(More Than) Skin and Bones — Tale of a Mermaid

March 1, 2022

I haven’t been writing more than one-off sentences in my iphone notes lately. Last week, after watching Euphoria, I wrote, “I don’t think I was ever that sexually adventurous when I was younger, but that’s ok because I didn’t want to get fucking herpes”. Another says, “Every night I pretend I am taste testing what I’m cooking, but I’m really just eating my dinner”.

What do you say when a small country is being swallowed by a monster? When people are discarded like the floss I just threw away? The earth is dying. I’m dying. You’re dying. But I also really wanna take the kids to the arcade; watch those SNL clips on Youtube… I want to tell the truth. And the truth is I’ve been happy lately. I painted my nails silver. Tin Man, Wizard of Oz, silver. I told Scott I actually kind of hope I have to flip someone off (he is probably the most likely candidate even though God, I love that guy) because my nails look so radical and I think it would feel better than flipping the bird with my regular half-eaten nails.

At the grocery store checkout yesterday I blurted out “Sometimes I don’t feel like a real grownup”. There was something so warm about the cashier scanning my 15 kombuchas so carefully. She said, “I’m not a grownup either. I just age.” It sounded like a tattoo. Like something simple that resonates with how I want to feel until the end.

I’ve been kind of hung up on the word success lately. What is it anyways? Having a podcast and a New York Times Bestseller and, like, one of those big doors in your house that looks like a giant glass panel looking out at nothing? Can I really be successful if I never write a book and only grocery shop and raise my kids? If I write a book and only my friends buy it?

You know when George Bailey thinks of killing himself and then Clarence shows him how so many other lives would be messed up without him? Sometimes I watch that and I cry and feel inspired, but on the inside I think- how much would really change if I was never here? I know that people would fight for my life if I needed them to. So I owe others the same, right?

There’s this line in a song called Steamboat that says, “I wish I was more than my skin and my bones” and I think that all the time. I wish I was more. But maybe the point is—we all are more. And understanding that we are each this spirt that doesn’t end is maybe the most comforting thought I’ve had lately.