Survival, day 2

You do this thing one day at a time. Each day is a universe. Each day is its own lifetime.

I see my analyst everyday. I am not alone.

A lifetime of longing. So much longing. I think “longing” and see myself walking down a busy street, late 80s, everything so beautiful though I didn’t know it then (the US’s love for urban ugliness throws a powerful light on memories of other places), a street paved with marble, and me, thinking, I must die.

I see myself in a number of streets thinking this. Also, please help me.

I see myself at some community home to which I do not belong in San Diego, a stranger sitting on a porch, don’t know how I got here, feet on the railing, the sun lasering down, my motorcycle parked in the street, thinking, please help me. I get up and bike away.

You survive because you have survived so damn fucking much already. Because you have sat in your therapist’s office and felt a smidgen of love that addressed the specific longing that wants you dead. A love shaped the particular configuration of that hole. An impossible love, offered impossibly. The only love that can save you. You come back for more. You stay for more.