At a Funeral

As the summer sun warmed me back up from the relative chill of the air-conditioned chapel, I finished sorting through the bitter introspection that made me feel like I hadn’t done a good job at memorializing AB’s father. It was part of the parcel, I guessed. My problem, universally, is me. No one dislikes me as much as I think they do. Very few people like me as much as I hope they would, either. My social anxieties are rooted in my inability to accept that being social is just a matter of being social. There’s no magic trick to it, no secret that can be taught. My daughter knows how to do it already and she’s so fresh in the world still the new baby scent hasn’t rubbed off of her yet. She smiles at people. She shows an interest in them. She gets delighted when they show an interest back. She spends some time by herself, but not so much that she has learned to prefer it. It’s practically instinctive, and I haven’t spontaneously developed some aversion to it or been afflicted with some kind of block against it. I’ve fostered this isolation. I’ve groomed it. I’ve taught myself to adore the terrifying solitude of talking to myself as the only audience who gets it, who appreciates the me I imagine myself to be. I’ve pushed everyone out and aside and away and sprayed these ill-fitting words into the light of the world of human beings so far away now it’s a tiny dot of light above my head.

The sound echoes and fades and resonates only with the grubs and worms and scarcely reaches the few who keep lowering their ears closer to the bottom of the well while I dig ever further from them and shake my fist that I’m not heard.

So no, I’m not the victim of unfortunate disorders. I’m not the afflicted with a short straw in my dirty fingers who lost the lottery of mystical or genetic ability to simply speak and listen with other human beings. I’m out of excuses.

I know I mourn the loss of a man I once knew and admired. I don’t think there will be mourning for the death of a foolish hermit, the portion of my self who let cowardice and selfishness deny the growth of a well-adjusted person. The slaying of that facet, shearing it from my personality, may be gruesome and painful, but there will be no tears. At the funeral we’ll never hold for the unlovable persona I loathe there will be only this eulogy:

“Spoken once in only whispers,

This self-imposed impostor lies

It gave birth to winged drifter

On firey wings of fellows flies.”

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