Exceptionality

“‘Where does it all lead? What will become of us?’ These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed.
It leads to each other. We become ourselves.”
- Patti Smith, Just Kids

i.

“Every time you lose in life, you have something else to add to your autobiography when you eventually make it,” your 16 year old sister tells you in an attempt at comfort.
You try to hold these words close to your chest, but wonder if the positive naivety has started to wear off as you grow closer to your mid-20’s.
What would she know? Your mom still drives her everywhere, she doesn’t have bills to pay, and the world and life are wide.
The possibilities aren’t suffocating yet.

ii.

You haven’t bled in the bath in years.
You wonder if it would make you feel close to yourself again.
At least the red hair dye bleeding in the lukewarm water imitates phantom blood, though it’s a little too magenta to be authentic—blood in a low budget 80’s slasher film, unmistakably false, like the imposter residing under the $200 dye job you couldn’t afford but paid for anyway.

The ceramic cradles your head and lightly hums you to sleep.
Swallow the air slowly,
slowly.
Stare at the ceiling above, framed by the metal curtain rod.
Stare at it.
Hold this image in your memory, a still frame in a movie no one wants to watch.

(The character tropes are cliché, and the blood is obviously fake.)

iii.

Remind yourself to be present.
Channel the calm female voices you listen to on gray walks, where you try to ground yourself by trailing your forefinger on every surface and really feeling the soles of your boots on the sidewalk.

Worry about impermanence,
so terrified by it that you hunt it down,
anticipate it.

Prepare yourself for its reminders.
Pick at the edges of your present
and tumble down the stairs
on your way to the beach
for your 23rd birthday.

Remind yourself to be present.
Your present is relief
when the sun shoots through your apartment windows.
Your present is the skate park on your walk to work,
alive and wet.
Your present is a drywall ceiling built in 1919,
that you can afford but barely,
hovering as you meander through the hallway.
Under it— everything you’ve crafted until now,
and you keep going and crafting and developing as much as you can,
because what else are you supposed to do,
although you forget to admire the trees covering the sun sometimes.

iv.

“You don’t have to believe a revelation to hold onto it.”
You can’t remember where you read this, but it serves as a revelation in itself.
Everything, for a while, is a revelation—strange voices giving you their morning latte order, graffiti on the side of the parking garage next to the walk up pizza window, the creak of your own steps, heel to toe, on your dusty hardwood floor.

You look for revelations, sudden answers, in an obscure
(and constantly, constantly changing)
world at your fingertips.
You try to answer the questions lingering over
every angry, nameless head also soaked in rain.
You try to find familiarity in the new soil under your calloused heels,
but fail to find home in the spine shooting up to your head.
You see a light under the crack of the door frame,
but you’ll go blind if you look directly at it.
You look for recognizable faces
in the unknown ones you face every day,
but you can’t find them,
can’t mold the clay under your shaky hands,
and sometimes you’re so. bored.

v.

You are a 12 year old girl again. You are an 18 year old girl again. You are a 23 year old woman. Your body doesn’t feel like your own, the promises of a life ahead are a carrot dangling in your face. You want your mom, wish she could cradle you like the welcoming cold of the ceramic bathtub. You’re getting used to how this feels. You’re beginning to wonder if it stays.

Everyone wants an exceptional story, and you often wonder how many people with ambitions as incessant as yours wake up one day and realize they’re unexceptional.
You wonder how many stay awake at night because of it. You wonder if they still find it important.

vi.

Remind yourself that this moment is a piece of the rest of everything else, as real and as tangible as the song you’ve forgotten playing on the speakers at work as you drop a blueberry scone into the toaster oven.
A reminder of the many you’s you’ve been that still reside in you, that are still you.
A reminder of the weight of every quickly abandoned second.
It drags you by your aching ankles into the moment, your trimmed nails bleeding as you cling to the tile.

A reminder to stand on the ground below you instead of leaping off of it.

vii.

Every time you lose in life, you have something else to add to your autobiography when you eventually make it.

Or maybe you won’t make it,
you’ll be just like everyone else,
which is your greatest fear despite its highest odds,
but at this point, it sounds like a safe option.
Maybe instead of writing this in your autobiography,
you’ll write it in your journal,
and your older self will find it one day
and laugh at your silly naive worries.

Or maybe she won’t laugh,
but will cry for the you that she no longer is,
that she no longer can be.

And maybe she’ll miss you,
maybe she’ll see through the mundanity,
she’ll remember the pieces you didn’t care to—
buying half-price sushi on Wednesdays
or the midday sun on your partner’s face while he dozes off
with your cat curled up at his feet
or the stairs in the woods on the way to the beach,
descending you to your 23rd year.

You crave this hindsight,
but try not to yearn for it.
You know you’ll meet her,
eventually.