Our Thankful Goodbye, Thankful For Me

“I am thankful for my mom. I am thankful for my dad. I am thankful for good health. I am thankful for my home. I am thankful for my wife. I am grateful for my husband. I am thankful for my children. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful to not be alone.” I hear these sentences coming from people, all types of people. Everyday. More than once a day, more than I care to hear. What am I thankful for? What am I thankful for. I think about this question, this rhetorical statement, often though I admittedly try to avoid the thought.

I am thankful for me. This isn’t what most wish to read. But that’s what I’m thankful for. I am thankful for me. Thankful to have me. Thankful to have me amidst everything. But I didn’t start off the year being thankful for just me.

This year started with falling in love. I was thankful for that, immediately thankful even before I knew it had happened, but it happened. It happened the first day of this all eventful 2020, please forgive the cynical undertone. I had started my job only three weeks before the new year, I was thankful for it because who isn’t happy to have a job, even before these trying times. Surrounded by dolls, middle-class, aloof Suburban families, and surrounded by people. People. People I didn’t know but people I was open-minded to knowing. Ray, Donatella, Barry. Then there was him.

I was thankful for that Thursday. More thankful than I had been every previous New Year. I was thankful for the people present in my life, the present and the future opportunities I was going to pave for myself, the passions I decided I’d take up again, the passion within myself I wanted to revive. I was thankful for the future. I was thankful to revive myself. What a fool I was! What a fool to think that what I put down with so much difficulty years before I’d be able to revive easily, just because it was a New Year and people are idyllically hopeful like that. But meeting him, that came easy, too easy. I should have known that what I was thankful for at that moment would make me regretful sooner than later. All I planned for that day was a New Year’s brunch followed by going into work on my day off to get my schedule, which I had forgotten during my last shift, too excited to get out of my new job because a hosting job at a doll store only goes so far in terms of personal fulfillment.

“Hey; hello; hi” are the standard greetings I got from everyone working that shift. I turned to acknowledge them with a smile, a rare contortion of my lips admired by guests and coworkers alike. Welcomed especially by him. I had him to thank for this change in my facial mechanics. Just looking at him, from the very first time he entered that dining room to every time after. Only my dreams had previously introduced me to a prince the likes of his presence: not too tall, but taller than me; brunette, but having a small, blond streak on the back of his head, his face fuller than that of most other men I had fancied, but the rest of his physique was the slenderest from the lot. Then, there were his eyes, those blues that even from a distance managed to stop me in my tracks. It was fate that we meet, that day, that day during which I thought I had already been thankful for everything I knew to be thankful for. Little did I know...

We didn’t speak a word to each other that day, we just crossed paths as I entered the kitchen to see the schedule while he exited back into the room where I first laid eyes on him. I was invisible to him. I should have heeded my first warning. I should have heeded the warning during our first official meet, when we finally shook hands, finally touched. When he looked into my eyes and I looked into his, and he smiled and gave me his name, and nothing more, because there was only so much he could give me. Even so I was thankful for it. I should have heeded the warning during our co-worker’s going away party, when he gifted me a smile, and that’s all he could gift me at first. Even so I was thankful for it.

I should have heeded the warning during our first meet of two, a meet of only him and me. Oh what a meet, a meet of talking about acting, and writing, and comics, and desserts, and one or two drinks, and a long hug and a kiss goodnight on the cheek. Oh what a meet. A single meet. Even so I was thankful for it. Thankful for him and me.

I should have heeded the warning during our next meet, when it was more than just him and me. It was Ray, it was Donatella, it was Barry, it was everyone. If only it could have been him and me. For another meet. A final meet. Even so I was thankful for it.I was thankful for him. I was thankful for him and me.

I was thankful throughout our first night together, our only night together. I was thankful for the seven hours and thirteen minutes of it. Every lucid moment of breathing. Breathing. Breathing through each other’s mouths and the lucidity I questioned every time we touched hands, every time his lips touched mine, every time his skin rubbed against mine, every moment he was in me and every moment we were one. I was thankful. I was thankful.

Little did I know thankfulness could be replaced by ugliness so quickly: anxiety, disillusion, angst, more anxiety, longing, nostalgia, longing, fear, more fear, and…love. Sentiments which read nicely in romance novels and movie scripts but offer little to no catharsis in real life. Little did I know that the things I was thankful for were about to slip through the cracks in real life. Real life was about to crack before I could say “Thank you” to the cashier at my favorite bakery, handing me what soon tasted like the last bite of sweetness. I sat and read the news on my IPhone through one of my many, otherwise time-consuming apps. First it was the bars; this was followed by indoor dining (there went my favorite bakery), movie theaters. Lastly was every place I ever held dear to my heart. Every escape. Every escape I was thankful for. Every escape from him.

These sanctuaries were replaced with sitting. Sitting surrounded by four walls, four white walls of my shared bedroom surrounded by another four walls of my shared living space. I had two options and only two options; to remain surrounded by those four white walls of my shared bedroom or join the four walls of that shared living room where the voices on TV reported the ugly minute-to-minute reality. Quarantine; stay-at-home orders; stay-at-home period. The feelings were there to stay as well. Feelings I was no longer so thankful for. Feelings rivaling the minute-to-minute reality of the outside world. A plagued world. Plagued like my inner world.

“I think you’re adorable! You pocket gays are such a distraction. Happy birthday! You’re officially a Zaddy! You look so much cuter when you’re smiling and laughing awkwardly adorable. Want to go with me to this concert? They’re my favorite band! Come over to my place at 7:30 and we’ll walk over to the restaurant together, don’t be too early. Did you leave your dirty clothes here on purpose? Moving right in now, aren’t you!” I reread these messages to myself over and over again. I had been thankful for them the first time I read them. The second time. The third time. I had been thankful every time I had read them. And even when I reread them and told myself I was no longer thankful for them, I was. They were my only option to him. My only option to life. So I read. And reread. Reread while surrounded by four white walls, four white walls of that shared bedroom. I could have reread them in the shared living room surrounded by another four walls, but then I’d have to share. They were mine and only mine to read.

If only I had been a better reader, literate in reading the signs right before my eyes, signs masked by flirtatious texts messages and glances, and non-spoken flirtation and emotional glancing. Perhaps I would have continued being thankful for those messages if they had only been formulations from a flirtatious, secretly sensitive, secretly romantic mind overseeing a secretly romantic heart. But no, messages are not only exclusive to “Thank You” or “You’re Welcome.” And our New World wasn't only exclusive to tempests of the body. “I wanted to have this talk in person. We can still be friends, but we can’t have…I don’t know what to say. I told you I didn’t want to sleep with you if you were going to develop intense feelings for me. Now you’re pissing me off. Fuck off!” I reread those messages too. I read the entire compilation. I reread them all. Each one. Each one from beginning to end. From beginning to the end of each day. From beginning to end of every hour of every day. Read from the beginning to the end.

I wanted to be thankful. Thankful for being alive. For being alive in a New World where life, having one at the beginning of each day, was a blessing, a blessing that demanded gratitude. Except the life inside of me refused to stop its fading. Perhaps I should have been thankful I saw his colors through this New World emergence. That the toad who I had mistaken for a prince revealed himself. Perhaps it was he who should have been thankful that a peasant like me entertained his existence despite his murky core. Perhaps I should have been thankful that our meet was really just a fairytale with a happily never after. A fairytale gone ugly.

I wanted to be thankful. I wanted to be thankful like the rest of the New World. I woke up to a new day every day. Except I never regained lucidity since the last time I saw him. Lucidity was the last thing I wanted to be thankful for. I was thankful for my slumber because there he remained. Retrospectively, I would have been thankful for an eternal insomnia because dreaming of him consistently culminated in a torturous goodbye.

I resigned to being thankful for the sake of being thankful. I was thankful to awake, even if to remain unmoved in bed. I was thankful for the food I ate, the one meal a day to combat physical starvation; my soul was famished enough. I was thankful for a bed; I would never be on his again. I was thankful that I could still write for the sake of writing; I would never write to him again. I was thankful for social media, for technology; I could see that he was alive and well, more alive than most even when relocated to the epicenter of this plagued New World. I was thankful for the sake of being thankful, because my ungratefulness was ugly.

I felt ungrateful more often than not. I felt ungrateful sitting inside that shared bedroom surrounded by those four white walls. I felt ungrateful to be alive so easily while so many others were fighting for their every breath; I felt ungrateful for everything before. Every date I cut short or simply wasn’t fully alive for, because I didn’t feel fully alive with anyone else but him. I felt ungrateful that I never followed up for second dates with men who were thankful for the short time we spent together, which to me seemed like an eternity away from him. Was this lockdown of memorial torture my punishment for my ungratefulness towards the right option. The rejected option. The option that wasn’t him, he was the only option I could be thankful for. Only for me to assume the rejected option. The option he was no longer thankful for.

Goodbye is never easy and never something of thanks, but it had to be done. First it was his phone number, then social media, and lastly the visual reminders. There were no tears. something to be thankful for, or perhaps not as the aching refused to exit. An aching all over. Mimicking the ache of the New World except mine had no quarantine period.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 30, Day 90, Day 100, the days went by and the memories refused to say goodbye. The memories I was once thankful for remained. I remained. And I was thankful for that. I was thankful for me. I was thankful for me, and I was thankful in the strength I found on Day 105. Day 105 away from the New World and Day 107 away from him. “You unfollowed me?” Social media has a way of bringing people face-to-face mercilessly, except I was finally ready to show mercy to my heart. “I did. I’ll be honest, I was hurt that you didn’t make an attempt to say goodbye when you came to LA to pick up your stuff. I’m not trying to be dramatic, just honest since you asked. I am glad you made it to New York safely. I’m glad you’re well and happy.”

I was more than glad. I was thankful that he was well, and healthy, and safe, and happy. I was thankful that he was still himself, even if he still refused to show me mercy. I was thankful for his happiness. If I could only be thankful for a happiness of my own.

Day 110, Day 115, Day 120, Day 131; the days went by and by and the memorial continued in my head, and in my heart, and even though I stopped rereading the message from Day 107, the rereading of memories remained. But I too remained. And I was thankful for that. I was thankful for me.

It was on day 137 when I entered the New World. I felt. I felt the air. I felt fresh air. The fresh air that vegans, hipsters, and nature enthusiasts focused their daily rants on; deeming it an environmental commodity exclusive to countryside hikes, weekend retreats to Joshua Tree and Lake Arrowhead, and walks around Echo Park Lake. I always dismissed these elitist types, laughed at them with close friends; I joked to myself about how they were a little nutty. Never gave them the time of day in their ecological fanaticism because I had more pressing things to fantasize about. Like him. They had the last laugh. They were probably thankful for that.

I walked down Morton Ave, past Scott Ave; I looked left, the juice bar I frequented remained, its welcome sign out greeting me. I was thankful for that. I walked down past the Donut shop a block north of Sunset, the usual Latino men who would frequent it in the am through early afternoon remained. I was thankful for that. The Chinese fast-food place that had replaced the other Chinese Fast-Food place I grew-up frequenting with my mom and Lidia remained. I was thankful for that. The homeless, frizzy-haired man circulating Echo Park for the past decade remained. I was thankful for that. I was thankful and I kept repeating that to myself as I walked towards Echo Park Lake. It was still there, busy playing its part in the New World. Runners, walkers, and loners remained. The swans remained. The leaves, brownish but alive, remained. The ducks flocking with their families remained. It was gloomy and below sixty degrees and the fresh air was cool, but the sun still peeked down on us behind its cloudy mask. It too remained. They too remained. Many too remained. I was thankful. Thankful on their behalf. Thankful on my behalf. Thankful to have me. I was thankful for me.