Little Weirds

by Jenny Slate

I was born as sweet as that and if I am too sweet for your tastes then just clamp your mouth shut and spin on your heels. I can’t add sourness to my sap anymore just to fit onto a menu in a restaurant for wimps.

I laughed a bit and said, “Unbelievable.” She knew I was talking about the gentle shock you can feel about how straightforward nature is in its generosity, its dizzyingly intricate offerings.

There is a feeling that by doing the natural thing of growing up, I have carelessly waltzed away from a mess. It feels that I have disowned my tribe by choosing to believe that the world is full of creatures and spirits rather than predators and ghosts.

But what am I supposed to do with all of the parts of my heart that are only there to be given? What am I supposed to do with all of this nothing that I see? Those parts of the heart, they really aren’t for me, they are not for my home or my body or my self-love.

If I could remember anything, I would remember my belief that my extra love could just be used on myself.

I retreat back to the old ghostly house in Milton, hoping to become myself again, and to have one more chance, just one more chance to share my heart, and to share it successfully enough that if I become a ghost one day, there’s at least another ghost right beside me. And I have its heart and it has mine, and we had the world together. This is what I believe can happen to me. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I believe that this can happen to me.

I walk through each bashful morning with renewed pride, and my heart is perky and smart as I open the door so that I can put myself into the world.

I died but it was so small compared to how I had lived so much and for so long with you, alive. One death was so small compared to all the things that we did in our life, things that we did all the way through, right to our ends.

There was no other time in my life when I looked for you and thought you were there, thought you must be upstairs or about to walk through the door, but you really just weren’t there anymore. There was no other time when I’d shopped for groceries and bought grape jelly, which only you like, and brought it home just to realize the horror of what I’d done, buying purple jelly for a person who is not there.