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Life is a circus. 

Just like the circus, there are people who are terrorized by the clowns. There are people who are annoyed by them or just couldn’t care less about them, and then there are those weirdos who really enjoy them. 

And sometimes, the circus changes. 

The reason I’ve been scared of the clowns? Because I was living in a bad circus for a long time. I tried to like the clowns but.. you know. Even when they don’t physically reach out and touch you (or eat you, like the ones in horror movies), when you end up at the wrong type of circus it can still just all turn into a nightmare. It’s that sinister, unsafe, something is very wrong here vibe. It’s chaos.

Chaos can be liberating, when you end up at a good circus. Jugglers frolicking and acrobats flying around above you, happy elephants. Yes, even the clowns can be warm and inviting. You never know what is going to pop up in your face next. If you are at the right circus, and in the mind to enjoy a nice delightful surprise, chaos just.. hits the spot. 

Of course, in life, most of us seem to be at the circus against our choosing, and so we’re kind of just trying to find something to pass the time and be good sports about humoring our more enthusiastic (or luckier) friends. That’s not to say we can’t join the appreciators of a good knife-throwing show, if we can ever give up the resentment about the general lifelong idea that we “weren’t even supposed to be here today.” 

This metaphor came to my mind today while I was getting lunch between classes in  Jimmy John’s across from campus. Their motto is that they make your order “so fast, you’ll freak.” Orders were moving at a fast enough pace to make the employees freak, at least. I slid in just three people after the beginning of the craziest rush I’ve ever witnessed (definitely not the last if I keep taking lunch there this semester) at a sandwich shop with only 5 dine-in tables and no standing room. 

I’m the awkward person who talks to you briefly if you’re standing next to me while we fill our sodas and the lemonade is out. Sorry. I’m the awkward person who will probably smile at you if we’re all standing around, practically inside the bathrooms waiting for our sandwiches, and not be shy to make eye contact.

I mean, that is me today. That is who I am, of course, when I feel healthy. That’s another story, though. That’s another circus. I was sitting at the table (one of five, such a lucky and successful day I’ve had) and eating the tuna and avocado with tomato and lettuce and wheat bread and.. all the things that they normally add into that sandwich- which matters because my life has been falling downhill lately and that mushy sandwich, overfilled with lettuce strands, wasn’t just another day at the sandwich office for me. I have been starving to death, I think. My soul first, and then my mind, and then my body. 

As I was there on campus today, after observing the circus of Jimmy John’s at lunch, in the middle of a day centered around refilling my body, my mind and my soul- I made connections that my life before has been a circus, a bad one. I’ve been destroyed, because I was thrown into a bad circus.

Life after this bad circus- still a circus. But the amazing thing about it- at least today- is that it wasn’t a bad circus. It isn’t a bad circus. It isn’t always. It can be a good one. I get just… collapsed, when the circus comes to town. I’ve endured so much circus in my past that I’ve forgotten more than I could ever remember of it. My arms don’t want to lift up anymore when the circus happens, now. Even when it’s just the boring circus, or jeez even the really amazing Cirque Du Soleil kind (I mean, you don’t have to do anything but sit there and watch that one…).

I just can’t budge. I just can’t move. My arms won’t lift at all. Too much circus out there.

My arms are afraid of the clowns because they didn’t know that there are other circuses out there. I saw clowns without fangs today. 

To throw in another metaphor (because I like chaos now, of course) as I drove away, among a sea of other cars leaving campus (nice?), I decided that the metaphor for independence of “learning to ride a bike” had never really been for me. Bikes still make me uncomfortable. It seemed appropriate, but maybe I just hate riding bicycles because they hurt- and that’s how life seemed and independence was a necessary torturous evil that I had to face because it had to bring that same sort of pain. There’s pride and benefit in it, but the intense helpings of necessary pain and suffering as well.

Today, I had hope that it’s more like learning to swim. Exhausting, and yes, there can be pain in that, too. But for me, there has never been any sensation in life like propelling through water. Independence took on a new, breathtaking allure.

Navigating this chaos is bumpy and I know my moods are cycles, and always have been and probably always will be. I guess I just wanted to write this down because I regret it when I don’t write things down. There’s always the hope that these cycling moods just come and go because they’re each trying themselves on for size, and when one doesn’t seem to fit well enough with reality and my own needs, it gets tossed out. None of my perspectives and feelings have been quite on-the-money about life just yet. 

Luckily, I’ve chosen to pursue a major in Philosophy, and I’m getting therapy now. I think just being in school does something to shift my whole world around for the better, on the whole. In the end, my dream is to just figure everything out. I don’t really know if that’s too much to ask. 

please tell them.

don’t value his life over your own.

please understand what it does to you.

I tried to avoid muttering to myself in my brain and with my tongue, “It doesn’t matter,” because that’s a detachment that’s actual hyper-attachment in disguise.

I tried to look at the places around me and I said, “You’re alone and you’re safe,” and this is what I repeated as I moved through the spaces with my fingernails pressed into my fat and skin, my rotating wrist cutting the way around me through the world and the street.

Cars moved all around me and pedestrians (don’t look at them, just think “You’re alone,” and they can disappear too), and buildings that were brown and bluegray, brown and orange trees, and higher up in the street than the cars and the pedestrians (don’t look at them, and they won’t be there for now). 

There were no people (nobody, nothing) in the cars that were running around the corner in steady pressing metal car motion. There were no people in the trees, I tried to look at the leaves.

I thought about the humiliation and I thought not to think about the humiliation. I thought about what I should do about the humiliation and thought not to think about what I should do about humiliation. I thought and muttered, “Go home and don’t do anything and take care of yourself,” and I said, “It’s over with and you’re here now, you’re free just here and free and alone.”

I thought to not think about feeling bad because I thought I felt okay.

I thought I’ve been making up my own bad feelings and I actually am okay. 

I thought I’ve smiled my whole youth and thought I felt okay,

and then I didn’t, and I didn’t, and I thought I was hiding it and