Just Being
Sometimes it’s so lonely to be trapped in a singular body. Until it isn’t. And you go out dancing, dressed in white, again, and again, and again.
I’m not sure when I realized that being a human would never be a fixed experience. Or something to be fixed.
Yesterday, I dried my undergarments with a hairdryer because they were the only pair that wouldn’t show through the white knit skirt I’d planned on wearing out to eat pizza covered in peppery red sauce — pressing the crust between oily fingers til it cracks, tomato catching at the corners of my mouth, puckering at the cold slip of gin and tang of brine. I save the olive for the end.
Someone even remarked upon the fact that I was brave to wear white. I didn’t spill a drop, but still came home sweat slicked from dancing, my feet aching, gratefully, the salt gathered at the nape of my neck, curls just starting to form.
I came home to find red and blue ink stamped upon my skin, bleeding beneath the tips of my nails, which I scrubbed until white crescent moons appeared, the skin scalded. A bright bruise by my knee from the edge of a pool table, what a joy it is to laugh that hard in public and not care what you look like doing so.
Those kinds of nights make it much easier just to exist. Let me explain. Because you are not worried, you are gloriously, accidentally present, and there’s no room for comparison or much weight to concern.
My best friend will soon have a baby, and when I close my eyes, I can still picture the way her little boy’s hands looked when I first held him. The weight of his existence, his tiny yawning mouth, his woeful cry, his body pink from being pushed through, pulled out, into the world, painfully, frighteningly, wonderfully.
No one chooses to be born, and then one day, every decision is yours. And I wonder all the time how some people just seemingly have their whole lives together. And what the hell “together” actually looks like when you’ve been on your own for so long, has been ringing through my body since well before I could write my way through the confusion, confidence, exhaustion, and exhilaration that goes into being alive. Sometimes it’s so lonely to be trapped in a singular body. Until it isn’t. And you go out dancing, dressed in white, again, and again, and again.
