This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife.

My parents and I play this cute little game where we both pretend I enjoyed my youth. And, to be fair, I was pretty satisfied, pretty excited to just BE, until say…12 or so. I would say I was a happy child. Where the very subtle game of make believe begins is during my teenage years, where we pretend the quiet, mild demeanor I possesed was the symptom some sort of happy and introspective personality. Where we act like my antisocial and morose personality could be chalked up to the tempermental reality of teenage hormones.

The truth, which we will never discuss openly, is that I spent those years in a fantasy world of my own construction, desperately trying to distract myself from the fact that I connected with no one and nothing. We do not acknowelege how powerless I felt to instigate any acts that might garner true intimacy. We do not address how terribly terribly lonely I was. To this day, few people understand this fundemental element of my past. That every time I witnessed joy, romance or freedom it was from a safe distance…painted on the silver screen, lit by a quiet sunset as I sat on a pier, soaking up with unfettered envy a couple quietly falling in love on the beach below.

Another thing that is important to undestand about this time is that a combination of protective and reclusive parenting, and my own seeming inability to break past these bounds for more than a night here or there, a prank hither and yon, is what kept me so deeply burired within my shell of a “personality”. That only now do I understand that it was not so much my parents…parenting, but my own embrace of the shackles I resented that kept me so deep within this hole. Teenagers rebel against far worse than I could have. I can hardly call social services over oppressive mildness and abusive ennui.

It is important to acknowledge that I very much did not know how to bring down the walls I constructed, the glass bubble I wore was like an egg. Misleadingly solid, a comfort sack of inertia.

Another, even more important to understand about this story, is that this story takes place in the past.

That my college years brought me alive, allowed me to finally experience the joy I witnessed in others, allowed me to finally form the bonds of friendship and love I had only read about, seen on the silver screen, witnessed, as I sat on a pier by myself, a couple quietly falling in love on the beach below.

It’s called socialization people. And I can’t say enough nice things about it.

So why tell you this sad sad story today?

Well, to be fair, I can’t rightly say. Other than I want to tell you something. I feel the need to enunciate, on occasion, to insure that wall is gone, to establish I am, indeed, sensing the outside world, to insur emy own words aren’t echoing off the membrane of my own persona, off of a defensive wall I had forgotten I had constructed, without a door or window.


And because I hate to be alone.

And everyone suddenly seems to be making things. The writers are writing again, and the painters are painting. Photos are being snapped and glass makers, are, umm, blowing.
Yes. Blowing.
I suppose this means we are all coming alive.

And by “we” I mean they. And by “they” I inform you, uncomfortably, of how I observe, from a distance, this phenomona.

Whether it’s the involuntary embrace of tragic pain, or the healing process that brings us back to a place of joy, lust and unbridled hope, the signs of a raw and exposed emotional tidal wave are hard to ignore when the sea is hit by rocking waves of the dispel and continents on every side get atleast a little bit wet.

And here I sit. And I don’t really know what to say. I only can say it has absolutely nothing to do with me. My feet feel dry and everyone else seems positively dewy with their new enthusiasm. The world, around me, is practically lubricious.

And I quite suddenly, and with utter striking familiarity, recognize myself back up on that pier. And the interesting thing about the lack of sand in my shoes, this time around, is that I went to the beach with everyone else. I DO things. I talk and I move and I act and I love and yet I am beginning to hear a faint echo when I speak. I am forgetting to take my shoes off when I go the ocean. I am forgetting to wake up when I walk out the door.