Uncharacteristically, I returned a phone call exactly when I said I would- to a dear friend I met and grew to know during my study abroad trip in Germany. We don't talk often, and didn't even hang out that much in Germany... but somehow we've always been connected on a deep, mystical sort of level, and I've always appreciated how raw she is with the world, how she just fights and fights... I don't know. I feel like I am always letting the world overcome me, happen to me. I feel like she is the kind of human who happens to the world. Admirable.
Last night when I returned her phone call, I told her things I haven't said out loud to anyone in my entire life... things I didn't know I could express to anyone else. And she just listened and knew, talked and understood. Two and a half hours passed and I was hungry and had to pee so bad and still couldn't let myself give her excuses to hang up the phone because I needed to hear her talk as much as she needed me to listen. I needed somebody to put it all away for once, to fall apart, to let me catch them. Not even like a this-is-how-I'm-feeling conversation... but this-is-who-i-am-and-what-am-i-to-do-with-it thing. Talking about all the things I think about alone all day every day. I don't feel any different based on this conversation, just maybe more safe and less alone. I feel like the most important thing, though, is that during that conversation, that was all that was happening for me--- that was where I was, this was what I was doing. I love Meaghan Elam for reminding me how to love the conversation more than fear humanity. It was so beautiful to connect in this way and so beautiful to be reminded that it's all so easy after all, just requires a little bit of pushing... and encouragement.
The truth is, when I get home every day, I want to tell somebody what the sky looked like on the way home, how the elevator smells like laundry, how I feel about Henry Miller and Anais Nin. I want to ask anyone how they felt the first time they remembered being naked in front of someone else, if they've ever felt the sunshine inside of someone else, if they remember how to read a mind. I want to break down all the walls, to scratch everything til it rips. I just want to have someone to fumble with again, like how we all did before, like how we still do for moments when we forget how scared we are. Like how Austin and I did on our way to Carrollton, fumbling together in growing up... Like how Kristyn and I still don't know how to be apart.... like how my family has been doing for my whole life... I just want to take it to the next level, to say out loud more often... "aren't we just fumbling?" I want to live in a little house where I can come home every day and say stimulate me... tell me something new, teach me how to live again, remind me why I bother.
I wonder sometimes if I told you the truth...
