the habit of being

Across from her, warm, in a wobbly chair at a small table with a red tulip and a white water pitcher, I feel Not Alone. She’s wearing that sweater I gave her for Christmas; she says she didn’t plan that, but it looks nice. She’s kindof distracted and sad, but so am I, and I feel Not Alone. It is not only that I sense the similarity in the the two of us, skinny girls who cry, the things we feel, but that I feel the sameness of all people. We bring this up randomly in conversation - the alikeness, the humanity. Differing histories, differing experience; same love, same suffering. We have all briefly felt like characters in a fable. It just comes up, sometimes, when we talk. We repeat it, offhandedly. We have all loved and we have all hurt.

I have such compassion for her, such unaffected love. In these confused days, it makes me glad just to see this in myself, relieved that I am not all sour, resentful, and self-pitying. It is a good thing, to have another head on my shoulder, another life on my mind, instead of my own. I can say simply that I would like for her to be happy, her happiness brings me joy. I feel that I could never tire of listening to her; her ideas delight me, her sadness touches me. The words bring me closer to an understanding which is not only the understanding of her life and her confusion, but somehow her thoughts and feelings have meaning also in the context of my own life experience, from this place I sit in to observe. I do not have trouble seeing the roots, the core emotions, and I do not strain to empathize, to appreciate a being separate from myself yet made of the same fabric.

The confusion, the complexity, the strangeness, awkwardness, anxiety, sympathy and desire to do good. It is easy to see the beauty of a person, even in troubles and worries. There is beauty simply in the Way She Is, in imperfection and paranoia and kindness. This is the beauty of a human life, of mundane madness and common craziness and melodrama that feels like the world to Atlas and the rock to Sisyphus and just getting up in the morning to me and you. The awful tearful passionate suicidal horrible screaming lustful mournful death-loving bliss of sexual relationships, of being in love. The waves and smiles and sighs and glances and hair twirls and stumbles and unexpected gifts and trips and crying jags and pills and insecurities and kisses and roses and lost mothers and lost daughters and lost lovers and lost credit cards and lost keys and lost friends and bad hair days and bad poems and bad letters and psychiatrists and alcohol and mumbled I love yous and hair dye and boyfriends and sidewalks and street corners and bookstores and drug addicts and preachers and abortions and necklaces. All of it. This is us. This is everyone. Everyone is us.

We both had Caesar salad.