Eyes of a Stranger

When I was in high school I thought love was this flower that was asleep inside my heart and that when I met the right person it would open, like they would shine and it would bloom. At the risk of sounding cheesy, when I closed my eyes in high school and thought about life it looked like this. A literal flower. I was a really intense, emotional, self destructive kid. I say kid because anyone younger than twenty is a kid to me now. I still feel like that person sometimes. Certain people I meet bring it out and it's just the most shocking feeling. Like a ghost limb I lost in some heartsick war that I manged to amputate in order to survive. I feel it twitch and its this intense dislocating feeling. In a way every day that I wake up and shower and make my bed and try to eat at least one fruit and one vegetable and smile and not be moody and shake peoples hands and nod and not engage in terribly inappropriate enmeshing conversations with people, is a day I feel like i'm going through the grownup motions. Because it is, but its best that way, for me, and for the people in my life. So to meet an equally disjointed person who you instantly recognise as going through the motions, is weird. Weather it be in friendship or love. It's scary and I want to run. Even though every fiber of my being says GO ALL THE WAY.
Anyway, I don't act on these impulses, rarely ever. I like my life the way it is, I pay my bills, go to school, hang out with friends, see my shows and turn my work in on time and meet my deadlines.
The world is filled with missed connections, paths in the universe that somehow never crossed. If I had known you when I was twenty-five, if we had been friends in high school, if I had seen you looking down from the balcony of the mall. If you had lent me quarters for the pac man machine, that even in 1996 was retro. If I bought you an iced tea on melrose at the punk rock store.
But all these criss crossed moments through the universe are only that, missed moments and I wake up and do the motions knowing that the world is filled with people just like me and sometimes we pass each other and it feels like lightning.
But ultimately, now, I'm too grown up and no amount of feeling high is worth not feeling clean.
ps. I want a time machine so I can go to 1983 and ride the alpine slide at action park. thanks katie! i'm obsessed now! click here to read about americas most dangerous theme park. now closed. god this place looks like it ruled!
"It's like coming to Broadway, it's wonderful." YESSS!!!! Tacky old NJ grandma, YESSS!!!!