It's been a very tumultuous few days at Chez Forbush (I'm never using that phrase again, just so's you know. Way too much sibilance. It's making me a little bit uncomfortable). I've been doing things with Jobs that are very new and intimidating (I'm going to actually start doing Social Media for people!) and some of my dear friends have taken some pretty heavy blows this week. People going through pain is hard to watch from the outside, especially when they are people close to you and the events that they are feeling pain over (for one reason or another) hit really close to home for you, too.
All the sadness and stress floating around my face like fog has got me feeling very introspective, but also very lucky, too. Lucky, you say? Yes, say I. And, as you probably expect, I'm fixing to tell you why.
There are some people in this world who you just know you have been lucky; honored, even, to know. They fill up a room with their positivity. They've been around your whole life; or it just feels like they have, to the point where you can't imagine a time when they haven't been there. You can talk to them after years and feel like nothing has passed. They're the kind of people of whom the simplest gestures of kindness are remembered for as long as you have breath to tell others the story.
If you're lucky, you have one of these people in your life. I have several. They are friends, mother-figures, and family. And though they wouldn't tell you themselves, they are truly exceptional people. I like to try and pretend that somehow, some part of me is exceptional: if it's not my looks (which it definitely isn't) it's my intelligence and my 3.9 Summa Cum Laude with a cherry on top, if it's not that, it's my wit and vivacity, and if it's not that, well, then, it's my ability to read a freakish number of words per minute (which scares my dad). And if we're scraping the bottom of the barrel, it's the weird little pads on my fingers that I'm almost positive will turn sticky one day and I will don the mantle of Gecko Girl and fight crime in my native city.
Yeah. Like that'll ever happen.
But I'm not exceptional in the way that these people are exceptional, no matter how much I try to be. If you know one of those people, your life is the better for it. And when they're gone from your life, you feel the void. You remember things, like the time they let you stay at their house as a teenager, or the fact that they always went out of their way to ask you how you were doing when you saw them. You remember the way they smiled, the fact that it radiated so much genuine kindness that it made other people's smiles seem cold and forced by comparison.
Sadness and loss makes me realize just how much people matter. I've always tried to practice this philosophy in my day-to-day life, but it's times like these that it gets thrown into sharp relief. Individuals matter. I look at my friends, and without exception every single one of them matters so much to me that it takes my breath away a little. Sure, I've been frustrated by (and DEFINITELY frustrating to) my friends at different times. I've felt lonely and abandoned (if we're being melodramatic) at times, just like every other human on the planet. But I look at this constellation of individuals that make up my little corner of the galaxy, and I mostly just feel incredibly, well, lucky. All the little things--the things that have caused vexation, feelings of pettiness and jealousy, all the little spats to the really big fights--they don't matter, not really. Ultimately, for me, they're forgettable, like the Hobbit Trilogy, or chicken n'waffles flavored potato chips. Because people matter. More than the fights, more than pettiness or jealousy, more than their mistakes.
You'd have to make me really suffer to want to give up the memories I've made with friends over my life. Growing up, co-ops and homeschooling and semi-hippie-sheltered childhoods. Adolescence, the abruptness of quick-changes (backstage and in-body) and the feeling of the hot stage lights on skin, the smell of varnish and high school halls, vulnerably trying so terribly hard to be grown-up, to be genuine. College, late nights in semi-illuminated dorms spinning wild stories off of one another, reading submission after submission of terrible prose, discussions of self-discovery, piano music and watching fireworks from the roof of the parking garage. Getting shattered, feeling numb; but not so numb that I couldn't appreciate how many pairs of hands appeared, trying to help me put what was left of me back together.
And the present time (After College? AC?), though of course I can't quite view the present with the same lens where everything is smooth and glossy and easily encapsulated by a single image. The present has too many jagged edges that my mind habitually tries to skip over. My present, though, is still made up of a lot of those selfsame friends.I'm one of the most flawed people I know, but I will say this: I am fiercely loyal to all of them. Because they're exceptional. They matter to me, so much. I want to hold them all tightly for as long as they'll let me. I'm not very good with loss, or change, and these whole few days have had a particularly elegiac feel to them. I just wanted to put it into words before this present becomes another of those well-eroded memories I keep in my pocket.
I want to remember the way this knowing feels: in spite of how brief a spark our existence is, how messed up we all are, how much we hurt each other; in spite of humanity's flaws and fatal failings, I want to remember for right now, just how much people matter.
And in spite of how crazy these last few days have been, that knowing feels like enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment