People-Traveler

I exist in two places, here and where you are. —Margaret Atwood

I think if someone were to ask me what my superpower would be, I would be flummoxed, as the case always is whenever I am given options.

I think I’d be more satisfied if the world worked this way: that your superpower would be whatever your real-life strength is, enhanced.

(Yes, like Twilight. No, I don’t like Twilight – but yes, I’m borrowing the idea.)

It started when I was eight years old. I was walking and passed a man walking the other way. I don’t know what it was about this man; maybe it was because his brows were furrowed in such pensiveness, that he reached out to me—but for a second, I was that man. I felt his frustration, his back-and-forth what-if’s like brushes of bold color across my own brow.

It’s been like that since then. Not all the time—only when I get out of the cobwebs in my own head long enough to look up, and feel out another furrowed brow.

To quote Margaret Atwood, in those moments, I do exist in two places.

This is why I live for one-on-one conversations. With enough time, and enough trust to be vulnerable, I get to touch more than just the tip of the iceberg of a person. I, along with anybody else, become so entangled in the business of living that sometimes I forget there are whole other lives being lived right next to me.

A friend of mine once talked about this old man who said something along the lines of: “I fall in love ten times a day.” As Jacki Kellum, whose delightful blog I’ve just discovered, talks about in her post, crowds are quite lonely. Ironically, sometimes the world is a less lonely place when it’s just two people talking. Because let’s face it, more often than not, the better you know someone, the more likely it is that you fall in love with them—and for the space of a few hours, they are your world, and you exist in that place.

I think I know what my superpower would be: People-Traveler.

A reply to daily prompt: Counting Voices