Junkyards.

My brother was taking his sweet time wrapping up a story when I (somewhat rudely) asked him, “Okay, okay, what’s the whole point of this?” To which he responded, “Hey, it was a good day.”

The simplicity of that. It was a good day. And I realized the next morning while I was eating pancakes across from Melanie and recounting yet another random series of events that the simple statement is the tip tap tempo of my life. It was a good day. Every day is a good day, and the days that aren’t are just sad hiccups between the last amazing 24 hours and the next one around the corner.

Yesterday I went to a junkyard to look for a carburetor for the Falcon with my brother. As we wandered the crunchy gravel and he bemoaned the fifty-year-old Jeep flatbed lying harvested next to crappy Ford escorts, I marveled at him. At myself. At the sad and desiccated beauty surrounding us; why do I think rusted metal is so pretty? And the haphazard tilt of the cars, their emblems strewn about on the ground, their insides pulled out and lying forgotten around their edges. Some of them caved in from accidents, some of them burned. There were people in them when that happened, I realize. I hope they got out alive. I wonder if they cried over the loss of the car the way my mom always has whenever one died; she would form an attachment to them as if they were pets, with emotions and temperaments and hidden agendas. There is oil everywhere, and my hands are covered in the slick grittiness from the grease and crud covering the carb we found and pulled out of an old Ford. My brother hooted at the find, almost sliced his head open, and bitched about being short within seconds of each other. He asks me every five minutes if I’m okay; he pretends that I’m complaining if I mention my arm whenever we’re around someone else or better yet, that I'm not hurt at all, but as soon as it’s just him and I, he doesn’t try to hide that he’s worried I’ll hurt myself, or get tired, or trip. His concern warms me in the chilly air as he looks up and begs for rain; it’s 50% off anything we buy if it rains, he explains. We look up expectantly, both of us more willing to be soaked in a car with no heater than pay full price for our finds.
I find a gear in the bed of a truck. It’s perfect, with “Made in the USA” stamped boldly on the back. I grab it, feeling like a thief. The unexpected beauty of the day is washing away the fear that I woke up to.

I dreamt of work, which made me anxious, and then it became me sitting in a hospital with Cesar next to me, holding my hand, and all the truths of us rushed to me, and I asked him to leave. If you don’t love me the way I will love you if you stay, my dreamself says, you need to leave and never come back. He left, because my subconscious knows what my heart doesn’t want to recognize; as much as we laugh and smile and are sweet to each other, my heart is open and his is not, at least not to me. And while building walls to try and match his feel as futile as building sandcastles in high tide, I need to. Because my dream and the subsequent tears that followed tell me only one thing; I will fall in love with someone who will never love me back if I’m not careful, and that’s life.

It was a good day. And it reminded me that I need to focus on the people who do love me, like my brother and my friends and my family, and to disregard the people who don’t. Why focus on a minority when I have such an overwhelming majority? One versus one-hundred?

I love you, and am thankful for you loving me. And for reminding me that I deserve nothing but people who do the same.