then.

I used to be sensitive about my height. I no longer am. I figure that if I were any shorter, I probably wouldn’t be me. And although life feels out of sync with my heart right now and more than a little unrecognizable, to wake up suddenly somebody else would be even less recognizable, I think.

I used to get quoted a line a lot. One that said something about being born with a silver spoon in my mouth–which is what a traveling prophet had said about me a long time ago. Nobody quotes that to me much anymore, not unless they are making a joke. Sometimes that silver spoon feels very far away. It’s easier to believe in it for others, but not so much for me. What’s easy to remember is how I was born: asleep, mouth closed tightly with nothing remotely like a spoon nearby. Basically, in my own little world. I like to think I go back there most nights when I fall asleep.

I used to think I’d be with one person forever. Now I know that I won’t. And thank God for this, I must say. That might sound mean, but believe me when I say that you probably don’t know the half of it. And if what it comes down to is a glorious smash of a willowtree figurine that represents nothing of what actually happened, well at least that thing breaks and breaks like it means it and there are so many pieces left  on the ground that it can never get put back together again and you feel like look! it’s just like your heart but wait, no, everyone says you’re doing so well now, you’re eating and you fill out the bum of your jeans again. But they don’t know. And you’re tired of talking about it but you don’t know what to do with yourself sometimes, you just don’t know what to do with yourself. So you walk and you get bitten by bugs and you watch the sun all brightly orange in the sky and you wonder absently how hot that sun really is, were you to touch it, but then no, that could never happen. People don’t touch the sun. But there are so many things that shouldn’t happen and they do, they just do, so maybe who knows? perhaps you will touch the sun.

I used to be sentimental. About things, I guess. My parents laughed at me because I kept so very many things in my room that, often, they would spill out into the rest of the house. And then when it came down to cleaning my room, it would be nearly impossible because of the monumental amount of all those things!, I’d say to my parents. And they would get upset or they would close the door and usually I much preferred the latter, can you blame me? But now. Now I look at many of my things and I just don’t care that much at all. I admire other people’s things; I am glad they have them. Glad their houses are so beautiful and that they have pictures framing the places they’ve been and the people they love all over their walls. But I look at some of my things and I feel nothing at all. At least the things that I had when I was that other person–the one who never did wonder how hot it really would be to touch the sun.

I used to be normal. Or at least, relatively so. Now I get very sad sometimes. I get a feeling like claustrophobia at times, when I have to leave I have to leave I have to leave it’s not personal but I have to leave. I go on long walks. I even go sometimes at night, which is something that I used to be too scared to do.

I used to be so afraid that life will change. Now I rather hope it does. In the  sense that I will not stay here, at least. Here where my heart is reacting to what’s happened; here where I wonder what’s left sometimes. Because I know there are many days ahead and always, the good will outnumber the bad, and I will continue to quote my friend John and say miracles happen, so why not to me? Because they have and they will and I will see good things and know good things and have better things to wonder at than the temperature of the sun and whether or not it would melt me so much, should I touch it.