Writing - Liz Tigh Dennerlein

Below you will find some ramblings taken from personal journal entries I've written over the years. Some have a poetic flow to them while others are random thoughts tied together in a messy bow. These stories feature moments that felt lonely at first, but will later be crucial in forming who I am today.

Writing and photography has helped me encapsulate times in my life that feel significant or bring about a deep sense of nostalgia. When writing these entries, I recall thinking, ‘Pay attention, you'll want to remember this moment.'

I open the door to a bedroom that feels unfamiliar even though it’s technically mine.

Before me, a mattress lies on the floor — still sheetless despite having moved in a month ago.

It’s the same mattress I bought for us when we moved into our home by the beach. A $200 Amazon purchase with four stars and 8,000 customer reviews. A mattress described as “lightly firm” for the in-between sleepers who don’t quite know what they want.

Cups crowd my bed. Some empty, others contain varying amounts of tap water — there in case I wake up dehydrated after a bad dream.

On the bed, lies a half smoked bowl of weed. A purchase I made in a failed attempt to be the chill girl — a stereotype that often precedes me so I thought, ‘Why not try it out? Give the people what they want.’

I always apologize for the mess before a guest comes inside. It’s the same repetitive phrase women utter, “I’m sorry. Sorry for being me.”

An empty bottle of wine remains on the floor because I often need a glass after a long day. A glass that becomes two or three or four.

It’s the same bottle of Sauvignon Blanc I’d buy after a fight with you. Each sip bringing me closer to a version of myself I hate.

Beside that bottle, there’s a container of collagen pills I bought in the beauty aisle of CVS. The girls at work tell me 26 is the perfect time to invest in anti-aging solutions.

Because there’s nothing more unattractive than a woman who’s lived a little.

As if the dark sunken circles beneath my eyes — that reveal the countless sleepless nights spent worrying. The nights spent missing you, missing me, missing us — are too much to bear.

An empty room reminds me of those first nights spent in our old home together with nothing but a memory foam cushion on the floor. Us laying there — our feet facing the opposite way, talking about passions, fears. About past relationships — what went wrong, what went right — without realizing we’d soon become one.

The bare floor reminds me of the way your foot used to tap on the hardwood while your fingers danced around the strings of your bass, knowing just what to do.

And just like muscle memory, I find my mind always reaching toward you.

A Lonely Clarity

I’m at the Channel Islands 700 feet above sea level, looking out onto endless fog. I just hiked 3.5 miles on a steady incline — my gear for the night strapped to my back.

With nothing to go on, but a park ranger’s vague directions. “It’s only a mile or so up the hill.” I curse her under my breath.

I’ve been camping for three weeks. There’s black residue pressed deep beneath my fingernails, reminding me of the way he used to like how I always had dirt under my nails, kind of like the way he used to like me.

Even in new landscapes, nostalgia finds a way to creep in — I’m thousands of miles from home and yet my mind still manages to weave in and out of old rooms that once belonged to me and him.

Out here in the quiet, his words echo in my mind. Where he says he’s not sure he can be with someone like me. How in these solitary moments, it’s hard to be with someone like me.

I wonder if it’s OK to think of him from time to time without knowing him day to day. Wonder if life is just a series of missing people who used to know you.

“Aren’t you afraid?” many asked before I embarked on this solo road trip to six national parks.

I didn’t know how to explain that I was more afraid of the dark corners of my mind, the places I conveniently avoided all these years.

That all the comforts promised of city life began to feel more like constraints.

That home had become a place I was grieving — a reminder of a detrimental drinking career, lost friendships, past lovers. Just a blur of wine soaked nights that compile most of my twenties.

I preferred being out here in the middle of nowhere — the wind blowing aggressively against my tent. Preferred it to the sound of my apartment neighbors blasting techno at odd hours while I lie awake — eight months without a drink — with a sober clarity of the person I am, and don’t wish to be anymore.

I desperately needed this trip to remind myself there was still something wild within me, that I was still very much alive.

I found that by waking up each morning at sunrise and chasing pretty things — I was able to capture beauty, to make it stand still.

I captured these moments for the person I hoped to grow into, for the woman I planned to rebuild a home for — who will later adorn her living room with these very photographs.

And when I return to the city I reside in, home will come to me in a series of images.

Home will find me in the jet black eyes of a fox, in the soft purple sunsets of the Grand Canyon, in the bright, yellow glow of a one-person tent.

Home will reveal itself even on those foggy, gray hikes where I don’t quite know where I'm going.

Home will come in the sunbeams that poke through the haze the next morning, and I will remember that beyond all that fog, the vast Pacific Ocean was always there to help light up my path.

And in these moments alone, I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.

Mustard yellow pants

West Texas, 2019 —

It’s been 17 days since I’ve had a drink. The longest I’ve regrettably gone since I was 18. I’ve vowed to stay sober for 30 days.

An accomplishment, my friends tell me. But all I can notice is how much I crave red wine stained lips, a dizziness in my brain.

My friend Hannah’s sitting in a lawn chair — the wind blowing in her hair. She’s wearing mustard yellow pants. A BB gun in hand. One leg bent, one eye squinting, focusing on the target — an empty Lone Star can.

I can feel the desert heat on my face. The sun radiating off my pale, winter skin. I crave the heat. My definition of warmth has changed since moving from the East Coast.

At times, it feels like my mind can’t get used to Texas, this new place. And yet, my body after just nine months of living in this state has forgotten what it’s always known. How it’s forgotten the cruel East Coast winters. How it can no longer brave temperatures below 50 degrees despite having survived them for 25 years. How it feels like old versions of myself are shedding.

Our friend Ross stumbles out of our Airbnb — hungover, his hand brushing through his tangled hair. His eyes squinting, adjusting to the harsh light as if they’re seeing for the first time. It bothers me how effortlessly good looking boys can be when they just wake up.

“I forgot where we were,” he says, looking around.

We just woke up after a long drive in the dark from Austin to Terlingua. With no cell service or GPS to help guide us to our stay for the night — just longitude and latitude coordinates, and tiny hand painted red signs that reads, “ZONE” to guide us to our stay.

I sit nearby on the sidelines, continuing to watch Hannah. Always the observer, never the participant.

Hannah’s body jolts as her finger pulls the trigger, and the Lone Star can goes down.

She immediately turns back to me and laughs, eagerly running toward me, placing her tiny arms around my back.

“You try.”

I can’t help but smile.

At the way a woman’s touch can light me up for days. How it can take all the years of aching away. Even just for a moment. How it doesn’t even compare to the way the many men in my life have ever made me feel.

I hold the BB gun, hesitant at first at everyone's eyes on me.

“Don't watch,” I say.

“Just relax,” Ross tells me, sensing my tension. Afraid of what everyone thinks.

Funny how a woman’s touch can soothe my aches. Yet a man’s voice I need before I can begin. His certainty making up for the lack of my own.

Coffee Table Nights

I had dinner with a past lover last night.

He made me a steak. Had all my favorite things ready — margarine instead of butter. Lemon for our seltzer, wine glasses to pour them in. “It’s tradition,” he says with a smirk.

One of my books I gave him months ago sits on his coffee table. I crack it open — he’s 80 pages in. He underlines his favorite passages inside his books now. Because of me. He tells me how he likes the way my books are covered in pink marker — the way I highlight all my favorite lines. The way I sometimes highlight the page number at the top right corner. “That means it’s really important,” I say.

“I know,” he replies.

The way our conversation feels like we’re 80 pages in, like we picked right back up to where we started.

The way I can sit by his side on his couch and feel closer than ever despite all those months of not talking. Those months where our cars sat side by side in our shared apartment parking lot, closer than I thought we’d ever be.

He reads me a letter he wrote over the last few days — how he misses me, wants me back in his life, how it’s a shame when the parts fits but the machinery doesn’t work. Always a poet. The way he prefers to put flowery language on the page, but when it came to real life he always fell short. How romance only goes so far.

And yet it feels good to hold his hand, to touch him.

How easy it is for me to slip back into old habits. A wine glass to my lips, a man at my hips. The ones who have so much to say when they want you but are nowhere to be found when you need them.