I feel everything so deeply.
I feel sadness like boulders crushing my lungs, I feel happiness like hot rays of sunshine bursting out of my skin, I stare in awe at beautiful things with tears so heavy in my eyes that I can no longer see at all, I feel love as an urge to hold this person inside my skin and swallow them whole, I feel hurt like my heart is being wrung out and bled dry, and I feel the weight of the infinity of life and all its glorious possibilities so heavily I forget how to even take a breath.
I have risked my life behind the wheel of my car so many times trying to capture pictures of the sky because it was just so overwhelmingly gorgeous in the moment that I needed to savor it forever. I want to hold everything in the palm of my hands and squeeze it so tightly and never let go. I kiss the stuffed bear I’ve owned for 20 years on the forehead tenderly when I walk past her sitting on my bed. Seeing new grays in my dad’s hair in a picture he posted to facebook makes my heart ache in the worst way. I cry so, so hard at weddings, even when I hardly know the bride or the groom. Saying goodbye to my old best friend when she would visit me in college for a weekend brought me to tears every time she left. I wave to cows every time I drive past them even though I know they don’t see me and are indifferent to my existence as a whole. I drive down streets I’ve never been on and marvel at them like I’ve traveled to a new country. It’s truly a miracle I have never crashed my car with the way I stare in wonder at everything I pass.
Spring especially makes everything so damn beautiful that I have to hold back tears of joy every time I wake up and look out the window. Greens have never looked so green, the sky has never been so blue, rain has never looked so lovely, night has never felt so crisp. The first breaths of spring taste like I’ve never been alive before right now. It’s so hard to contain these feelings to words alone.
Right now, I’m sitting in a coffee shop that’s just shy of perfect to me- ugly old couches, bizarre art for sale on the walls, twinkle lights dangling above the cash register, ceramic garden gnomes and skeletons in overalls decorating the shelves, tables that don’t match, a mannequin dressed in pajamas peeking through the ceiling rafters for no particular reason. It’s ugly in the best way, cozy like my grandma’s house, and eclectic in a way that feels like it’s taken years to collect the most perfectly bizarre knick knacks to tie the space together. It’s the kind of coffee shop I’ve been looking for ever since I moved hundreds of miles away from my old favorite coffee shop. I take these places very seriously.
As I sit by the window, I can't help from watching a group of old friends drinking coffee on the patio. The sidewalks are rain kissed and dark blue. If you could peel back one thin layer of grey clouds it would be a sunny day, but the sky insisted on being overcast. The air is a delicious mix of warm and wet, but the breeze is cool and carries a fresh grassy scent. No one else was brave enough to sit outside, but I watched one of the old couples dry the rain off of every chair with a towel before their friends arrived. They opened the table umbrella to protect themselves from impending rain or sun (no one could be certain which would happen first) and greeted their friends with a hug and a smile so big I could cry. I took a picture of them. I know I shouldn’t have without their permission, but I couldn’t help but show my friends the evidence I found for how long a friendship lasts.
Last week at the restaurant I work at, I served a party of twenty little old ladies. They arrived one by one, photo albums in hand, and greeted each other with giant hugs and excited smiles. They spent the afternoon flipping through the albums, showing each other pictures of kids and grandkids, reminiscing and catching up.
I noticed one woman had been scrambling around getting everyone else together for a photo, but she wasn’t in any herself. I offered to take a group picture before they left and she gratefully handed me her phone. I made them all huddle together and say, “cheese!” as they giggled. When I handed the phone back to her, I asked what they were celebrating. She said they all used to work together when they were teens and hadn’t seen each other in decades.
If there was ever a doubt that friendship could last forever, I had the proof.
I hoped the group photo I took would be printed out and put into a new photo album. I hoped they would keep in touch, maybe return to the Old Spaghetti Factory once more and reminisce again. I hoped that when I was seventy-five I would be reunited with my old coworkers from a place I worked when I was eighteen and we would share pictures of our grandkids and smile and laugh and some poor waitress would offer to take our photo.
Friendships are often very difficult, as I have learned in my short time being alive so far. There is a learning curve that I’m not quite accustomed to yet, as I adjust to this post-college “real world” that everyone spoke of. No one is on the same schedule at all, or even in the same state. Some of us work nine to five, others five to nine, some work weekdays, some work weekends, some work doubles, some work two jobs, some poor souls juggle three jobs, some work from home, some travel across the country on a Tuesday just to turn around and come back on Wednesday.
It’s insanity trying to find a single day of the month to get all of the people you once hung out with on a daily basis together. It is possible, it just takes a lot of communication and patience. My friends attempted to use a google calendar to cut through the chaos, but it was no use. Those of us with odd jobs who wait for weekly schedules have no choice but to plan each week on a day by day basis. It took begging and pleading and bartering to get one Saturday off at my job so that I could celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday this weekend. Even then, I had to send work calls to voicemail as they attempted to persuade me to pick up a shift. No thanks.
All week, I had been counting down the days until I was off the clock and out with my friends. I daydreamed about all the fun things we would do- we would drink, and catch up on everything, and shout “cheers” over a round of shots, and stay out until the bar kicked us out, and make memories that would last a lifetime!
I think the anticipation was accidentally my downfall (re: “don’t get your hopes up”). It was similar to the feeling you get when Christmas is over and you’re left with a beautiful tree and Santa’s rosy cheeks smiling down at you, but the strange lingering feeling that there should have been something more to feel. Not that the presents weren’t perfect and the people you love most were all gathered together, but something about the build up of Christmas carols and decorating and shopping and Hallmark ads just makes you feel like the whole day of Christmas should feel like fireworks in your heart. But then you sit back at the end of the day and realize it was just another day, really.
It poured rain when we planned to sit on an outdoor patio, it was too loud to talk to everyone at the table, and I ran out of conversation topics about thirty minutes into our hang out. I spent too much time in my brain overthinking every interaction I had. I froze up. I wandered around an arcade alone, wondering where all my friends were. My girlfriend happily sat by herself at one of those coin pushing games, trying to knock down all of the Spongebob character cards to collect 2,000 bonus arcade points. I ended up sitting in the Main Event bathroom, reading substack articles while my friends disappeared somewhere and reappeared incoherently drunk.
I was underwhelmed. My girlfriend was unbothered by all of this, just happy to be at the arcade. I wish I was more like her. She doesn’t need to drink to have fun. She just has fun. She doesn’t constantly need to seek the approval of the other girls, she doesn’t overthink and freak out, she doesn’t get pressured to drink too much and then throw up on the floor, or get so high that she cries in the bathroom. Instead, she was zen and focused and collected all eight Spongebob cards and walked out with so many prizes we needed two bags to carry them home.
I wish that I did not care about being liked. I wish that I did not feel an obsessive need to be included in everything in order to feel validated. I wish that I was not jealous that all of my friends were moving into a five bedroom house in the city together. I wish that I did not find out that all my friends got brunch the following morning and did not invite me. I wish I did not live thirty minutes away from my best friend, who has since made new best friends, and I am now an afterthought when it comes to making plans. I know that she loves me, when we get together the world still feels right and everything still falls into place. It’s just that the gaps between seeing each other get longer and longer the older we get.
When I choose to not live in the moment, and instead live inside the rabbit hole in my head, I am actively choosing to disconnect from the people around me. But I can’t seem to find a way to stop it. I let my insecurities win. My anxiety has already decided that the worst case scenario is true and that these girls really do hate me, and created a divide between myself and the people I wish to be close to. I want to tear down my walls and have meaningful conversations and connect with my friends in the way that they seem to connect with each other. But I find myself tongue tied and clammed up and wound so tightly in my own brain that I can’t even think of how to ask a normal human question to a person that I have known for over three years.
I crave love and acceptance so badly it aches.
I text my long distance friends about how much I miss them at least twice a month to remind them that I still think about them and care deeply for them. I still text my friend from high school on his birthday even though he doesn’t remember mine. I haven’t seen him in maybe two years since we graduated college together, but I still think of him when I watch Adventure Time. I send my friend in New York sporadic messages telling her I thought of her and sometimes a week goes by and she will respond to tell me she misses me as well, but life is so crazy and time just runs away from us. These people don’t have to miss me, the world does not owe me anything.
I don’t know what I’m grasping at trying to let people know that I think about them. I want it to come from a place of love, but is it quietly from a place of loneliness and desperation? Am I “stuck in the past” for thinking fondly of these people I no longer really know? Do I need to just move on? I don’t think I’ve ever truly gotten over anything in my life. Am I keeping alive a friendship that only exists in my mind, perfectly preserved in the last place and time I saw them? Does it even really matter if they find me desperate? I would be flattered if any one of my friends reached out to me with a short, sweet “miss you!” text. I would be so fucking excited if any of the people I worked with when I was eighteen arranged a dinner party to catch up in fifty years. I feel so childish for loving so deeply, arms outstretched to anyone who will let me, and yet, I feel so estranged from the people I cherish. Love is so embarrassing.
I do not give out my love expecting it to return ten fold. I love because there is no other choice.
I cannot help but fall in love with everyone who has ever come into my life for even a single fleeting moment because that is the only way I know how to live.
I think it’s so horribly cliche that every Pixar movie ever ends with the power of love saving the day, tying everything together with rainbow ribbons and happily ever afters, but at the same time, what other force is there in life that is stronger than the power of love? The power of giving a fuck. Lightning McQueen was a miserable man/car(?) who had everything going right in his life, and yet, he couldn’t enjoy it because he had no one to share his joy with.
Life is not worth living if you don’t share your joys with the people you care about. This is the thesis on which philosophers have died for, the foundation of which the pyramids were built, the message that hundreds of self help books are trying to sell you, the dissertation of Woodstock, the fact that Rome was not built in a day, nor was it built by one man alone. We need people. People need each other. Civilization would collapse and life as we know it would cease to exist if every single person did everything all by themselves.
Love is the answer, love is the key, loving yourself, loving others, loving your friends and family, loving your life, that’s the whole fucking deal. That’s all this whole life shit is about, right? Cherishing moments of love and light and wonder and amazement so huge and consuming that you can’t help but cry at how beautiful this all is and how lucky we are to be alive.
I fear that my hyper-independence has created an impenetrable fortress around my heart that keeps everyone at bay. I feel so much, but I will not let anyone see it. I romanticize my time alone so much that the idea of inviting someone else to join me in the things I love is too intimate. I go to the movie theater by myself, sit in coffee shops by myself, go for walks, shop at the mall, get tattoos without telling people about them, take hikes on my own, have picnics with myself- I am loudly ignoring my own thesis statement that life is better when you share moments with other people. Yes, it is important to have quiet moments for just yourself, there is nothing wrong with healthy independence. But this affection I crave, and the way that I deny myself this gift of quality time with friends, is borderline masochistic.
I get teary eyed over old folks sharing a coffee on a Monday afternoon because that is all that I long for in life. Simplicity. Sweetness. Joy. Connection.