In case of THE INVISIBLE MAN

I see things.

And in case you’re about to be all comforting and reassure me that, it’s okay, everyone sees things, let me say right here exactly what I mean. I see things that aren’t there.

This is, I think, what it must mean to be a writer. We’re the kids that played pretend games all the way through elementary school, all the way through fifth or sixth grade, all the way until some Backstreet-Boy-Wanna-Be decided to start pushing us around. And even that wouldn’t have gotten us to stop if it hadn’t awaked our survival instincts. I mean, really. I blame Darwin. Survival was the reason we stopped.

We stopped and we traded our pretend games for, well, secret pretend games.

It sounds funny, but I’m not kidding. It wasn’t that I ever stopped SEEING The Big Dragon. I just stopped POINTING at The Big Dragon.

Thanks a lot, Chuck.

But now I’m starting to wonder if it really is all in my head.

Like, I look around. And there’s all this drama and meaning. There’s all this story everywhere. I can point to anybody and be like “you did this because of that time in your childhood when you ran through the lawn sprinkler. And, what’s more, you’re bound to run through the lawn sprinkler again!” Or whatever. And I can write it that way and it will make perfect sense.

But some days I wonder if I’m just grasping at the air. I wonder if The Big Dragon really exists at all. Or if he ever existed. I used to see him and I ran. But to everybody else…I was just running. I wanted to believe that my running meant something. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it really didn’t.

And sometimes, when people hurt us, we feel like there’s a reason. Because in our minds, there was a relationship there. There was a promise there. There was trust and love there.

Trust. Love. Intangible things. But they’re the realest things we know.

So when we hurt, we want to believe that it means something!

But maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it really doesn’t.

I’ve spent my life throwing words at this, throwing flour at the Invisible Man. I feel like if I can just powder him from head to foot, give shape and space to him, then I can prove that he is there!

But sometimes the flour just floats, gently, in a horrible yawning silence, to the floor. There’s nothing for it to cling to.

And sometimes there’s no reason to run, anymore.