The Day I Waltzed With The World

I believe the world is spinning. Of course, scientifically, I know that it is. But I actually felt it myself, once. I was fourteen and my bare shoulders were pressing into a cold, tiled floor. I wiggled my toes, laying in the fetal position, while gravity held me down in a pool of my own vomit. The planet swung me around the sun, in the greatest waltz. I was dizzy and could not get up, but I did not want to get up.

I knew of nothing but the hands in front of me, which were curled inches from my nose. I knew they had to be my hands, because the chewed-up nails with the chipped, purple polish seemed so familiar. And I knew I was alive, for to see hands and recognize that they are hands, is to exist. Of this I was certain, and so the shards of my heart that lay scattered on the floor around me, burst into smaller pieces still.

I was reminded of what it was like to be seven years old, spinning on the toes of my red sneakers with the yellow flowers on the side. I was reminded of swirling through a cluttered living room, with my eyes wide open, and knowing that that’s what the world looks like. I was reminded of collapsing on the floor and feeling my brain moving inside my skull, knowing that that’s what the world feels like.

Years later, I was swirling my finger in a puddle of yellow chunks under my sunken eyes. The little white pebbles that could be seen swimming around me, had barely dissolved during the brief time they’d spent inside my stomach, and I counted them slowly by threes. One, two, three...

As I counted, the planet Earth hugged me tight, and spun on its axis. One, Two, Three. One, Two, Three, One, Two, Three… and so it went on. I felt sure I was going to slide right off the edge of it all, and out into the blankness I sought.

But I did not.

I gripped the floor with the palms of my hands and tried to understand how everything was moving. How electrons orbit their nuclei, and atoms swirl furiously together. How bodies twirl off their feet that are usually planted firmly on a spinning planet, that spins ‘round the sun, which spins ‘round the Milky Way which spins ‘round other galaxies and beyond that, we’re not sure. But I’m sure that whatever is out there, is spinning too. I felt powerless against all the revolutions, and all I wanted was for it to just STOP.

But then I thought about what I had just attempted.

If the electrons stood still, if the atoms gave up, if the bodies stopped reeling, and the planet stopped wheeling, and the sun woahed and the galaxy slowed, and all that was left just froze, we wouldn’t be here.

I thought about the people of whom I am made. The hundreds of thousands of bodies that had to come first in order for me to be.

Through me, they are not gone.

The reminiscences of my parents’ lives, the two bodies I’m built from, can be seen blowing through the streets of a sleepy city, from the inevitable collisions that came and went.

Yet through me, they are not gone.

When I was fourteen, I woke up on the floor of my bathroom, coughing up my insides.

But today, I am not gone.

I dance around the world and I let myself get dizzy. I know eventually I’ll fall over again, but I also know it’s better than standing still.

I tried to stand still the day I waltzed with the world, but as it often does, the world swept me off my feet despite my plans. Once you’re here, you’re here. It wasn’t up to me to disappear.