Then everything becomes less symbolic. The shadows cast are not some premonition of good or evil, just the gentle outline of the ordinary--the kitchen chair, a vase, a shoe in the foreground.
Suddenly, life becomes real. The warm feeling in my belly, the strength I feel after several shots of gin, the mess in my apartment, my unwashed hair, a stack of unpaid bills, the unanswered message, the dryness in my mouth, my garbled half speech, my warbling sing-along voice. It's symptomatic. It's pathologic.
When I was 16 and just a set of inexact words, I remember lying in bed half way across the world listening to the only album that mattered and mouthing the words, looking for some semblance of meaning. My mother yelling, my father crying for the only time I've seen him do so. I walked off into the world that I hoped would engulf me. And in all this, I am not thinking of what it is I am feeling but verb and tense.
Thinking back I was a mess: still reeling. The world set me off kilter. Towers crashing, smoking in alleyways, thinking things could only be better or worse from here on in. I sat in a counselor's chair trying to align it together. She smiled slightly, asked me if I ever thought about medication, asked me if i ever thought about dying. What is the human experience like for those who don't?
What could a 27 year old version of me say to a 16 year old version of me? Maybe there is no such thing as better or worse. I can cut my hair and brave through though. A man can tell me about growing up in a refugee camp, trim the ends and tell me, well, it wasn't nearly as bad as that. A child can play behind barbed wire as easily as he can on open astroturf. He tells me about growing orchids in his home these days.
What can 27 year old me, who is beautiful and broken and aging and too wonderful and too awful, but likely just mediocre, say about anything? I'm just all these cheap rags and too much eyeliner, garbled words and inexact feelings. I haven't figured out a way to be right just less overtly wrong.
What does 27 year old me have on 16 year old me except a sense of longing that is deeper? My father once told me growing up that a man can love a woman who is pretty and nods when he speaks but an intelligent woman would always want more. Or worse, because in truth, he doesn't tell me this but says it'll never be easy for me because I don't know how to do either. I am still reeling from this but sometimes I just want the warmth of someone pressed closely against me.
In my apartment, I wish I could work or break or cry but I haven't found a way to do any of this.
