Shades of Blue
You listened to Joni Mitchell’s Blue while you were abroad. Some say an unhealthy amount, but you beg to differ. Something about the timbre of her voice resonates with traveling, long-distance train rides and loneliness. Because that’s what the feeling was, right? Loneliness?
*
Familiar faces turn into remnants of their former selves. Something about being alone/naked/afraid that either helps their personality shine or highlights their frailties and flaws. You are the latter.
It’s OK to be the latter.
Instead of spinning around and kicking dust in Parc Guell with your friends, you watch on with envy and a wistful smile. Two weeks later, you meander around Hyde Park for hours, trying your best not to sob in public. An old Filipino lady with a kind face sitting with a beautiful King Charles Cavalier Spaniel takes pity and accompanies you to the train station, because your chubby jowls remind her of her niece. You avoid drinking litres of glorified poison, but succumb to your illness on a night out in Camden Town to get your money’s worth. You attempt to fill the void with different men: some who find you even more endearing because you refuse to tell them your name, others who reluctantly allow you into their private sanctum before politely kicking you out because your breath weighs too heavily in the dead silence. While it won’t ease the hurt, these men make you braver: You keep the lights on, refuse to shave your legs, and instruct them how to curl their fingertips up inside you to make you moan.
*
The blaring of the famous child star turned pop-punk princess's first album wakes you up. The tinniness of the metallic-tinged speakers startles you from your slumber. Your breath smells like day-old burger and flavourless cheap lager; remnants from last night’s pub crawl. His lips taste like yours. You shower together and enjoy the tingling sensation your heart feels when you feel his gaze. You wish you had been sober so you can remember what the sex felt like— if it was any good. It doesn't matter. You recall the most important parts: How he cocooned you in his arms at dusk, how gentle his kisses were, and the coy smile you got whenever you noticed the way he kept studying you.
You don’t know it yet, but this one will teach you more about life than the others have.
*
Thank god for birth control and prophylactics, you say to yourself every time you let someone else inside you. Crimson splotches still top the rest as the best Christmas present you’ve ever had. And just like Joni’s Little Green, you note the full moon in Cancer as an auspicious sign.
*
It’s on your fifth stop in Prague that you conclude that the best parts of traveling are not the ones so advertised on whatever millennial-age collective of bullshit wisdom written by people who don’t know their left foot from their ass. When you walk home at midnight after a failed first date (at least they paid for dinner and the movie, how quaint) and stumble upon the Art Nouveau Municipal House in its full glory, you realise, Shit. This is the best part. You return to the hostel living room, silent and empty, and greet a friend as she stumbles back into the common room with flushed cheeks.
The little things are the best parts. You find some strength to get out of your comfort zone and stay awake until four-thirty AM gossiping with your friend about her tentative romance. You will miss these people, these moments, this city– but something inside of you needs to move up and out again. The next morning, you’ll pack up and leave, but not before sharing a conversation with one of the Australians in your hostel room. You give each other shit for being sappy love fools (you fell for a French man back in Paris, and he tamed his debauchery for his lady back at home) and go your separate ways.
*
It hits you in waves: first in London, then again in Paris, but it hits you the most in Berlin—right before you leave. Blue, the colour of sadness and much more. As Joni warbles about songs being like tattoos, self-adorned scars in permanent ink and you can only dream in visions of him. Your worn-copy of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets clutched in one hand, the other on your cell.
Because you cast your line via iMessage.
Surprisingly, he bites.
Serpentine, he slithers, tempting you with his smooth words and provocative looks. But you’ve aged, gained some wisdom. You’re privy to his tricks, and notice the strings tethered to you have gone slack. The smoke and mirrors disappear. Now you’re left with each other. All you can do is laugh and mess with him a little. You play around until he makes his point.
“I’m busy. So if you aren’t going to do anything about this, I’m going to go now.”
You throw away the glass. You were never fond of red wine in the first place: too cloying as it slithers down your throat, and makes your whole body feel warm. No more getting drunk off his lust.
Give yourself credit– even if you did, you still have the strength to walk away.
Maybe that’s how it is when you love someone who cannot return it tenfold, so you let it sink into your bones. You write about it. You keep writing letters. And when he comes back to you, you’ll see the loneliness in his lies. You play along, but realise, my love, this is the start of something wonderful.
*
When you fly out from Berlin, you become grateful for capitalism and racking up airline miles, because business class never felt so good. You settle into your seat and look next to you: Empty. Two seats for yourself. No sharing. Instead, you wish you were in Barcelona with the fuck of your life.
Fuck.
*
Welcome home. You’re back in Chicago.
Joni, Joni, Joni. She gets you. Her warbling evokes the same emptiness and ache of settling back into the mundane. You wonder if there was an ‘Ever After’ on your return to paradise. Home is no longer the same place it once was. West of Clark Street no longer scares you. You sit in your cab on the way to brunch and wonder why you didn’t go there more often. Belmont feels stale, and you can’t shake this feeling of restlessness. You call up a former flame and ask him to meet you for a cup of coffee that you hope will lead to a good afternoon fuck, maybe to fuck the numb away.
The cup of coffee turns into a jumbo-sized iced soy chai latte, and the afternoon fuck with the flame turns into a one-night stand with a sexually ambiguous man you met off the internet. You shed a tear when he comes on your chest. You sob after he leaves.
Maybe you should have stayed in Amsterdam.
*
Congratulations. It’s over.
For the first time, it doesn’t feel like you’re drowning. You’ve been drowning a long time and didn’t even realise it. Doesn’t it feel nice to come up for air? Give yourself some credit—you did this by yourself, for once. You didn’t need someone to fish you out and sink you back down again. You’re on solid ground again. Might take you a while to learn how to walk, but baby steps are key.
Someday you will look back towards the river and laugh. You crave bigger masses of water now.
*
You never understood the sum of love and all of its parts until you met him. It may have been one night, but this man has taught you more about love, and yourself than formal education ever has, or ever will.
Your heart doesn’t ache when he isn’t around, simply because more often than not, the distance keeps you apart. His cynicism and realism tether you back down to him and keep you grounded– something you appreciate after drowning for so long. Your days and nights will start and end with him, respectively. You’ve been seeing things in shades of blue, and he’s pulled you up into reality. You are not perfect. Neither is he. Sometimes you get upset because he starts to sound preachy, but you realise his words are heavier and come from a place of love and respect.
This is when it all changes. Your flirtatious texts turn into long, sprawling conversations about love, life and loss. He sees the pain behind your words and tells you how it is. He does not sugarcoat things. This man teaches you how love can transcend and have no boundaries– that something can be fun and meaningful without expectations. So while you wish you were back in his arms, you realise this is more than that. More than a distance, and anything a solid romance could ever give you.
This man teaches you how to fall back in love with yourself, pull yourself up and find strength within yourself.
And while he brings you back down to Earth, you find you would rather pick yourself up and fly away.
He’s done his job.
-Christa Lei Sonido
Christa Lei (they/them) is an emerging writer, death and community care worker, and patient care advocate. They grew up in Hawaii as a fat, neurodivergent, disabled, queer child of the Filipine diaspora. Their work is featured in Breath & Shadow, Carmina, and Vast Chasm, amongst other publications. They live with their spouse and two dogs in New York City. Connect with them on Instagram (@supchrista), or at christalei.me and isthiswhatyouwant.org (substack)