I prefer real flowers, even so.
I wrote this late at night on February first. I had received some devastating news, and because Jak was away for a long weekend I was alone. I didn’t post it then, and of course I no longer feel exactly the same as I did, but there’s still truth here, and beauty, so I offer it to you now … whoever ‘you’ may be.
“They’re not real, so they last forever. Isn’t that neat?”
I had Lars and the Real Girl from Netflix but I’d been avoiding it all weekend, thinking it would be bleak and sad, and I just didn’t think I could handle more sadness.
But then I got more sadness anyway, a lot more, and as it got late at night — too late to phone anyone for help — I got desperate for distraction, and tried it anyway. And strangely, it turned out to be really good for me.
Here I am, hating the fact that I hurt so easily and so deeply, wishing that I could just be half-numb like everyone else (comparatively speaking). And then here’s this story about a guy who hurts so much more than I do, so much that he can hardly stand for anyone to touch him with even a single finger. Like the physical pain of skin against skin is more than he can bear. And I think geez, there are a lot of things that hurt me that much, but at least I can still be touched. And okay, that’s part of the problem — my desire to be touched, and loved, is what got me into trouble, maybe what always gets me into trouble (and gods help me the next time someone offers to hold my hand, I might literally run away screaming) — but it’s part of my salvation too.
And I’m feeling the world shrink around me, like every person I lose is one more irreplaceable thing, that the only people I can trust are the ones who’ve been totally solid for a decade or more, and it’s an ever-dwindling number (like what now, two? maybe three?) and once they’re gone I’m just done, because I can’t, I can’t … I just want to curl up in a ball of alone and die.
And there’s this whole community that rallies around this poor guy, embracing something absolutely absurd, because … I don’t know why. Because he’s a sweet guy, I guess. He inspires kindness.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with my life, but it was beautiful.
