Day 35 - August 29th

Day 35 - August 29th
Beers and Chinese with Rachel
I'm realising that for the whole time I've been in Melbourne I haven't been really drunk... and I'm ok with that... really
Really nice night with ma girly

        Rach still lived at home with her parents in an inner-Northern suburb of Melbourne, and at this point I was still living in the hostel, so we didn't have anywhere to go and fuck ('make love', whatever, what would you call it? Fucken loser). As it happened I was absolutely allowed to sleep at her parents' place, I was just too shy to ask and assumed the answer would be no, so we spent the first few weeks of our relationship going on lovely dates and furiously making out on street corners. One of the hardest times I've ever laughed was around the corner from Bimbo between kisses when Rach responded to something dumb I said with, “Is this real life?”
        I replied, “...or is this just fantasy?”
        “...caught in a landslide...” she eyed me off, daring me.
        “...let's not, and say we did?” I pleaded, not wanting to commit to a full rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Oh how we laughed. We laughed all the time.

        I told her everything about my past: Mélanie, Grace, Bolivia, everything. I told her I'd booked a trip to go to Sydney with Mélanie for a weekend, but that I'd committed to it before I even came to Melbourne. All of it was true.
        After I stopped talking to both Mélanie and Grace, but before I moved to Melbourne, I'd found that I still had things to say to Grace, but I couldn't say them to her because we weren't talking. I wanted to tell her that I hated her, but that I loved her as well. I wanted her to know how much she'd hurt me, and that it wasn't fair, and that she should have given us a chance instead of turning away from me, and that maybe, if she wanted, she still could. I wrote it all down in a journal, I wrote in the second person, as if I was talking directly to her, and then on her birthday on the 4th of July, just before I left for Melbourne, I went around her house and gave it all to her.
        When I got to Melbourne Mélanie contacted me again on Facebook and asked what my address was, she had some mail for me. I gave her the address of the hostel, and a week later an envelope thick with handwritten pages showed up. She'd left Adelaide, but found she still had things to say to me, but she couldn't say them to me because we weren't talking. She wrote all the stuff down in a journal, addressed to me in the second person, and sent it to me in Melbourne.

        Have you ever heard that song, 'Everyone's Free To Wear Sunscreen'? It's based off a column in the Chicago Tribune written by Mary Schmich in 1997 titled, 'Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young', the concept of which being that she would love to give a commencement speech at her old college, but had never been invited. She decides to write the speech she would give should she ever be asked, and in it, attempts to give the best advice she can to the hypothetical group of young people sitting in front of her. The advice ranges from poignant, to beautiful, to frivolous, and the song takes the words to her imagined speech, and sets them to nice music. I've always loved it.
        One of the lines is,

        Keep your old love letters, throw away old bank statements.

        I kept those pages that Mélanie sent me, along with the original envelope that she sent them in, and wrote those words on the side. I still have it, it reminds me of the amazing time we spent together in South America, when we really were in love. It could just as easily remind me of the bad times, like the weekend we spent in the Blue Mountains near Sydney after I told her that I was seeing a girl called Rachel back in Melbourne, and didn't want to sleep in the same bed as her. It could remind me of that, but it doesn't. That's nice, isn't it? That bad memories fade away eventually, while the good ones linger, and float up slowly to the surface.

        But Rachel.
        I've been thinking so much about the distant past while writing these entries – and after six years, the distant past is really all it is. I've read through some old emails, and even listened to old conversations and silliness that we recorded from around this time, and in doing so, and listening to the the people we were, it's easy to forget the people we are now. I listened to a voice message she sent me once, and I almost wanted to message that person and talk to her because it made me smile.
        But I can't, that person doesn't exist any more. It would be an insane person who would make that contact, trying desperately to dig up feelings from the past and resucitate them. They're gone now, and just spectres.

        I do almost feel as if in writing this I'm somehow trapping myself in the past. It's not healthy to relive these things over and over. Every edit dredges up new, forgotten details. I need to get to the end of this, but when I get there, I need to break free.
        Rachel was and is an amazing person. I met her so quickly after I moved to Melbourne, and at the time it seemed perfect, like she had appeared in my life on cue to offer me a fresh start. Looking back, as happy as we were, I don't think I was anywhere near ready.

Click here to read the next part - Day 36 - September 4th