It's always just you in there
It's hot. And not quite dark out yet. We've got the fan on in the bedroom, and out the window our yard has turned into a tropical jungle on steroids that smells good and is a fantastic explosion of lush greens..
JJ, being the sensible one of the two of us, has already fallen asleep. I, the brooding & passionate one, am here.
Liz had her yearly b-day bus party this weekend. I feel sort of like a nine year-old after the fun thing is over, moping around in a sea of semi-deflated balloons, missing everyone and wondering what there is to look forward to now. I find that I can prolong the joy slightly by flipping through all the photographs for the eleventh time, reliving how much fun it was as compared to the dull Monday awaiting me. My inevitable passage through time is both begrudging and resentful, and I cross the line that divides sparklyfunexcitement with regular life only because the universe is making me. JJ is pretty much unaffected, snoozing away contentedly beside me.
I got intensely dressed up for the first time in a long while. The complicated ritual that is now limited to special occasions was once a part of my daily routine. Going through it yesterday, it was hard to imagine where I found such sizable reserves of time and motivation on a daily basis. But as soon as I stepped into the drugstore, all done up and on a quest for camera batteries, I remembered where the motivation had come from. All the clerks that on a usual day treated me with the standard friendliness dispensed to every customer, now stared and lit up and went out of their way to pour on the attention. It was a little disappointing that they didn't realize it was just "me". The same me that always comes in for the $2 t-shirts and grape bubble gum. And what a goofy amount of difference a half-hour's worth of smoky eyeshadow and root lifter has on the way people treat you. Of course it's exciting. And has seriously potent potential to sweep a bored and lonely teenager into drunken glee. And even as a twentysomething, it's still awfully fun to relive.
It's not so much the being pretty that I get drunk off of, but the being wanted. Not in the dirty, I-want-your-body way. Just the simple way. The basic, innate way people crave to meet eyes with others. To exchange smiles and other nonverbal expressions of gentle kindness and goodwill. To touch. To not be immediately forgotten once you pass out of one's line of sight. To occupy a soft spot in another's heart that's not directly tied to a specific action or achievement. The kind of undiscerning, generously-given wantedness that only seems to come when people are stupefied by beauty or drunk with love or truly wasted with alcohol and knocking into one another, proclaiming everyone as their best friend. Even with as much friendly contact as I get in a day, it's like every single nerve ending is still so starving for love and attention that I wonder if I will ever feel full. I had a dream that Maria adopted me and said that I could live in her house, and I felt like it was Christmas that I should get a culture and five siblings in a single day. That might make a fine consolation for the party bus being over. Unfortunately nothing true and likely promises to be similar to another party bus or a houseful of Mexican siblings. Maybe I will press my forehead to JJ's and try to join him in a dream.
JJ, being the sensible one of the two of us, has already fallen asleep. I, the brooding & passionate one, am here.
Liz had her yearly b-day bus party this weekend. I feel sort of like a nine year-old after the fun thing is over, moping around in a sea of semi-deflated balloons, missing everyone and wondering what there is to look forward to now. I find that I can prolong the joy slightly by flipping through all the photographs for the eleventh time, reliving how much fun it was as compared to the dull Monday awaiting me. My inevitable passage through time is both begrudging and resentful, and I cross the line that divides sparklyfunexcitement with regular life only because the universe is making me. JJ is pretty much unaffected, snoozing away contentedly beside me.
I got intensely dressed up for the first time in a long while. The complicated ritual that is now limited to special occasions was once a part of my daily routine. Going through it yesterday, it was hard to imagine where I found such sizable reserves of time and motivation on a daily basis. But as soon as I stepped into the drugstore, all done up and on a quest for camera batteries, I remembered where the motivation had come from. All the clerks that on a usual day treated me with the standard friendliness dispensed to every customer, now stared and lit up and went out of their way to pour on the attention. It was a little disappointing that they didn't realize it was just "me". The same me that always comes in for the $2 t-shirts and grape bubble gum. And what a goofy amount of difference a half-hour's worth of smoky eyeshadow and root lifter has on the way people treat you. Of course it's exciting. And has seriously potent potential to sweep a bored and lonely teenager into drunken glee. And even as a twentysomething, it's still awfully fun to relive.
It's not so much the being pretty that I get drunk off of, but the being wanted. Not in the dirty, I-want-your-body way. Just the simple way. The basic, innate way people crave to meet eyes with others. To exchange smiles and other nonverbal expressions of gentle kindness and goodwill. To touch. To not be immediately forgotten once you pass out of one's line of sight. To occupy a soft spot in another's heart that's not directly tied to a specific action or achievement. The kind of undiscerning, generously-given wantedness that only seems to come when people are stupefied by beauty or drunk with love or truly wasted with alcohol and knocking into one another, proclaiming everyone as their best friend. Even with as much friendly contact as I get in a day, it's like every single nerve ending is still so starving for love and attention that I wonder if I will ever feel full. I had a dream that Maria adopted me and said that I could live in her house, and I felt like it was Christmas that I should get a culture and five siblings in a single day. That might make a fine consolation for the party bus being over. Unfortunately nothing true and likely promises to be similar to another party bus or a houseful of Mexican siblings. Maybe I will press my forehead to JJ's and try to join him in a dream.