Eli moved away 3 years ago now, and sometimes I want to call or text but I start thinking about how long it’s been and how much has changed and how they’re probably busy and whether or not it’s even worth it to keep in touch and I feel like I can’t breathe. But sometimes I do call, and we talk, and we decide to go do stuff. Earlier this year, probably the first week in October, I drove down to Davison. Upon arrival, Eli and their mom and I piled into the Saylor minivan and headed to a cider mill nearby. Fall has always been my favorite season, so I was excited to ring in my favorite time of the year with one of my most treasured friends. It was good fun, having cider and donuts and caramel apples on a sunny autumn afternoon. About halfway through a dozen donuts, a big, fuzzy bumblebee landed clumsily on the table in front of Eli. They jumped about 3 feet in the air and sprinted to the nearest porta potty, locking themself inside. One of the things we bonded over in elementary school was a mutual fear of bees, which I got over a couple years back. But apparently fear runs deeper within Eli, and though we both share a love of nature we are not equally suited to the great outdoors. In the whirlwinds of highschool and growing up, it’s strangely comforting to be reminded of the quirks that stick with us through the years

This has happened a few times, but I’ll stick to the most recent. The closest Culvers to the highschool has two lanes where cars can pull up to wait for food. Sometimes it’s fun because you see a friend. Sometimes it’s awkward because you see your coach after skipping practice. Sometimes, in this case, it’s both confusing and terrifying. It was probably around 10pm and I was picking up some fries and a Coke on my way home from a friend’s house. Some sort of sporting event must’ve just ended, because the lot and building were full of highschool kids. I was scrolling through Instagram while waiting in the pickup lane for my food when my attention was dragged from my cell phone. There was a minivan across from me that had at least 8-9 teenage girls in it, most of whom were looking at me and yelling something. I rolled down my window and it went dead silent. I said ‘Hey?’ and a few of them all responded with, ‘Do you have snap’ which, to my knowledge, is how kids these days flirt. I just stared back mildly horrified and rolled up my window without a word. There was a mixture of laughter and protesting and disappointment, and eventually I got my food and drove off. I’m not sure if they were serious or if it was some dumb joke at my expense, but I do know that a week prior, some guy in a pickup kept looking at me and wound up yelling ‘F*ggot’ at me out of his window as he drove off. Navigating the world as a queer person and a trans person is complicated to say the least, but at this juncture I dress plainly, wear earbuds, keep my head down, and generally draw as little attention as possible in public. An extra glance or being followed for 30 seconds is enough to make my heart start pounding, and I always keep the sharp part of my keys clenched between my knuckles when I’m walking to the car, even in small parking lots in full daylight. Growing up I always thought that the whole ‘better safe than sorry’ ideology was stupid, but these days it’s a mantra I live by.

So there’s a meme about the song Mr. Brightside playing at dances while people cry, and, funny enough, that happened to me before the meme. It was Homecoming of 2018, my sophomore year. I had gotten all done up, what with the uncomfortable dress and uncomfortable shoes and uncomfortable hairstyle and uncomfortable existence. I went with 6 girls who had paired up with each other. It all went fine for the first 2 hours or so, but eventually I got separated from the group and found myself up on the track, looking down at all of the friends and couples and in-betweens dancing and laughing and smiling. And there I was, standing alone on a metaphorical cliff face watching the world spin around me. I was struck with how I seemed to be surrounded by invisible walls, keeping me from friends and love and happiness and dancing and feeling comfortable for once in my life. And then, suddenly, I noticed I was crying. I ran to the bathroom which was empty at the time (thank god) and cried off all of my crusty mascara and clawed off the shoes and the dress and I was left there shaking, feeling the stalls vibrate to the sound of The Killers. I think that was when I figured out that this,, it would never work for me. Those walls were always going to hold strong if I never changed anything, no matter how many dresses I stuffed myself into, no matter how much makeup I slathered on, no matter how hard I wished or prayed or cried. I resolved to change something, although I wasn’t quite sure exactly what that something was supposed to be.

Maybe it’s the fact that I live in my head so much, or that I never had siblings, or that my parents are older and introverted and busy, or that all of my cousins live hundreds of miles away, or just the way I am, but I’ve never really understood the concept of or felt any sense of family. Until I was 16. My team rented a huge lake house in Muskegon in late March for the State Finals, and all 17 of us stayed there together for a couple nights. There were 2 adult chaperones staying in the basement, and the rest of us slept in the rooms on the remaining 3 floors, free to arrange ourselves however we pleased. I shared the top room with my closest friend at the time, Sarah, and we all played cards and pool and stargazed and enjoyed the hot tub and piled onto the biggest bed to have a huge cry session over the season ending. I don’t have a whole lot of specific or clear memories of those days, but I remember feeling for the first time that I was part of something bigger than just me, and that each of these people loved me and I loved each of them and we all loved each other, even if we didn’t always like each other. I think that’s what family is. Loving people even when you don’t like them, spending quality time together, feeling real closeness and safety, and knowing that you are part of something.

 Eli is A) an artist, B) a hoarder, and C) a loner who hates talking about feelings, or really talking much at all. So when they moved away I decided to go help them take down the hundreds of drawings, poems, and paintings that had been taped, pinned, and sticky tack-ed to the walls. We untacked, untaped, and unstuck for hours with the silent understanding that this would certainly be the end (it wasn’t). Layer upon layer coated the walls, and seeing so many of our old sketches and photographs was a comforting stroll down memory lane, but as more and more pieces were peeled off the wall, nastiness emerged. The pins had ripped tons of holes in the older drawings, and the tack had secreted some sort of goo over the years, staining and ruining papers and paint and drywall alike. Eventually near the bottom layer, dead bugs would fall out from behind pages when you took them off, and little spiders would scurry away underneath a different journal entry. At the end we sat and stared at the patchwork of stains and bits of gunk left over on the wall, with Eli eventually resolving to pack far too many ruined pages into a box to bring to the new house. I think somewhere in that story is a really good metaphor for the nature of human memory. Friendships, jobs, sports teams, families, when things become fixtures in our lives we take all of the good feelings and memories from them and pin them to the walls of our minds, a reminder that we are loved and important whatnot. But all too often, I think nostalgia, doodles, and fond memories are our way of covering up the stains and dead wasps and nights spent crying lurking in the periphery of our lives, and I think that’s why so many people stay in abusive situations. The pages hide the ugliness so well that we can choose to forget it’s even there if we want to.

I’ve always been a tense child, and one of the best examples of this occurred on a trip we took to Texas to go to a wedding. I don’t remember the actual event, in fact knowing me my parents probably found something else for me to do. I do remember the banquet afterparty thing. I remember being this little kid surrounded by lots of tall family members whom I did not know, most of which wanted to touch me. This was horrifying. I’m the youngest by a million miles on both sides of my family, so at this time I was probably around 7, which would’ve made my youngest cousin 17. Meaning I was the only kid present and I didn’t want to talk to any of the big scary touchy people around, which would have been ok had it not been for my parents magically disappearing. The wedding was half inside and half outside, and I remember after waddling around hunting for my parents for a good 30 minutes I resigned myself to going outside and around the corner of the brick wall and just standing with my head pressed against the wall sobbing for over an hour. I don’t remember how that situation was resolved, but I do remember how distraught I was and I remember realizing how alone we all really are, how alone I really was.