day18 - someone new
"I know we've talked about you getting out and not just staying at the house, and I really think you should reconsider it. I know coming back here was out of the question-- maybe it shouldn't be--but doing the same thing over and over, each and every day, makes it hard to become someone new. I know that deep down that's what you want." -- Scott Summers, X-Men Volume 5, #10
Dear Luci,
Full disclosure, I'm embarassed by how much I've poured myself into the X Men lately. Not literally though, that'd be weird. To some degree, it has stopped being something that brings me comfort (at least, as much as it used to) and has become something mechanical that I do. But I read that quote today when I had stalled out of some busywork I assigned myself and instantly I knew it would be the basis for tonight's letter.
It's like I've talked about recently, routine has been a crutch to prevent my wasting away. And as far as crutches can go, in my circumstances, it's not the worst! But it's also not really working. Of course I spend my daylight hours in the office, but at night, I lay on the couch with no lights on save for the RGB lamp I have set to a pink-ish purple, and I listen to sad music on Spotify while I try to make playlists accounting for the subtle differences in my low moods1.
They follow a similar pattern: the sudden stab of discontent followed by melancholy, chased with a blinding loneliness which begets a kind of desperate grief, clawing for anything tangible. After that passes, the shame sets in, and then, like a diver resurfacing too quickly, I am hit with the full shock to my system that all these emotions and their rapid onset brings about.
So I thank anyone who has ever caught me in the midst of that, seen me, been patient, tried to help.
In any case, I'm physically fine, but (see above) I am an emotionally complex person riddled with questions that cannot be answered without future knowledge. But much like a petulant little child-- a clumsy ballerina stumbling to learn her place in this over-choreographed cosmic dance-- I whine: I wanna know now!!
You'd like that, huh, kiddo? Get in line. This dance, like all others, must be observed and thereby learnt start-to-finish. How do you expect to anticipate steps you have never been taught?
I'm a rubbish dancer. I'm not light on my feet and I have dreadful balance. If you'll allow me to get flowery, perhaps my folly lies in my attempts to execute every step with precision. I'm too focused, too tense, I keep making mistakes and falling out of time. There's no evidence to suggest this dance is as refined as ballet. That's a pre-supposition on my part. Perhaps I ought to just dance with the music. Clumsily, dorkily, but freely. I love to dance when I am dancing with other lanky losers like me. I spin them under my arm and into me, and there's always one rotation too many, they end up facing away from me, but we laugh and re-adjust accordingly.
I think I'll try that. And hopefully some other dorks will find me on the dancefloor again. Once more, but never the same, unique and impossible to replicate.
Here's the end of Scott's letter.
"And, hey, I promise I'll be with you the whole way. Come fire, come war, come anything that would stand in the way. You're safe, because you're with family.
We'll probably be home after dinner.
Love, Scott."
Sweet dreams, Luci. <3
Is it the kind of sadness that you want to wash over you passively, or is it the kind where you need to scream-cry-sing to let it out? Or perhaps are you feeling a melancholic wistfulness? My obsessive desire to organise the impossible-to-organise is bewildering.↩