If I could be a stranger

I wish I could be those people, the strangers who just walked into your home, welcomed with open arms and genuine smiles. The visitors who feel loved for their existence.

I hate being inside your home, where I am expected to feel approval because of my place in the family. Assumed to know you want me here because I’ve been here before.

Because I am not at all sure. I’d give anything to know it was true.

I don’t want to do anything wrong. That is what I concentrate on when I am around you. Step far enough. Not too much. “She didn’t clean up after herself” and I remember the shoes I left in the hallway. “He never cleaned the kitchen” and I scrub every dish in the sink. Please don’t let me be one of those people you talk about later, I silently wish.

Sometimes when I am desperate and especially vulnerable, I don’t care so much that you do want me here, but it would be so terrible to know for certain that you did not.

Take that away. Bring some of it back. Just tell me what to say and think and feel and I will do it!

And then you do, and I hate myself for responding like an eager puppet, lifeless without your dictation.

I envy your strangers, your guests, your friends. I wish I could be anything... other than your family.

Selfish

I must be the most selfish human being on planet earth.

I went to a funeral today for a sixteen-year-old girl who died in a sudden car accident. I cried along with everyone else, not because I knew her, but for all the lost potential. Moments she would never live.

And I imagined if it had been my own sixteen-year-old brother, and the instantaneous grief I felt over that thought made my stomach churn and my hands tremble.

I went through each of my brothers and sisters. And my mom and dad. I thought of what I would feel. What would be going through my mind if they were snatched from me, and if I sat in a church mourning their death.

And then I imagined my own funeral. And nothing hurt.

I did not grieve over the years I had left, or feel my soul wrenched by the pain of separation. My stomach stopped cramping and my breathing slowed. My eyes dried and my body felt firm, suddenly composed.

So I have decided that I want to die first, before anyone else. Jesus, it can be today or tomorrow, or years from now. But please let it be before anyone else.

And that is why I am a selfish person. I just don’t want to hurt.