Posts tagged relationships
Seeking, Listening, Echoing
Seeking, Listening, Echoing

I grew up in the north of México in a city called Tecate, B.C. I used to think that I could, just as well, have grown anywhere else. I used to ignore, as I grew up, the situations of Mexican migrants. My family was not and that is why they always made sure that I didn’t know what, thanks to them, “I didn’t need to know.” My father and my uncles crossed the border as if getting into the neighbor’s yard to retrieve something they had lost. Only they hadn’t lost anything and were looking for what they never had, and without permission but with confidence. The confidence of someone who has crossed a territory that is not theirs many times knowing they shouldn’t.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfamily, immigration, relationships, languageComment
Why We Came
Why We Came

When they ask me, I tell them we came for the rain.

It’s easy that way. It makes them laugh. It’s the dog walkers who always want to know. A passing conversation in the park. They usually talk about Mochi’s long legs first. Like a mom with a new baby, I let them gush over him. No, he’s not a puppy, just small. Yes, he’s enthusiastic. I tell them he’s a rescue and an immigrant too. He was my carry-on luggage, stored safely below the seat in front of me from San Francisco to Dublin. We linger for a few minutes, as our dogs take the time to sniff. Then they ask, they always ask, why did we come?

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True StoriesKristina Buschrelationships, reflection, family, moving forward Comments
If Walls Could Talk
If Walls Could Talk

You and I became acquainted nearly thirteen years ago. It wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, I was initially after another one just down the street. But that one had too many problems and I didn’t want such a big project. I noticed you on the same day that I said no to the other one, and so I came to see you. You were cute, in solid condition. Very old-school but nothing that a little modern touch couldn’t fix. I had been casually looking for a home for several months. I and my now ex-husband, that is. This felt a little different and we really needed something positive to look forward to. Something of a distraction, maybe.

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True StoriesKristina Buschreflection, home, relationships, family Comments
Tight Grip
Tight Grip

The amygdala assigns emotional significance to clutter I can’t throw away. To souvenirs and books throughout our house. To clawhammers, backpacks, yard signs we hang on pegboards. To ordinary places we visit again and again. This precious tiny thing deep inside my head also helps form shiny new memories. I want to hold on to my amygdala for a long time. Keep it healthy and functioning. Feed it. Maintain it. That sort of thing.

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True StoriesKristina Buschrelationships, love, reflection Comment
If in the Convent You’d Found a Friend
If in the Convent You’d Found a Friend

Maybe you saw her serving champagne on a one-for-you, one-for-me basis at a big nun party, shooting corks for children to catch. Later, you’d bond that one summer week watching science fiction movies in the novitiate basement. You’d be thrilled when she came to live in your same convent. It would make sense, the life-sized poster of Spock in her bedroom, just down the hall from yours.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfriendship, religion, relationships Comments
The Lessons that Replaced the Phantom Limb
The Lessons that Replaced the Phantom Limb

We broke up on a Thursday in a foreign country where I only spoke a disjointed version of the language. In a charming little restaurant, he sat across the table from me, reached for my hand, told me he loved me, but…I guess the rest doesn’t really matter. He was back on the dating apps two days later. It’s such a disorienting thing to feel your entire world implode, to watch dreams of a life together disappear into thin air. I questioned if they had ever been within reach at all. They weren’t, but I didn’t know that yet.

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True StoriesKristina Buschrelationships, Broken, BrokenheartComment
The Sign
The Sign

It was a perfect August day, and the Wolf River was clear and cool. The leaf canopy of spruce and cottonwood sparkled overhead, like shards of brilliant green glass backlit by intermittent bursts of sunlight.

Dave and I were trying out the twin red kayaks that his kids had given us the previous Christmas. Everyone agreed we had been working too hard, and the weight of a business we could no longer save was taking its toll.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfeminism, relationships, independence Comment
A Field Guide To Loving
A Field Guide To Loving

I didn’t want to meet Tim at first. I’d just been burned badly by a man who said we were exclusive, and then I found out he was dating around six women at the same time. I’d gone back on the dating apps more as an act of rebellion, an action to prove to myself that my horrible experience with Jeff wasn’t going to define my experience with dating and love. But I was leery. Oh, how I was leery.

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True StoriesKristina Buschlove story, relationships, online dating, romance Comment
Juicy
Juicy

On the dock beneath a Wolcott summer house, you show me how to cast. I flick my wrist and it goes nowhere near as far as yours. By means of sarcasm we agree it’s not the most vegan thing to do. Later by the fire, you hear the splitter splatter in the water as I roast a marshmallow in the din of our friends’ chatter and guitar tunes.

“They are taunting me,” you say of the fish, “can you hear them?”

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True StoriesKristina Buschlove, relationships, lossComment
The Soundtrack of Fury
The Soundtrack of Fury

“Why do you always play the same songs?” I’ve seen her iTunes library; there are hundreds of MP3s. The overplayed list explores grief beyond the Lilith fair trope. Some get mainstream airtime like “Drops of Jupiter” and “Meet Virginia,” others obscure, folksy lesbian coffee shop artists. She glances at me for a second before returning to her screen. “I’m making the soundtrack of us.”

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True StoriesKristina Buschlove, LGBTQIA, relationshipsComment
Four Falls
Four Falls

A warm-hearted pack rat through and through, I knew she probably hadn’t donated the boxes in my former bedroom, nicknamed the hobbit hole. (Much like Paul was the Walrus, I am the Hobbit.) Crammed with what I kindly labeled childhood trauma — lighten the truth with a little humor, no? — the boxes held SAT prep books and enough plaid uniform skirts to choke not only the horse, but the whole Kentucky Derby.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumsuicide, friendship, relationships, mother daughter, Growing upComment
On Black Notebooks, Blue Skies, and Dick
On Black Notebooks, Blue Skies, and Dick

It’s day thirteen of my Coronavirus quarantine, I got up at eleven, drank two mug fulls of espresso, and I’m sitting in my childhood room in Montecchio, Italy, writing in a little black notebook, blank except for a handful of pages. The notes are a few years old and they are all about him—they are embarrassingly titled “My You”—but most importantly they are about her, the girl who was me, the girl who didn’t think she would survive heartbreak, humiliation and abandonment.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumItaly, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Friends, relationships, sexComment