"La'hov"" or "Your Father Said You Never Looked That Alive"

I recently had this talk with this friend of mine.

When you start the yellow-brick road from friend to close friend, there are landmarks you start to see. When you find out you both really like that one movie, but you don't really know why. When you realize you have had oddly similar high school experiences. Your conversations begin to evolve from music, Friday nights, and how you hate waking up early, into what you think was your greatest mistake, your relationship with your mother, and, the most inevitable of all the conversations, what exactly IS so wrong with you.

So we were knee-deep in the inevitable. You explain yourself. It has to do with my father, this one thing that happened when I was a kid, these memories, these dreams I've had, the way that I always feel like I walk on one foot more than the other. Maybe the reasons here aren't important.

But I was explaining that I have a real problem with giving myself a hard time. Everything is my fault, because I messed up. And it is likely because I'm ugly, neurotic, useless, overbearing, ridiculous, hyperemotional, and too damn loud. This list may sometimes also include, though is not limited to, laziness, procrastination, carelessness, thoughtlessness, getting too attached too fast, being too easily devastated, being too easily excited, and lacking what I feel is an integral feature of most effective human beings, a filter between your head and your mouth. That is what I covet the most.

As I let these things fall out of my mouth and skate across the floor like little glass marbles, he looked with earnest eyes and said, "Why? That's stupid. You should know what when you make a mistake, or when a boy doesn't like you back, it's not because you're ugly or not smart enough or not good enough. Shit just happens sometimes."

Not to say that I haven't heard it before, I have. But this was from the guy that "doesn't like me back", so I think that made me listen more.

Today when I got coffee at the Java City in the library, when I got my card handed back to me, there was a Christmas card with it. The lady behind the counter smiled, and didn't say anything. I said thank you, and smiled, and went to get my coffee. As I poured in cream and half of a splenda packet, I read the card:

"Dear Pinky,
Thank you for always making us smile, and always being so nice.

Merry Christmas,
Java City"

It is good to remember that sometimes you are making people happy and you don't even know it. And maybe the stuff I make myself feel awful about should never be as important as the stuff that I should make myself feel delighted about.

Also, I'm never dyeing this hard back. Not ever.

<3gen