sunburnt blues

I have no concerns in regards to getting older. In fact, I’d argue I want to get older faster. I know the common consensus is, “enjoy your youth,” but youth is an overrated concept. That’s what the cynical part of me believes anyway.

However, I keep thinking about the past and who I was when I was younger. Not just lately, but all the time really.

On my way back from the gym today, I got caught driving slowly through torrential downpour, a playlist of the same ten songs from my hyper-fixation rotation playing on repeat. It came on as suddenly as it was loud—terrifying, even.

I hate driving in the rain, especially in Miami. Everyone is reckless, dodging through lanes and crashing through the flooded streets without concern of the imminent hydroplane. It’s dark in the sunlight, and I don’t have the best windshield wipers since I keep forgetting to change them out.

Just an ordinary day of existence with only thoughts of wanting to be home, in the shower, and watching mindless little YouTube videos.

I’m usually someone who drives pretty fast, but in the rain, I’m down to the speed limit which lengthens my commute home. So the songs play, and they play, and I’m sitting at the red traffic light behind other cars as the rain floods over my windshield, and I’m thinking, “Damn, I really miss my Honda.“

In my late teens and throughout my early twenties, I had a habit of driving down to South Beach after midnight, back when parking was free and my depression was at an all-time high. After driving down the empty highways, I would take a towel under my arm, trudge through the sand behind the hotel—The Deauville—where my high school had its senior prom, and sit down to just stare at the rolling Atlantic waves.

Meanwhile, I’m terrified of the ocean.

It’s too vast, and deep, and there are creatures lurking in the dark. Since watching Jaws as a kid, I’ve been terrified of sharks. I can’t be in any body of water alone—not even a pool, for pete’s sake. This anxiety overcomes me that makes me rush to safety the moment I’m alone. Of course, I’ve gone swimming regardless, but never too far from the shore. Hardly brave enough to take my feet out of the sand.

But even still, I would sit there quietly, and all on my own. It would be 4AM by the time I took the same highway home. Some nights, you could see thunderstorms in the distance—the lightning could be purple, or white, or blue, or even red one time. Other nights, the moon would be so bright and full that even Miami’s light pollution couldn’t compete.

And it was all so romantic. So totally and completely sublime, it could bring you to tears just sitting, waiting, and watching. There were many times I did cry, weeping into the sand until it was time to put my hands back onto the steering wheel.

I used to find beauty in everything. I would feel so deeply burdened by being able to see it, but never share it. I would take pictures of things that felt beautiful to me, yet never seemed to be beautiful to anyone else. At one point, I even thought I was beautiful too—in some weird, alien kind of way.

There was this inferno inside of me, sweltering in my belly. Sometimes, I thought I would burst. I was angry, yes, but I was optimistic. I felt hopeless, but I was so vibrant. It wasn’t enough to exist, I was determined to live.

Now, I just want to make it to 30.

I’m not on fire anymore. My existence feels like a stain that’s bound to be wrung out. I’m still angry, but it’s unmotivated. None of it feels worth it, none of it matters; and when none if it matters, neither do I.

My life feels so devoid of beauty when my mind used to live in it. I’ve only ever wanted to share what I saw with everyone else, and there were times I could. It resides there, in my writing somewhere. It’s all the tiny universes in my head; it’s the spaces between words, and all the sentences strung together that might not make any sense. But if you read close enough, you can see the faint outline, like someone you love standing behind frosted glass.

I try to find the string I unraveled behind me to circle back to that feeling somehow, but it keeps slipping out of my hands. I wake up, go to work, feel miserable, come home, feel miserable, go to bed, feel miserable, and wake up to do it all over.

But goddamnit, I just want to fall in love again.

I want to be moved by thunderstorms. I want to enjoy fog in the mornings. I want to be happy when I make strangers smile. I want to stick my toes in a swimming pool and kick the water around until the droplets stain the stone ground. I want to look up at the sun and think to myself, “Today is a good day to be alive.“

I want to be on fire, even if it burns, and I want it to hurt.

I’ve come to realize the days I feel the most loveless are the days where nothing is romantic—where a car is just a car, and the rain is inconvenient, and there’s nothing but laundry to do and money to worry about.

But maybe—just maybe—there’s some hope for me. When I’m not in Miami, things feel different. I can see it, and I never want to go back. But then I do, and I’ve lost it all again. The answer to my prayers is to leave, I know that, but I’m not able to because my reality keeps me trapped. So what else can I do but persist, suffer, and wait for the end?

One day though, I hope you’ll see what I’ve seen, and I hope I can see it again too.