I am Sleepless

I pull the door shut and collapse onto the toilet and cry so hard my body gets the wrong message and decides I need to poop. I sit there with legs apart, wracked with sobs, and try and pull it together. To at least be quiet enough that airport security doesn’t get the wrong idea and kick down the door in an effort to locate and remove the crazy person.

I’m sure this is one of those memories that in years to come I’ll look back on and find hilarious. For now, it hurts like a knife to the guts.

Pulling it together takes a long time.

I never write about stuff like this, merely allude. Paint around the edges and move on. The private is private and the public is public and to break down that line and erase the distinction takes courage I have never had.

She wasn’t like that. For her, it was always out in the open. She would bare her heart for everyone to see, and then email the text to her family. I can’t do it, not yet, maybe not ever. I aspire, and have always aspired, to write as freely as she does. To cut so close to the heart.

She talks down her energy, but the truth is when she is on, she is radiant. It is a near tangible thing: a crackling whirlwind of youthful enthusiasm and unconditional love. An energy, self-contained.

We talked about the skin on our hands, dry and hard on the inside of our fingers.

“I think it’s just getting old, you know. I think we’re just getting old. Next time you’re back, back home, look at your parent’s hands. Feel them. My dad’s hands feel like paper.”

But we are not old. We are young, and the world is ahead of us.

Posted in Mwah on Monday March 24, 2008.