Posts tagged with "pieces of me"

You Caught Me Dancing

I always lis­ten to music when I’m in the bath­room, and I always dance when I’m alone.

Except you were in my room, look­ing in, and I was brush­ing my teeth to the beat. I don’t even remem­ber the song, I just know that it moved me, manip­u­lat­ing my joints and twitch­ing my bones like a mar­i­onette. Shoulders, hips, legs co-ordi­nat­ed like a shame­less drunk.

You asked. I denied.

And if you men­tioned it now, I still would­n’t admit it.

L'esprit de mes reve

Coming up with the right thing to say when it’s too late. The French have a term for it: l’e­spir­it de l’escalier. Staircase wit. When you’re leav­ing a par­ty, going down the stairs, per­haps play­ing over an inci­dent in your head, and you think of that per­fect riposte.

Staircase wit isn’t lim­it­ed to insults and wit­ty retorts though. It can be any moment when you can’t think of any­thing to say, only to reach an epiphany soon after.

Sometimes, when I’m feel­ing shy or anti-social or just plain flus­tered, the entire day is filled with such moments.

I always end up say­ing what I want in my dreams, but it’s nev­er as sat­is­fy­ing. This is how I know that life isn’t a dream.

Otherwise, I’d be more wit­ty.

Embracing My Emotional Reactions

I laugh when I’m ner­vous. Especially around girls I’m attract­ed to — total gig­gle­fest. I also laugh uncon­trol­lably around peo­ple I meet for the first time. People low­er their guard when there’s laugh­ter, and I sus­pect my mind sub­con­scious­ly finds humour in every­thing to put peo­ple at ease around me.

Around peo­ple I hate, I’m dead silent. That’s how you know I don’t like you: if I don’t talk. The mere pres­ence of one of these peo­ple forces me to ful­ly con­cen­trate on not drilling a 4‑inch hole in my tem­ple with a cord­less DeWalt.

Pat’s dif­fer­ent. He told me once that if you ever see him shake his head and shrug his shoul­ders, you’re in his black­list. In an act of faith, he’ll give every­one respect and will even go so far as to stab you in the front, but he gives up if you cross his line of ethics. He’ll nev­er be involved with any­thing relat­ed to you after that. It’s not that he hates these peo­ple, like me, he los­es all inter­est. This is prob­a­bly even worse than my reac­tion which, because his is cold. You mean noth­ing to him. I try to let go as well, but I can’t. In the back of my head I cling to the hope that these peo­ple can change. Sometimes I also won­der if these peo­ple ever lis­ten to them­selves and can under­stand exact­ly why I hate them, because it’s so obvi­ous to me.

I also cry in emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions. It does­n’t have to be any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly sad or hap­py, just a time when emo­tions are high. Intense sports games, Tim Horton’s com­mer­cials, some­times just because some­one else is cry­ing. I can hide it pret­ty well though; peo­ple don’t under­stand if you start cry­ing in a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous sit­u­a­tion.

As frus­trat­ing as these emo­tion­al reac­tions can be, I know they make me who I am.

I used to try des­per­ate­ly to remain cere­bral and log­i­cal — like Pat — but my emo­tions would always get the bet­ter of me. Now I’ve learned to embrace them. I could only do this after accept­ing myself and becom­ing con­tent with who I am. They give me some­thing Pat does­n’t have: intense inspi­ra­tion. That rush, when your stom­ach churns, when your head is burns, when you heart flut­ters.

They’re a part of me, and they make me who I am.