Like Destiny, Dinah

It felt like destiny but now it feels like a knife. It still feels like destiny though. 

I met her at a party across the way. 19-row homes and a turned corner later, we were in a dining room with pink-peach walls. Dinah’s black glasses and yellow overalls were sitting across from me. She had a smile that showcased her buck teeth and her buzz cut made her seem soft, and approachable. I don’t know if she ever wanted to look soft.

“I also got out of a relationship.”

We were chatting over the newfound relief, that we had the courage to leave, the quiet shame because we knew it was bad, the embarrassment, the excitement to move forward. It was tiny,  the belief, that our lives will bloom into something different, the fear of the unknown. Our plates had crumbs and streaks of leftover sauces,  ours into the catching up of our souls. 

“Wait, Wait, Wait, you live where?!”

“7575 Oak Street”

“Oh my goodness, I’m 7574 Oak Street.” 

“Oh shoot, you’re my neighbor!” 

I started coming over every day. Running down the stoop and running up the stoop, using the guardrail to swing me into your home, your love, your laughter.  It seemed too good to be true.

We would sit on the stoop and smoke weed bowls. Letting the blue smoke fill the air with circular squiggles as we talked about jazz. Well, I talked about jazz. I think you wanted me to like trap. We both like the oldies. We knew were old soul tribes. Motown, gospel, and negro spirituals that connected us to slavery and the shit that we folk still got to put up with now. 

I should have remembered the first time they stepped into my apartment. That was the omen. The door echoed a ding of a broken electric doorbell. I had one hand on the handle to push the door back into the locks so that it would open.

Dinah walked in, she moved straight to the bottom of the stair and sat. You were contemplating and telling me more about how things truly fell apart with your past. Friends took sides. You then told me, 

“My ex wound up in the psych ward. I don’t talk to them anymore.” 

“Wow.” Is all that I could muster as the hum of them explaining the toxic nature of their relationship and arguing was. 

“ I completely understand.” I was there too. Somewhere in there the scars of our past felt healing to each other and I needed that. You needed that. The mind fuck of reality when communication breaks down. 

We kept hanging out after that. My favorite memory of her was when we walked 6 miles into the cemetery listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. The sky, the grass,  and something about walking above the dead solidified a union of something trascendent. We talked about wanting to be cremated or recycled. We thought tombstones were a waste of space and that we need to think about the Earth more. We found out we knew the same church songs and would sing them together. How close was your life to mine? How much did we share and could we share and be safe in that? It seemed like plenty, Dinah. As you shared so boldly and openly about everything. It made me feel like I could too. How many black girls got this space to do it safely, anyways?

Dinah’s kitchen was well-organized thanks to the help of her three roommates. Everything was labeled and there was an aesthetically calming nature to the fact that everything was in its place. Almost like the chaos of our lives needed to be balanced out somewhere in our physical realities. 

We would daydream about putting up lights, plants, and rugs and make a garden out on the porch. We talked about turning the backyard into a haven for hanging out. That we would create the haven our homes never had. I could taste that love every time we shared tea. We agreed to make this space to be safe and open. I started to imagine my life there. I could feel the warmth, the struggle of our pasts releasing into something more beautiful. A sisterhood. A community, I longed for. 

I would make bowls of ramen when the lockdown happened. I remember we would go on walks together to collectively make meals. We all chipped in and got a carrier so that we can carry our ingredients back from the store. We would make pasta, matzo ball soup, order Chinese, and do whatever we could to feed each other. The support deepened. I was glad we were there for each other then. I’m glad I felt like we could have had a community. 

One time it was just you and me and we would walk at night. The stars above us and something about the cooling air of the night and the emptiness of the street made us feel safe. Unstoppable. Child-like again. We were talking about the scars our moms left us for about an hour before you said, 

“I just find it funny that you’re trying to tell me, how to feel about my mom.” 

Me sharing my experience feels like preaching. Where did I miss the entryway? Where did I not get the cue?

“No I don’t want you to feel like you have to like your mom or that condones anything that she did that’s not what I meant….” 

My explanation didn’t satisfy you. I felt like that was the moment you didn’t trust me anymore. 

We would still talk about generational trauma but I was more invested in healing it. I didn’t mind spending conversations around the pain. The pain went so deep.  One day we were in your room and we played Maxwell’s “Pretty Wings.” I told you how I dedicated this song to my ex. 

“You really think that nobody will have sex with you on that level again?”

I sighed. I did get rocked by my ex. It was the first time casual sex didn’t feel casual and it was emotional. Two relationships. 6 years between each and no sex. I wasn’t invested in love in that sense anymore. That’s what caught me about the sex affair I was having. It was finally real but perhaps sex doesn’t mean real feelings. I didn’t know anymore. 

I wish I didn’t grow up Christian. 

“I don’t know, man.” I was just trying to fuck him out of me at that point. I didn’t want to fall in love again and I was cool with just being a single girl in the city. Romantic love just did me dirty and I was gasping for breath. 

We talked about your lovers because you were exploring polyamory. 

“It’s interesting the way we assume certain roles, like who assumes the masculine and feminine and what constitutes what.”

I could tell you didn’t want to get caught looking stupid. I could tell you wanted to do it right. Run away from anything damning so perhaps you don’t end up like your mom or like your ex. You offered one of your sex toys. 

“Is it weird that I’d let you use it? I’d of course clean it.”

I never intended to but there was some sort of intimacy that you were offering. You opened yourself so widely and with love that we could go into anything together. 

You talked about your sex life with your new lover. You had an experience with the strap-on that you didn’t like. You felt like there was trouble in going really deep, physically. I could hear the embarrassment in your voice. I wanted to help you not feel inadequate but I was silent instead. Perhaps that was the moment you felt more distant. 

All that time you never mentioned Rose, your housemate. I actually met Rose before you when I first moved in.

It was sunny. The type of sunlight that you have to squint because the rays are kind of hurting. It was hot. I thought I was “finally in the city” while I watched Rose on the porch next door turning the bike pedals. Bike upside down like they were trying to diagnose a mechanical problem. Their long blond hair. Their tiny body. You never admitted to me that you liked that. It all came out so…ugly. 

We were a month into lockdown and the shops had long lines. Then the banks had cedar wood nailed all over the plexiglass, so the riots wouldn’t break them. It was apocalyptic. 

I was in your kitchen trying to make food when things stopped making sense. 

You were talking but it didn’t sound like you were telling me anything. 

You were talking about Rose and how they had a crush on you. You told me how you didn’t want anything. You told me how they weren’t respecting your boundaries. That went on for like a month before the lockdown. I didn’t think anything of it. It didn’t change the dynamic luckily. But in the kitchen that day, something shifted in you. 

I told you I didn’t want to talk about them and you because I like you both and if you’re having issues, you should talk about it with them or someone else. 

This seemed to make you mad. 

“Are you committed to misunderstanding me?!!!!”

“No I’m not committed to misunderstanding you, I just don’t have the spoons for this.”

“Okay, well if you don’t want to listen to me then you can get out!”

I was bewildered but mostly pissed. What is going on with you? The way you were talking wasn’t coherent. 

You started yelling and getting pissed off. It was already a lot with the lockdown. I didn’t need more drama. We talked about moving in and my stuff was halfway packed. 

You sent a very long paragraph in Whatsapp that you never felt connected to any of us. That we would just whine and talk about stories when we could have been doing work for school. Cursing us out about how we are all incompetent, how we complain, how we don’t fix shit. How you never wished you met any of us. 

Just. like. That. It didn’t make sense. Times were stressful for sure but things escalated in a 24-hour period. It went from love to hate in a matter of a day. I actually talked to Rose. They told you two courted. You kissed them. You undressed them. You two almost had sex. You told me none of this. You made it seem like they had a crush on you and you didn’t want the same.

Why did you lie?

Were you embarrassed?

I didn’t feel safe after that. You were being erratic. Now you’re cursing all of us out. You’re also spinning stories.

And I needed a fucking place to live. 

I decided to stay at my apartment instead, while my roommates were in other places. Deep breaths. Journaling. More playing the guitar. I could feel my head spinning from the lack of logic around a boundary. Why you got so triggered? Creeping out of the guilt for setting boundaries. I tried to put it away. 

I got a call from Rose that you were in the psych ward. 

That’s when I felt the knife. 

You were gone for 11 days. You called us on the first night you were in. You cried. 

“I’m gonna get better. I’m gonna get better. I’m sorry.”

Rose said, “I love you.”

You said, “I love you too.”

That was the last moment I recognized you. 

While you were gone, I was in your room. I shouldn’t have invaded your personal space but I needed some glimpse of you. I saw a note.

“I feel like I am a boy but I don’t want to feel like that’s a bad thing. I’m so afraid to say that I am a boy.”

I saw your little notes.

Remember to take your meds, love.

I knew you had depression. I didn’t know you weren’t taking your meds regularly. 

How did I not see you were struggling right in front of me?

What felt like moths of you gone, were only 11 days. We thought perhaps you were having a manic episode.

When you came back, you didn’t talk. We wanted to give you space if you didn’t want to be our friends anymore. For expectations never spoken on. You cursed us out, again. We thought you were having a breakdown and that you’d feel differently outside. But you didn’t. 

You said you weren’t sorry. You said you don’t care that you are blowing up our lives. You said you were very aware of what you were doing and didn’t give a fuck. 

Did the ward fail you? What about the promises we made? 

My stomach knotted.

I knew I needed to leave and that "here" wasn’t safe anymore. 

You then told the landlord you needed to move out immediately because you claimed Rose raped you.

I saw Rose’s face turn red immediately. 

I didn’t know what to think. Who was right or wrong. Who was telling the truth or not. 

 I just knew I needed to leave. I hated the situation you put us into. 

A time I felt like safety was here, shattered just like that. You changed your name.

It’s been 5 years and you disappeared after telling us you wanted nothing to do with us. 

I remember how it seemed too coincidental, your ex, you end up in the psych ward. Me wanting your friendship, your sisterhood. 

Our walks are too similar. It was almost like you prophesied like those old preacher men, we’d complain about, what you were going to do to me in this time.

I don’t know where you are now. I never really bothered to look. 

I moved back home. 

I hadn’t heard from you since.

That was the last time I opened to a true sisterhood. You were my friend and I wanted a life with you. 

It still felt like destiny though and I hang on to every last bit of you.