Words with friends

I just watched a sweet video from this guy at Adventures in Gay about his coming out, after I had watched his very silly gay classification kingdom video in which he makes up some very silly terms. He's 25, and an artist, and talked about his difficulty calling himself an artist, as well as his growth once he came out.  I did not possess that self awareness when I was 25.  I think it's dawning on me slowly at 45 - all those acting classes where they were trying to get me to just be myself when I was trying to be anything but. The struggle now is not looking at those as lost years, but necessary years.  I've lived through some things. I'm getting better at being honest about who I am. That's been a long journey. It was inspiring to hear him say that being gay is not normal, but special, and to embrace what that is and make something of it.  What a wonderful point of view.  It's heartening.

I was playing words with friends, and lost for a word to play.  Sometimes I'm completely flummoxed, and the only word that seems possible is "it" or possibly "es" or the like.  Then I start to think I'm not smart enough to play words with friends, and that everyone I play with will think I'm stupid.  It's usually not a great day when that's happening. This morning on the way to work, for instance, NPR was playing a story about a child with eye cancer, and how his devoted father was working on an application that could spot this cancer in pictures of children, thereby detecting the possibility of disease earlier and saving their lives and their eyes. This father was devoted.  My father, not so much, sadly - he had a disease of his own to deal with. How is it possible to miss something you never had? Do I even remember correctly, having been a child? Self-pity is never fun, but in the morning, it can ruin your whole day. Most times I do not go to this place, but for some reason this morning I did.  By the time I got out of my car I was too old to do anything new, a failure, fat, insane, and most certainly emotionally unable to ever be in a relationship with anyone other than my sad, failed self. And my car needs to be vacuumed.

These thoughts are like a subterranean sewer system in my brain.  Most of the time, they're just chugging through, and out to the ocean to dissolve, and I don't even notice.  At any point, though, I can lift the manhole cover and dive right in.  It happens pretty quickly.

Playing words with friends, I looked away and when I looked back I saw a word that I hadn't seen, and played it for a lot of points.  That happens fairly often.  Order is restored. I'm back in the game.  A solution presents itself.  I forget to look away sometimes, but when I can, I look back and it all looks different.