Calling All Creeps

Come, love. Sit down with me. This is for you...

When it seems like there's no where to put your love
When your desire becomes a splinter in your heel that you cannot remove no matter the tweezers
When you just keep walking, pain and all, beginning to limp from longing so deeply

When what you prefer giving and what they prefer receiving doesn't exactly line up
When you have no fucking clue what it is that you're meant to give
When you can't control your energy in ways other than outbursts of desperation or denial

When you're the only one at the party buttoned up, or wearing flannel, or ready to kiss with as much as a hint
When you're never invited to the party
When you always choose to stay home

When you're popping xanex in the bathroom to kill the edge
When you just can't shake your judgement
When you can't understand why everyone's judging

When you get the best gift of your life and then have nothing for the giver but a thank you that he won't even receive
When you know the truth will most definitely break something--like the inertia of your body or the frozen fear of your voice
When you'd rather lie than go through the pain of restoring a shattered life
When you decide to let things break, and no one likes your recklessness

When you begin to see yourself in everyone and everything
When you can call yourself what you really are, without pretending that you are not
When your big bold life begins to topple over the edge of normal and into the realm of whole
And when you let yourself worry that this--this expansive way of being alive--makes you even stranger than before when you had no where to put your love

What if your belonging doesn't depend on someone else's word or approval?
What if there's no one coming to comfort you--I mean down-to-the-bones comfort--but your own tired self?
What if you are the so fucking special and also the creep, the weird-o?

We are all so very vulnerable. No one immune. No one getting to play hookie in the health room during the math exam. Not forever, anyway.

We all eventually have to sit for that test--the one that exposes how little we know, the one that makes us feel like beginners again, the one that softens our ego and teaches us to ask for help, or say nothing at all and just be with our own tender limitations.

We are all creeps. All weird-o's. And there is someone out there, someone so fucking special meant to make your creep stand tall like hairs on your back. Meant to remind you of your fragility. Meant to point you to your strength by illuminating your wobbly parts.

Sit for your test. Struggle to let someone see your vulnerability. Over and over and over again.

Passing's not the point.

You're learning. Perhaps, if nothing else, how to let go of the need to get everything right, to know all the ways of the all the worlds, to always have an answer.

You're learning how to be a creep, and therefore, relatable. You're learning how to be a weird-o, and therefore, low-pressure for everyone else. You're learning how to be one of many drowning in the pool of desire for a perfect body, a perfect soul.

And this, this makes you more known, more normal, more human than you ever thought you'd be. It makes you just like me, just like her, just like him. It makes you one of us in this big, messy, beautiful human family that's trying to learn love despite our differences; that's trying play and grow up and stay young and feel free and feel safe all at the same time.

We see ourselves in you.

We all have our days (or months, or years) wondering, What the hell am I doing here?

We're all in this together.