SPECIFICITY

I think there is nothing more lovely than the specificity with which I am loved. After yesterday’s discussion with my college friend and my purging into the last entry, I decided to surround myself with the birthday cards my beloveds have sent me. Normally, I would have hopped online, shot off a few emails of “ugh, I’m feeling very not okay” and had supportive replies but my computer is in the shop and it’s a Sunday (10/15) which means I’m feeling too lazy to get all my grocery shopping done, finish my week’s preparation and then spend hours hunting down a internet cafÈ.

Instead, I caressed the notes from home and thought about my favorite Tori Amos lyric, “So then I thought I’d make some plans, but fire thought she’d really rather be water instead.” I have always known that I am that tempestuous fire whose will fuck everything up. Just like my maternal grandmother, I very much need to be reigned in from time to time. My Chinese horoscope is a horse and it is fitting in that the horse cannot be made to stay still. “She is a thing of great beauty who must always be free to run” was how my precocious college friend explained it. I just never thought I’d have people who were fully aware of that and would still love me.

Aside from the lovely sentiments passed along, two of the most important people to me both quoted me back to me in their letters. One “borrowed” the way I sign my letters to them. That letter results in the written equivalent of a bear hug. The other quoted a conversation of great specificity about what is most important to me in our friendship. That letter results in a swelling of peace.

I eviscerate myself textually for public consumption in the hopes that someone might, someday, find my words and feel less alone or feel connected to something previously inaccessible. I write to provide the things for which I read; company, perspective and knowledge. The written words of others are what saved me in some of my darker chapters. I never thought my own words could be used to make me feel less alone. However, the specificity with which I am loved provides me such serenity that even when I am drowning in a culture unprepared to handle the inherent challenges of my mere existence, I still sleep well at night.