We've Been Here Before

On the plenitude of caring.

Hannah drove a truckload of my things — the last of them — to the ranch last week. She also brought me a pack of shandy’s, a tray of corn, and new deodorant. I screenshotted a map of where I live, drew some arrows with my fingertip, and sent it to her with the request that she ignore Google Maps and take the long way. Her three hour drive became seven.

Though both of my parents are alive, neither are available to look after me or my whereabouts. I am not an orphan, but is there another word for the feeling provoked by their absence? I consider how long it would take for them to notice if I disappeared. Would they remember where I told them to look for me? Could I trust them with a crisis? No, and decidedly not.

When I started traveling last winter, I asked Hannah if she would keep tabs on me. I now share my location with her indefinitely. The plenitude of her care washed over me, as it has for more than a decade, watching her white Tacoma roll up the driveway at golden hour on a Sunday. “Hi Bob, how are you?” we said to each other in unison before embracing. When we hug, I become keenly aware of the sensation of hugging someone exactly my size. It feels as if I’m hugging myself, my counterpart.

Hannah is here to help me with my things, but she’s also here to hold my heart. Since late-July, each morning has felt like being forced to stomach a giant smoothie of intergenerational trauma. From the opposite coast, I unsubscribed my mother from receiving this newsletter. The past few weeks, I’ve listened as her capacity to help herself yields to a near-total loss of her short-term memory. I’m witnessing her security unravel due to a lifelong devotion to limiting beliefs and submitting to men. 

I am suspended in moments from every age I’ve ever been, holding my mother as she cries for a life unlived. I am 15 years old and in my grandmother’s kitchen, wearing a cut-off denim skirt and a pink muscle tee. “I don’t know what to do with this anymore,” my grandmother says to me, while cradling a raw chicken over the sink. We’ve been here before.

I note the moments when life pushes against my biases and challenges my lonely constitution. Hannah’s arrival following my mother’s decline has served as such a moment. Hannah’s love prohibits me from feeling alone. There are friendships I act out in, friendships I veil myself to, and friendships that drop off. My friendship with Hannah is no exception to any of these issues, but what persists is our continued choosing of one another, as if our magnetism is of a greater force than preferences, conditions, or opinions. We always find our way back. 

Once I visited her in San Francisco and a raging UTI, my first, plagued me after I had sex with a former college crush who also lived in the city. Hannah drew me a bath and helped me get what I needed without accusing me of prioritizing a man over our friendship and getting myself sick — which is exactly what happened. Last summer, when I needed space from a man, I stayed with Hannah for a month to regain anonymity. I slept through the night and walked the lap around Clover Park unbothered. This summer, I didn’t ask for Hannah’s help with the last of my things. I could have driven down to my storage unit in Costa Mesa while bracing for conversations with my estranged brother from the road, but she wouldn’t have allowed it. I didn’t need to ask; she knew what I needed.

As we unloaded her truck, Hannah rejoiced that my unit was finally clear. I poked fun at my life choices and how much I’ve paid for storage because of them, revealing an embarrassment that burrows. The reason I’ve needed these extra spaces over the years has on both occasions, been because I’ve gotten myself into codependent relationships with men too quickly. These storage units were the children born from backtracking out of them. 

A part of me regrets waiving the satisfaction of emptying the unit myself, these remnants of a pre-Covid existence that I’d left unacknowledged for years. But I know that to let Hannah help me is to let her love me, and sometimes that’s all I can give to our friendship. Who do I let myself be loved by? Who do I allow myself to need? To whom do I become willfully indebted?