chris came to visit me last weekend so we could spend some time together before he embarks on his great summer adventures, and although there were a few hiccups in our plans, everything worked out really well and it was super cute.
we’d bought saturday tickets to digital dreams because we both really wanted to see armin and porter, but apparently the weather was so bad they had to cancel it.
he got into toronto on saturday afternoon and we were so excited and i was waiting for him to come over, but right before he hopped into a cab to make his way to my place, he texted me and told me saturday had been cancelled. they cancelled it a few minutes after it was scheduled to start, which i thought was a bit ridiculous.
earlier that day he’d told me he wanted some pho, so he came over anyway and we walked through chinatown in the rain to get it. although this rut in our plans and the shitty weather inevitably dampened our collective mood a little bit, it was still really nice just to be with him again. and the pho was really good.
he was really tired since he hadn’t slept and had been travelling all morning, so we went back to my place and we took a nap. at some point, i got tired of sleeping, so i started to play some music on my keyboard while he continued to rest. i wondered how he would’ve survived a day at a music festival given how tired he seemed to be.
when he woke up, we decided to buy tickets to sunday at digital dreams since i was getting a full refund anyway, and he was able to use some of his american express points to pay for them, which was so nice. at the end of it, my ticket only cost around $50 instead of the $140 my saturday ticket cost.
after we finished solidifying plans for the next day and getting ourselves excited, we made our way over to his brother’s apartment. i finally got to meet his brother and a few of his friends, and we went out and partied and it was fun. i’m glad we all got to spend time together.
i slept over at his brother’s apartment (where i would sleep for the next couple of days), and before i went to bed, i thought about how saturday’s cancellation might’ve been a kind of blessing in a really good disguise considering we got cheaper tickets, chris got to rest, he got to spend time with his brother and now we had something to really look forward to the next day – even if the lineup wasn’t as ideal.
the next day i decided to go home to change and shower while chris went to the gym before we met up and headed to the festival together. my family was on their way to church by the time i got home and nobody had left a key, so i had to be incredibly resourceful and pull some crazy tomb raider stunts to break into my own house. it was actually pretty fun.
when i got back to chris’s brother’s place, we decided to wear matching monkeysuits to the festival and i’m not eveng going to pretend it wasn’t completely adorable.
the festival itself, although maybe not the best, was still a really good time since i was with chris and we got to dance and hold hands and walk around and spend time with each other. it spit rain all day, but i didn’t really mind, and we were both pretty warm and okay in our monkeysuits. chris and i always have a great time together at music festivals – it’s one of our things. the energy of the crowds, the blaring music pulsing through us, the dancing and the lights – and above it all, lingering over everything, the love.
everyone kept telling us they loved our monkeysuits and high fiving us and asking for photos of/with us and telling us how adorable we were and i love attention so i just soaked it all in. it was really nice. we got a lot of cute photos.
by the time zedd came along, we weren’t really feeling it, and we were super tired so we went home early and just went to sleep.
i had to go to work at 9am the next day, so i woke up super early, went back to my place, showered and changed and prepared myself for a really hazy shift.
chris and i met up later that evening and we went to kinton before going shopping to get him a new swimsuit for his exciting summer adventure.
this is where things got kind of weird, and i got in an unreasonably irritable mood, and in retrospect i’m really sorry i let my attitude bring us down, and i’m sorry i might have made him feel like i didn’t like just spending time with him doing anything, because i do, and i’m sorry if i made him feel like my terrible mood was at all his fault, because it wasn’t.
i chalked it up to me just not enjoying doing any kind of errand, but that wasn’t it at all and i knew that, because of course i wouldn’t mind doing errands with him. i love spending time with him.
i thought about it later, and i realized i had felt kind of the same way during his visit to toronto last summer when we’d gone out to buy his friend a bottle of whine for letting him stay at his apartment. i began to understand that it wasn’t the act of running errands itself that bugged me. it was the associations and the links within the specific acts themselves, and the strange ways they winded to make me think of the deeper, more pervasive issues.
for instance, my mind decided to run with the idea that he was buying a swimsuit, and he wanted it to be short and tight, and he wanted to look so good – and i thought about how much fun he’d be having without me all around the world, meeting all sorts of new people he wants to look good for, with all sorts of new potential for all sorts of new things that he should want to do – and deep down, i do want him to do – things i feel he would never want to do with me – and he would make a couple of jokes about hooking up with other people (a particularly sensitive topic) and i’d immediately feel like i could cry, even though we’ve already been through this, and i know we’re not together and i know that’s for the best and i’ve already mourned so many things and put myself on a track that takes me beyond them.
the thing is, my rational self knows and understands all of this, and i’m really pretty okay with it, but when you’re walking down the street and holding someone’s hand, it’s hard not to feel differently. i mean i’ve always been a little bit possessive and territorial, but at least i know my faults.
so i was tired and irritable and it would’ve been just too exhausting to bring all of that up just then and there, and he was leaving the next day anyway, and i didn’t want our last hours together to be spent rehashing all of these things we’ve already been over, so i just said i didn’t like running errands, and that was that.
we went and got milkshakes and pie and my ridiculous mind went to better places and i started to feel better about everything and then we went back to his brother’s place.
we fell asleep together one more time, and i felt warm in his embrace, on a bed made of two couches that we’d stuck together every night of his stay. it was tender, and sweet, and we woke up early and then he was gone.
i watched his uber drive away and i crossed the street and picked up a coffee and made my way home while the city started to wake up all around me.
sometimes when i’m by myself walking home really late at night or really early in the morning, i am more attune to the fact that the city is so big and full of people who each have their own story – their own joys and struggles – and i am just another face in the crowd. i feel alone, but connected – somehow understood by the faceless streets – and i am content.
so i made my way home and i thought about chris and how much i’ll miss him and i thought about how happy he makes me in so many ways, but also sometimes sad, and i thought about the good times and the hard times and all the things that we had and all the things that we didn’t and i thought about how now there is all this time and all this space, and maybe that’s for the best. i’d like to think we’ll use it to grow, and maybe settle into a different kind of pace, and when we find each other again, maybe things will be different, but good.
we keep talking about how things need to change.
maybe now they have a chance to.