Skimming the cream
One of, if not the most, pernicious ideas keeping us from happiness in this day and age is the knowledge that we are broken. And if we are broken, you are broken too, for loving us.
Also, the idea that who we are right now, in this moment, is who we will always be.
I feel my brittle-ness so much more since I've started taking public transit again. It highlights how little strength I feel inside myself, when I am surrounded by strangers, forced to imagine myself inside their skin. My own skin cracks and crumbles at the thought of allowing another inside, at the knowledge that these broken, imperfect people can see me. Can analyze me to their hearts content. Because that's what I'm doing to them. The man sitting across from me, with the deep set eyes that speak of allergies and Elizabethan England, I wonder if he knows who his ancestors are. The woman playing with her thick curly hair right next to me, using it as a shield between me and her boyfriend, I wonder if she realizes how sensual her fingers twining in her curls really are. The young woman sitting between two hawk nosed men, staring at me from under her thick eyelashes... does she think about what I could do for her, or what I want from her men...
There are a million different stimuli on public transit. It is constant, and it is overwhelming when all I want to do is sit inside my skin and welter in my fear. This is why having a car is dangerous. Because it lets you forget how connected you are to the rest of the dirty, imperfect world. For a person who skims the surface, through no choice of her own, public transit is a way to throw yourself into the deep end of others reality, others sensuality. A car just lets you remove yourself a step from a reality you're already too willing to throw away.
Also, the idea that who we are right now, in this moment, is who we will always be.
I feel my brittle-ness so much more since I've started taking public transit again. It highlights how little strength I feel inside myself, when I am surrounded by strangers, forced to imagine myself inside their skin. My own skin cracks and crumbles at the thought of allowing another inside, at the knowledge that these broken, imperfect people can see me. Can analyze me to their hearts content. Because that's what I'm doing to them. The man sitting across from me, with the deep set eyes that speak of allergies and Elizabethan England, I wonder if he knows who his ancestors are. The woman playing with her thick curly hair right next to me, using it as a shield between me and her boyfriend, I wonder if she realizes how sensual her fingers twining in her curls really are. The young woman sitting between two hawk nosed men, staring at me from under her thick eyelashes... does she think about what I could do for her, or what I want from her men...
There are a million different stimuli on public transit. It is constant, and it is overwhelming when all I want to do is sit inside my skin and welter in my fear. This is why having a car is dangerous. Because it lets you forget how connected you are to the rest of the dirty, imperfect world. For a person who skims the surface, through no choice of her own, public transit is a way to throw yourself into the deep end of others reality, others sensuality. A car just lets you remove yourself a step from a reality you're already too willing to throw away.
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