Lost

"Life is short!" They say it joyfully, a cheer for experimentation. Or they say it wistfully, with the breathy confidence of conventional wisdom.

They never say it with the terror of gaping paradox.

They never say, "Life is short! But I have waited so long for this day to be over." They never say, "How can life be so short when I have spent so many nights waiting so long for sleep?" They never say, "It seems that life is short, but the more you contemplate eternity, the slower it turns." They never say, "I am unconvinced."

But I am unconvinced. Because I have waited a long time for this day to be over. And because I have contemplated a million things today and I remember almost none of them. Maybe my life is not short but shortened, by the thousands of days blacked out, by the millions of long deliberations and flashes of insight I thought were shaping who I am, but that now may as well have never happened.

Maybe it's the lightspeed of our synapses that makes our life feel so long, the way our thoughts hurtle backwards into untraceable darkness, faster than we can turn to watch them go.

Humanity is 500,000 years old. But what is it that our human history has left us, if each of us loses 90% of everything she ever comprised, every minute? Five thousand years of written history is just the bits of cloth and wood and dust that remained after all the people blew away.

It makes me angry, it's so overwhelmingly frightening, that though I could read everything, all the wisdom of the ages, I can still only be 25. And how sad for you, to be only 50! And how very, very sad, at 80 years old, to have gotten no older by then. And to have started over every minute, your whole life, with only a fraction of everything you held moments ago.

I guess, then, it isn't such a mystery, these frequent moments of panic, and the way I rush to the bathroom mirror to lock eyes with my own face.

Wherein I write my husband's love poem to myself.

My husband posted a very romantic message for me on Facebook today, in honor of our third wedding anniversary, and after three years, my response to his romantic gestures is the same as it has always been: Who, me? For real?

I would have expected him to say something more like this:

To my wife on our third anniversary

Beloved, for three years you have sat on the couch

and eaten Cheez-Its. You have told one thousand

"Your Mom" jokes and fallen asleep during all

my favorite movies. Lovingly you've asked me to take 

the dog out when it is too late, or too cold, or raining.

You maintain the youthful innocence you held 

when we were first married, refusing to admit

the sobering reality that you would not end up

so mad if you only put your shoes in a place

where you could still find them two days later.

Imagine my puzzlement, having heard you use

the word "mofo," and having seen the tv turned to

"Toddlers and Tiaras," to see you the next minute

pulling Shakespeare's hardback face off the shelf,

rolling your eyes and calling my interests "banal."

Every day you scatter absurdity around our house

like love notes, or your socks. And I know already 

how delighted you will be by my writing this metaphor, 

because I have figured out much more than you realize:

I know that to you, a love note is just like a sock.

I know that for you, there is no truth except hyperbole
and no life except absurdity, and it's only you who wishes
you could give me something normal. So as long as
you keep asking "why do you love me?" I remain

content to have no answers that suit you.

 

 

 My dearest husband, thank you for loving me, and for loving me in such a perfect way. In honor of our anniversary, just for today, I won't ask you why.

 

You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I love you, too.