Alone, Part II: Feet

Feet

I woke up this morning surprised at the sight of my own feet. It was one of those long restful nights where I slept way longer than I should and woke up feeling quite irresponsible but wonderful all the same. It was one of those mornings where you wake up on time the first time but still feel disgustingly exhausted so you go back to sleep and wake up two hours later and repeat the whole scene a few times. This cycle keeps repeating itself until someone or something forces you out of bed just in time to feel completely amazing about life.

I woke up when the owner of the couch I had just hibernated on came in the front door, opened the dogs kennel, and the little schnauzer came up to the couch and started nudging my face excitedly. A little ashamed to have still been asleep at 12:30 P.M., I opened my eyes and just lay there, half-acting like I’d been awake for awhile so this responsible man that was on his lunch break wouldn’t think I was a total loser.

While I was laying there, I looked down at my feet and was taken aback for a minute. It was one of those surreal moments where something absolutely familiar to you becomes completely and utterly foreign for a moment and your brain seems as if it did a somersault into a swimming pool and now it’s upside down and wet and disoriented and got water up it’s nose. It’s like when you see a word that you’ve probably been saying since you were four years old and have been able to spell since the second grade but has suddenly begun to look extremely odd and not right to you. Apple. Aple. Ahp ehl. App. Uhl. Appelle. Alpe. Is it spelled apple or aple? Is that right? Why does it sound so weird? Appple. Apple.

But instead of with the word apple, this moment of mental displacement focused on my feet. As I laid there with a blanket that smelled like dust and a couch like feathers, I feel like I saw my feet for the first time. They looked so foreign to me. The feet that rested at the far end of the couch where my feet were supposed to be were more slender than I remembered. Each toe desperately stretched towards the ceiling being held back by tiny tufts of hair on the knuckles. The tendons and muscles popped out as if these feet were used to doing some walking and rather enjoyed to go out and not be inside all day. On these strange feet, flecks of dirt were caked on in some places and almost stained in others as if these feet didn’t like shoes and felt as if shoes only constrained them and stopped them from being who they were as feet. The toenails on these feet had dark edges with even more dirt on the surface, but they were mostly semi-neatly trimmed as if someone took the time to keep them comfortably short. These feet looked interesting, as if they had a story. I reasoned that the feet in front of me were the kind of feet that didn’t belong to anybody but had someone who belonged to them. That someone who belonged to these feet was probably pretty interesting and probably had a really good story to tell.

I concentrated very hard on not trying to move my toes for fear that I would discover that these were my feet and this retreat from reality would be destroyed. But like anything else that you concentrate very hard on not doing, I ended up wiggling my toes just moments later. And I was actually a little shocked to find these foreign feet move when I told my feet to move and each toe following.

Those were my feet. But how could they be mine? They look so foreign, so different, so...adult. They don’t look like they could possibly belong to me or I to them.

I think one of the strangest realizations I’ve ever had in my life is that I don’t know who I really am. I know that I’m Gary Head, a twenty-year-old college student who loves music and coffee and good friends. I enjoy short walks on the beach and dogs and my pipe. I love the Texas summer air at night when the it’s just starting to cool down and the heat of the day seems to evaporate from your body, replaced by the cool air and this ethereal feeling that I’m very much alive and existent.

But none of that really has anything to do with who I actually am. The color of my eyes or the things I like and dislike have a little to do with who I was and who I am and who I’m becoming, but not too much. Who I am has more to do with the soul that exists inside of me, the core of my being, the very purpose for each individual heartbeat and why the clock of my life keeps ticking and hasn’t stopped yet. It’s not about the things I love or hate but the very fact that I’m able to love and hate that are the true indicators of who a person really is.

And as I looked across the couch at these feet, not really knowing who they belonged to or who belonged to them, I began to feel inescapably alone. When I feel alone, I usually feel as if no one understands the absolutely unique pain of situation that I’m going through. Being alone, I feel as if no one really knows what I’m about or why I live or why this situation is so painful for me. Aloneness makes me feel as if know one knows who I intrinsically am inside and no one can ever know.

But I’ve never felt more alone than when I realized that as much as I long for someone to feel my soul and understand my being, I don’t even know those things. I don’t understand the unique pain of the situation I’m going through. I don’t really even know what I’m about or why I live or why this situation is so painful for me. And to me, the culmination of aloneness exists when I can’t even see far enough inside myself to know who I fundamentally am as a person, as a human, as a soul. And I can’t ever know, really.

Those feet at the bottom of the couch must have a human that is very interesting and wonderful and exciting. That human must love to live and breathe and feel the brisk air against his face in the cool of winter. He must have a group of friends who love him and support him and think he’s funny and want to be around him. He must live a good life and his feet must take him to wonderful places to see and experience and feel.

But that guy, I don’t know him at all. He's a stranger to me. Him and his feet.