Directions: to take with a grain of salt

It wasn’t anger pooling at the tips of my fingers, it was sadness. I felt drips piercing my veins in thick cool bulges of pain. I could already hear the voices, the insistent people who believe they are full of wisdom. They say, “Oh, but when you’re older you won’t remember, it won’t matter.” I’m sure it won’t just as I am sure that the sun will die without a whimper from a black hole. Nothing will dare remember as it melts with the rest of them, the trillions of other stars. Yet, in the moment the wound stings, and the fire goes nova.

I don’t understand why people say time heals all wounds. In a metaphorical sense even less. Forgetting about the metaphysical nonsense our brain spouts. We remember what we did yesterday, and the last time our heart was launched outside of our chest, just the same as our skin remembers when you have a bruise, even if it doesn’t scar, our skin cells remember. Time will never let the skin forget. Healing is forgetting but I will never forget. 

Ever notice how when someone adds a ‘but’ to a sentence they never mean the first part? “I love your writing, but there is no story.” I especially laugh when people try to soften the fall. No one likes it, at least not in the long term. Blunt people, in my opinion, hurt you a lot less because in the future when they tell you that “this is the best piece I have ever read,” well you will know they meant it. But a cushion never hurts in the beginning.

I wasn’t angry per se. I didn’t feel any anger towards them, and as old and mature as I sound, I felt more disappointed. “Life is a roller coaster,” they tell you. When you finish the ride, are you at the highest point, the lowest, or are you static in the middle? Is the coaster a never-ending loop, where your stomach is dropped at your feet, or you are so sick with apprehension you could throw up at any little jerk of movement? It’s a not well thought out metaphor you tell me. Either way, life does not seem very appetizing.

I always heard grandparents are supposed to feed you a lot of food. Beyond the feeling of contentedness and satisfaction. Everyone jokes about that. Except when I started to lose weight the first thing they said was “Wow! Oh boy, don’t you look better now. Keep on going.” They’re lucky I didn’t care about what they thought. Or else I would be as small as a mouse, my roar as large as a lion.

There was this poem by some Fountain guy. He wrote many poems and probably had ghostwriters, just like Shakespeare did. The poem was about returning kindness. Some lion king lets a mouse escape its looming claws, and when the king finds himself in trouble, he beckons for the rat to help. The rat obliged. I never liked that poem. The rat wouldn’t have been in danger if the lion had never been there. I hate people like that, that make you feel like you owe them for nothing. This is meant for a specific person; hello there mother. The word ‘mother’ when addressing you doesn’t even deserve to be capitalized after what you did. You never get a sense of a person, not truly at least, till you look them dead in the eyes. The scariest moment of all is when you see dark pools of nothingness – yet you still choose to believe the flick of sunshine is a sliver of hope, and not just a play of light. I read the poem of an ‘important moral lesson’ in front of my class and got an A+ with a gold star.

I can enjoy public speaking, yet reject it all at once. I used to love to get in front of a crowd but now when I write a presentation I ask myself, “How will I do this?” And my nagging voice answers “We will cross that bridge when we get there.” Is it wrong to want to know if the bridge is stable? Personally, I don’t care if the bridge wobbles, but the anxiousness planted in the soles of my feet apparently seems to care a great deal about my future.

I saw a sign once for charity it read “A sole for a soul.” I thought that was pretty smart. That was the day I started trying to make fun snippets. Don’t even get me started when I figured out what an oxymoron was.

“Act naturally,” is what they tell you to do on stage. Holden from The Catcher in the Rye says it so beautifully. He says that when actors start to talk like they do in real life, it becomes too real, and you get distracted by that fact. What makes an actor good? I believe it when their emotions bleed dangerously close to the screen. 

I find it funny how people hate the sound of their voices. They only distaste it because they are not accustomed to the ups and downs, the ridges and bumps that other people are. When you hear it taped, it sounds strange, like a giant talking with a thicker slimy stretch of gross slathered on the vocals. Put it to you this way; when you look in the mirror you see all your imperfections. The people in the street see none. When you speak, they simply hear you. You have idealized yourself in this perfect version of your voice, but trust me your voice is so much better in my head than yours.

Maybe I am angry but it is that anger that fuels me, and it is this anger that lets me truly live.