Meaningless reminds me of my four-month stay in Los Angeles in the summer of 2005. At first I was so lonely; I called my mother and then-boyfriend in the middle of fits of gulping sobs, knowing they could do nothing about it, wanting them to take responsibility for the consequences of a decision I made myself. It was terrible of me, like burying them in the sand and walking away from the mound.

I was 21 and about to enter my senior year of college. I was living off a settlement from a car accident in a subleased apartment in Westwood. I had a car. I went to an internship three days per week and took a class some nights. It took me a few weeks to see how good I had it. (And right now, I’m pretty disgusted to think it took me that long.)

Eventually, though, I learned to relish this alone time. I read on the outdoor patios of coffee shops with honey-flavored coffee drinks. I strolled through art museums, skipping rooms that didn’t interest me. I stayed home and chain-smoked cigarettes on the apartment’s tiny patch of deck. I listened to piles of previously undiscovered records in hours of traffic. Being by myself is the best, I realized. I can do whatever I want.

Halfway through the summer, my boyfriend came to visit me for an entire week. That Friday, we got in line at Largo at 4 p.m. and sat on the sidewalk, the sun-heated concrete searing the backs of our thighs. (The one person in line before us was obvs insufferable.) During this time, Jon Brion was playing there weekly. The table seats sold out weeks in advance, but there were 12 or so bar stools available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Chris and I were determined to get two of them, and we did. And sure, we saw him together, but the experience of watching the show is my own. I cried when he played tracks from Eternal Sunshine (duh).

This album, which I listen to straight through like a movie, reminds me of that entire summer, when I came to rely on my own reserves.

(P.S. A brag: While in Los Angeles, I got to go to the office of NANCY  MEYERS because she’s an AU grad).

To admit that I’ll only listen to Rufus Wainwright’s new record, Out of the Game, all the way through once, ever, is a big deal for me, and hurts my heart, because if you haven’t yet noticed, Rufus has his own category on this blog (because this blog is one million years old), and I was once an obsessed superfan who stalked him by the stage door of a London gig in 2004. WEARING A TRENCHCOAT, no less!

Out of the Game evidences his trade of meth-fueled promiscuity for a very tall German husband and baby daughter; of zebra print for pinstripes; and of acoustic strumming and lush orchestra backing for “smooth” and “groovy” elevator guitars (quoting other reviews here) and aged doo-wop lady vocal blends.

It’s cool, though. He’s grown older and settled down, and I admire his choice to swap destructive for responsible behavior.

I’m kind of air-handjobbing all over the inclusion of Mark Ronson as producer, though. If Rufus has resigned himself to the future described in the song “Montauk” (One day you will come to Montauk and see your dad wearing a kimono / And see your other dad pruning roses / Hope you won’t turn around and go), why get the guy who clothes-pinned the lead singer of Phantom Planet’s sagging vocals to classic Radiohead to spray Sgt. Pepper all over everything? Couldn’t Rufus decorate things himself? (Disclaimer: I was once obsessed with Phantom Planet.)

Rufus’ evolved life rules, but the music about his advanced state of being kinda bores me (one exception: this song). And while I don’t really care about “Montauk,” I’d certainly give birth to a first-born child just to trade it for an invite to his bathrobe garden party. So at least something was achieved here.

I attempt to be amusing on my Tumblr, but that’s short form, people, and I have lots of things to say. So I am going to blog about lots of things here from now on, I have decided.

One last Clark(ish) bit, though: Did you read this weekend’s Times article on how psychedelic drugs can help the dying face death? Though Clark’s exhaustion after rounds of excruciating treatments helped him to accept his fate at the end, I think about the nightmares he had the week before he died, the pot smoke his lungs absorbed during the months he received treatment, and know this kind of thing would have eased his anxieties. Also, it probably would’ve given me a little comfort in the aftermath.

“I now have the distinct sense that there’s so much more,” said one patient, “so many different states of being. I have the sense that death is not the end but just part of a process, a way of moving into a different sphere, a different way of being.”

Uh, yeah, that would have definitely helped.

The subhead for “The T-Cell Army” by Jerome Groopman reads “Can the body’s immune response help treat cancer?” and chronicles the phases of a clinical trial of the “adoptive cell transfer” Clark would have received had his cancer not ballooned in such a dangerous spot (in the very place doctors had resewed his intestines together) so quickly.

In the latest of three trials of patients with melanoma who underwent adoptive cell transfer at the National Cancer Institute, nine of twenty-five patients have been in complete remission for more than five years.

The article features an interview with Dr. Steven Rosenberg, who conceived of the treatment and once stood beside Clark and I as we told our story to the pack of researchers and doctors seated in a semicircle around us.

Later, Groopman writes of a man in remission. It is certainly effective for the piece to single out a man who once expected to live no more than six months and now thrives after receipt of this treatment. This man, like Clark, had melanoma in the lymph nodes of his left groin and lungs, but now he lives. Of course the focus of this advancement is on the victories, the moment when two pieces fit together in this tedious puzzle. Of hope for the future.

My story, though, is still not here, so I continue to write, though I take a moment to push through this feeling of being left behind.

While this story is ultimately tragic because two people lost their lives, and Charles Snelling’s act was clearly carried out in desperation, I don’t feel overwhelmingly sad about the deaths. I cried because of what he must have endured in those six years he took care of her as her mental state deteriorated.

Though he murdered her, the couple had been together for 55 years. I’m not sure if I feel that commitment justifies his actions, but he was the most equipped of anyone to make any call about her condition. I cannot assume to know, even slightly, the effects of watching the love of your life fade away like that.

I very much admire the Snelling family, who must be experiencing incredibly grief, but who issued a statement saying that Snelling had acted “out of deep devotion and profound love.”

“This lady rescued me from a fate worse than death, and for a long, long time,” Snelling wrote in a Times piece months before this incident, before deciding that for her to stay alive was worth than death. Would it had been brave of him to continue to care for her? Yes. But was he brave to decide not to? Yes.

Cella was good. She let me sleep in her bed. But It was a bad time. The only one I wanted to talk about how hard life was post-Clark was Clark. (It kind of comforts me that I still feel that way about a couple of specific things – and not just things that have to do with his death. That he’s the only one who totally gets it.)

This year I’m not fucking around. Jeff and I are driving to Baltimore for matching massage appointments at 11:15. Then brunch at my favorite restaurant, Woodberry Kitchen. Then napping in a glorious four-star hotel I got for a deal on Priceline. Then dinner at my other favorite Baltimore restaurant, The Golden West (fancy American farm-to-table is, predictably, my cuisine of choice).

I still feel kind of weird sometimes, and another year older brings my current issues to a head. Now that I’ve finished training at DCRCC, do I want to go to grad school next fall and become a counselor for real? I can start taking prerequisites at Montgomery College any time now if so, but I haven’t registered yet. I can sign up to take the GREs, but it costs so many dollars. Do I want to stay in D.C.? Well, I have my apartment til next February 28, so for now,  I guess yes. BUT THEN WHAT?

While my mind is still occupied at high speeds, thinking about these things doesn’t send me into a panic. So I will ring in my 28th year with my face peeking through the hole in that little massage table donut, and I trust my brain to stay quiet during the rub.

It was hard letting go, though. I worked there for over six years. I worked there even before I met Clark (a time that sometimes seems too far away to consider). I’d spend hours getting drunk in the bar downstairs when I was 22. My position there was one of the first things I told people when they asked about me, one of my defining factors.

I could tell I wanted to quit in my brain, but my body would tighten up whenever I thought about actually sending the email or making the phone call. But this is the place where Clark used to ride his bike to visit you! This is the place where you printed out the necessary papers to apply for Clark’s Medicaid! This is the place that ordered food trays to be delivered to Clark’s funeral! This is the place that you stood, crying and watching Neko Case sing two nights in a row when Clark was almost dead because you had to do something that was only about you or you would lose your mind!

No one who works there still even thinks about those things, or thinks about me in that way. These things are mine alone, along with my decision to stop working there and move on. It can still be that place even if I don’t go there as often. And if I decide, after a while, that it’s just a place — that’s OK, too. I still keep my relationships with some of the people, which is important to me, so it will stay that way.

As these ties to Clark and the past begin to fade, I temporarily panic over what that says about me or my identity. I think, though, I’ll soon be comfortable with thinking the loosening of these knots and their eventual undoing doesn’t mean anything bad.

I’m crying for strange reasons, though. Like how I feel differently now than I ever anticipated.  I feel guilty for not having a gathering of friends planned for tonight like I did the past two years. For not wanting to acknowledge it publicly (besides in this blog post) – I think I posted something on Facebook or Twitter last year – or talk about it at all, really. I’m fine; I can handle myself. Very few of my closest friends have even mentioned anything to me about it, which may have made me angry or anxious last year, but this year I am glad. I’m struggling with being fine, I think. Who could have predicted that?

Dean and Britta were performing 13 Most Beautiful …, their album of song tributes to some of the most stunning screen tests by Andy Warhol, at the Gallery. We slumped against the wall and shared a magazine while we waited in line, and he held my hand during their performance. I never listened to Luna, the band Dean and Britta previously played in together, somehow, though it seems like something I would have been very interested in being very into when I was in high school and college. Anyway, it’s just my thing. I love these songs.

Then we ate bar food and drank beer at the Red Derby. Jeff knows most of the bartenders there, and the server was reading US Weekly and reading interesting and hilarious bits from it out loud to us. After our meal, we went to see Ted Leo in a church basement. A lot of people I know through Clark were there. I walked in and was a coin that had been flipped. With tails facing up, the part of me who took care of Clark dwarfs the part who loves Jeff and dreamy music and art museums. I am struggling in my search for a balance.

“… though caring for a sick person can be exhausting, it can also be exhilarating, a chance to rise to your greatest potential, to mean more to another human being than you otherwise could. Strange as it may sound, your boyfriend’s illness could be the best chance you ever get to experience that. Don’t cast it — or him — aside. “