Latency

I remember the first time we met. Your friend was so excited, maybe because he was thinking about something completely unrelated to introducing us. Your voice crackled into voice chat.

“Oh, hi!” you exclaimed. “Who is this?” I was excited to meet someone new. Instantly, your chatter turned my brain on. The jokes were flying, the stitches growing tighter the longer we interacted. Wow, that was interesting, I thought to myself after signing off.

“That guy is really cool,” I giggled to my boyfriend, bored, rotting, and disinterested as usual. “That’s great, honey, I’m glad you are making friends,” he muttered, disillusioned and unaware that he had been secretly scrolling gay hookup sites on the couch, lying to my face whenever I asked what had been going on with him.

You kept joining voice chat — awkward, silly, interested, and interesting — a total dichotomy from the male attention I was used to getting. Rather, the complete lack of attention. “You do your thing, I’ll do mine,” a parallel play relationship where we orbited each other simply because of the pull of some unnamed force. Was it just gravity? The gravity of the situation that had lashed our hearts together.

I had grabbed his ears the last time we shared our bed as a couple, desperate to feel the delicate folds of skin. Would I even remember the color of his eyes? The shade of his soul? How he smelled or where darkened moles delicately punctuated his skin?

“Lemme pimp out your server with emojis!” The first message you sent me directly, on February 28th, 2024. WUT the heck was this man talking about? Sure! And then, radio silence. You had stressed yourself into bloody pulpy stones, delirious, sending that incoherent message. You returned with an apology. No worries, I chirp back.

We share surgery stories. “I asked to keep my appendix and they wouldn’t let me, but I got a picture!” Our friends are planning a trip to NYC. We haven’t been invited. We commiserate in our private thread, Like Damn! What are we?! Chopped liver?! Salad Fingers and Old Gregg make the rounds, touch points of a millennial internet fever dream.

I’m inspired by you, and your struggle to find a soul-touching job. I’m having the same dissonance. The universe had chopped me off at the knees to teach me about a different kind of resilience, the kind that forces you to lead with an open heart, a new perspective. I had architected my new sanity around work, still avoiding how to feel but productive, and it had been snatched from me. My value was no longer apparent as I spent 13 months unraveling, yet again, now working a job that could never be a crown jewel of inspiration. But hey, at least we weren’t eating pizza every day — leftover pizza, because he had been too depressed and black-holed to help me row the ship back to shore.

Our stores of pitch and tar had been scraped from the last barrel a long time ago. Nothing left to patch as I frantically held up sopping wet paper towels, explaining that the boat was fucking leaking! Why could no one see this? Terror gripped me.

“Can I be out of pocket?” I typed, uncertain but wanting you to know you didn’t need to apologize for existing. I barely knew you, but you gave me permission to speak freely, with the promise to respond in kind.

“TO BE equally candid!” you yelled. “NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH CANDIED WHICH WOULD BE SAO MUCH MOAR FUN!”

‘My life is a mess. Scattered chaos is reigning in my dopamine-starved brain,” you admitted.

“You are excellent in the two times we have spoken, and you’ve apologized both times, so I’d hazard you apologize a lot. I hate to see awesome, bright weirdos apologize for taking up space,” I typed, holding my breath. I think my sincerity catches you off guard. Both of our hearts creak open with wanton curiosity.

“Please always be open with me,” you said. Permission to exist granted. I knew I didn’t have to monitor every experience with fear. The connection crackled. It was early March. I offered to help in your job search, something to take my mind off my own failures haunting me. You told me that when you have something to be proud of, you’d love to talk about career stuff. I hear your pain mirroring mine, but your mask is better.

“A thousand cuts make you stronger,” I typed. In voice, something happened, and I sent you a GIF of a tower calling out a tower moment playing out for both of us in real time, unaware of the design I laid ahead of us. Still unaware of the power my voice holds. My yearning.

You helped me with work, my boyfriend on the other screen on FaceTime, getting more and more annoyed at me ignoring him, while you had rolled up your sleeves to talk graphics and design with me. Fresh eyes on a materials edit. He eventually hung up on me, and I had giggled at his annoyance. How dumb, I thought to myself. I’m just trying to do a work thing that’s coming down to a deadline.

I didn’t understand then how our attention reflects our paths, opening valves for new storylines to pour through.

My life hit the rapids. We hadn’t spoken. I was alone, couldn’t eat, years in the toilet. A man crying for his own failures, a crisis of consciousness had finally hit him. “I don’t love you anymore; I don’t want this,” he had said at 4 am. My breath seized from my chest as a mourning wail escaped my lungs.

“I can’t breathe,” I whispered. “I can’t breathe.” I could never love him again. Permission to love revoked. Numb, the universe continued its slow dismantling of everything I thought I had, everything I thought I knew.

“Hallo,” I typed.

“Hey, stranger, how are you?” you responded.

“Meh, shit, bored — how are you?” desperate to turn the conversation away from my own dark void of panic.

“Medium good,” you said. “Doing game stuff. How’s the menu going?” You remembered.

“Good, almost done, falling behind as we get to the deadline. Stupid boyfriend of broke up with me at 4 am Thursday, was out of the house by 4 pm Friday.”

Ten hours to remove himself from my life. Excision from the heart would take longer.

You typed, breaking my spiral, “Oh Jane… I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m sure that hasn’t been easy to process.”

Your kindness felt like a knife through my sadness.

“So that was fun,” I replied, cool girl style. “Bah, bullshit. Was very sad, now starting to get very angry, and on DEADLINE WEEK! How rude!”

“Ugh. That’s really shitty. So much for concentration and focus, right?”

“How does he know?” I thought. I’m allowed to feel.

“Literally it’s like I’m not medicating my ADHD, and suddenly it’s getting worse.”

“I mean, I’d say that’s prettyyyy fucking reasonable, though, considering the circumstances.” hmm validation, I think to myself.

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucked up. Who leaves in 10 hours after 10 years? It’s fucking wild,” I said, trying to comprehend the seismic shifts.

“Oh, fuck, Jane. I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind me speaking candidly, but I think that’s a really cowardly way to conduct oneself.” Someone else could see it. Someone else knew it wasn’t okay.

“Please be candid,” I responded. “That’s why I reached out.” Whatever magnetism had connected us felt like a soft place to cry, to process.

“This might sound like a REALLY stupid question, but how do you feel about everything now that you’ve had a little time to think about it?”

How do I feel? I think to myself, like a warm death, a corpse, a waxy shell of possibility — drained but angry. So angry.

The next day, we connected again. The cadence reminded me that humans care; I just always seem to choose to hang out with the uncaring ones.

“I know I don’t, like, even know you lol,” I typed nervously, uncertain. “It was just good vibes from the first interaction.” What I wanted to say was, I feel like I’ve known you forever. You’re the easiest person I’ve ever talked to, and I’m pretty sure there is a connection here. But I didn’t. I just stuttered out a more socially acceptable way of saying, Please love me one day.

He responded a while later. “Just got back home. How did things go…did you guys end up getting a chance to talk? Well, for whatever it’s worth, I genuinely feel the same way.”

“No, I’ve been relegated to texting only.”

I had wanted to talk about the kid with my now ex. You know, the kid we had toasted to in that grimy old dive all those years ago. In the beginning, we lined up six shots on the pine bar — three whiskeys for me, three tequilas for him — and we said our vows to each other, our eternal promises. One of his promises was, We’re going to get your son back. I don’t remember much more, but that one always stuck out among the shadows of a long night.

I had gotten my son back. He provided just enough stability for me to find my footing and begin my journey of joining the living. That may have been the only promise he delivered on. He taught me how to stand alone on my two feet regardless of the crest of the waves crashing on my shore. We were absently, fused at the spine, tethered by our nervous systems. Beyond the natural creature attachment and longing for the familiar when he left, I could process without my world falling apart.

My vow to myself had remained unbroken. It was an honorable vow propped up by the “I’m a strong, self-regulating, emotionally intelligent, resilient human being” ethos. If he leaves me, I will not break. The truth of that vow was to never let anyone get too close. Guard the heart, control the variables, and hope the black swans don’t break you. The mistrust crept in like the mist that rolls across the bay on cool fall mornings, the steam of the water obscuring the sea from view.

“Yep, just texting. He won’t speak to me.” My nervous system was in full revolt.

“Whoever delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”