eternal sunshine of our spotless hearts

i've done a lot of stupid things in my lifetime.

when i was three i thought i could prop a framed winnie-the-pooh picture up longways and stand on it so i could reach a picninc basket at the top of my closet. five hours and twenty three stitches later, i understood that just because something is tall doesn't mean i can use it as a footstool.

later that year, i was underneath the kitchen table rolling a glass thermometer around in my mouth because i liked the sound it made against my teeth, and bit into it, the mercury and glass and blood forming a monet watercolor on my chin. an e.r. trip and stomach pump later, i realized that maybe i shouldn't put glass in my mouth, even if it does sound nice against my teeth.

when i was ten, i took an exuberant dive into the pool, smiling all the way down, and smashed my face against the concrete so hard i chipped my front tooth. even though i got it fixed later that day, i spent the majority of the time waiting to go to the dentist's office underneath my mother's table at the pool crying about how i was going to be ugly for the rest of my life. that was the first of seven times i have broken it out. now it's just an expensive pain in my ass.

i have taken a running leap into a closed sliding glass door, sliced my finger to the bone trying to open up a box of cookies with a knife, gotten my leg caught in the spokes of a bicycle, run into a brick mailbox full-speed on a scooter, and gotten a chunk bitten out of my pointer finger feeding squirrels in central park. i have stepped on a rusty nail that went all the way through my foot while i was barefoot in a construction site, closed my fingers in the trunk of a rental car, broken my wrist in an attempt to do a back handspring, and broken my pinkie toe by misjudging where a doorframe to a classroom was.

sadly enough, this is just the beginning of the list of things i've done to myself while sober. i don't have enough room on the internet to write about shit i've done liquored up.

above all of the stupid shit i've done, above the trips to the orthopedic and the e.r., above the ace bandages and butterfly closures and thread in my skin... i still think the stupidest thing i've ever done is love.

sparing all the melodramatic bullshit i write about in my poetry, i have formed a cynical and thick skin towards finding someone i trust enough to let down my walls. the graves of those who have perished in a relationship with me could fill ground zero and more... some by my own hand but most ruined by others.

our ability to love and love again is unlike any other resilience in this universe. being broken to a point of being jaded is not exactly a great starting point to try again, and yet, each time, we dust ourselves off and try to open up. i have notes and letters and cards and gifts and whatever else in the wake of my break-ups, all of which remind me when it's over why it never should have started in the first place.

a friend at work yesterday came in to talk to me about his girlfriend, whom he's been dating on and off for the last four years. he said he loves her and she's great for him, but she's starting to push the heat on marriage and he knows she's not the one he wants to spend his life with. i told him as difficult as it is, he needs to cut ties and let her move on to find someone that can give her those things, because two years down the road when she's really salivating for those eternal vows it's gonna be a cacophonious clusterfuck of "i told you i didn't want to get married"'s and "why did you waste my time"'s.

i know. i've been there, just recently. almost the exact same situation, and it was really fucking hard. but it has turned out for the best in the end, albeit allowing me to begin other relationships to fail at.

love is what it is. you know when you want to and when you don't, and it bounces back and reshapes itself shiny and new each time. and, each time, it begins with the promise that it will be better than the last, and the time before that, and so on, and so forth.

but there's one thing i know for sure about it... for as smart of creatures as we humans are, we are dumbstruck about matters of the heart. i think the other animals have it right... fuck, build a nest, lay eggs, and get the fuck out of there.

i'm sure it will happen again, and i'm sure it will fail again. but i'm sick of being dumb about it. fuck breaking down walls. i'm just gonna sit back and figure it out as it comes.

why we never have created an e.r. for our love lives i will never figure it out. expensive, yes. but absolutely necessary.