Personal Pronouns

If they walked right through the doorway, I think I would be shocked. They’re not supposed to be tangible. They’re not supposed to cross over from the land of daydreams and heartthrobs and romantic notions. No. They’re supposed to stay in the mists of fleeting thought, dreamy twilights, and warm hazy dazes.

It’s sort of funny I guess. Funny in the way that you laugh after you fall down. You think to yourself “why am I laughing” and you realize it’s just your instant reaction after the fall. It’s the most instant way your body knows how to react to the absurdity after surprise and the pain have faded into a sense of normalcy. In the same way, I’m laughing, a crazed laugh perhaps, but it’s only because it’s crazy: you keep getting pulled by those strings magnetized by attraction to all the things you can’t have. I’m cursed. It’s a curse of inverse torment: I attract everything that I don’t want, and everything that I do want isn’t as much repulsed by me, but doesn’t seem to find me. Not that they necessarily don’t find me attractive; who knows what people think in the colorful, noisy chambers of their innermost thoughts? They just… they just don’t find me. Whether it is some cosmic force keeping us apart, or some sort of apathy, or that islands are meant to stay disconnected from other islands.

If they walked right through the doorway, I wouldn’t know what to say. I would probably make some sarcastic comment, the only way I could deal with the ever-growing anxiety that there has to be some sort of punch-line somewhere, this is me we’re talking about, the guy that wasn’t supposed to actually be found.

Maybe it’s that I have exerted so much energy in looking for someone. I’m looking at them looking at me, and “knowing” that they are looking at me because they find me attractive. They “of course” continue to glance at me in the classroom because “they can’t keep their eyes off of me.” I allow this sort of nonsensical flight of fancy go for as long as my boredom stretches on. I see them in some random location outside of classroom: the different context wakes me up to the fact that the flight of fancy isn’t really fun anymore. It’s just… stupid.

I don’t listen to Physical Attraction anymore. My first instinct about THAT is usually wrong. “well, they look honest or nice or amazing.” Physical Attraction dangles sex in front of people’s faces. After sex is when people wake up and awkwardly retreat to where they were before: sometimes they wash themselves over and over hoping that the night before was just a bad dream, they talk to their friends about how confused they are about what just happened “I’m not that kind of person! I don’t do those things!” All those love songs they were singing a second ago, now seem like honey that was used to lure them into the trap, and traps, even if you escape them, often leave scars. ‘

“This scar is my pride” they show the tallied scars as the amount of times they have “won”

“This scar is my reminder” they say proudly, “of a place I never wish to return to”

“This scar is the red ink that corrects my faulty longing”



It’s all tied up to the notion of perfection, something that those shining, filled-with-light images cannot stand up to: we’re human: it means we make mistakes. So loveably falling down over and over again only to get back up again like a toddler: that is us, human beings.

They come through the doorway, smiling, with some sort of nervousness, a remnant from a few relationships gone bad. They don’t have a sense that I will complete them because I already told them that I wouldn’t do that.

I don’t want to be idealized or put on a pedestal. I just want to be seen and heard for who I am without Photoshopping the flaws away.

They’ll look at my scars and chuckle and say, “Yeah, I have a few of my own too.” I’ll close my eyes and not want to open them again, because I am sure, if I do, I’ll wake up, and waking up is all I ever seem to do these days. Between the times of waking and sleeping is held all the dialogue and stage directions needed to portray what we perceive as real. But to me, they seem unreal, and that is the heart of the problem: I desire heart above all else, but even the shape of a heart is a lie: It’s not really bright red and tapered off at the bottom, it looks more like some squishy messed up pear that escaped from the circus. The real image of a heart is more in line with what I’m searching for: this indie individual, separated from the rise and fall of the tides where everyone dwells. Intentionally living, pensively pondering the puzzles, saying something to me about the importance of flickering lamps and that annoying unraveling thread from your knitted sweater.

He’s sitting next to me with a smile on his face and I’m still afraid to smile, but we talk for hours about him and about me and about the time I fell backwards off of the stage and it felt to me like slow motion. His words are slower now, the ambient sounds of the birds outside my window have slowed in their frequency. All of the world around is perpetually slowing down to a frame by frame account. I’m looking at these images, one by one, examining closely the creases in his face that show the smile and in his eyes a certain glimmer of boyish optimism.

These personal pronouns remain most important to those who wish that “they” would always replace “he” or that “he” would always replace “they” in this context. But it’s not ok to be personal anymore, because the difference between she and he is the difference from a smile and a frown on the face of the reader. The difference between a happy ending and a horrible twist unexpected.

Stop expecting and start living your own life, then I'll tell you if I want a husband or a wife.