Can we talk?
I started a piece earlier today, something about how I’ve given up on the idea of friendships. Not because people suck -
and people do suck (and by the way I include myself in people) -
But what I wanted to write about was how I’ve been trying to unlearn my adolescent and asinine ideas I’ve created around friendship. Expectations that, in the world we live in, are impossible to meet. I can often hold people to such a high standard forgetting that I also am able to drop the ball, forget to text people back, ghost people on their birthday, leave people on read.
These days I’m just trying to be a better friend to myself. That’s what I wanted to write.
That was before someone accidentally locked their bike to mine.
It was an off day. Slept poorly and woke with a deep heaviness in my bones. I lost my AirPods at the gym while training and still haven’t found them. They’re hiding in the left pocket of a hoodie I took off and somehow misplaced.
The bike incident at the end of the day was just the cherry on top of a lacklustre day. Who is in such a rush that they don’t even see that they’ve locked their chain to someone’s else’s bike?
To be fair, having to use public transportation because someone has accidentally locked their bike to yours is not such a big deal. But I’ve been running on fumes these past few months hoping this new work schedule would slowly starting to feel more natural over time and sadly that hasn't really happened. Mostly, I just ache all over.
(The thing about being a dancer is that you feel and interpret everything that is going on any our body. What does it mean that you have a weak left ankle? That after standing for four hours your right hip begins to ache? Why is your head so stuffy? Is the sharp pain in your neck serious or will it just go away on its own?)
Is it time for a little break?
Since my early twenties I’ve been doing this thing that seems to help me when I’m down,
like really down.
Like, there were times I’d be scrubbing toilets as a busboy thinking, what the fuck am I doing with my life? Or I’d go home after a long shift as a waiter in tears because a customer yelled at me for messing up their order. Or like now, when I’m trying to write something interesting, all I can think is, this is such shit.
When I get really down on myself I’ll find a moment to look up at the sky (if I’m outside) or just quietly (or out loud) say to myself:
THANK YOU
That’s it. I don’t know why that helps me but it does.
Maybe it’s because it’s a reminder that some things are actually random and nothing is personal. Like it’s a fact that someone locked their bike to mine, but it wasn’t a sign from the universe that my life is broken. It’s just something that happened today.
Anyway that’s what I do. When I feel like I’m really in the mire, or drowning in quicksand, I’ll dig deep and just say THANK YOU, to no one in particular and everything all at once.
Because that’s a muscle worth training: to feel grateful, even when it’s not easy to feel grateful.
Anyway, sorry this is a shitty piece of writing that totally amounts to nothing. I’ll be taking a two-week break after this and be back on June 30th. Maybe I’ll have something more interesting to share then.
