This is one of my favorite poems. I've met Rachel a handful of times (which she won't remember but that's what happens when you're basically the president of the Chicago poet fan club for a few years and most your interactions with wildly amazing writers you don't realize are spoiling you with their talents are spent drunk and gabbing about absolutely nothing important while they search for the nearest exit). Anyway, Rachel and my friend Marty are both well-known poets. (Marty is most well-known for this poem.) Feminist and women, but that is not meant to lessen their amazing writing abilities but rather explain why I've always been pulled toward their writing. I guess you could say they're about as famous as living poets can be.
Anyway, they both write these gut-wrenchingly beautiful poems about love and pain. Rachel's popped into my head recently and I remembered how much it gutted me when I first read it. I just read it again, and it did the same. Gutted in the best way.
Each time I lose someone (I've had a lot of loved ones die) or a deep and long relationship ends, I think about the big bang theory...the concept that everything we've done has been done before and will continue in perpetuity again. And I think about the love I've felt and lost and the fact that, if that theory is true, that I will feel that same love and loss over and over and over again. And I think about how it was worth it and I wouldn't change it for anything. Because I got to feel it. And it's the feeling that makes us human. It's the adventure of these emotions that makes me feel like this whole living thing is worth holding onto.
Which can be hard when a calendar is swiss-cheese crossed out for anniversaries of sadness. I think there should be a specific name for those days. Sadiversaries? I dunno. I'll work on that.
Anyway, I had a few sadiversaries recently. August 10-11 are pretty shitty days for me, having lost my grandma and father on those days. For some reason Jason's been coming up in my mind a lot lately. Maybe because I chased him and let him occupy my mind for so many years until I finally gave up and he and I became friends. Seeing him the last time was freeing. We'd finally buried the hatchet between each other, there was no sexualizing, just friendship. And it was nice to see someone with whom I'd shared such a part of my life with doing well. We were both decently happy with the way our lives were shaping up. And that felt really beautiful.
I sometimes think about that Big Bang, and it brings me a little peace knowing that I'll get to see him and all my lost loved ones again. That their vibrancy will electrify my life again. That the love and the pain will never be lost. Yes, the pain will happen again infinitely as the love would, but my what a thing living is.
And I'm glad I'm still here to feel all of it.
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