Saudade in transit
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I’m on the bus. It’s too early to be human and I haven’t had my coffee yet so I don’t really want to do much; maybe read or listen to music, things that help tune out the other people or the monotony of the commute. When I leave the suburbs, it's usually dark. I occasionally look out the windows, but more to see how far I’ve traveled than at anything interesting. By the time I arrive downtown, I can see the sun coming up over the harbour.
Sometimes a woman boards a few stops after I do. No matter how desensitized I am to her presence, my body tenses up for the rest of the ride and I spend most of the trip trying to avoid looking at her. Some days I give into temptation and take a glance, or look at her reflection in the window, but I usually double down into my book or scroll on my phone.
I used to know this woman years ago. Not that well, unless you counted regular proximity, but we did chat fairly often then, enough that I felt a bit of a connection with her. At a certain point, I started to realize that I felt a certain way whenever I saw her, and looked forward to our interactions. I thought I was safe from this feeling because I had come out as queer years earlier, and hadn’t been attracted to a woman in years. It was also just around this time I began to question my gender, which would complicate things down the line were we to end up in a relationship; I didn’t get the sense she’s anything but straight, but then again, I’m sometimes oblivious to subtle signs. Still, I couldn’t deny she was attractive and that I was starting to develop feelings for her.
I honestly don't know what I wanted out of the whole thing; on some level I knew I didn’t actually want to bother pursuing anything further. My financial situation was precarious at that time; I usually felt guilty about spending money on things like eating out that could have been used more responsibly. I also knew I didn’t want to deal with the attendant heartbreak that would come should things not work out. The context in which we knew each other also made the idea of something more casual a bit too fraught for my liking; not that social anxiety really lends itself well to that scenario anyway. Maybe all I wanted was another interesting person to know and gush about to others, another fascinating character in the stories I told other people about my life.
There were overtures at staying in touch after we went our separate ways, but eventually it became clear that our two paths were only to converge for a brief period. I felt her absence, though. Maybe there's more drama and unintentional hurt on my end than there needed to be, but run-ins began to leave me with too many questions in my head for my liking; the ease I felt around her faded, and I eventually started to deliberately avoid her because it stung whenever I saw her face (probably not the most effective way to get over someone). I couldn’t bring myself to go completely no-contact, but I don’t really know how she is or what’s going on in her life now.
I’m pretty sure this whole thing was just limerence. I’m not sure whether it’s her I miss, or just the feeling I had about her back then. Perhaps I just liked the excitement it gave me, the thrill of wanting to learn more about her. Something about her still lingers in my head, though; I’ve come to accept it always will in some way. There will be things that remind me of her in people I meet. She's an especially vivid memory, and sometimes shows up in my dreams; not so much as the main subject, but in the periphery, where I feel her presence more than I actually see her.
I used to say that running into her was the emotional equivalent of being clotheslined; the more routine exposure to her over the last little while has helped somewhat. Seeing her no longer jars me the way it used to; the ache is still there, though. I have to accept that it may always be that way.
A few months back, a friend was helping me unpack my feelings about this situation; she mentioned that sometimes these things just happen and you can’t predict when. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me often enough for me to develop a callous, so I’m wary whenever I develop feelings for another person. I'm too tired to bother chasing that high anyway.
It’s the kind of thing has to happen organically, once you really start to experience a person regularly and get a better sense of who they are. There’s just something about them that draws you in even more than you would have ever expected from whatever preconceived notions you had about them.
I’ve got the kind of brain that always looks for patterns to make sense of things. Certain physical attributes catch my eye more often than others: dark eyed brunettes in particular do something for me. I also really like short hair on women, and those with a touch of androgyny, the kind of woman that looks good in a suit, tank top or flannel. Maybe I’ve always had the sapphic gaze; I know I’ve got the lesbian yearning thing down pat.
It’s the less tangible things that aren’t tied to physical appearance that make me feel something, though. I’m usually drawn to funny, kind, creative and adventurous people, but the ones I developed strong feelings for are so much more amazing than I have the words for; to reduce them down to a few qualities doesn’t do them any justice. It’s some kind of alchemical mixture of certain personality traits that end up blending into something better than any idea of a person that my brain could create from a checklist, and I end up wanting to get to know them better. For the longest time I had been trying to accurately describe whatever I felt about them, but I never can; I have to be in the thick of it to know what it is, and I don’t really remember it anymore. I can intellectualize all I want, but there are some things the mind will never truly understand.
Going through second puberty at the same time my body is starting to slow down is also an interesting experience. I don’t know if it’s the hormones or the pandemic-induced isolation, but I’m craving human touch more than I have in years. Nothing serious, but it’s unusual for me to only be interested in something physical. I’m not going out of my way to find it, though; it’s something that’s nice to have, but in the hierarchy of my own interests and desires, it’s still only somewhere in the middle. Naps are a bigger priority for me these days.
What I really craved most of the time I had crushes before transition was proof I was somehow “normal”, as if being linked to another person would confer that status on me. On a basic level I wanted to be in love, but I also envied the platonic bonds women have with one another. Whenever I developed stronger feelings for someone, it was because they added something to my life that I never knew I was missing; ironically, this also made me more reluctant to act on these feelings because I didn’t want to lose them.
I wish I could unlock the version of myself that managed to fall into unexpected and revealing conversations when I was younger. Maybe that was just from too many drinks of the week at Ducky’s or sleep deprivation from trying to eke out a coherent term paper. I’ve grown more cautious over the years, though, and I don’t have the energy I used to.
I wonder whether I have the capability to adequately express how much specific people mean to me. What would I tell them if there weren't any potential for rifts in the relationship?
