I see you.
I see you. I see you sitting there. There, with the kind of look eyeliner or a new shade of lipstick doesn’t cover up. Some call it longing, you call it restlessness. A listless feeling that where you are is not where you want to hang up your coat and stay a while. Nobody will notice, you think.
You fake a smile back at me that could be genuine if you went three degrees to the left. A laugh that feels genuine until you think about it later.
Be in the present? To try that would be to consciously exit all the parts of your brain that are churning, and to enter a door with people you never know anything about. Your brain is your little closet of words and memories, of reminders of the things you could say and be. The present is only a vehicle for some better tomorrow, a tomorrow you hope will come faster than your alarm. I see you, though. I see you right before that fake laughter, the way your body always lean towards the window like a plant heading to light. You like the light. You know light dispells darkness.
Welcome to the generation of wishes. The I miss you. The ‘somebody’s got to be able to express the things I’m feeling so I don’t feel so alone.’ It’s the feeling that makes you misquote the poetry of people who lost love in the exact sentiment you feel like you lost love. You stare at pictures of yourself and remember the moments you weren’t so hurt or weren’t so lost and had that killer concert tee you think you left somewhere. It’s a person, it’s not a person, it’s the uncomfortable numb that times were better in moments you’re not exactly in now. It’s what happens when you have a whole week of days where nothing happens—no upwards motions, just little conversations that lack bite, of whole Tuesdays that pass without you noticing. It is a sit and wait. It is a ‘please get more interesting.’ It is driving you crazy.
It’s also this feeling of messing up. The feeling of being on your own without the tools to guide you to the spot you’re supposed to be, only because there was never a spot you were supposed to be. And again, it’s the constant longing. A homesick without having a home, the decision to ignore the home you have now.
When did we start to feel this way? I’d say around the time of uncertainty, around the exact time somebody handed us our lives and a piece of paper that somehow indicated we were “adults” now. You had no footing. You wish you did. The last few months, years for some, have been little moments of routine, of the hike trail to the life you might have somewhere far away and distant. Where there is a somebody, there is a secure job, there is a bank account and a home with actual furniture, and books, and reccords. A beam of light in the eyes of 36 and cardigan sweaters you finally found.
There is the ignorance of the present. You, on the tightrope of yesterday where things were simple, walking towards the things you think will happen. You don’t look down. You see neither the ground or the string. You are stuck somewhere in the back of your mind, because there is nowhere safer to go.
I just want to say I see you…
The bottomless pit you’ve been ignoring is still there, but this time you need to feel the fear of being alive. This time you need to feel. Feel things. Good things. Bad things.
Face it. Head on. Stop thinking of yesterday, or tomorrow, or any other day that is not today. Consider this day, in all of it’s sadness and terrifying moments and potential slips on ice. See all the things you have. Look, and marvel. Being alive and young is something that only happens right now. It’s not 16. It’s now. If you don’t, the rest of your years will be filled with the longings of this day, of this today, when you forgot who you were but you stepped outside of yourself, got some air, cleared your head, had a serious come to Jesus meeting…and reminded yourself who you want to be.
The view is lovely, my dear. It is so nice, and so deep, and so scary.
Wish you were here.
