If you made it to 30something and you don't look like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, on the inside at least, then I think you either won the cosmic lottery or you've been hiding yourself very, very well.
I don't envy the laundry list of wishes and regrets you might run through on your deathbed if you're the latter: the conditional past tense is my worst enemy, not caution, I'm sutured back together with embroidery floss, duct tape, and even in places, real stitches. You aren't part of this, and it's not directed at you.
As for the cosmic lottery winners, I actually know at least one of you. I'm good with your kind, if and only if you know just how damned lucky you got. Or you give God the credit. Whatever's cool with me, as long as you know you won something.
I'm not digressing into that; I have A Point this time. I think so, anyway...sort of.
I have about 11 things I am dying to tell a friend of mine, who isn't so much hiding at the moment as retreating. There is a difference, Imaginary Constant Reader. I'd like very much to be 19 for half a day so I could...
No, no, I wouldn't.
Okay, so he's retreating, this friend, and this is acceptable behavior. It's kind of my fault. I made the easiest mistake to make if you actually care about someone else, the person-kind of someone else: I tried to stitch up his wounds for him. Of course, that's scary.
My first clue that something wasn't right was not his sudden silence, but a slight case of stigmata. No, that's not all that figurative: in the middle of a day of way too much mutual self-revelation, a ten-month old scar of mine started bleeding. I didn't even scratch it, but so what if I did? Those eighteen stitches were perfect; I went to the professionals for that one.
I took a picture, but anyone I've tried to send it to just gets a blank message, not this picture of the blood on the spot where Stitch #17 once held my skin together. Don't tell my shrink, okay?
My second clue was a two-sentence day, followed by another. I was completely cool about this. I put all the pieces together immediately, overnighted some dental floss, rubbing alcohol, and a sewing needle to the frightened friend, and...
I'm fucking with you. I panicked. It had to be something I said or something I did, right? Or better yet, a great and terrible external force of evil was trying to fuck up one of mine, so I'd better get all the details so I could sew my fairy wings back on real quick like and get to the rescue. Or transform from a (reasonably) regular girl into an old god--that could work, too, but I might lose a smidge of emotional intelligence, and I think we bipeds are shy on that, anyway.
It's starting to seem really obvious now, isn't it? Yeah, that's because it's not your cautionary tale, asshole.
Buffy once said that a cry for help is yelling "help" in a really loud voice. He didn't do that. On the contrary, he said in the nicest possible way that he wants to be left the fuck alone. (Read: he left "the fuck" out of that statement.)
And that is far, far out of my area of expertise. I like fixing things, and ending fights, and making people laugh and drink the tea I made on really bad days.
Now count how many times I've used the word "I" thus far, not even including the me, my, mine. And don't give me any shit about the fact that I'm living in a neverending television series, 'cos I won't be making an appearance in this episode.
Well, that frees up at least one day this weekend.
Maybe I should go take a CPR class, then hang around places that serve fatty food. Or look into some EMT classes.
Or use that dental floss and sewing needle on myself, since my sweet friend just unknowingly ripped the duct tape off a very old and nasty wound of my own.
I'm not done, but I am tired of sitting in the same spot, and I want a cigarette, so we can come back to this later. Not next year, but at least after I retract my wings, sit the fuck down again, and stop trying to be a Comic Book Hero.
Thanks for that, Little Gypsy.
No comments:
Post a Comment