SAUDADE

By Vanessa Wong

Brian is an old friend whose heart I keep breaking every few years simply because he keeps letting me.

Try explaining THAT sort of relationship about your date at holiday parties or family get-togethers. You can’t. He’s not my boyfriend, but he’s more than just a friend.

On the bummer side of things, introductions are awkward. On the plus side of things, people look relieved when you decide to leave early.

There absolutely should be a word for that. I bet other languages have a word for this. Other languages have these specific, detailed words that evoke a complicated array of emotions in one succinct utterance.

The most recent time Brian and I went through this little script of ours was near Thanksgiving of last year, when we both wound up at the same party after not seeing each other for months. It was cold outside and I was drunk and when we kissed, it felt right. There, in a dark bedroom that wasn’t mine, I told him that it was for real this time, and that I really wanted to make a go of whatever it was this was. And of course he said yes and we spent the rest of the night cuddling on the couch, receiving looks from our various mutual friends that ranged from happy approval to confused disgust.

But as the party began to end and the noise and the chatter and everything slowly tapered off, an unsettling, yet familiar, sinking feeling began to take over, and I realized I’d been wrong. I didn’t want this. I couldn’t promise him anything.

When it came time to leave and he wanted me to leave with him, I had to tell him — I had to tell him the whole thing was a mistake. As the words stumbled out of my mouth, he looked at me both quizzically and expectantly, like he’d known this was coming all along.

I tried to explain that it was much more complicated than that, and I tried to tell him about how in another language, there might be a word.

“Like saudade,” he whispered, and then walked out, leaving me in the kitchen, alone.

I didn’t know what it meant, so I pulled out my phone to Google it — apparently it is a Portuguese word for a sort of nostalgia or sadness that you feel, for something that happened in the past, is happening now, or maybe even hasn’t happened yet at all.

Vanessa Wong makes art, and your coffee, and studies anthropology.