confessions of a somebody

I've spent my life trying to be something I never really understood. I always felt so external to everything. Everyone would tell me I had a beautiful mind, or I was so unconventional, or so creative, and I never understood. I was just being me, and I wasn't sure who that was. I only knew what everyone else thought.

It was never exciting or eventful or interesting. I learned everything I could and never took risks because risks never seemed interesting. I sat, and I watched, and meanwhile, around me, life happened. Sometimes people took notice of me, but mostly it was that I was outside of everything. I had perspective. I was calm and reasonable. I gave sound advice because I thought about everything from the right angles.

I was completely fucking miserable, just waiting for something to happen.

Everyone close to me has a compelling narrative, even if they don't see it. I could tell hundreds of stories about them. I want to, even. It's so beautiful, every last one of them. I don't feel like I'm a part of them. I'm outside, watching, wishing I could be a part of it.

In all my years, I've been alive for less than six months of them. I felt alive and significant and part of something, and I wasn't outside watching anything anymore. I smiled sometimes. I didn't need to hide behind jokes. I was free.

It's just a memory now, hazy and distant, but happy, in the sense that I'm vaguely aware that it was the best thing to ever happen to me, even if I still don't understand it. I envy myself for it. It's better than the alternative.

scar tissue

A muggy afternoon and we were laying around in bed, too hot to do anything else. Occasionally she'd get up to change the CD. She'd put in a Paul McCartney live album, and it wasn't helping the temperature in the least, but at least it became a way to mark the passage of time. It seemed to stretch on forever.

"Since when do you like Paul McCartney, anyway?" I asked, mostly trying to make conversation.

"Huh? Oh, uh. I guess I don't really. I just had the CD lying around."

Perhaps I was imagining things, but she seemed a little more distant, a little more withdrawn, after that. I didn't press the issue, but it started to bother me. I didn't know the significance, if there was any at all.

The CD came to an end after an eternity and she put on The Long Winters, and eventually I forgot about the conversation.

dreaming again

It seems every summer there's a few weeks where I start dreaming again.

There's this girl I keep dreaming about; in the dream we were living together in some sort of weird house or hotel. It was new to both of us, both house and living together, and despite the tiny room and the tiny bed we were so happy living there, wherever it was, trying to figure it out together. I can't dream about her without wishing I saw her more often, because in my dreams we're always having fun and everything is just so perfect. I'm afraid to talk to her because nothing can ever be quite like those dreams, where I wake up feeling exhausted but content.

Then there's this dream I had where we were all in some military academy. We were walking back from Davis Square, past Powderhouse, and there was a bus sitting there, running but abandoned. My friends tried to steal it and I tried to stop them, standing in front of the bus, even pushing against it so they couldn't drive. When it became clear they weren't going to stop, I just hung on and begged for them to stop driving. Eventually they couldn't manage a turn, and the bus tipped over, and I broke my arm, and then we were all on trial for stealing the bus, and all of my friends and everyone hated me for stopping them. When I woke up I was cradling my arm like it was broken, and for hours after I had to will myself to stretch my arm so I could remind myself it wasn't broken. It was, as they say, just a dream.

secret rain

I woke up at four in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. It had been thundering off and on all night but it wasn't very noticeable. As I put some water on to make tea and sat down on the couch, though, the sky flashed and a few seconds later there was a rumble of fast-approaching thunder.

I sat down on the couch with my tea and turned the lights off, and it started raining--it wasn't before--harder than I could remember it doing in a long time. The sky kept flashing with lightning. From my living room I could mostly only hear the storm--the beating rain, the thunder, the wind starting to pick up. Occasionally I'd see the flash.

Eventually it calmed down. The thunder passed by, growing increasingly distant, and the rain let up to a more constant drizzle, but for a while I had my own thunderstorm to keep me company in the morning hours.

collapse

When I tried to stand up to go into the kitchen yesterday, my leg didn't work. It just collapsed under me, and I fell rather ingloriously to the floor, harmlessly, but still frightened. I still don't know what happened. My knee was a little numb for a while but it was all right after a while.

But I'd been betrayed. I couldn't trust it anymore. As I walked down the stairs at the subway, every time I bent my leg I wondered if it wasn't going to freeze up again. And then what? Would I catch myself? Would I fall, just like I had before, slowly but unable to stop myself? What would people do? Would they do anything?

I knew I couldn't tell anyone about this. They'd say I need to go to the doctor or that my leg just fell asleep. It happens. You should stop sitting so weird. The thing is I'm not really afraid it'll happen again. They're right. I don't need advice. I need to forget what it's like to lose control like that. Where I don't know what it's like for your body to stop working, to betray you.

The worst part is nothing's changed. No one but me knows, and I'm not doing anything about it. There'll just be those thoughts. Waiting.