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I listen to Comptine D’un Aurte Ete, L’apres-Midi by Yann Tiersen and remember Stacy playing it in a coffee shop downtown. It was late, she was gliding across chords on an old, out of key piano; our own little sage-y green room, women whose names escape me but whose faces still remind me of the season where my spirit took a lot of hard beatings. Stacy’s pulled back blonde waves that really wanted to be ringlets; chai, tiramisu, spicy brownies. Women whose boyfriends and husbands were best friends.

On Febrauary 14, 2013, I went out for chips and salsa, avocado tacos and Stacy got a margarita and we ate good food, hiked up the cut and gorged ourselves on all the chocolates that her husband had given her that morning for a holiday that doesn’t offer anyone a day off, but just ends in a lot of sex or a lot of lonely tears or with the sore hands and tired backs of child laborers forced to pick coco beans for Ghirardelli’s biggest sales day of the year.
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I know I just ate and I’m staarrving, I said as I rolled around dramatically on the couch holding my not-yet-satisfied stomach. You’re not starving, she said in her “I’m irritated that you just said that”, voice. Oh my god, it’s just an expression!, I defended myself. No, I, I know people who are actually starving, followed by a shaky, “I can’t believe we’re talking about this” laugh that in a text message might have been followed by a, “….”.

A deep sigh of irritation came upon me and I felt myself abandoning myself as I often do when I feel like I’ve just gotten caught being wrong.

I woke up at 4AM that morning to the thought of, How am I going to pack up all of this stuff? Where’s the wood going to go? How in the hell am I going to get that on the plane? I then remembered thinking that my mom was coming to pick me up (in three months) and as I tried falling back into sleep I thought again, But how am I going to pack all of this up? There it was, my desire to escape has followed me into my dreams, no longer present to the moment even there.
I awoke every couple of hours until I had to meet everyone out in the living room at 7:15. I remember thinking to myself in between those hours of sleeping and awaking, Wow, me in another dimension keeps going in and out of sleep. I wish they’d choose one. (I’ve been playing around with a funny little theory that we all exist somewhere else other than here and that when I am sleeping in one place in time, my other self in another place in time is awake and etc.)
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I craved Comptine D’un Aurte Ete, L’apres-Midi today like one craves corn dogs or ice cream or hot sauce on something savory.
I think it’s funny this song is beginning to act as a thread in which every  dark moment in my life connects. Like elementary school children clinging to a rope to help them stay in a single file line.
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I can feel myself gong in and out of silence within myself. Maybe it’s that instinct that I have to abandon myself. Maybe I just need to give myself space to just exist. Whatever it is, the overwhelming feeling to make it up to everyone and explain and apologize for my behavior is heavy, is debilitating, is oppressive.

Why must I explain anything?
Why must I be understood?
Why do I want so badly to be understood?