Manatee

Posted on October 7, 2004 in Avoidance

I have been hearing all my life that I am different. Strange. “Profound”. It’s so easy for some people to fit me to a pattern. I am a man from Mars, “like all men”. I am a nerd, a geek, a fool for loving the world as I do. One of those people.

So here’s my hat off to everyone who has it easy. Who are alike. Familiar. Simple. Who are really men from Mars or women from Venus. Who have never felt depression. Who can laugh easily and tease me because I don’t explode until….

After all they dish on me, they wonder why I do.

I came home tonight from a writing group and started putting these cliches to paper. They look the same every time and yet I don’t see myself in them. I did it because I didn’t want to take out a sledge hammer and break a hole through the stiff craniums that don’t get me.

I speak of the things I see. I am not certain of what I see. I don’t think all men and all women fall into easy grooves. What is familiar to me is the same old suffering people inflict on other people. My mother calling me with bad news. “I thought you’d like to know that your godfather had another stroke. You should send him a card.” The face of another man superimposed over mine because all men are alike. A phrase from something I wrote — something where I took a risk to find new language — being tossed out at me for the sake of mocking me. Twenty-something brats thinking charity spoils fun. The same old crap in the same old world.

I am used to walking alone to my car. No one seems concerned that I am leaving.

It must be lovely to be satisfied with roses standing for love and lilies standing for purity. It must be so great to live for a purpose. Yet I don’t take nearly as much satisfaction from them as I take from just being myself. When it is allowed. When I am alone in the office writing blog entries to myself.

This manatee longs for Blue Springs where he can dive to the bottom. Where no one will hear the sound of the slashes in his back. Where no one will say “I don’t get you.”