will rise to the surface again for a final curtain call.
What has been a prevailing weirdness the last couple of weeks (on top of all the weirdness), is feeling watched.
I see people watching my Instagram stories, people I met through him, people I don’t know if they will ever speak to me again. I feel like anything I may post or share is waiting to be examined or scrutinized.
I’m a stalker of stalkers, noisy as can be, and I look every time at who has looked at my Instagram stories (awful, cringy, self-centered, I know!) Every time I see one of their names, I wonder “What do you really think of me now?”
I shared one post on my Substack and to my (second) TikTok account mentioning this breakup, and I almost immediately got a text, “Did you make a post about us breaking up?”
I had removed my ex from these two profiles—not for shame or to hide or to shit talk—but not to feel watched and to respectfully create some distance. I don’t care to dwell on this part, but I think I’ve quieted myself the last few years because I didn’t want him to see, I didn’t want him to watch.
For whatever reason, I didn’t want to share. And I’m just getting my footing again.
But someone messaged him.
And if that is you, just don’t. This is not for him. If I have to start putting my posts behind a paywall, I will, so don’t ruin it for everybody else.
I don’t want to be watched.
I do want to get over my hesitation complex, to let go of caring about what others think of me or what I believe they think of me.
And I have considered the question, am I running away? Am I doing this or that to numb, to hide, to deny what I am feeling? Am I throwing myself into something to shut out the parts of me I don’t want to deal with?
The answer is absolutely fucking not. And I won’t dare believe anyone telling me otherwise.
For once in my life, I know exactly where I stand and I am running through all of this. I feel alive again. Certain and alive and strong enough to carry the weight of the grief, the doubt, the melancholy, the anxiety with me along the way.
I’m done accepting someone else’s belief that I don’t know what I want, that I haven’t grown up or will never grow up, and that I will never be satisfied or happy. I’m done listening to and believing you.
I know exactly what I am doing.