Somone to Wake Up To, Or, Jesus Guest Stars on The Real World
One day I was sitting with my boss and another guy in the office and my boss goes "Mel, you'd rather be with anyone than by yourself."
I blinked and said, "why yes, that is probably true," though I couldn't imagine why he would bring this up while the three of us were doing payroll.
And he like, nods knowingly or something. Awesome.
But regardless of whether or not my boss is a round, bald jolly clarvoyant or just had been paying attention enough to notice what is probably obvious, the fact remains that this is true, and boy howdy, am I tired of waking up alone.
Not in the seedy way. I've had the priviledge of waking up next to someone unexpected and having to play detective. This is funny when it happens on TV. It is less funny when, sitting through a showing of Knocked Up, you realize that its pretty much about you except without the baby part, and even less funny when the guy is sitting like three seats down from you.
So not like that. Been there and it sucks. And I don't even mean just waking up in bed with your soul mate. I mean as simple as waking up and there's other living beings in the house.
And I don't care who they are.
I spent the last week in a giant Florida guest house with fourteen people, only four of whom I had ever met before. It was like the Real World if everybody on the Real World loved Jesus, or at least attempted to. I am raucously comfortable in this giant house full of people. It didn't occur to me to be uncomfortable, or change my behaviour significantly. Did I like all of them? No. But they breathed air and made noise, and sometimes they would help you with things, and sometimes their fiddlefaddling just made you aware of the passage of time. In the apartment by myself, I've realized that time can fall into an anonymous black hole of doom, never to be seen again.
Being the only living being in a house also makes it next to impossible to wake up. I wake up here and will seriously loll meaninglessly in bed, not even all that sleepy, because wheat am I going to wake up to? You wake up when other people are waking up. Or maybe even earlier, intentionally to wake up before others wake up to do certain tasks. The point is you get up. Liveliness and action are assured. Things are happening. Others are alive and doing. You may be really lucky and someone has already made something for coffee or breakfast. Perhaps something bad has already been discovered, like the cat's perpetual giant dingleberry on the kitchen floor. The point is you don't know. There are surprises. The house is alive. There is someone to tell your silly dream about faeries eating everybody to, even if they think its stupid and give you funny looks. If you're really lucky, you wake up with someone you really love who makes you laugh and makes you want to be awake.
I had written a few weeks ago that my Best Morning Ever was because I woke up with an attractive and funny young man that I didn't do anything dispicable with the night before, and we did nothing but have breakfast, coffee and crack each other up for a good solid three hours. He has siblings and parents, and probably didnt count this as anything fantastic or unusual. For me it was like a freaking holiday. And you know how you can't admit how important something was to you when the other person probably doesn't get it? You gotta be all cool and chill. Dag. I would pay significant money, or give ludicrous quantities of blood, or hand over my entire collection of dorky expensive action figures (in their boxes!) for a repeat of this experience.
Zack once asked me "Mel, why beta fish?" I have three beta fish in my apartment, and they all have little bowls in different color schemes, names, and fake plants to match. I thought for a minute and I was like "they're alive. when I walk in the door they actually see me and come to the edge of the bowl." And he said "Just somebody to recognize that you're there and breathing, huh?"
Yeah.