November 08, 2021

VD (Verbal Diarrhea)

It's really early in the morning and I've just eaten a frozen Frosty dessert from Wendy's. It's been sitting in the freezer since this afternoon, and I figured, since I'm leaving this apartment tomorrow morning, I had to eat it tonight. A frozen Frosty isn't as good as a fresh squeezed one, it loses some of the taste in the freezing process. Still, I didn't have the heart to throw it out.

It's been a healing weekend. In a lot of ways. Part self. Part relations.

Did your parents ever measure how much you grew in a year? I don't think they ever measured my sister or me, but they used to measure my brother. Which, thinking back now, seems a bit gender sensitive. Because he was a boy, he had to grow, because we were girls, we didn't. Interesting. Anyway. My brother was measured every year, down in the basement, by the toy closet under the stairs. If ever you've been to my house, you understand why I say "under the stairs" - because we still have a lot of toys in my parent's basement.

I digress. What I've been trying to say, but, instead painting an intricate picture of other things, is that I feel like you could have measured my personal growth this weekend, the way my parents used to measure my brother's height increases.

Each year they would see growth. This weekend, that is what I saw. But it kind of sucked. I still feel more sensitive and vulnerable than I've felt in a very long time. And I don't like that feeling, but I know where it comes from.

I got stuck waiting for a subway for 30 minutes on Saturday night when I was heading up to my friend's birthday. Before I decided to walk the 20 blocks, I watched as people interacted with each other on the platform. Most of the men that walked passed me tried to make eye contact, and then immediately looked away. Some of them had girlfriends. None of them were all that interesting, but it was easy to identify the people who were dating, and those who were just friends. Body language was so different, as it obviously would be, but when I was watching, almost studying humans, I realized we all fit into a couple of simple "relationship patterns." We all do similar things when we like somebody, when we flirt, when we are angry with someone or when we are upset. It's because we're all animals and we all act differently, but not all that different.

Am I making any sense?

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Posted by jamye at November 8, 2021 01:37 AM