Paperclips, sonny

I want nothing more than to believe in people. “Woo Sarah!” is what I cried louder than everybody in the entire room when my friend Sarah crossed the gym-manorium stage to do some type of 1st grade band performance, I genuinely don’t remember what it was. What I remember is all the kids who laughed and made fun of me for months after that, re-enacting it over and over again, because even though talking to girls was necessary, actually liking them was still rather taboo back then. These were the first bricks being laid in the foundation of what would become a childhood-long narrative of me being “weird”. But I never really cared. I did and said what I had to for the sake of harm reduction, but I never really cared. I believe in people. Silently, smilingly, from the roots of my heart to the buzzing in the bottoms of my feet to straight out my eyes. More loudly now, but I can trace the line all the way back through my earliest memories; the excitement, the thrill, the joy of believing in people; my friend Sarah walking across that stage.

I don’t like to talk about people’s pasts. Mainly because that’s not who’s in front of me. We were all someone before, individually and collectively. They aren’t in right now. Plus. Plus, I’ve found that people use their pasts in perturbing ways. Some see their pasts as peaks that they’re trying desperately to get back to. Or run away from. Worse, some see their pasts as justifications. They make me uncomfortable, and then I react, and then talk about their pasts, almost as if their pasts mean freedom from anything questionable they do. And when they want me to understand their pasts, to know their pasts as nicely as I know their present, it rings like the broad side of a stormfront. Because why? Why is it so important that I know so intimately a story that is no longer true? There’s always a reason, and it’s almost always one that favors justifications for not-okay things, or attempts to soften a blow that could simply not have been given.

In case you couldn’t visualize the “broad side of a stormfront”

My head is full of snot today. I can feel it in there behind my eyes and nose. Like termites. Nom nom yum yum, eating all the space. Get out of there termites, it’s June for fuck’s sake. Summer sicknesses always seem to bring introspection for some reason. Probably because it’s summer and you’re not supposed to get sick in the summertimes, so if you do there must be a reason — I say, laughing at myself a little bit on the inside. But now the introspective thoughts are running short, and the extro-spective thoughts are coming through again. The week I’ve had. The people I’ve had hard conversations with. The one I still may have some friction with coming up, the one with whom the impact of the friction hasn’t withdrawn just yet (and it sucks because around that time I sensed an affection growing between them and someone else, and that warms my heart and makes me wants to celebrate and I loved to celebrate them to their face). All the joy I want for both of them, despite how much they have hurt me. The way I want to believe in them, and the ways I do. I just want them to do it all not at my expense, and I’m done asking for that.

Everything is so messy, and my nails are so long, and my hair is getting long again, and the days are getting long again, and my oh my I thought the solstice was coming up but it was four days ago. Wild. Lovely. The tigers are out to play somewhere. Winter is going on somewhere on the beaches of the ocean. Cabo Verde could advance to the knockout stage today and continue their stunning debut. Venezuela; just fucking yikes for people in Venezuela.

Like I said. Paperclips. Paperclips and believing in people.