rec·​og·​ni·​tions

even if you promise to listen, if you promise to sympathize, can I trust you'll hear? I'm recognizing a deep desire of mine to be known, in all of my complexity. I'm recognizing a tendency of mine to frame conversation as if an issue is already present. I'm recognizing a fear of mine: that I am replaceable, imitable or imitating. I'm recognizing a distaste of mine: dishonesty, exemplified by overgeneralization. I desire to have someone hear what I have to say and respond, even if I've said it before. Because when you listen to my stories, you hear my life. When you hear my thoughts, you know my brain. When you know my feelings, you hold my heart. I feel known by some, and that's a great treasure. I feel their knowing as a thick, knit blanket draping over both of my shoulders, giving me a hug, loose but secure. Present, committed, and aware. I tend to start conversations with "I" and to follow that up with "just feel like," and then often after that comes a bit of "it's hard when…" From there I can get a little more creative. Oh, and I sling these sentences like a line cook, baby. If each day were a kitchen table, and my words were food, and the chairs around the table were my people, I can only imagine what the scene would look like: very Count Olaf's theater friends. There would be soup everywhere, to start, and on top of the soup would be piles of raw kale and underbaked, salty breadsticks. Sometimes my words flow faster than my brain can cook them, and sometimes that means they're messy soupy sadness. And I forget that some people don't like soup or kale and are allergic to gluten. I fear coasting through my days, because I fear coasting through my years. I fear being a consumer and a passerby, a marble in a channel, rolling through a pre-made track, one of many. It may be satisfying, the gentle whirring of my shiny orb as it races on for an indeterminate length of time (we're far too zoomed in to tell how long the track is exactly). But it's an imitated, imitable image, like a promposal or an embroidery kit. I guess I just don't want to be someone about whom they say, "Oh! Sure, you could invite him, he's cool." No, not cool, Beth. I'm kaleidoscopic and dry, and I'll sweep red velvet cake crumbs under your favorite rug to spite your ambivalence, I swear I will. I cannot tell a lie. And if I do, I freak out and correct myself as soon as possible. I probably look like a frightened crane, verbally splashing water and knocking over poolside vases. I'm terrified of people believing that everything I said is what I meant when really I haven't had the chance to spell out my conditionalizing caveats yet (which typically number somewhere between three and nineteen). Sometimes I cheat when I play cards (because I think it's funny and adorable because I'm a minx), but I do not let myself get away with it. Within 3 seconds, I blurt out "I CHEATED OK?", to the reception of re-deals and eyerolls. I cannot sit with dishonesty. Blanket generalizations, claims that opinions are facts, advertisements and religious propaganda, etc. are met with walls of ice. Mine to share, yours to hear. Just know that I reject veneer.