Concomitant

I have been keeping my insides inside. I go through these spells. When I only talk about some gross thing I just saw or some television thing I don't approve of. Half of the time, I think this makes me less, half the time more. The push and pull in me is the desire to indulge my brooding sentiment without making anyone think I'm a downer. This is always my problem. The attempt at being all things. Maybe it's folly. It's why I don't like to type a smiley face after a sentence. I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking I'm smiling. Because by the time they read it, I probably won't be.

You're violating the laws of the universe.

I was cleaning house today, and I watched a movie I've seen many times before. There are things in it that make it hard for me to avoid going round in familiar circles. Music and memories. Familiar, familiar. Full of the tendrils of a former complacency. Flecked with the wry wisdom of the years since. Sublimated by the latest twists and turns. Churned. I felt tearful. And called myself ridiculous.

My father said that Claire Forlani's face went through more expressions in a moment than most faces do in a lifetime. I don't think he meant it as a compliment. My high school friends were frightened of my father. They used to call him "The Equalizer." He wore handsome suits and carried an umbrella in the fall and winter months, and they thought he looked like Edward Woodward, and they figured he would be mean. He isn't. He is the opposite of mean. The anti-mean. He is the sweet center of me. And I wish I was holding his hand right now.

I cleaned my windows. Now I can see everything.

It's about redefining your life because another exists. You breathe because they do.