(bus: Madrid-Illescas)
The woman sitting directly behind me on the bus has the sniffles, and I’ve more than half a mind to change seats. The sniffles are easily my least favorite sound. I don’t know why, maybe because they’re so gross and mucousy and I’m like, “Just blow your damn nose already!” Even when I, myself, have a runny nose, I take care of it. I blow my nose with a vengeance.
I guess another part of it, too, is that sniffling strikes me as childish, and I’ve never been particularly tolerant of childish behavior.
Not even in children.
* * *
Haven’t written much in the ol’ blog lately. Haven’t much felt like writing. I’d love to be one of those Kurt Cobain-y types (or insert any great, alcoholic American writer here) who’s somehow more creative when depressed (since I seem to spend so much time like that), but really what happens is that I just turn into a gloomy little pity party of one, and it’s not particularly artistic or productive in any sense. It’s more like a black hole of moodiness.
Not that I’m depressed. I mean, I was, definitely, and i was having revelations like, “It’s better to be truly alone than to have the illusion of not being alone,” and I guess I still feel that way, but I also feel very…calm. I feel like I’m in a hot air balloon floating high above the landscape–distant but not cold–and while this marks progress, it also worries me.
Because my new thing is that I’m having a really hard time connecting with people. I just feel so far away, even when Whitney was here, and I’m realizing that this isn’t my new thing at all, that in fact this is my thing and this is my me, my who I am or who I’m in danger of becoming if I don’t find a way out of the looking glass (don’t see that movie, PS). I think about Brett, and boy do I miss that boy, but at the time when we were roommates I was always cranky about his everything bagel crumbs on the counter, or if he used the right sponge to clean the toilet, and we very much lived isolated in our own little rooms at two ends of the same small hall, and I just couldn’t reach out to him, even though he reached out to me. He never let me sink too low. He brought me cheap Chinese food when I was sick. He ate cookies and talked boy troubles with me. And where was I? So often I was just off somewhere floating, lost even to myself.
It doesn’t have to be like this! Right? I mean, sure, I’ve said that I want my happiness to be portable, to not be dependent on other people or circumstances, but I’d like to be able to share it, too. Sin costarme tanto, you know? What good is warmth if it’s not shared? I like this floating basket I’ve woven for myself, because it’s safe, and it’s portable, but I want to be able to touch down more easily. I want to see the people, hear their voices, be held in their arms.
little sarah Big World 