Money is an Idea.

 “Money is an idea.”

I didn’t want to tell you how I kept replaying “Love Don't Cost a Dime” by Magix and Arya Star, hoping I’d listen to it enough to make you text me or hate you.

I thought of writing you to oblivion and how no matter how much I wrote, I couldn’t write “the end,” foolishly longing for newer experiences and in them we are back to those slaps. I’m wearing a yellow tank top with developing breasts ready to tear the top, and you are holding my hands and telling me what “capitalism does” and how money is power and the plans you have for the future. 

Is it the rhythm of the song or the lyrics you believed and loved or was it all just about you? What about the song made you jealous of it? Saying you wish you wrote it? Was it meant to be dedicated to me? Like a big, rounded wound itching tirelessly that I can’t afford to touch, I urge you to know, do you even remember we had our song? And the many times we played it, driving around town, holding my hands, kissing them, and smiling at me? Like a ritual, it was our song; it was sealed, wasn’t it? Am I imagining it too? 

What do you think of when the song comes up? Do you play it randomly?  Was it really our song? Did it matter? Do you hear other random songs and think that I will like them too? Do you remember me when it comes up?

So when she told me you were in her DM, everything became bland, and suddenly there were too many numbers on my screen. Data they choose to call it, fire on my chest, I didn’t know which I needed more, gestid or the inhaler. I had typed a long message to send to you; I deleted it, responded to her, and deleted my Instagram again. I didn’t want to be asked a follow-up question; I didn’t want her confiding in me. I lied; I said, “I only knew you a little, and you were a kind man.”. I held on to my promise never to speak to you again.

When I saw you, I was surprised that I had betrayed myself again; I had promised to kill all the butterflies fluttering in my tummy when I got home, maybe take hot water often. What is it with you? Maybe it’s the imperfection that comes swiftly with you that reminds me so much of my father and how even in the midst of pain, chaos, change, promotion, love, happiness, and sadness, it’s you I want to share it with, over the phone, over a bottle of white wine, with tears; it’s you I want to yell “asshole,” “kiddo,” “you can’t be serious,” “let’s fix it,” “you will be fine.”

And when I asked where you had been and you said “hell,” I wanted to tell you that I no longer imagine hell as a deep hole sinners end up in; I wanted to tell you that’s where I have been since you left, but instead I laughed my cowardice laughter, like I really understood you and the hell you have been. You asked why I stopped sending you my stories. I didn’t tell you I stopped, because nobody deserved to be the muse. It’s the foolishness I carried with me at that slap, like you were a god, and whatever you do determines how well the story will be, so I wrote technical writings. Instead of “health in data,” how supply chain management works, etc.

But I have learned alongside grief that a soulmate is also an idea, a familiar idea we grew up with, a trauma bound, a tingle feeling to coin in our dreams and lie to ourselves sometimes brutally and blatantly that this is what we deserve, ignorant or lazy as humans choose to be, to search for something more fitting, more dutiful, pleasing, and accepting clinging to the idea that we might never be, that everything happens for the plot, that we will forever chase different things, and if I choose to stay again, I’m pandering, so I’ll try; I’ll close my eyes shit and tight till it starts to hurt and choose to see darkness.