Frankensteining

I used to think I was good at fixing things. But now I’ve figured out what it really is. Really it’s that I’m resourceful, and I use whatever’s around to Frankenstein things back together until they fulfill their function again. And I used to think that meant I fixed them, the things. Now I wonder. Is it really fixing something if it’s just patchwork? If its held together by scraps and glue and wire; if it looks nice from the front but you turn it around and you’ve never seen such a mess? Things aren’t as they were before. Pieces not returned to their proper places; spaces not filled with what really fits.

Sometimes I wonder if anything I ever thought I fixed in myself was just that: just jerry-rigged to work in spite of broken parts; missing pieces. And then I’ve created this whole thing—this ghetto contraption with all these connected patterns—that needs to be dismantled and broken down before the real fixing can begin and maybe I just made it harder for myself to get back to normal.

You know when you take your car in for repairs and the mechanic tells you it’d be cheaper just to get a new car than to get the old one back into shape? Sometimes I wonder if I’m that car.

What is any of it anyway, though—the thoughts, the feelings—with no witnesses? No witnesses but me in my head to the passing feelings of pointlessness, so brief they’re not worth mentioning but so sharp, so penetrating they’re hard to forget. No witnesses to the waves of wonder at the world; no witnesses when the faith runs back in like water, or back out again like a fugitive in the night. No witnesses to the questions of why and how and will I ever? I don’t talk that much, generally, and I don’t write as much as I used to. Sometimes I think it’s just as well; these things are passing, waves on the shore. Some seem insurmountable and frightening, some breathtakingly beautiful, some peaceful and calm. But in the grand scheme of life they all pass away and what were they, anyway?

I think I don’t go through life lightly. I stomp all over it, splash through it, spatter it all around. I puddle jump; sometimes my feet aren’t on the ground at all and sometimes I’m sunk in above my ankles. It gets in my eyes and in my nose and mouth; I can taste it and it’s gritty between my teeth. I wallow in it. I want too much of a good thing; too much of everything that I love (yes, there is such a thing, or so they tell me).

I’m afraid I am not understated; I’m afraid I am not so good at “restraint”. I want more and I want everything; I want to wear a princess dress covered in mud in the middle of the jungle with a machete in one hand diamonds in the other. I want the palace and the ruins, the ocean and the desert, adventure and luxury, to curl up at home and to trek the whole wide world. I want to live off the land and I want to eat the finest cuisine in Paris. I love camping, I love resorts; I love spas with scented oils and I love barns with hay and horses and manure.

I’m almost twenty-five years old and I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up except that I want to do everything and not waste my time fixing broken things. Can’t I just slap on some duct tape and move on? I don’t have time for this.
I am Frankenstein and there’s so much to do; waves to ride and they are passing quickly.