vomitingouttheuberwindow

[vomitingouttheuberwindow]

[vomitingouttheuberwindow]

[vomitingouttheuberwindow]

Parsing the honey through splintered teeth

On Friday I barfed out the window of an Uber. I don’t do that. But I did. And it was horrible at first; my friends held me while I cried about chuking on this man’s property and making his job harder. I tried to make it better, I apologized and tried to dump water from my Nalgene on the side of his car door. He said nothing, his foot stop-go-stop-go on the gas, fleeing into the night as I limply poured water over the (scarce) chunks on his door. 

And then I realized I am awesome. Didn’t even barf in the car. Out the window, like a champ. I laid on the beach while my friends dared the Puget Sound in their underwear. 

That is probably the only interaction with that person I’ll ever have in the chance of our brief, overlapping time on this planet. No redemption. I think it’s sad. I think it’s magical. I think it’s beautiful. 

I turn twenty in two days. I have been grieving teenage girlhood this whole year. I realized I don’t feel like a teenage girl anymore though. I feel like more of a nothing yet than a twenty, but we’ll see. 

How do you survive adulthood? Every day I live: I see emotions, histories and futures, truths 

And they are screaming, kicking and seething, antagonistic. One looking at the other. Or, they are sitting back-to-back, never seeing, knowing, experiencing, understanding the other. Touching all the same. 

Maybe it is all about this intimacy. Maybe the exorbitant outbursts and the distant touching is a translation of love. Maybe I’ve been framing it wrong. I’ve wanted to ask 

How do you hold both in your hands and feel something like “this is okay, this is what life is about”? Accepting that humans are everything at once. Accepting that historybefore and presentnow and futurethen are everything at once. 

But maybe it’s not so much acceptance as it is witness. I bear witness to its chaos with my body. The point of holding the tension in your hand isn’t to accept it and feel okay. I think it is to see it in its ugly kalediscopic terrifying infinity and not drop it. I think that act might translate to love. And part of not dropping it is perpetually doing something about it. If something someone just said in class makes you itch, use your words and do something about it. Make art about it, read a book about it. Research is translated in all kinds of ways. Research it. Document it. Keep collecting grocery lists and take pictures of people’s fridges. If you’re gonna barf out the window, barf. 

I don’t think there will ever be right answers. Or, answers. But everywhere will speak when you ask, so I’m asking. I am forever trying to ask. 

[vomitingouttheuberwindow]

[vomitingouttheuberwindow]

[vomitingouttheuberwindow]