It’s a sunny Sunday morning and as a millennial I must mention mental health every few minutes, so I know that the natural light is good for my brain. I think it’s funny how millennials on social media are like my mental health is a dumpster fire -- pretty funny right? I guess it is why people turn racial epithets into a term of endearment. Someone has spraypainted “FJB” on a dumpster in my eyeline. Everyone wants to be heard, I guess. You see a dumpster, I see a canvas, he thought, which is pretty inspiring. BE the dumpster fire.
My church is imploding which I guess is the best thing a church could do because it is so introspective, and shouldn’t we put on our mask first? The noncontroversial masks. I have a lot of shame around it for that same reason, I guess. Its dusting off some deep trauma of feeling validated for my faith and thoughts and feelings and identity that I had forgot about for like a week. We are currently a legit Christian Missionary Alliance church in the paperwork but to the naked eye you would think you were at a brewery where the lights fixtures are old bicycle frames. It’s no one’s fault and to be clear everyone has always been the same, it’s just more visible on the universality of apps. It’s breaking me, if I’m being honest. There is something chemically significant that requires your brain to think your love is unique and it is an insurmountable challenge to face pictures that mamas post of their 3 month old always with the caption “2 weeks late on posting this.” Your generation had polio and we have parents loving their kids. Life is funny, huh? I hate it – not the people, the redundancies (hate the sin, not the sinner).
The denomination is the same as my childhood church where my family of 8 was most of the church and I ran the overhead projector. I’m just realizing where my love for transparent things came from. My church denomination solidarity never afforded me any validity in my parent’s eyes. I can read forehead lines. It had something to do with Obama’s tan suit or something meaningful, perhaps (I’m growing, changing, listening, and learning). Yeah, most of it is political and affects nothing, but casts us both in the role of the representative of two opposing football teams. Our greatest powers are only to hurt and be hurt. It’s so redundant that I hate to even write it. Imagine existing! Oh, the burden, but I know that seeing the redundancy transparently makes me more unique. I’m scrabbling to mount a melting glacier. Maybe social media is the poison and the medicine (poignant!) to hold a mirror up even though that mirror is an actual different human person. I am very vocal about my love for mirror work. I’m Gwenyth Paltrow.
Does this impact the cost of a cup of tea in China? Infernal global economy! Yeah, it probably does. But still, I pray to what I cannot see. It’s the baby boink (smaller than a boom, used with permission). It’s the conspicuous consumption. It’s the pink tabebuia tree in bloom. We must make everything a part of us. I refuse to feel unspecial; I will feel collectively unspecial!
Also, everyone’s elderly relatives are dying this week. My sister who is studying to be a doctor in Chinese medicine said that seniors die at this time of year as it’s cold and I guess a time of death seasonally. My grandfather’s kidneys are failing and if he goes, he would be the fourth old person in my orbit this week that died. Man, that curtain falls in the middle of whatever. Me and three of my five siblings visited Lakeland Regional along with my parents. It’s a temple of death where the floors are about an inch deep in your brother’s tears, a slipping hazard. It was sudden, my wife and I canceled our early romantic valentine Italian dinner. My dad ordered six coffees from the cafeteria and my grandpa had one sip with us in ceremony. It was collectively unspecial and it was life and it was how you feel when the sun is in your eyes, kind of annoyed.
Family and friends are the most redundant. It’s like a house of mirrors. While it can be a challenge to navigate, it can be fun to just sit cross-legged and look at yourself from each angle, depending on your levels of self-loathing that day. I recently saw a scar on a friend’s face. It wasn’t me. That is fine, usually, but it reminded me of someone who scarred me and it felt impossible to evacuate. I could pull the fire alarm but that would be dramatic. The longer I looked at his face, I slowly realized it was in fact mine and I just had just forgotten what I looked like. It was healing in a way like what I imagine it must feel like to smell a vagina candle. Or maybe “you broke your own heart” isn’t as helpful as I had hoped? Live, laugh, love.
No comments:
Post a Comment