Life is Long.

I hurt easy, I just don't show it

You can hurt someone and not even know it

The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity

-bob dylan, "things have changed"

Life is long. It is so long. I get it, "if you don't stop and look around once and a while, you'll miss it." Whatever, Ferris. I challenge you to think this instead — "if you don't look around and reflect and think about the future, you'll live your life without feeling the pressure of how daunting it is." 

Life is long. It is so long. I often forget about just how fucking long it is. There are full days I have no recollection of, there are full years I am told I lived. There are moments that last forever, days that won't end and feelings that never fade. Life is so long. It is so long.

It's so long that it stresses me out. Simply continuing to exist is this huge burden sometimes. It's a huge burden because there are so many instances to fuck it up. Every moment is a moment you can wreck everything you've worked for. Split seconds, that's what we get to make decisions that effect this whole long life. This incredibly long life.

You can fuck up your body, you can fuck up your mind, you can ruin someone else's life, you can taint the world with your very existence. There are so many opportunities to wreck everything, and it just seems like the bad far outweighs the good sometimes.

And, it's not fair. It's not fair how easy it is to destroy everything.

Even something as simple as weight gain or loss. Someone eats a hamburger, slurps a milkshake, they skip a work out, take the bus instead of ride a bike — our bodies suffer the consequences. Then someone eats a salad, drinks a glass of water, hits the gym, and rides a bike on their way there — our bodies are better for it, but you have to do that 10-1. What unfair odds.

I think of Adam Sandler in one of my favorite films, Big Daddy, as he chats with his new 5-year-old friend about eating. He makes the insanely accurate, and thus hilarious comment, "I drink a milkshake and my ass jiggles for like a week."

This life is so long, and lopsided. People remember the bad things said about them, they gloss over the good. You do it. I do it. Let's call an apple an apple.

Why do we do this? Life is too long to do this. Whether your life is 10 years or 100 years, every moment counts, so stop doing this. I'm in my twenties, and sometimes I feel as if I have been here forever. And it's this weight of knowing that even my own body will fail me, even my own mind will leave me, everything I have isn't mine — and that makes life feel so long.

Summer in the city

It's 4:00 a.m. and so incredibly hot. You know, that sticky kind of heat that not even the best fan can break up. She's been moving from her bedroom to the living to the bedroom and back again, a short respite in a cool shower, and then snap to a few hours later. It's time to start the day. So says the sun.

It's 6:37 a.m. and already she's tired of this day. There are dishes in the sink, collecting quickly, gnats finding a home where they previously didn't exist. An empty bottle of Palmolive sits on the edge of her grubby sink. A grim scene if any parent were to walk in unexpectedly.

"Oh, Kimberly May, this is just--" and her mother would cut herself off, because she knew her dismay said more than any more words could. Ah, tone of voice. The careful decision to use her daughter's first and middle names. Disappointment, a feeling Kim knows well.

About a month earlier, it was probably 11:54 p.m. on a week night, Kim had called it quits with a guy she barely could say she was seeing casually. Or, put another way, if someone had given her a plus one to a wedding she would think about inviting this guy, but wouldn't because in the end the relationship had no legs to stand on. She tried not to be so cynical at the start of it, but that's hard, so with each passing day her defeatism grew into an inevitability, well, a defeat.

So, now it's noon on a Saturday. The week ended as quickly as it began. Thankfully so. She woke up late, having been out til the wee hours working the night before. She woke up alone, sticky in the summer heat. There's no room for anyone in this home, void of an air-conditioner, anyway. Sweat. Solo. Summer.

"Summer in the city, I'm so lonely lonely lonely I've been hallucinating you, babe, at the backs of other women And I tap on their shoulder and they turn around smiling But there's no recognition in their eyes " -Regina Spektor, Summer in the City

Readjusting Revitalization

The Weepies, "World Spins Madly On"
Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
and let the world spin madly on

Everything that I said I'd do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly on

I let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I'm standing still

Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
The night is here and the day is gone
And the world spins madly on

I thought of you and where you'd gone
And the world spins madly on.

This time of year usually has me in its grasp. It usually has me feeling fresh, renewed, ready for the next best thing. Spring. All this talk of college graduation has me struggling though. I already did all that. I was revitalized — this time last year. But what about this time this year — now? It seems the world is spinning madly on without me.

I find that I am so fickle in these life choices I'm failing each day at making.

During mass yesterday Father McGovern talked about competition. He spoke of how we compare ourselves to everyone, our friends, our family, our schoolmates. It's the way of capitalism, I suppose. But he made the genuine point that we should not only abstain from doing that, but instead take our talents, gifts, etc. and use them not for our own glory, but for God's. Sort of a "the first becomes last and the last becomes first" deal. I mean, I've always thought about that as a given. I've always wanted to do my best. The only thing I never thought of was the notion that all my life I've viewed the concept of "My Best" as in comparison to others. As if I could not possibly have achieved my best without beating Jimmy, Johnny and Jenny.

Now more than ever I am realizing certain qualities about myself that seem to be coming out more often. I am an extremely jealous person, and that is not good. Listening to The Weepies wallow in the idea that the world is spinning madly on without us had me feeling like I wasn't just jealous that others are moving on in this world, but that they get to. For some reason or another, and I suppose I'll figure it out soon enough, I am feeling held back. I never thought of myself as a person who was afraid, but now I am. I need that sense of revitalization that abounded throughout me as commencement approached last year.

Becoming renewed to me always meant becoming something new. What I didn't quite catch was the "re" part. Meaning, being made new again, taking our old self and reworking it to be new, not getting rid of the old, just adjusting. I need an adjustment. I just don't know how yet.