I am full of all the words I haven't written yet. I feel them. they dance in my dreams, they wake me up at night. I know it is through writing, that I find myself, revealed. I know it is through forming the words as yet unwritten that I will learn the truth of my heart. so I sit down and I write. and sometimes, I don’t.
sometimes I look at my phone, for hours, literally, hours. sometimes I stare into space, or focus in on the wall or a window or the ceiling or my hands. sometimes I watch 5 minutes of 20 netflix movies and then go back to my phone. sometimes I feverishly pick at the skin around my fingernails until I bleed and feel disturbed by my own self-destruction. sometimes I eat a lot of random things I find in the cupboards, alternating between salty and sweet until I feel sick and immobile. sometimes I take a bath planning to read and instead just sweat and think and cry. sometimes I read one page of a book and then go back to my phone. sometimes I read hundreds of pages of a book and manage to forget about technology and how it has put me in an almost constant state of wondering if my phone might finally, once and for all, have a message waiting for me that will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN MY LIFE. that perhaps I’ve finally received the email of all emails, the discovery of a massive trust fund left by a stranger in my name. or perhaps a text message from a special someone begging to make me FOREVER HAPPY never to suffer again.
and sometimes I make myself laugh alone. these are some of my favorite moments, where I’m afforded a brief and beautiful bird’s-eye view of how funny it all is, how funny I am. how wonderful, how silly, how magnificent. me in bed eating chocolate, trying not to dirty the sheets. me on a walk desperately looking for eyes to make contact with, just double checking that I do indeed exist. me on a boat in Italy, me on a train in Germany, me on a plane in the sky, going somewhere, anywhere. I am constantly moving so my outsides can match my insides. matching the without with the within. the worst thing is feeling crazy because what you are told and what you feel don’t agree. when your body says A and the world around you says B. when you’re sure you shared something special with someone who is now flinging insults via text like angsty monkeys throw poo in the zoo. careless. confused. frustrated with the bars and you looking in. we build our own cages. we sell our own tickets to the show. we let people in and we get angry when they see us. why do we seek so to hide, when what we really seek is to be seen? really seen. acknowledged as something more than just another smear of a face on the metro.
I am all the people who have seen me. I am the words I have heard, whether true or false, they take up residence inside me. sure some are filed away on dusty shelves in dark halls long forgotten, but there they sit nonetheless. I am looking for myself when I am looking for you. you are doing the same, don’t call me names you’re not willing to call yourself. we all do it. we all hope to find something out about within through the outside eyes of another. show me the me I cannot see. we all long to learn the truth of what we feel because madness isn’t shouting at yourself and strangers in the street, madness is pretending you’re not when you are.
the truth shall set us free. free from the insanity we feel but are afraid to face. sanity is saying, “yes, I see you, yes I hear you and I promise not to pretend I don’t.” sanity is holding space for all the ugly truths and letting them lie next to all the beautiful ones. sanity is acknowledging that you don’t know, that you are afraid, that you want to but don’t know how. that you are just trying to find someone to love enough to realize how lovable you are, how lovable we all are. the ugly truths don’t change that fact, but we’re so trained to think they will. and that is its own form of insanity, and we all suffer from it.
I am afraid if I let you see me in my cage, that you’ll just take a selfie of yourself with me in the background and then walk away. mildly amused, slightly disturbed. ultimately unmoved to come any closer. unbearably untouched. inevitably headed to check out the cute girl behind the counter at the snack bar. I don’t want to be someone’s snack. I want to be a 5 course meal painstakingly prepared and slowly slowly oh so slowly consumed, delighted with, drunk on, enraptured in. only to want to do it again tomorrow. sweetly sleeping, full and wanting for more. in seeking communion, I am seeking the truth. in seeking companionship, I am just seeking the ability to finally be able to sit alone with myself. it may seem backwards, but that’s the way we get at things sometimes, in reverse. I am determined to match what I am shown with how I feel inside. I seek that peace. when I am alone, and it is quiet, and I find stillness inside to match the outside, I feel how lovable I am. I know I am learning, over time, how to hold that knowing in the presence of others. and through this process, I know I am simply hoping to show the truth of how lovable we all are, ugly truths and all.