Writing into the Void

A lot of times when I write, I'm writing into the void. In this case, the void is just corner of the internet that it's really unclear if anyone reads. I'd say screaming into the void, but the sound in my ears seems a lot more like clacking. On the first day of my 100 days of writing, I'm clacking into my corner of the internet where it's not clear if readers exist or not. But in truth, I don't care. Readers are not why I clack.

Well, let's dive in.

Apparently, my life looked in the mirror this year and saw the reflection of a tall tale. Because my life veered from vaguely predictable to erratic and Hollywoodian at best.

Even when my life dwelt in the realm of predictable, it was quirky. I've always been weird, but times of living by myself bring out the strangest in me. I love weird experiments, like homemade kimchi without a real recipe or teacher, or like sewing a dirndl without a pattern out of very thick free table cloth, or like making my own deodorant, or something. For being a born-and-raised Iowan, moving myself to SF for a while signified I had quirked my way out of being a typical Midwesterner.

But my life carried with it a substantial dose of Midwestern pragmatism and forseeability. I had a career as a software developer and was meandering down the path of general professional success. I had aimed myself towards a respectable future, one with destinations at "a dutiful, durable husband" and "a couple pregnancies" followed by "empty nesting" a lot later on. My course trudged towards boring, despite its promising roots.

But here's where it all went wrong. Here's where the unreal began and never seemed to stop... Here's the inciting incident and then the proof that we've entered a parallel universe that's much more interesting and cool.

Inciting Incident: I drove from Big Sky, Montana to Virginia Beach, VA in one straight go running from the Corona Virus.

Proof that Things have been nutty since then:

• I moved back in with my parents for a bit and learned to juggle
• My very best friend just croaked abruptly with no warning. That's pretty unreal
• A global pandemic shut down California, a place where I'd just recently moved
• I started dating my ex-ex-ex
• I'm living by the beach in SoCal again

My life feels like the plot of the strangest movie. I had a sad, boring love life with a go-nowhere boyfriend. I ran back into my ex. He sees me and comes over to talk, just to make trouble. I get startled by his presence even and my heart opens just a crack, a change from the icy cage it's been (as hollywood would cast it). I do something unpredictable as the main character and decide to go chat him when I see him later at the bar (or in this case, the Tiki at Skydive Chicago and this was the biggest skydiving even they host, Summerfest). I even specifically tried to look cuter because I knew he was there. I blew dry my bangs. I wore a dress. I rimmed my eyes in black mascara and liner because that effect turned my eyes from boring denim-jean blue to a dimmed icy-blue. I put on my favorite perfume, Alien.

Things felt almost scripted. At one point, I looked up and said, "Are my bangs okay?" and he kind of peered and brooded, trying to decide on an answer, I interrupted him and said "Fix them for me". He reached toward my forehead and tousled and touched my bangs. I reached out and touched his bicep as he smoothed my hair. I'd never done that before; I don't know where the inclination to ask for an intimate moment had come from. As I said "Good Night" and walked away, I touched his arm.

But from there, I was swept away. While my go-nowhere boyfriend had been sliding boringly into the oblivion of my conscious, my ex-ex-ex smashed through the walls of my brain kool-aid man style and I was hooked. I was over. I was done. For a man that'd I'd sworn off 5 years previously, he captured my heart again faster than I would like to admit.

I blame it on his smell, on his taste. The first hug I gave him in five years knocked me over with a warm familiarity. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders a bit formally, but the curve where his neck met his shoulders had a familiarity that shocked me. When he pulled me a little closer than I expected, I caught a whiff of his skin, of his hair. My knees went weak.

It's been history ever since.

I'm dating my ex-ex-ex. I just moved out from with my ex three days ago. His ex just moved out today. We all skydive and that's a tiny community. What a weird, quirky world. I'm sure that truth is stranger than fiction.