moments that are opposite of blindness
Collage by Crystal Bowden
Short-lived cicadas greet the twilight with their trenchant hum, the sun tucking itself behind the rolling hills. You climb an oak tree because your cousins double-dog-dare you, despite the vertigo you’ve come to know in your ten years of being alive. The sky, damp and sublime, darkens and it’s time to play Release. This elaborate game of tag isn’t for little kids; the stakes are higher. You team up with your cousin Ryan and run through the woods, stray branches catching your bare arms, sticks breaking under your feet and betraying the silence you need to escape unscathed. Inhaling summer’s swollen air, exhaling the anticipation of the chase. You end up in your neighbor’s yard with Ryan, collapsing on the dewy earth, supine in the grass. A pensive silence stretches between the two of you, and for the first time in your life everything is clear; the sky, the grass, the air. You two were never found.
You’re thirteen and unlovable. Your only friend Kayla invites you to go to a carnival with her family, so you smear dark eyeliner under your eyes and hope for the best. She and her grandma pick you up, eyeing your makeup choice. Your wardrobe. Your demeanor. You stick earbuds in your ears and stare listlessly out the car window, My Chemical Romance coursing through your brain. Kayla frowns at you but says nothing, and before you know it you’re at the fair. Girls your age giggle and latch onto their teenage boyfriends, and you try to hide your scowl but lack the willpower. Kayla turns to you and says, “You’re not being fun today.” And suddenly everything is clear; the makeshift carnival rides screeching on the tracks, cotton candy tossed thoughtlessly on the ground, the reality of your uselessness. What are you supposed to say to that?
Fire crackles and embers burst in the dry air, summer dying alongside them. How you wished you could be one of the embers, flaring up and disappearing in an instant. Sixteen is tough so far, and the bonfire you’re at with your friends should, by all means, be fun. But as you look around the circle of chairs, each friend immersed in their own conversations, you realize, slowly, that you cannot relate to any of them. Their minds aren’t as dark as yours. Wordlessly you stand, showing yourself out of the backyard and down the searing streets. You can feel the asphalt burning beneath your feet. It feels like yearning. You lie face-up in their neighbor’s yard, eyes glassy as you stare up at the stars, pretending you’re ten again. The sky is clear and you are too.
“Doors closing. Sedgwick is next,” the Chicago train says. In all of your eighteen years you’ve never known freedom like this. The brown line is your favorite; sailing through buildings, first small in Lincoln Park then slowly growing to towers as you travel south. You’re not going anywhere particular, just somewhere away from your dorm you’ve grown to resent, somewhat. It’s 9 PM on a Wednesday and surprisingly quiet. There’s an intrigue in your eyes you’ve never known before as the train floats across the Chicago River, between Merchandise Mart and Quincy. Perhaps this is what wonder is, you think. The water, sparkling under city lights, is clear despite the muck lying beneath its surface.
Nineteen is shrouded in darkness. You’re trudging your way to your apartment the night before the polar vortex of 2019. It’s-1 degrees, the 7 PM winter evening is pitch, and you’re carrying about twenty pounds worth of groceries on your shoulders as snow bombards all of your senses. Your winter boots are soaked through and you’re still a ten minute walk away from your apartment, hands freezing under fingerless gloves. “She Works Out Too Much” by MGMT rings through your earbuds, making your eyelids droop just a little more. The fresh wound of your first heartbreak festering within, the bitter cold chilling it over forever. Cars dashing by on the busy road and spraying the sidewalk with slush. Misery. It’s as clear as the starless sky.
Night time again, new year, the shiny age of twenty. Too young for grown things and too old for naivete. Amanda’s driving with Roman shotgun, you in the back as “Die Young” by Kesha blasts through the car’s speakers that are almost too small to hold the beat of the bass. Almost. You’re going through Kesha’s discography with them, rating each song (SS is top tier iconic, S next, then A, B, and lastly Garbage). Scream singing in your small hometown, up and down the hills, going nowhere. The smile stretching across your face is as clear as the empty streets you zoom through, going 40 in a 25. By accident, of course.
Cate, Boston, and Lauren are curled up on the couch in the apartment you’ve lived in for three years now. Twenty-one years old, a pandemic outside these walls. Attack on Titan dominates the tiny TV screen, and in a tremendous plot twist you all realize nothing in the show will ever be the same. Cate’s yelling in a passionate confusion, you cracking up alongside Lauren and Boston (spoiler ahead: “They just admitted to Eren that they’re titans, very casually!”). You decide to voice record this moment on your phone so the evening will never leave your memory. The laughter of you and your friends rings clear throughout the third floor of the apartment building.
Montrose Ave Beach, Chicago, IL. Two days before your twenty-second birthday. You and Paige buy Smirnoff Ices and her boyfriend drives everybody to the beach. The weather is perfect; sunny and 70 degrees. Sprawled out on a giant tarp you bought at the store, there’s chips and salsa and a speaker playing a playlist everyone there contributed to. You light a cigarette for Boston in spite of the August breeze. Pictures with everybody. The sun is setting in orange, yellow, blue, pink, completely clear save for one kite soaring over the beach. You can’t stop smiling. You wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world.
