On Good Behavior: An Apology
By Tianna Loverde | @tiannaloverde
Sorry, I went missing for a bit. Are you mad at me? It’s okay if you are but you have to tell me. Because (and this is something new I’m learning) I cannot read your mind and you cannot read mine. How depressing!
The exception to this rule is if you find yourself sitting across from a psychic. Which I did a few weeks ago. Ava read my mind (see: vaguely placed tarot cards on a table) and told me I was lost. I found this to be an empty proclamation but I was pigeonholed by the fact that she told me I was stubborn as soon as I sat down. A genius maneuver because any resistance to her reading would only further validate my stubbornness and her omniscience.
But I didn’t think I was lost. At least not in the way she meant it, which I believed to be some version of a girl in a movie sliding down a wall sobbing. Or crying on a bus, going nowhere fast. I live in Los Angeles, of course she’d thought I’d find these ideas romantic (and I do…). There is appeal to being lost, the freedom to write off my past behavior as nothing more than an attempt to find myself and failing. How impossibly tantalizing is the idea that I could walk into a room and find, well, me. I began to fantasize about looking into a mirror and in complete earnestness, speaking this aloud: hi, you. there you are. I mean, can you imagine that high?
I tried it on. I said it out loud: I think I’ve been a little bit lost lately? My friends nodded. I was the girl in the movie. My behavior was separate from the person I was now or would be in the future, there weren’t any stakes. It lasted a week or maybe just a day; it was safe but it wasn’t honest.
I knew exactly where I was. Maybe more than I ever have. Sure, I tripped over myself. There were times when my desire took on legs of its own and ran away from me. But we always went to bed together. In the dark, praying to my deceased grandparents, I could hear my gratitude and aching plainly. When I’d wake up in the morning with a pang of anxiety or a belly full of excitement or residually horny from a sex dream, those feelings were mine. Entirely.
And here’s everything I learned accordingly [sourced from my notes app, excerpts from my journal, and written on the inside of brain]:
Having a crush remains a religious experience.
430 square feet is not enough space to foster two cats who want to kill each other. I’m laying on my floor, staring at a cat’s scratched nose. I'm increasingly convinced I will one day make a horrible mother. I start posting online to find a more suitable situation for them and soon find a couple eager to take them. When we go over, it becomes clear their lives have fallen out of a fairytale and landed inside a Victorian home in Echo Park. Sitting on their couch, Pablo (who reached out to me) tells us that sometimes all two cats need to bond is to share a spot in the sun together — each day they will slowly move closer and closer towards one another. He is serious when he says this, and we are too. Every streak of sun bathing the floor or staining the cushions of my couch I’ve seen since has felt like potential.
Your friend's hair will always look impossibly good on the day you get a horrible, life-altering haircut.
I am wrong about most things.
I’m driving home after talking to my friend for hours. It went like this: one of us said did you hear…and then it was five hours later. My throat is dry and the silence of being alone rings loudly in my ears. She gave me a big cup of water with a bendy straw for the drive. I sip from it and realize that I don’t want to stop driving. This is rare for me as I hate driving and am objectively bad at it. But I could last behind the wheel of this feeling for a long time. I could start a new life off of it. One where only this feeling is familiar and everything else is brand new.
Everytime I kiss the person I like, I wonder if we’ve ever kissed each other before or if this is the first time.
Someone owes me $200 and is actively avoiding me. There’s nothing else to say here, just needed to get this off my chest.
Sometimes a good thing proves too hard to talk about. I don’t want someone else to hold it in their hands and create a different shape out of it. I want it all to myself. I’d apologize but I’m trying to do that less.
Certain kinds of pain are inevitable. My friend and I were on a walk the other day when a jogger came running towards us at full speed with seemingly no plans of stopping. It felt hopeless. That somehow even if we moved, he’d run us over. What I’m trying to say is: you can do everything right and pain will still come plummeting towards you, leaving you breathless and lying on the sidewalk. It’s okay to stay there. The clouds will form meaning and then they will become clouds again.
Love has turned me into a kid again; I’m inside my favorite afternoon. Everything smells like spring and tastes like fruit that’s been cut into pieces and left on the counter for you.
I just feel like if someone experienced “ego death” they wouldn’t have to talk to me about it so much. It's always great when a twenty-four-year-old discovers empathy though.
How to drive to my therapist’s office every Thursday at 2:45 p.m. and relinquish control over my body at 3 p.m. How to close my eyes and hold pulsators in my hands and return to the darkest memories of my childhood. How to answer the question: What does your younger self need to feel safe? How I’ve never considered myself an angry person but I have lit buildings on fire and used violence to create an alternate version of the memory where I feel protected. How I thought I knew everything until I didn’t.
Over the phone, my older brother tells me that I need to learn how to outlive the dog. He is talking about his dog who passed away a little while ago and how he’s continued on since. He says nothing is permanent, and I resent this. I am desperate for things to last.
Every goodbye hurts my feelings, I’m not good at it. How long is appropriate to linger? To stand by an open door and talk about nothing. How many times should I try on that shirt I’ll never wear but insist on keeping? What are the seconds it takes for eye contact to transition from flirty to creepy? The answer is different if you’re ugly. God, I’m sorry to be a bitch like that. I’m just so scared that the lights will turn on and I’ll be the last one left.
♥︎
Tianna Loverde is a writer based in Los Angeles, California. She has a Substack titled “Tuesday’s Gossip” where she publishes personal essays. She loves blushing, the day when you’re waiting for your film to develop, and wearing pajamas in public.