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Nothing About You Made Sense

And that’s why I needed you

You walked into the classroom and I was instantly peeved. Who does he think he is? Why is he smiling? How does he have friends already? What’s he laughing about all the time? The more energy I wasted hating you for no reason, the less I had left to focus on more important things. School, all my extracurricular music, anything but you.

Remember when you were young?
You shone like the sun
Shine on, you crazy diamond

Now there’s a look in your eyes
Like black holes in the sky
Shine on, you crazy diamond

My youth was spent in a dream. Just like my childhood, every waking moment felt more surreal than the actual, ominous dreams that punctured my restless sleep.

Regularly, the terror of something wrenching my spine out of place ripped me into consciousness.

Petrified, my back twisted. I feared any movement would break it for certain. But moments passed, and the cramping subsided. I drifted back into the world of magicians and grandfather clocks and hidden closets behind carpeted staircase landings.

In the mornings, I woke up to music and spent days immersed in its atmosphere, my head only on occasion poking out of the narrative fog those astral soundscapes infused into every mundane moment.

You were caught in the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom
Blown on the steel breeze

Come on, you target for faraway laughter
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

One day, there you were. Platform №10 — my platform. Striding in my direction. I buried my face in my coffee connoisseur magazine.

You walked up to me anyway, and you said my name. The audacity. Why? My expression must have given me away: widened eyes, as far as eyes widen, with a slight swivel of the eyeballs every half-second or two. Internally, anyway; I have no recollection of what my actual face showed you.

One couldn’t deny I was excited. But I did it anyway — I denied it so hard, my slight distaste became full-blown loathing.

You reached for the secret too soon
You cried for the moon
Shine on, you crazy diamond

Threatened by shadows at night
And exposed in the light
Shine (shine) on, you crazy (you crazy) diamond

I was smitten with a different boy. Seeing him brought me onto something. I remember the moment it came to me, walking down the steps of the cathedral square, deep in wistful thought. It still amazes me I don’t fall down stairs more often.

When we fall in love, we’re really falling for the undiscovered within ourselves.

I added the ‘undiscovered’ part a scant ten years later, but nonetheless, back then, I could feel it. I knew it. I reveled in the realization, placing my contemplative, exhilarated longing into this new framework.

But the thought didn’t survive until my next woeful love. My heart hadn’t broken and scabbed over enough times to inscribe its truth, warning, and freedom into my brain.

Soon, he realized our friendship had gone in a direction he hadn’t wanted it to. He asked me about you. What? Why? I hate him, I said.

You know, hate and love are just two sides of the same coin.

I want you
I want you so bad
I want you
I want you so bad
It’s driving me mad
It’s driving me mad

We spent one maddening year emailing about nothing in particular. I wondered what the fuck all this was for when you didn’t seem to want to see me in person? On the other hand — I was happy with email. I’m not the best with people.

I want you
I want you so bad, babe
I want you
I want you so bad
It’s driving me mad
It’s driving me mad

At some point, it became clear you had a girlfriend. Though you sometimes complained about her, it seemed you wouldn’t be leaving your relationship anytime soon. My gut wrought itself into a knot of gloom, my heart permanently torn by the futility of everything.

Still, you got me a job in your parents’ restaurant. I wanted to work in the kitchen, but they needed a waitress.

I was dreadful. My autistic, socially inept brain hoarded deciliters of blood every time I approached a table. For naught. I broke tumblers, I forgot and garbled and confused orders. All systems on red alert, every minute of my four-hour shift.

Every evening when I was finishing up, you would arrive. I wouldn’t look at you. I couldn’t speak. What was there to say, anyway? Now I know — I was just exhausted from masking all evening. But then? What do you want from me?

Your girlfriend was still around — I caught flashes of her bouncing hair sometimes, and once, the two of you sat down at the bar across from me, giggling and chortling as I was busy cleaning Bordeaux glasses, concentrating hard on not breaking more than two that day.

The day came when you parted ways.

We had a drink. Another. Soon, we were outside. You came to my house. You showed me how to pull on joints. I laughed for hours, then retreated to the floor inside to paint upside-down prophecies. They would come true ten years later.

I wrote you a weird text message confessing my love. You asked me to go for a walk and said all the right things: You just got out of a relationship. You liked me but it was too soon. But let’s do stuff, you said.

We spent the nights roaming empty streets. Squealing and talking for hours on a bench in the cold.

I lay my head on your lap as you opened another beer.

I want you
I want you so bad
I want you
I want you so bad
It’s driving me mad
It’s driving me mad

You were driving. You said you wanted to show me this song. It was so awkward — but oh, so thrilling; the obviousness of the lyrics had caught me spectacularly off guard.

My literal mind reeled, feeling its tendrils into the unfamiliar territory that was drawing conclusions from what had yet to be said.

It was driving me insane. If you wanted me, why couldn’t you tell me? Your scarlet Polo haunted me for years.

I want you
I want you so bad, babe
I want you
I want you so bad
It’s driving me mad
It’s driving me mad

Nothing about you made sense.

What did you want from me? How did this happen? Why was I so in love with you? My best friend at the time, though highly outspoken, very cautiously observed she had never seen someone drowning in love the way I was with you. I sat back helplessly. I observed the same.

Were you an invitation to play?

Nothing else made sense. Nothing about us worked, which is why I am glad you never tried to kiss me, let alone sleep with me, despite still wishing you had.

While you treaded everywhere with caution, nothing was serious with you. Everything was play, even the matter of us.

Nothing about you made sense. Another friend asked me why I was so drawn to someone that made no sense. I asked myself the same. I loved meaning. I needed it, I breathed it, I ate it for breakfast. No meaning, not worth it. As it goes, I was constantly straddling those extremes — seriousness or ridiculousness.

You always evened out the lower end.

I’ve since become aware of my joy-suppressing ways. When I don’t feel that innate intoxication with life itself, I refuse to give the weighty more room than it needs. At least, I try.

But have you ever noticed how the soberest of beauties can harbor the highest of euphorias? It’s strange, it makes no sense, but I’ve realized I love things that make no sense, and isn’t that what life is about? Loving all of it.

That spellbinding pizzicato no longer stains my outlook all shades of melancholy. It frees my wandering mind to focus on beauty.

Beauty gives way to joy. Then, elation.

She’s so heavy
Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy

The song meandered. Now, the conclusion-seeking was locked in a dance with my countless insecurities — do you mean this literally, too? Or do you just like this song and mean nothing else by it? What do they mean with those words? Am I attractive to you? Do you want me? Or did you never want anything at all? I don’t get this thing.

Why does nobody just say what they want?

Well, you wore out your welcome
With random precision
Rode on the steel breeze

Come on, you raver, you seer of visions
Come on, you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

You were a canvas. My insecurities developed a life of their own. They steered the boat, they told me what to draw, they even prescribed the colors. You soaked up all my projections, and I painted on you until you couldn’t take it anymore.

I want you
I want…

And you fled.