I spend a lot of time waiting. For little things, like my pizza in the microwave; and for big things, like the beginning of my real life. Cause I don’t think this is my real life. I’m treading water, waiting for a ship or a piece of driftwood or a giant sea turtle or anything to take me to dry land. I’m not settled yet; not ultimately established. It’s hard to feel at home when I know that someday soon I’ll go away and this will never be my home again. When I know that home will be somewhere different, but I can’t start to feel at home there either because I don’t know anything about it. I can’t get too comfortable where I am, but I can’t prepare for the future either and I’m constantly on my toes and afraid that any moment may be the one that will begin the upside-down-turning of my world. Because as restless as I get sometimes, the feeling is easily dispelled by the approach of possible change.
Though, I hadn’t noticed my dislike of change until someone told me about it. And now it is nearly debilitating and I’ve thought long and hard about why that may be and I have a theory. It is probably quite far off and any psych major may scold me for the suggestion, but it’s a thought for my bored brain to play with; another rubix cube in my mind, among the many that sit unfinished. I think that maybe with all the careful psychological studying and analysis and diagnosis, we are just talking ourselves deeper and deeper into our problems simply because they have been acknowledged and given a label.
I’ve heard it before; I’ve told someone something about me that I thought was just a random—if a bit odd—fact, and suddenly there was something wrong with me. Something broken in my brain. No longer an attribute of uniqueness; no longer originality. A diagnosed cognitive malfunction to be analyzed and fixed. The power of suggestion, the dignity of response; whatever it was, something I hardly ever thought about had then taken root in my gray matter, and suddenly those exercises and lists and things to work on were necessary. A horrible snowball of inner turmoil I thought would never, ever be in me. But years go by and damage is fixed, and hollow congratulations are in order because I’m exactly where I was three years ago.
Exactly where I was, because I’ve worked on things and buried some things. Some people. Well, I haven’t buried actual people. They are still alive and well. But I couldn’t put them to rest in my mind and I tossed and turned every night; lost so much sleep on their account. I’ve read that doing something physically can help to do what needs to be done mentally, so I decided a funeral was in order. Mourn the loss; cut off ties. Have some closure for myself, because there is no way I’d ever be able to actually talk about it in person. What would I say?
“I have planned your funeral; I will put you in a box. I will put into the ground all my pictures of you. Every piece of paper, and your music that I saved; all wrapped up in the clothes we wore, with that green and silver melody. I will bleed into the ground with the birthdays and the note cards, and the drawings with our phrases; the insects in our names. I wanted to wait till springtime, when the ground is soft, but you must go down deep now, and I must love myself. So I held a glass jar; I kissed its face, with yours beneath. I cracked it on the ice, to wait there till the summer’s heat. You drown in my backyard, where we swam in better days. And I hang in bottles, catching light in golden rays. Over your grave, there will be no headstone. You will lie unmarked when I’m through. Over your grave, there will be no mourning, because I’m the only one who ever knew. Over your grave there will be no flowers, except for this one, embalmed in red. Over your grave, there will be no sunlight, but what charity filters in.”
But I couldn’t tell them those things; those words that sound like the demented ravings of a melancholy serial killer. It’s all metaphorical, but they wouldn’t understand that and they wouldn’t understand why because I never said anything and it’s too late now. It’s too far in the past.
I spend too much time dwelling on the past. The good things and the bad. I’m working on letting go of bitterness, though. I had some things to say. They were true, and when I think too much about them they are still true, and I think, “So stay in your paperback heaven; I never asked anything of you. You gave it on your own, just a glimpse, and made it so I couldn’t live without. But like a heroin addict claims she’s not really hooked on the dope…as the withdraw wracks my body—red-rimmed eyes and insomnia—I’ll never admit that you were the cause of my pain. So stay and obey all of your laws; make sure you do everything right. Don’t take any risks. Don’t even feel, because someone might disapprove. Maybe you just don’t care. I’ll never know what you’re thinking. All I know is, much time has passed since you said that you’re glad I’m alive. I don’t know why you drew away; I can only assume I did something wrong, or just not enough things right. If you won’t tell me anymore what’s really in your head, then I’ll stop asking for your thoughts, and hide mine from you as well. Apparently you don’t want to hear. So I’ll turn my back and say ‘fine, then’, stubbornly refusing the crushing urge to look back and see if you miss me.” I know that’s bitter and sharp, but I’m slowly wearing the edge off. All by myself; cause I did look back…and I wasn’t missed.
Sometimes I wish I was catholic so I could confess to a priest behind a carved wooden wall; not having to make eye contact, and not feeling like I’m burdening him with my stupid problems like I do when I talk to friends or even family. Some people would probably suggest a therapist for that kind of thing, but I know that wouldn’t be the same. A therapist would nod and pretend to care and scribble things in her notebook and write that I’m “emotionally numb” just because I haven’t cried in awhile. I’ve heard psychobabble; I know that’s all I would get. And that’s not what I need. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me; my different ways of seeing things and feeling things are just personality quirks that make me who I am, as strange a person as that is. A therapist would tell me to fix things that aren’t even broken. A priest would call me “my child” and tell me I’m forgiven. Words so much more comforting, and he wouldn’t even charge me sixty-plus dollars a session or however much a psychologist costs.
But I’m not catholic and I don’t go to confession, so there’s a different wooden box I lock myself in when I get that feeling. It’s full of the raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay and covered in a familiar coat of wood dust. Then I say everything I’d say to the priest, only I say it directly to God. I know He forgives and He understands, but sometimes I wish I could really hear the words; His voice in my ears calling me “my child” and saying “you’re forgiven”.
I listen sometimes, hoping to pick it up in the rustle of the sounds of the barn. I’ll sit on an upturned grain bucket in Spirit’s stall, next to the water bucket so he won’t step on me by accident. I muse in my journal, my pen occasionally slipping across the page when Spirit shoves his nose into my lap, always impatient when I pay attention to something other than him. My journal is pretty worn out and smeared in places with dirt and horse drool, and even some blood from when I snagged my hand on a loose nail. It’s ok with me, though. I’m glad. It’s further record of the essence of my life; the essence of me and what I find important.
Worn things like that are the things that speak the most, and so are the most significant. They hold time in them, it seems to me. They’ve soaked up the minutes and hours and days and the things that happened in them and it makes me wonder, if I was that old shed or that tree or whatever, what kinds of things would I have seen? What would I have heard and what things would I hold in my long, long memory? I like things that are older than me. Things that have been in the world longer and experienced it more than I have, and in a way that I never will.
That’s one of the reasons why I like rain. It’s always in a cycle, rain is, and so the raindrops are probably very very old. I don’t remember a lot about the science of it, but I know it’s continually recycled and I remember the basics of how it works, so that’s my theory. That the rain is old, I mean. Water being evaporated and then falling again and used by plants and people and animals that die and have the moisture sucked out of them and so the water ultimately returns to the air and falls again, so who knows how old the rain is? The droplets that splash on my upturned face might have fallen who knows when, who knows where, upon who knows who or what. If my thought process could in any way be correct, the rain sliding on my skin could once have slid on the skin of Christ. Maybe. Who knows. I don’t; not really. But I like to be connected like that and think of things like that, of all the places that rain has been and who and what it’s touched since the beginning of time when the first water was set into the cycle.
I feel cleaner after it rains. I heard that in a song once and decided that it’s true. Because I relate heavily to my surroundings. Maybe everyone does. I don’t know. But I do and when the world is fresh-washed and bright and pungent, I feel that way too. I go out into the woods and watch the swollen creek, so unfamiliar it turns the entire wood into strange terrain. Though I suppose it’s more like a river, after a storm. Its current is strong and it continually erodes the sides of the bank. Things have fallen down there; benches and piles of wood and fence posts that were set around the edge. They fell in as the bank collapsed, bit by bit, so we’ve stopped putting things there and are careful not to step too close. Sometimes I do, though, just for the rush when I think about how, at any moment, the ground could drop out from beneath me. And when the creek is swollen and rushing, I think about how it is eroding the banks more than usual and how the ground falls in and is carried away and I wonder if someday the bank will have crept up so close that in some violent rainstorm, the foundation of my house will be washed away and my home will crumble.
But that would be years and years from now, and by then this place might just be a fuzzy memory like my childhood homes are now. Because when I really “grow up” and start my “real life”, this place will probably seem like a childhood home, even though I guess I’m not a child. I think things are going to change more before I’m sure of that. It’s hard to want the changes though. Hard to anticipate them. I see them being acted out in the adults I know, but seeing isn’t knowing. I see love between people—real love, mature love—but that doesn’t help me any more to know what it is. And I don’t trust books, as much as I like to read them.
It’d be nice if love in real life was as good as love in books. I can’t fathom how it possibly could be, but maybe it is. Otherwise why would there be such a hype? But it’s so common. Love, that is. No, it can’t be as good. Maybe not even special. It happens to almost everyone, and it dulls out with time, from what I’ve observed. “The One”? Please. Chemicals, animals, instincts, God’s plan for populating the earth and giving people some pleasure of ultimately shallow connection while they’re at it. It’s just love. It can’t be that great. All the hype is probably just cause people are so broken and empty and pitiful that romance is the best thing we can experience on earth, and thus it is glorified. Falsely glorified. Love is the fanciest of our cheap jewelry; a rhinestone among the plastic. Still common and nearly worthless, but not quite as cheap as the plastic bangles of wealth, power, and fame. A fresh romance may be exciting, but even if it works out, the couple will grow old. Passion will fade to habitual attachment. Routine will set in, all exciting drama and happy chaos gone. All color gone. So what’s the point? Every real-life love story is the same. They have their differences, but they’re really all the same, from where I’m standing. Boy meets girl, hearts race for awhile, then they slow again. If one or both of them aren’t broken first. And many people just stay together cause they’re afraid of being alone and they still feel an echo of attachment. Chemicals, instincts. No, real-life love can’t be as good as book-love.
Of course, I am being overly-cynical, because I prefer not to get my hopes up. I don’t want to be disappointed. Because if I dreamed love up to be wonderful, I would be disappointed. I’d be disappointed if I never fell in love, or if I did and it turned out to be less than worth it. Being almost-in-love didn’t turn out to be worth it at all, so I suppose the risk to really being in love is that it may be even less worth the time and energy and heartache.
Not that I know. I’m just speculating; always speculating. Because there’s so very much that I don’t know, and quite frequently I need someone to beat some perspective into me. Luckily, I have a few people who are more than willing to do that. They’re stronger than me; strong enough to tell me the truth and not just what I want to hear. I usually tell people what they want to hear unless they insist on honesty, or I just don’t say anything at all. Because for as much as I like to argue, and for as many awkward silences as I have created by voicing my strong moral opinions, I hate conflict on a personal level. It’s ok, though, cause it’s not like it hurts anyone but me. Right? Avoiding conflict just affects me and I can deal with that a lot better than I can deal with the risk of hurting other people.