Every Skinny Tree

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28 de Octubre 2008

high class enlightened behavior, if you will

this morning at chocolati there is a man sharing the velvet comma shaped chair next to mine, with his dog and they both seem pretty okay.
and also, there is a puppy wrestling match going on between the two little dog brothers (cappy and apollo creed murderface mclovin) who hang out here now. so i keep thinking that it is a good enough day to lay it on the line.
here goes.
i thought i might make a list of all the people who probably read this but then thought better of it. instead i will just explain that there are others out there, who are just like you and me and you don't need to know what they look like (this ins't facebook) and you don't need to know all their favorite shit (this isn't myspace) you just need to know that they are there, or here, rather and that they keep coming back for more.

see, the things i write here are not just for one of you. i think i know you pretty well, Readers, and i only tell you about the things that will be helpful for the plural you. so if you think i wrote this for you, i did, but i also wrote it for at least one other person and the fact that you are reading it on the internet means i put it here so you two or three or 20 could read it at the same time and know that you are with each other.
if i had something to say just to one of you i would write you a letter or send an email or call you up and be with you like that.

while i'm at it, i should explain one more thing:
the skinnytree started as a place to sort of carve my initials above yours. it is a way to tell you all the things i wanted you to know, the nice things and the mean things. it is my way of cutting you and me, who we are, our names and feelings, into something that will eventually grow and change and perhaps hold onto us in spite of ourselves.
i hoped you wouldn't argue when i made a personal dig.
i hoped, suspending my deepest fears of turning in to the narcissist, you would know i wanted you to see it even when i wrote it about someone else. but mostly i knew this would be helpful for me and so i divided the selfish parts into three categories:
help yourself, which is less an invitation and more a command.
helpful, which is the nicest way i can point you in the right direction.
and just in case, which is where i put things i really want you to know even if they are not helpful, kind of just in case you were wondering or just in case i was too mad to articulate
in a helpful way.
and then there is this, which factors in every damn time:
i am becoming more and more resigned to the fact that i have this sort of maddening sensitivity. it is like a sweet tooth that loves to tear up over sour candy, or a wild hair that threatens to ruin all the family photos, or or or...
and so the only way to let you know that you are, regrettably paying dearly to be my friend is to be honest with you.

my feelings are so inconvenient and i know people who can't change, which makes me very afraid that i can't change, and so i should just be honest. if i'm honest with you, you know ahead of time you will have to pay the tax: if you love my sensitivity and brilliance, you will have to sit and cry with me sometimes. and i am quite ashamed when it happens but this is the price we pay.
i must take it or leave it about myself. and i have it on a good authority that i have to live with myself more often than you have to live with me--it might be hardest on me--so spare me your judgmental fears, i have plenty of my own. i have to take a risk and want to be honest enough to tell you i'll be crying under the stairs, take it or leave it, join in or don't, pay the fare or walk.

when you stop trying so goddamn hard to be normal you strike a bargain with others and force yourself to hope, which is where i am today... knowing you are probably there too.
and with those who are unwilling to uphold their end of the bargain you just put up boundaries because you will hurt worse than they will should the fences fail or the walls crumble. but hurt is just hurt and there is God in the hurt.
in her next life my good sensitive friend Donna is going to come back as a thick-skinned, unfeeling jock mindlessly loyal to the home team and drinking in the bleachers.
but for now she says that crying under the stairs is high class, enlightened behavior and we all should be crying under the stairs. she says that buying a home is buying a safe place to cry.
she says that normal is to hide behind the game face which means you will die behind the mask. and that is how you become exhibit a: the failed suicide attempt, bomb building, gun toting, narcissist too much in love with the reflection because you can't see yourself anywhere else and neither can anyone else.
of course, no one has the right to judge madness, i'm not attempting to do that. i'm trying instead to avoid it for myself and to show you who you are to me.

just think of all the things we really ought to feel
sad about
grieve,
mourn:
wouldn't it be understandable if your best friend with all his hangups and traumas went under the stairs and stood there naked, yelling and crying, just for a little while? just imagine how appropriate it would be in light of all the terrible things that we have done to each other? imagine your best friend stripped and bleeding, crying out on behalf of all the worst things we have done, even the things we have left undone. imagine him thirsty and angry but refusing to dry his tears and suck it up.
who am i to say all the crying is finished?
what of the people i love who can't cry for themselves? would it be wrong to consider me a hired hand to mourn? i mean, if i'm going to go cry anyway, you might as well get in on it.

it is who i am:
i prefer passing out halloween candy to buying christmas gifts
i like lots of church on sunday mornings and wiping noses all day long.
i'm into brussel sprouts and beer milkshakes,
for the record i quit smoking pot when i was 20 and yet i can't deny my slight lifelong secondhand and firsthand nicotine addiction.
i am proud to say i fell in through the ice on sarah palin's lake wasilla one time but didn't drown and when i was 13 i kissed a really beautiful boy and then he hid from my mother, in her shower, for half an hour.
i believe in rocktober and autumn leaves, God killed God and
i am working on crying every chance i get because i think it will actually minimize the drama.
i am a poet and pastor: i won't tell you which way to vote but i will tell you i will be with you when democracy fails you.
i like to tickle and
i would take the ocean over greenlake, and stars over snowflakes
i find your accent to be a miraculous wrapping around the gift of your voice.
i admit dance saved my life, fiction is a good vacation and television probably won't kill you.
i maintain that addictions are chemical reactions, psychotherapy works if you show up and running away is a fantasy--it is never going to work the way you thought it might.
in my opinion loving her makes her more beautiful
truth is what happens when you close your eyes and jump
creeks dry up sometimes but not all the time
childhood sticks with you
and grown up is when you are finally able to tell your step parents what is really going on, whether you really love them or don't.

my new friend told me yesterday that her daughter had a great time with me, carving pumpkins at a youth group event, even though i gave her a real knife and she cut so deeply into her middle finger that us leaders were afraid she would need stitches. and it is possible that she had said wonderful time because (what pastor in her right/normal mind would do this?): i figured we needed to blast Green Day's dookie and sing along as i rushed her back to her father so he could assess the damage to the precious mid digit. honestly, nobody needs a middle finger more than a junior higher.
i recommended that the patient watch all the episodes of Joan of Arcadia because it is a show about a girl who gets to talk to God.
lizzle looked at me and said, 'abigail, what would i do without you?'
i immediately fired off a snide comment in response but when i woke up this morning it sunk in.
the gratitude in her face and the honesty in her voice were written on the bedroom ceiling this morning when i opened my eyes.
normal people don't get their friends' daughters sliced open and then recommend canceled television shows.
normal people don't listen when someone asks what they would do without you.
this kind of behavior is reserved for painters, poets, and other crazies, hand picked to help with the sorrow and point out the lovely shitty shit all around:

molly made me my double decaf americano in a 12 oz paper cup: room, no sleeve. she warned me it was really hot and then said, 'you look like you're wearing tight clothes today, you're all sexy, what a hot little figure, who knew?'
the world series was rained out for the first time in history
and i voted for a black president last night.

see, there is a lot going on and it isn't that you have to feel about it all, but i do and even though each day i grow up a little more i will never outgrow feeling, as much as i dislike it as much as you dislike it.

good luck trying to get over getting over it.

if you need help crying over it, i can do that, i think.

help yourself , helpful | By crymytinyflood | 10:09 AM

Comments

Posted by: lizzle at 28 de Octubre 2008 a las 01:35 PM

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