Today I took my sociology final. This is what my cheat sheet looked liked:
Ever get that feeling where you just want to lay out in the grass with your arms under your head and just look at the stars? Because so many people looked at them before you and if they made it, you can too, even though the whole world seems scary and you’re just one little person?
Because I’ve been getting that a lot lately.
He lived alone with his books and his records and his telescope, with all the doors locked. Days piled upon each other one by tedious one, until the pressure finally created a diamond like thought and he was instantly sad.
I’ve read every book. I’ve heard every song. And I’ve seen every star from the safety of my bedroom and I am empty. In defeat he slumped forward with his eyes still pressed against the telescope. Just then his lungs began to expand, he blinked rapidly, alternating his eyes between squinting and making his eyes as wide as saucers. He cried out, “Of course!”
With all the hours spent looking up it never crossed his mind to veer straight ahead. He spent days upon days taking it all in. He saw children grow to become men and men grow to become fools. He saw hope, beauty, war, strength, weakness, chaos, stillness. He watched until he could recite each scene from memory, eventually he wrote his own books about what he saw and he made his own songs about what he thought he had heard until almost he himself believed what he was creating to be true until lie upon lie piled on top of itself, until the pressure finally created a pearl-like thought he spoke to the world, ”I’ve seen all of your lives and Ive heard all of your conversations, and I am hungry.”
In frustration, he dropped to his knees and began to bang his head against the old wooden door. ”Of course!” He cried out. And without hesitation he stood up, put on his coat and hat, and turned the knob. But before his first step even hit the ground, he was faced with the most unexpected of emotions, one that he could only figure to be what his favorite books and records refer to as Love.
“Where are you going?” she asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Me too,” she smiled.
“I’ll take you there.” She extended her tiny hand and swept him away with her.
They walked until their feet bled. During their journey she told him all the places she had been and all the people she had met along the way. A new emotion began to unfold inside of him, one he thought he had overheard in a conversation looking through his telescope. It was the word Fear.
Why would she choose me?
Not wanting to lose her interest, he began telling her stories he thought she might be impressed by but all they did was make her question his strength and ability to battle the enemies that she knew would surely jump out at them one day but she still kept her faith in him and they continued walking.
What amazing things they saw. They danced in dark caves, warmed their faces by the brightest of fires, and played with brilliant children in the blue Spanish sea. But even amidst all that gorgeousness, their hands began to slip - first from palms, then to fingertips, then to nothingness. They stood still, she faced south, and he faced west. He called out to her, “I’m leaving now, and I blame you for the state we’re in. Through all of our adventures I’ve done nothing wrong and though you’ve taught me how to breathe, I’m taking my new voice and leaving you hear with nothing.”
She looked back and cried out to him, “We drew a map together that you promised you would follow with me. I too am scared, especially after you stole my strength and made it your own. But I am still reaching for your hand, knowing it will fit more perfectly than ever if you will only reach back to me.”
But he didn’t reach back, he was vain and confused. He tried to make a new map, but he didn’t know where to put the “X” anymore. So he walked in circles, he lost his rhythm, he froze by the fire, and he drowned in the sea. He made himself what he had feared the most - incomplete. And even though the decision was his, and his alone, he blamed her for that too.
But the whole time she followed him, looking for fallen twigs and fresh footprints to see where he was going but all he left in his path were messages written in the dirt with a broken stick, scrawled lies of anger and shifted blame, until one day he wrote the word “Help” when he needed her most. But by then she had stopped trying to read his thoughts and make sense of his misery. So he headed back to where he started, back to his books and his records and his telescope.
Battered and broken, he finally reached the edge of his street only to find her waiting for him. And upon seeing her soft smile, he immediately knew what he had done, he knew what he had lost, he knew how sorry he was. For the first time she was real to him. they sat and spoke about everything they should have in the beginning of their story and through all the tears he learned that she had been walking her entire life and that she wasn’t waiting for him to go into the world with her at all. No, she was in fact waiting for him to invite her into his house so she could read his books, hear his records and look through the telescope behind the safety of his locked door.
What a fool, he thought.
“I didn’t realize that with all this time I spent looking out this window, you were right there looking back at it, at me, at this, at us. I already had what you had been traveling these roads searching for.”
She crumbled under the weight of hearing her own truth. And through their honesty, they were both as strong as can be and now under the relief of each note of forgiveness, no thought appeared to them, just a feeling. And he whispered to her, “I’ve seen your efforts, and I can feel your love for me, and I am whole. I still have places to visit and mistakes to make in private, but take my home and make it your own, recite lines from my favorite books in the garden, hear the songs closest to my life while you sleep in my bed, and look for me waving at you through my telescope.”
He raised his hand and he rested it on her chest, and he drew an X across her heart. Of course, he thought. He slowly closed the old wooden door and he locked it behind him.
