FreeBird

It’s a little depressing, nay, disappointing, when I find the only two things I can really say about today are:

“Always make copies” and “Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”

I was told today “not to wear your heart on your sleeve,” by a much older woman. Apparently, when you do this, people swarm, and not to give hugs, but to stab. I don’t know if I believe this yet, and I guess I might be screwed when I find out it’s true…but I’m always going on and on about wearing my heart on my sleeve, and I think I’m a little too devoted to the idea to just give in because a few people warned me not to. I guess it’s my loss, or maybe my gain. Who knows?

I guess no one knows because most of us take the advice. So for all I know wearing your heart on your sleeve and having it stabbed can’t be any worse than starving your heart in a tiny cage. I’ll take the knife please, at least that way it’s over quickly. Cages suck.

I just read the blog (yes, not only do I waste my time writing them, I waste even more time reading them) of a guy who sat next to me in Advanced Composition. You don’t have to be me or sit next to this guy to know him, because you already know him: He’s the guy who’s sarcastic, but funny, aloof but connected, smart but a little slacker-ish from time to time, charming but is completely capable of being a jackass if he really wants, seems a tid bit lost and innocent, but throws the “f” word around with so much heart that you don’t even consider he’s cursing, and might I mention he didn’t read hardly any of the assignments but had all of the best answers in class. The guy you wish you could be (and by “you” I mean “I”), but you’re not quite brave enough or free enough to be him.

My friends and I gave each other nicknames in school. I was Myrtle the turtle, this is both humiliating and completely void of anything to do with me. My parents called me Pricilla the Hun or Lucille McGillcuddy because of my tendency to be mischievous and a “terrorist” from time to time. But when I was in high school, I was sitting on the beach with a group of strangers, and a boy asked me for my name, and before I said anything, he decided he’d call me Freebird. And when one of my friends asked him why, he simply said, “because she’s free.”

Maybe he was flirting with me, and calling me Freebird was his way of making my singleness sound desirable, but I liked the nickname. And when he starting singing the lyrics by Lynyrd Skynyrd, slurring the part about “I’m as free as a bird,” and rocked side to side, holding his beer, I was happy. Because I believed it.

Deep down, there’s a freebird in my soul, she’s just gotten caged somewhere. And cages suck. So Rhetorical question: If you stabbed me, would she fly away?

I don’t know what happened. Some people spend their lives not able to differentiate who they are now from who they were then. But sometimes- when I think about who I was then- she doesn’t look anything like who I am now. That seems absurd, you should always just be you, but one day, I couldn’t climb trees any more, and I couldn’t play with dolls or GI Jo figures, I couldn’t pretend and play: I wasn’t a child any more. This isn’t the end of the world, but still, I don’t think I just lost my nap time and animal crackers, I lost something else. I think I lost my courage. I never questioned my spontaneous roof climbs, or creek adventures, or attempt to build forts and sleep in the woods. I didn’t consider them, analyze them, look for the sensible things…I just did them because I wanted to, because somewhere in me, I needed to. I needed to get lost, to climb something bigger than me.

Somewhere along the way of growing up, I grew up. Where I used to dream about rooms filled with blank paper and pens, and traveling the world, dancing on cobble stoned streets, and getting lost in big cities with strange names, I lost Pricilla the Hun and Lucille Mcgillicuddy. They were replaced by the sensible and grown-up Martha Lee Anne. And Martha Lee Anne worries too much about the cost of traveling, safety concerns, getting lost in big cities not able to speak the language, and “what about my degree, and job, and ‘future’”

It’s highly ironic that the entire time I was hoping to just live. To just be. To take the world for all it was, and fall in love with it- all of it- I became the responsible adult that I hoped I’d never be. At this moment I hate Irony, and I’m well aware that he’s on the ground, gasping for air between his laughs.

I don’t need the house, the job, the “American dream”. I don’t need a white picket fence or a flower bed. I don’t need the crunchy eyelashes and white powder. I never needed them, I never wanted them, and still, I’m moving in that direction. I’m closer to being Stepford Ryals than I am to being Freebird. I refuse to be a Stepford, because it’s not who I am. I’m a Freebird, and birds don’t need organized folders and plans and people to tell them where to fly: They fly because they need to, because it’s in their nature to.

Wilson (the guy from advanced composition) is a freebird. He could be running or he could be a coward, but my idea of those two things means 1: treadmill 2. Getting a degree and working in a little office making a good American salary because the cage looks a heck of a lot safer than all of that empty, blue space. Being a coward is not: going to Europe for 7 months, having dinner with complete strangers, sitting alone in a café.

I think if I had never been taught responsible is better than spontaneous, or if you climb too high, you might fall and break something, or everyone grows up and…. I’d be more like Lucile McGillicuddy, like Wilson. Because I think, maybe, this is a huge generalization, but I think we’re all like Wilson in that we lust for the adventure, the story, it’s just, we’re not all brave enough to go find it.

But I’m going to find it. I’m going to write about cobble stoned streets, and old men singing opera, strolling down streets with empty bottle in their hands, and I’m going to sleep in the sun on open hills, and I’m going to feel tiny in grand churches. I’m going to be Freebird again. I’m going to be Lucile and Pricilla again. Because I’m not Myrtle the turtle and I’m not Martha Stepford, I’m Martha Lee Anne…and Martha Lee Anne has lust for a story, and adventures, and the unexpected, and I suppose, I just took a little detour from her for awhile.