When sitting down to write these essays, I have a bad habit of avoiding the topics that are most pressing in my life. These topics feel delicate. What if I talk about something and then my feelings towards it change within a month or two? And then I have an archive of my feelings months before locked in stone, like a fool? Just think of what the press would say.

But I guess, in honor of a little bit of vulnerability, I’ll share a small sampling of the thoughts filling my April. A charcuterie, if you will:

An Empty House

I once came across a comic on tumblr about the fear of an empty house: the fear that one day, everyone who was willing to live with you now would fade into relationships and marriages and leave you alone, with no future clearly mapped out. I remember feeling so seen by it, while also feeling like a fraud for feeling seen by it. After all, I wasn’t aromantic, as the artist seemed to be. I had the option of one day pairing off in the usual way, I just didn’t want a life that grew empty because society said there was only one way for it to be filled.

Grand Rapids is a particularly isolating place to live as a single person with family in another state. If the people you meet in the wild don’t have weekend plans with their families already, then they’re busy galavanting with people they grew up around, or they’re raising a toddler. Sometimes, it felt like a waiting game until people began to disappear.

As I hit the five-month mark for one of the first romantic relationships in my life, I find myself enjoying not just the relationship itself but also the relief of being able to go over to someone’s house after work to eat ice cream and watch a TV show, or knowing that there’s someone who will be willing to check out that park or attend that play. And yet, I feel guilty too, like I’m betraying the past me that longed for better communities outside of romance. Nothing bothered me more than people suggesting romance as a cure for loneliness. I didn’t want to wait for something rare and precious to save me; I wanted a world where friendship was valued as highly as romance, where a friend could be your emergency contact, where you could waltz into each other’s homes on a random Wednesday night. 

I don’t know how to build those communities, but I don’t want to lose sight of the goal.

Aging, My Enemy and Bosom Friend

Getting older has always scared me, a little. I don’t like being reminded that time exists, much like I get jump-scared by the kitchen clock letting me know that I have indeed been wandering my apartment in circles for an hour instead of cleaning. I would like to live in stasis, where the giggling dinner with friends lasts for eternity and the next illness or traffic jam or birthday never arrives. I want to stretch out the present like a worn stuffed animal.

Paradoxically, though, I’ve been disturbed by how often I come across content about preventative Botox and anti-wrinkle creams for audiences younger than ever. I’m afraid of aging, but I’m determined to enjoy it as it comes, if I can just figure out how. I find myself looking around for people who are older than me who are leading lives I would like to emulate. The older man who auditions for the play. The woman with the hair dyed fun colors presenting her fiber art she finished at 3 a.m.

Lately, I keep catching my reflection in mirrors and glass doorways and thinking, much to the chagrin of my younger self who insisted it wasn’t true, that I look like my mom. This is a comforting realization. I don’t see someone who’s older than she used to be, just a face that felt like home when I was a kid. Maybe that’s a start.

Would Twilight have been as popular if it were about a half man/half fish?

With all the eclipse memes emerging for the total solar eclipse a few weeks ago, I find myself wondering the question on everyone’s mind: if vampires correlate to solar and lunar events, what other natural phenomenon might correlate to supernatural creatures? Perhaps Shooting Star: The Mothman Story? Or Tidal Wave: Trouble for Mermaids? The Phantom of the Opera Is Here In The Basement, And So Are You Because Basements Are The Safest Place to Hide From A Tornado? Just a thought.

What? I never said everything going on in my life was deep.

the post calvin