ZYN/Snus

They sell Snus at 7-Eleven here in America now, the brand is called “ZYN.”

I used to buy it and think of you, but I’m not addicted to it, maybe because you gave me the real stuff so long ago… and also probably because I had the real stuff again in prison…

But every time I’m in the convenience store and someone buys it you flash into my mind.

And I’m taking my meditation.

And I’m writing here instead of writing to you-

But still I’m visited by these hallucinations, filling me with fear and hope.

I started writing this because I’m listening to a podcast and they mentioned “ZYN” again.

I wonder, what your husband, Howard, has that I don’t.

I imagine it’s a complete and full understanding of Norwegian History and social customs, something you wouldn’t need in America, but something you might miss, having grown up with it, and abandoning it.

Still, as I go about my life I learn more and more about Nordic way of life and customs from various books, YouTube videos, and friends, enriching my experience, clearing away my ignorance.

I’m not sure how much it will matter, but maybe when I decided to become fluent in Norwegian, when I can move past that mental barrier, when I can visit Norway without being arrested, maybe then it’ll make a difference.

Until then I suppose I’ll focus on Swedish, or leaning Danish. Everyone says they want to get out of America, as we watch the fall of our empire, but I’m only interested in places where I can have a dual citizenship, Denmark is on my list.

Of course I’d need the money to do that.

Of course it still feels like a pipe dream.

Of course there are probably some benefits of living in America, Massachusetts of all places, that trumps Europe, but still- Denmark is where I have my sights set. For now.

It’s that or Japan.

Maps

Not the song.

Recall those Google maps I uploaded to that shared folder, detailing what was in and around my current home location.

It’s 7:04AM on a Sunday, I have yet to sleep, and the community outside, down the street, across the fence, are older Vietnamese people.

Yesterday, there was a party for Cape Verdeans.

I feel like coming from a homogenous country, you might find it hard to feel at home in my neck of the woods.

But knowing what I now know of American History, I find it hard as well.

Still, as the outpouring of words becomes a deluge directed at you for these last hours, I wonder if “feeling at home” would just be being with each other.

If so, I would savor that.

Pride Parade

When you visited that one time, you went to the pride parade…

The pride parade is always a strange memory for me, what you did, what you wore, what you told me.

And then it got merged with my psychosis at some point. I remember those words too.

Well, it’s June 1st, the start of Pride Month, the parade will be soon, maybe in a few days…

I don’t know why it’s just hitting me now, or why I’m writing about it now… in years past I probably sent an e-mail, but I don’t remember everything I’ve sent or said.

I think maybe the date might be more significant to you than me, or that you’d remember it more clearly than I do…

The hostel, the bus, the medication, the laptop, my hoodie, the Bacardi beads, the lollipop, your hair in the morning, talking with your family on Skype, my high school graduation, eating at the restaurant, my uncle taking the picture…

After all the time I spent drinking and doing drugs, really trying to escape myself and my feelings, it’s all still there, like it were yesterday, and I don’t even remember yesterday that clearly.

Not like yesterday, like a few moments ago.

But you wouldn’t want me. I’m out of shape, unhygienic, poisoned by pornography, barely keeping my head above water financially.

Sure I’ve some good qualities about me, but what does that even matter.

I’m writing this more for myself than to convince you to avoid me.

Writing this to remember my place in this world, in reality.

That you’re all the way over there, with a husband and child, trying to make your community just a touch less racist by avoiding all contact with me-

And i’m over here, trying to come to terms with being a brown person on this planet, unfortunately black in America, but with the added, unfortunate bonus of loving white women, or really women outside of my race, because I think it’s time society, globally, moved past skin color, or really, reverts back to a world where skin color wasn’t as significant.

Maybe it always was.

What the fuck am I writing about.

I still love you.

After that blog entry the voices in my head went off about your situation.

long story short, they painted a scenario where we reunite.

I didn’t hate it. I didn’t feel anything profound, but I wasn’t against it.

And the more I thought about it, working with you to strike up a romance, to reignite that loving feeling again, I thought it was at least possible, that I would give it a chance.

Of course, I can’t believe in these hallucinations, I have to take your words seriously, I have to continue living without a shred of hope in my heart.

But without those flowery words, without the golden glow, without the feeling in my hand, knee, chest or stomach, I know-

Deep down

In the depths of my subconscious

That I still love you.

Hope…

It’s 2:33AM, I’m working this weekend. As I sit here in bed, thinking “I took my medication, why are the voices here?”

I hate what I am realizing.

The voices say you don’t exist anymore. There is no *insert name here* but you’ll come back into my life with a new alias.

I know I wrote in my last post that I can’t see us being together anymore, but thoughts like these still make me happy, still activate some reward complex in my brain or something.

What the fuck do I do about that? About this? About us?

Even if it were true I wouldn’t know the “you” to look for, I don’t even think I’d know what to say.

I know you have your “wonderful husband” and you have a child, and again I can logic this all away but these unruly, irrational thoughts still puffs up my chest.

It’d be so much easier if we could just be on speaking terms, truly, but you won’t allow that. I still don’t know what I did wrong for you to freeze me out, to ghost me, but I hate how topsy-turvy this all is. How upside down I can be.

Why

I was doing fine until the voices said you had committed suicide.

I don’t know why I have the voices now, I take my medication, but I knew the suicide they mentioned was the social suicide that that little black book talked about all those years ago.

So of course I’m trying to find it again.

Trying to buy it again.

But all I can find are comic books, and they won’t help me.

I don’t want to talk about love. I know how I feel, I know where my heads at, but I want some more understanding.

I want an explanation.

Something I think I’ll never get.

But I want it anyway.

Aurora

I missed the day they said it was visible in the US, my area, this past weekend.

Of course,

Like clockwork,

It reminds me of you.

But today as I walked to get groceries I began thinking that I can’t see us being together anymore.

I wonder what you think about the situation in Palestine. You probably don’t care, but I wondered all the same.

Back to that previous statement, yeah, I do t see us being a thing.

It sure took its sweet time to get here, but I guess this is the real moving on I’ve been searching for, unsure if it’d ever come.

Finally, the well of affection and love begins to dry up, as I trudge through a desert, barren of significant emotion in terms of thoughts of you.

It’s quite peaceful.

I too would be a Hashira of Love

I remember a time we were in my bed, laying there, almost falling asleep.

I can’t remember whose breathing was faster, or more shallow.

I’m on a plane now, paying attention to my every breath as we take off.

Recently I was on a medication that made my breath short, and also recently I’m attempting to improve my VO2 Max.

But even the simple act of breathing takes me back to you.

I wonder if I can ever escape this.

Deluge

I opened the faucet and now the deluge of thoughts won’t cease.

I’m reflecting on the people I know/have met from Scandinavia, that I’m currently in close contact with and they live here in America in opulence.

This isn’t true for all of them, like two summers ago the woman that needed to use the bathroom from Denmark, she didn’t have an air of “aristocracy” or in todays terms, she didn’t seem like she was anywhere near the 1%, in America, not like the guys I know.

And it makes me think, if that was a prerequisite of you staying with me.

And now I think of the time in NY when you went to the bar and one of my friends, he has all this money but he still has a recent ex, that was, I assume, aware of his fortune.

I mean money doesn’t make the man, or the relationship I suppose but I go down these rabbit holes and if I don’t express myself, if I don’t talk about these fucking rabbits I obsess over them until the meter that measures my sanity ticks one mark closer to “complete and utter maniac”

Anyway.

The World

The world just gets smaller and smaller.

People, videos, music all from and or around your country, reminding me of you.

It’s not directly from or even about you but still, I’m reminded.

In-between Sober and Buzzed

I’ve been having tiny flashes of you all week, maybe for even longer.

It’s not my prerogative to try and update this blog everyday, I’m not suffering from my illness like I have in past writings.

I was watching a YouTube video of a woman from Sweden and I thought “They say white people have no culture but there seems to be an abundance in. Scandinavia” and then I thought that you didn’t think to share any with me, didn’t think to give me any semblance of understanding.

And I go back to thinking that I shouldn’t feel anything for you, you gave up on us, on me, so quickly, there’s no real point or logic in feeling this way, and yet I do.

I listened to some music, and like how I built that older playlist, there were songs I could attribute to you, but like how the Killers now have a separate identity, adding those new songs to the playlist felt like me reaching to try and include something of you in my life. So I didn’t include those songs, didn’t even favorite them.

Honestly I want to think of you less and less, and I suppose I’m just trying to figure out how to do just that.