Cliché of the Day: Tattooing "Abide"

I never thought I’d get a tattoo. Especially not one easily mistaken for having Christian connotations. They’re expensive and permanent, and that's obnoxious. Three things I try to avoid. It’s why I like piercings. (Especially in Michigan: inexpensive and healable.) But one word has not left my mind for the last year: abide. And I like words. A lot. 

In response to my expressing surprise at its presence, my friend wrote:

I’m amazed at the confluence of “abides” in your life all at once. Wow. Sounds like some sort of message to me. I always think of that word as very comforting and peaceful. So maybe “hang in there” is the word, or “I’m here with you,” or both. Something like that?

I was/am amazed too. Looking back, that’s what I needed, to hang in there. It’s what I needed to hear: I’m here with you. She wrote that January 20^th of 2014, January of what would become the most fucked up year of my life. I know, that probably comes across as dramatic, and it is vulgar. But the year was both dramatic and vulgar. Someday I’ll express the vulgarity of 2014 in a book that I’ll probably never sell. Until then, perhaps “abiding” belongs not only in my mind and soul but on my body.

I probably won’t get a tattoo. I’m too cheap and too scared of permanence. But I’ll keep abiding. I’ll keep hanging in there, listening for and trusting that someone will always say, “I’m here with you.”

An Ode to Crosswords

Crosswords. They are a kind of complete that I am not and a type of disorganized that I am. The words don’t necessarily go together. In fact, they usually don’t. My inner workings don’t seem to go together all too well either. If they did, I wouldn’t be bipolar II. And of course, although the crossword’s complete, I’m not. Of course. None of us are. Some of us have more words spelled out and connected than others, sure, but we all have rogue tiles and mystery tiles. Real philosophical . . . I know.

I guess I hate being incomplete and disorganized, but the crossword’s disorganization mirrors my own disorganization and its completeness gives me hope.

Words. I like words. I like crosswords. I organize myself when organizing those tiles. But it’s no Ouija board. It doesn’t tell my future—and it doesn’t need to. It just needs to complete itself, for in that, somehow, it helps to complete me.