Little Weirds

by Jenny Slate

I found a window that opened. There you are, do you know what you are doing? You are finding the new air for yourself. What a useful, good action to take. You are a person who got up and found the air. Take at least ten breaths. It’s a fact that this is the main thing that you need to do to stay alive, breathing, and now it is a treat. Look at you!

I started to understand how to move away from near-misses with dead pink meat and into the live animal world, getting wild and gentle kisses from better animals. Instead of asking the old questions that sounded like “What is wrong with me?” I would start asking important questions like “What if I only dreamed gardens, what if I ate carrots because what if I were a pleasant rabbit? What if I got a crown for doing nothing but being who I am, what if even just one plant said hi to me or a tree bashfully bowed as I walked by, what if my dog knew what I meant when I wave to him? What if I could always be a little bit on this island in my mind? What if I could always be a little bit naked, a little bit kissing everything, an unplundered trove of my own love?”

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.

It occurs to me as I fight so hard with myself that these cruel and persistent voices are the echoes of trauma from the times when people treated me like I am now treating myself.

I realize I want to hear my voice and only mine. Not the voice of my voice within a cacophony of old pains. Just mine, now.

And then it occurs to me that it is never too late to write yourself a good little personal creed, and that finding a creed for yourself is about gathering a set of rules that supports your self-respect and your community. It occurs to me that even though I feel very much at sea, I am noticing that I am finally mature enough to develop a creed and to live by it, and that this will no doubt cause me great satisfaction and give me exquisite, lacy-patterned strength in my spirit.

And I see the leaves turn a bit in the air, and the breeze coming in feels like the whole world is a pet that is breathing on me, and I think, Well, I am so sensitive and I am very fragile but so is everything else, and living with a dangerous amount of sensitivity is sort of what I have to do sometimes, and it is so very much better than living with no gusto at all. And I’d rather live with a tender heart, because that is the key to feeling the beat of all of the other hearts.

I face the darkness with the faith in the light, without any rush.

I am that mysterious stranger that I hoped to meet. I met her at a dark dance. We came here to live together until I could stay by myself. The place is here. The time is now. This is all my lifetime.

Your heart is factually a part of the universe, which is a miracle of endless force and boundless beauty. There is literally no way that you are not part of that. Despair can force you to turn your eyes away from this fact, but it is the real truth and it will be waiting to be with you when you are free enough to turn back to it.