One Day At A Time

It’s a Sunday night, a night never to be trusted for emotions. So, a lot of you are gonna head home and either receive texts in the dead of night or actually compose them that are not going to be fully representative of how you feel for the rest of the day, for the rest of your week. Then you’ll be reaching out, and if you’re not reaching out you’ll have someone else reaching out to you. And your friends, and your brain, and your morals, and your conscience have all trained you not to respond. But I’m gonna go against the grain and I’m going to suggest that the next time you get a message from the one you love, the only person in the world you love and can’t talk to, that you respond. And you just write back when they ask you if you’re up, and you’re up, just write back, “Yup, come on over.” Cause life is just too short to keep playing the game. Cause if you really want somebody, you’ll figure it out later. Otherwise, you’ll be laying in bed with a Blackberry on your chest staring at it, doing nothing for the rest of the night, hoping that it goes, “PRRR, PRRR, PRRR.” If you love someone, if you love somebody. Don’t say a word, say, “don’t say a word, just come over. Let me cry all over you, let me wish that you were or I was someone different.

Maybe there’s something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters.

If there’s someone you absolutely miss, you might find yourself talking to them a lot in your mind, creating those fake conversations with them and you answer yourself in their voice in your head. Maybe it’s a girlfriend who dumped you or you know someone who died or that sort of thing, you adopt their personality or the memory of who they were as a means of staying close to them.

Forgive. Forget. Fake it. Chin up. Wear lipstick, make lists, make sure your voicemail isn’t full. Mix protein shakes, send timely thank you notes, sip drinks more slowly, stare at adults’ eyebrows, smile without dimples, develop perfect posture. Be gracious, be kind, eliminate self-pity. Look in the mirror and shift your internal monologue from ‘How do I look?’ to ‘This is my face,’ from ‘What the hell am I doing?’ to ‘This is my life.’ Capitalize your emails, read the news, walk briskly, stay focused, and never, ever let on that you are somewhat lost and sometimes lonely and so completely confused (and would someone please just let me know what it is I’m supposed to do next, where exactly I’m supposed to go–). Just keep going. Go, and do not stop.