We've Got Five Years, or: It's February 4th Somewhere

Five years?

Five years!

I miss David Bowie every day. I'm not kidding. Has there ever been anyone who gave fewer fucks and still managed to make the world fall in love with him? He's my aspirational spirit animal, and I'm giving myself FIVE YEARS to become him.

Because right now... well, right now I....

...I really never thought I'd run out of words.

Language is my sharpest tool. It rules my days, my brain, my sleep. But, you know, now I'm finding myself considering how silly it is to think that words could ever put color to something that just is, to something that feels so incontrovertibly true that why should I have to explain it at all?

For example: "There is air. We breathe it."

Or: "You've hurt me."

Or: "I'm so fucking happy to be alive and I just want to live more boldly."

On Wednesday I took myself out to the theatre alone, and I relished in how adult it felt to buy theatre tickets, bring a book, and read in the beautiful opulence of a CULTURAL CENTRE in San Francisco solo, when, lo and behold, a friend from elementary school and her crew of six friends happened to be sitting in the same row as me. I should have been happy to see them. What a coincidence to all be sitting in the same row of the same play on a rainy Wednesday night in February! I should have taken her excited hug and happy chatter as a source of comfort. But, instead, when she asked me, "How are you?" I wanted to...

...not use any words at all.

I wanted to take a strand of my feeling from the depths of my brain (is that where feelings live?) and implant it into hers so that she could get a sense of the somatic answer to her question. I wanted to tell her that I wished we could all have those nifty Pensieves from Harry Potter so that we could watch the same movies of our lives, digest them, and say, "Hey, I saw that too, and I understand."

I wanted her to see that my mom grew up in a police state and I never thought I would too. I wanted her to see that I had maybe fucked up another love affair and was approaching thirty without the sense of mooring I thought I'd have by now. I wanted her to see that I have such a hard time trusting new people that I build walls a thousand miles high and then stand on the other side of them and ask, in despair, "Why can't you come through?"

So, what I said in answer to her question was, "I'm good! How are you?"

But it's a lot better than I would have done five years ago.