
Waiting for Rainbows
We stepped off the plane and looked around us. There were six rainbows. At the same time. It was amazing, surprising, and exactly what I expected. Perfection.
We stepped off the plane and looked around us. There were six rainbows. At the same time. It was amazing, surprising, and exactly what I expected. Perfection.
If you are looking for a powerful, enlightening, and comforting essay about the devastating loss our community suffered on June 12th, 2016, I cannot find the words for you right now.
I feel sort of like Cinderella using every available moment to frantically clean up my life so that I might finally get what I want, except I have no animals, no magic, and no shoes made of glass (thank god).
I don’t remember what age we grew too old for make believe, but it was somewhere around middle school. The next logical transition was video games, which are basically still make-believe games, but more socially acceptable.
During Plead the Fifth, Andy asks his celebrity guests three questions, one at a time, and he tells them that they may only choose not to answer (“plead the fifth”) to one.
Their goal is to recruit you: to get you to sign on and give up. And many times, they get what they want.
She was writing on the whiteboard when the agreed upon time came. She turned around to find all nineteen students in the class at their desks, blankly staring at her with metal spoons pointed upward in our closed fists.
An emotional massacre is really what I wanted, leaving happiness as the only feeling left standing. It’s what made the most sense at the time, but it doesn’t anymore.
“You could argue that,” my professor responded, “but where’s the line between saying something hateful, and saying something offensive? I think that line exists, but you have to define it.”
There were whole virtual universes right in my very own living room. How could I think of leaving it? I guess I would go outside occasionally—when my thumbs cramped up from joysticks or my eyes dried up like craisins.
I had been living in Boston for about two months at the time, and it only took one week to realize that the gay-to-straight ratio here is exponentially larger than in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Never mind the over-caffeinated flight attendants, the screaming babies, the person in front of me reclining their chair into my lap—it’s really the air that gets me.
Balconies are the only architectural structure I know of that can immediately fool you into thinking that you have the socioeconomic status of a character on Gossip Girl.
In the majority of cases, this is because I feel that I have been inaccurately assessed: that my abilities, knowledge, and effort were not reflected by the grade I had received.
When I moved to Boston, I had a dream about the church I would attend. I would get there by public transportation, because I like to believe that God is green.
We are KILLING it! Let’s move this giant dresser! I’M READY!!! Ok 1…2…3! …wait this is so heavy…I need two seconds…(#horrificallyembarrassed).
Perhaps similarly, spiritual renewal has become a side effect of Lent. Perhaps everything is a morbidly unintended effect of our own self-interest.
But in the end, I think we’re all so wrong. So long as we keep yelling. So long as we keep denouncing each others’ thoughts and words and actions as evil.
Thankfully, over the past five years, my attitude towards my illness has changed from constant worrying and embarrassment to sarcastic apathy about its ridiculousness.
I wouldn’t say that I dislike traditions; it’s amazing to see how long they can last, connecting people of the present, past, and potentially future. However, for me, most traditions quickly lose their appeal.
This wasn’t the first time that this had happened to me. During my second year of college, a friend from high school that I hadn’t spoken to in two years sent me a Facebook message: “hey.”
It was like a secret society that everyone was a part of…except for me. Password? “Yeah, uh, I’ll have a Triple Grande Blended Nonfat Caramel Macchiato with Whip and Hazelnut.”
The question still remains I guess. What has Tinder taught me? To be honest, not too much. But it helped me to take a risk. To fight against complacency. To turn fear into hilarity.
I didn’t say anything. Not yet. But I was getting drunker. Not off the single beer I had to drink, but off the flood of potent memories over our last eight years of friendship.