jellyfish beach

little blob, you've got just enough:

mass for the receding tide to be unable to take you back to the sea
buoyancy to float in the little divet on the beach you're holed up in
tentacle length and clarity of membrane to attract old and young, plus random dogs
moisture to let the sand stick to you wetly, dehydrating you slowly as the sun beats down
life left that you're still pulsing slowly, mesmerizingly, angrily
sting to make life really, really miserable for awhile if I touch you.


I wonder if all your little blob friends you got separated from are emitting a song of sorrow for you, or gifting the water with a commemorative stinging symphony of electric impulses lighting up the sea as they float away.

Go Ahead With Your Own Life...Leave Me Alone!

I was a special eight year old. The Billy Joel song referenced above was literally my theme song. I hated being told what to do, when to do it, with whom I should do it, or how to do it. My emotions ran high pretty much all the time. It was during this phase of my life that I began self-imposed anger management seminars. I was so easily overwhelmed by emotion, and I so disliked being unable to control how I felt that after the third Saturday in a row of me crying my eyes out and embers of rage burning within me over something chore-related, I just couldn't take it anymore and decided there had to be a better way to live. It took awhile, and sometimes I still have meltdowns, but I think it's safe to say that things are better (overall) for me emotionally these days.

It's interesting that as an eight-year-old I related more to that song than I do now. Now the line that resonates with me is "Either way, it's okay, you wake up with yourself." The key is to being happy with the self you're waking up with. Doing the things you tell yourself you're going to do is so important. Being emotionally honest with yourself and with others is often the most difficult thing you can do in life, but if you can, you're so much better off. Hardly anybody wants to hear it (and here's where another Billy Joel song pops in my head, "Honesty...it's such a lonely word...everyone is so untrue. Honesty, it's hardly ever heard! But it's mostly what I need from you").

The more your actions align with your thoughts and your emotional plans to be honest, the happier you will be. In the last few months, I let go of some things that had been bothering me for a long time. I kept telling myself I was going to do it, that I needed to do it, but the fear of an emotional blowout kept me from it. In the end, it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I had already distanced myself from the situation, and it was just in my mind that the things I was laying to rest had power over me.


I walked to the river of dreams and let the things holding me back from rising like a phoenix, triumphant, fiery, and brave slip into the depths. I told the little devils inside me to go ahead with their own lives and leave me alone. It was liberating. It was needed. It was wrenching.

I don't know if the imps are completely exorcised, but they are vacationing somewhere very warm -- too warm for me -- and I don't wish them to come back. If they ever do, here's hoping beyond hope that I'll sing with all the emotion of that angsty eight year old: "Go ahead with your own life. Leave me alone."

Icarus and Billy Joel

"So I would choose to be with you, as if the choice were mine to make...
But you can make decisions, too, and you can have this heart to break."

That song makes me so, so sad every time I hear it.

Earlier today I was contemplating Icarus in relation to dating. I knew that Icarus had wings, and that he flew too close to the sun. I misremembered the story -- I thought they got burnt into little stubbly nubs and he had to be earth-bound his whole life and long to feel the breeze under his wings, but no. He didn't have to live the pain and sorrow and longing that I attributed to him.

The real story actually makes more physics sense--the wings were made of feathers and wax, and, because he thought he was all that plus a bag of chips, he ignored the manual, which specifically stated that you shouldn't fly too close to the water or the wax will get soggy, and you shouldn't fly too close to the sun because the wax will melt. Icarus thought he was above the rulebook, which is why he ignored it and, when the wax melted, he went tumbling, perhaps as many as a few thousand feet into the ocean and died.

I was thinking about Icarus because a ridiculous number of my closest friends have recently gotten out of relationships. In a couple cases, they were the ones who ended it -- in a few, it was the other way around.

It seems that with dating, everyone has an Icarus story.  When you're just starting to date someone you're excited about, it's hard not to assume that gravity will win...Every. Single. Time.  But then things seem to be going really well, and -- it's not usually the case that my fellow single fliers get cocky, like Icarus -- it's that we start to hope too much, thinking that this time will not be like all the others. Surely! An investment is made. It starts generating interest. The interest compounds, the interest is reinvested -- and voila. Recipe for disaster and heartbreak has been written. Already the wax is beginning to soften. Softening isn't bad, if the wings are being reshaped to be more aerodynamically efficient when they cool.

Sometimes, especially lately, it seems that as all Icarus daters fly along in their relationships, one of three things happens:

Option one, the one that doesn't really seem like a possibility for anybody on the ground, is to manage to make the up and down work, strengthening themselves and working together to dip and dive and soar and all those lovely-sounding things.

Option two is to do as Icarus did, not obey the rule book. The result is to tumble down, down, down, no parachute in sight, not doing a single thing slow the fall or look out for a safe landing. Splat. Failed love -- no more trying. This is very uncommon -- the least popular choice, I would say, as human beings are generally creatures of hope.

Option three, the one that seems to happen the most often to people in my life right now, is that the sun decides to dip down and singe the little relationship wings that were growing past all repair. The damage is done, and it seems like, instead of the fate of tumbling a fair distance and have the risk of essentially splatting, the wings are singed, and somehow the flier makes it back to safe ground, with a bit of a bumpy landing, and for their trouble they receive the option of being doomed to wander about with the burnt stubbly nubs I mentioned earlier, longing for the loft of a relationship. Eventually, after a good long bit of running back and forth madly in a futile effort to generate enough land speed to become airborne without wings, and perhaps much despair and fist-shaking at the sky, when acceptance comes, bit by bit, feathers come back, until one day a hop is taken, then a bound, and then a downright leap off the precipice is taken. Again. I know I'm mixing Greek stories and maybe even metaphors here, but come on, that Pandora's box of hope is a pesky, real thing.

The thing is, with option three, sometimes each person is Icarus in the relationship, and sometimes the sun. And sometimes, after the sun has just singed wings, all that's left is to sing Billy Joel and realize that each person can make decisions, and sometimes, that means hearts break.

Hugs to all those Icarii out there with singed, stubby wings. Sometimes it's a false alarm and it's just a few burnt feathers and you'll really make option 1 work -- it was just a scare. If not, I will wrap my arms around you, cry with you, and maybe together our tears will heal the little stubbly nubs and someday you can go flying again and find a beautiful partner, and option one WILL happen. It doesn't make it any easier now to hear that. I know, all too well. But keep a tight hold onto that pesky Pandora's box, and, with some luck and a lack of hubris and bitterness, you might just leave behind your Icarus days forever.