While You Were Watching Feminism in a Catsuit…

Life was passing you by.

Photo by Keshaun Slevinsky on Unsplash

This week reminded me—again and over again—what it means to be human. That delicate beautiful gift that we abuse endlessly.

Human- not in the Instagrammable, soul-healing, sunrise-filter kind of way.

Rather a raw, brutal, and beautiful you’re-still-here kind of way.

Here’s what I learned:

Tomorrow is a nice idea, but it is NOT guaranteed.

A woman I didn’t know messaged me on Instagram. Her husband had died this month last year. She told me he had saved a book that I gave him years ago with pictures of us in it still. She wanted to see if I wanted it, as he cherished it. I was kind of floored that he’d kept it all these years—and how kind for her to want me to have it.

That man—her husband—was someone I dated twenty years ago and had not seen since.

I didn’t even know he’d been sick. He died of ALS. A horrible disease that no one should ever have to endure—rendering one’s body to shut down but NOT their mind. A spirit trapped within a body that refuses to keep playing along is a hell I’d wish on no one.

The last time I saw him, we were kids. Staying out way too late, dancing, roaming, making plans, and endlessly believing we had all the time in the world to make it all happen. He was healthy, full of life, and walking through the world like it belonged to him. I had to go to her Instagram to see him again.

His eyes displayed that same fun-loving spirit I knew. Sadly, his body was withering away.

It hit me to my core and stayed with me for days. I dreamt of him—alive and healthy. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around someone I knew, around my age, so full of life, is no longer here.

It wrecked me deeper than I even understood at the time.

Yes, of course for him losing his life and for the suffering of his family—but also as a smack-in-the-face reminder of just how frivolous we treat life.

Taking for granted, well—anything and everything. From time, to people, to places, to things.

The time we waste in fear to live, to do, to see, or be.

The people we ignore, forget to see because we are too busy—or even worse, sitting right in front of.

The places we are not going because of time restraints, or “I’ll go next year,” or simply seeing those places through a camera lens and never actually BEING there—because we’re too busy recording the place to actually BE in the place in the first place.

The things—from little to big—from a flower petal to your dog’s eyes. Are you really seeing it, feeling it, present with it?

The absolute audacity we have as humans to think that TOMORROW owes us ANYTHING is truly astounding. It owes us NOTHING.

So yeah, while we are all watching ladies in designer catsuits go up in a penis rocket in the latest edition of “Performative Feminism Meets Capitalism with a Dash of Patriarchy”—AGAIN—someone’s losing a loved one or taking their last breath. Making us forget is part of the plan!!!!! And we are all knee-deep in it.

As I walked my dog this afternoon—the same neighborhood where that man I dated once lived—I noticed the cherry blossom tree blooming in the middle of all the concrete. Cars zoomed by, people rushed past on their phones, horns honked—and I decided to stand there. Just stand there and look at this beautiful tree. Not through a lens but just me and the tree. I looked at it for me and for my old friend who no longer could.

Photo by Evgeny Lazarenko on Unsplash

Life is happening, people. With or without you.

The lesson?

Do the thing. Say the thing. Sing the song. Scream the pain. Write the piece. Paint the dream. Breathe the air—and by all means, BE THE FUCKING THING THAT LIGHTS YOU UP!

Life waits for no one.

That cherry blossom was blooming before I was here in this neighborhood, during my stay, and will keep going long after I’m gone.

Just like my old friend who lived just a block away.

For Chris.