Another Extreme
What is life, if not a lot of it?
I don’t know how to define the complexities of life. I do not want to be asked either, because my answer is: Well, it is life. Is it not?
I can tell you life is fruitful, in both pleasure and pain. I can tell you life is bountiful, in both giving and getting, and occasionally getting taken away. I can tell you life is abundant, in everything you see, there is plenty.
But some things, despite the influx of how much there may be, can only be found by chance. They are what I call the “three extremes”: love, hate, and grief. You do not get a choice when you get them, you just have them. The thing that makes this trio so extreme is that most times, if not all, they cannot be shaken.
You are at Hobby Lobby in the checkout line, and like everyone else, you fall victim to the discounted items strewn on the shelves trying to weasel their way into your buggy. You are looking at the mug going for two dollars, the bag of weird chips for three, the hot dog shaped candle for four, so forth and so forth. You see the practical looking candles, ones not shaped like a hot dog, and the line is not moving. So you pick up the first one to get a wave of florals, then you pick up the second to get a whiff of fresh laundry, and finally you pick up the third to stand in your late grandfather’s garage and smell his array of leather work one more time. Grief can not be shaken, so you take the candle that smells like your late grandfather’s garage and his array of leather work and buy it. The five dollar candle makes a home on your shelf, never being lit, but when you think Oh, I miss you, you find yourself holding the candle between your hands, trying to bring him back to life through your sense of smell.
You are in the car with your best friends, and like all who are lucky, the music is loud, the windows are down, and you are all overjoyed to be with each other. You are singing with this group of girls you have not known all your life, but your love for them could go farther than the timeline you have written in your head. December 18, 2024 you sat on the couch with these girls for the first time, your connection being a girl from January 2022- August 2024 for them-, and the next morning you said “I love you, bye!” You have held hands, you have danced, perhaps even cried with these girls you met six months ago a countless amount of times. Even though they are technically new, they are a part of you, because love cannot be shaken.
While I will tell stories of grief and love, I will refrain from ones of hatred. What really qualifies as hatred? A disliking or is hate just love that has turned angry?
These past six months, I have questioned what makes these three things so integral to who I am, how I portray myself, and how I write.
In the same car previously mentioned, I told my friends, “I think I need to have my heart broken to write again.”
One of them laughed, and another held her hands on the wheel as she said, “Why?”
“I haven’t written in months. I got so used to writing about something as large as grief, I need to feel another extreme to be able to write again.”
She responded in an elaborate way of stating, there is more to life, more to feel, than just the extreme.
I wanted to find life so desperately, that I was willing to overlook everything about life if it meant I could define it.
This past year has been full of brokenness and rebuilding. I will also refrain from sharing my brokenness and my rebuilding, because as you all know, I will share these stories later down the line, not while I am living them.
I have continued to find myself in the same place I was years ago over and over again this year. Like my shoes have been glued to one spot, and I was not aware, because obviously I was not spending my time looking at my feet, I was spending my time looking before me. Addiction is glue and pain stings. The two do not mix very well, especially when the addiction is keeping you in the pain. Sadly, you have to wait till you outgrow the shoes, or even worse, the glue wears away.
Oftentimes, those two cannot be shaken either. There are layers to the extremes of life, even when you attempt to deny it.
It is easier to look at life with a false view: love, hate, grief. There is more to each than what the name gives.
You still love your best friend who screwed you over months ago. You tell yourself you hate her, but in all reality if she came crawling your arms would open like an automatic gate. They’d close in the same fashion too, saving her from whatever made her leave you.
You still grieve that opportunity you let your fear take from you. What if I fail? you asked yourself, but you forgot to ask yourself What if I succeed?
Every time you drive down that one road and the wind smells or moves a certain way, you think about that boy from your Junior year you hate. Yet when you think about how much you hate him, you think about how much you love him for changing you in the most disgusting way, but the most needed.
This past year I was so desperate to find life that I forgot it is everywhere, in everything, and in everyone.
You can see life in the finger prints carved into the dust covered trunk of the car in front of you from the many trunk closings and the not-so-many car washes.
You can see life when the bats that appear right before the sun says goodbye swarm in the sky above you as you attempt to keep your feet planted in the grass, despite the dog obnoxiously dragging you on his leash.
You can see life in the couple that has thrown themselves across the altar in the middle of a church service, the wife wearing a bright green dress despite the depth of darkness she is bringing to God.
You remember what life is when you think of who your father was when you were in sixth grade right before your parents’ divorce. On a sun-bleached rainbow lawn chair beneath an ancient oak tree in your backyard, your father sat with a jar of moonshine in his hand. You met him under that ancient oak tree and sat in the grass, and you let him wear his sunglasses, and you acted like you couldn’t see the tears spilling out from beneath them. His arm scooped around you and pulled you close to him, as if not holding you tight enough meant he’d never hold you again. You let your dad cry, and when he said, “I love you, Roo,” you smiled and said, “I love you too, dad.”
You remember what life is when you think of your mother standing beneath the doorway to her bathroom, her eyes swollen beyond means. She laughs a little, attempting to cover up the sob beneath it, “A daughter should never see her mother cry this much.” When you tell her it’s okay and put your arms beneath her to hold her in a hug, her tears become heavier and her sobs louder. You tell her you love her, and she cries hard enough for you to know the words I love you more are traced between her shakes.
You remember what life is when you round the corner to the living room and see your grandmother crying on her late brother’s birthday. She tells you of her last moments with him, how they sat and stared at images of him when he was healthy and whole. She cries when she recounts the images, and how she sat there knowing what goodbye lingered between each picture.
You know what life is when your best friend wants the phone number of a cute guy at a restaurant, so you pull some strings and get the number from one of his coworkers: a failed ask-out of your own might I add. You take an old perfume box and label it, “Hottie’s number for a hottie’s b-day” on the inside. You rip pink streamers off your pom-pom from the breast cancer awareness football game during football season and stuff it in this box. She giggles as you give her this old box, relatively confused as to why you have a camera pointed at her, and she jumps up and down once she opens it and realizes what’s hiding beneath the ocean of pink.
You know what life is when you are in your friend’s apartment, and everyone is over the fun and has gone to bed. Four of you sit in the family room. You’re falling off the slowly-deflating air mattress, your friend and her boyfriend stand before you drinking a weird type of egg-nog mixture, and your other friend sits at the counter in a somewhat broken barstool. You are tired, but you stay up and listen to her explain the difference between Judaism and Christianity as she drinks her odd egg-nog. You listen to your other friend ask more questions, and you listen to your friend respond. Occasionally you throw in a question, but for most of it your head tiredly bounces back and forth in the conversation.
You know what life is when your friends sneak you into the local bar at 17 by paying the cover fee and saying, “The five of us are all 18.” They wave you inside, but first they place a red star on your hand that screams underage!! A random guy comes up to you and says, “Let’s dance,” and sweeps you up off your feet before you get to say no. When you get home, you see a red star printed on the inside of your upper arm. You question the migration of the star, and the only explanation you can conjure up is that you had too much fun dancing.
You know what life is when you know it is more than extreme, it is unavoidable.
Even when you think you know what she is, she will tell you she is something greater if you let her be.