Bones and All
“Lee: “You don’t think I’m a bad person?”
Maren: “All I think is that I love you””
I just got back from watching Bones and All, and I’m still digesting it (Heh, heh, heh…get it? Because it’s about cannibalism—-oh, never mind!) Anyway, all dumb puns and jokes aside, I adored the film for a million different reasons. Fuck, I even cried.
The past couple of years has been me trying to answer the question, “What is it to be vulnerable?” I’m not sure if I have answered the question, but I feel as if I am, at the very least, closer to understanding the concept of vulnerability. I think I’ve avoided getting close to people to the point where I have pushed people away because of my fear of what other people would think if they saw the darker side of me, the one I hide away under lock and key—the entirety of me, “bones and all”. I think that’s most people’s fears, though. My fear is hardly unique, but sometimes it can feel like I’m the only person on the planet with a darkness they’re trying to hide. That’s just human nature. We don’t want to be judged for things that happened to us. How do you fix that? How do you stop people from viewing you in one dimension when you know you’re more than the bad that is apart of you?
Lately I have been thinking about how there are some people out in the world that bring out the better in you. The ones who make you strive to be better, at the very least. There’s one person who does that for me. He’s not with my physically anymore, but he has a place in my heart (He’s not dead, he just no longer lives in the same state as me), and I always wonder, “What would [REDACTED] do in this situation?” [REDACTED] is someone I have always deemed as having a strong moral compass. Maybe he never shows sentimentality, or becomes overly emotional—at least not like me, but then again I cried during a movie about cannibalism so I’m just a special squirrel, but I know he cares by the passion he feels about how the oppressed are treated in this country. How this passion makes him strive to make some sort of change, from donating to good causes, campaigning for candidates who will help the oppressed, and potentially using his future degree to fight for the oppressed. It’s one of his most attractive qualities, one of the many that make me weak in the knees. Doesn’t hurt he’s also easy on the eyes.
I asked him one time if he suffered from Catholic Guilt, and he answered with tact and brevity—yes. He summed it up by stating he just feels as if people shouldn’t suffer. The answer was simple and straight forward, but since then it’s just stuck in my head like an old wad of gum under a picnic table. it changed my view on things for the better. It’s always a question I ask myself now when I’m interacting with other people or making every day decisions—is this going to bring undue suffering to someone else? Is this something I can prevent, if at all possible? Do I have the capability to to make someone’s life easier by being less selfish? It’s made me a more empathetic person, to look at things within a bigger picture, away from myself. Every day he is making me a better person even though he has no idea how much that one little sentence changed me.
Circling this back to the topic of vulnerability, I always wonder if [REDACTED] would ever accept me, bones and all. Logically, I know he would. He’s hardly a shallow person, and someone who is as caring as him, even if he doesn’t put it on full display, would accept me in my entirety. But there’s the dumb fucking voice in my head that keeps saying “No” and it’s louder that the logical part of my brain. The only time I feel like I show my vulnerability is through my photography. Sometimes it feels like I’m having a conversation with him through my photos. I have no idea if he picks up on it or not, or if he, too, is having a conversation with me through his photos. Sometimes it feels like it. Not like an actual conversation, but an emotional one. There’s no words to describe these conversations, it’s just vibes and feelings, and the feelings are always warm and loving. I’ve always felt this sense he lives in some weird nook in my brain, where he hangs out with a book and candle, listening to all my weird and random thoughts as they collide with each other in a chaotic fashion. There have been moments in the past where he’s said something out loud as I was thinking about it. It’s hard to explain, so I try not to talk about it otherwise I just sound like a weird loon, but there is just something between us that is unexplainable. This connection is unique—it’s a connection I don’t have with anyone else, which makes it that much more difficult to talk about.
As I’ve gotten older, I have realized these connections are rare. Not too many people will like you in your whole entirety. These connections are the most precious things in my life. The fear of being judged by the people I do have such powerful bonds with makes the stakes that much higher, and the sting of possible loss that much more painful.