I first noticed it in Turkish class this afternoon, at approximately three-twenty-something.
It started out as just like a tightness, a little bit of irritation, some kind of stinging, chafed feeling...Somehow so familiar....
I look down, at the skin on top of my arms, just above my elbow creases...
It's pink. Gloriously, gorgeously flushed.
And I'm like, "HEEELLLLLLSSSS YEEEEEAHHHH. First sunburn of the season."
I hadn't noticed it happening, but you rarely do. I guess I had just assumed that I was impervious to ultraviolet light. Just like I'm impervious to loud, repetitive music and attractive men.
I had just started thinking that if no one could see me, if no one could find me, Mr. Golden Sun sure as shit wasn't looking my way.
I had just been slouched in some remote corner of the courtyard all afternoon with my five dollar sunglasses all askew on my face, my boots kicked off, arms folded across my chest, wind whipping my hair all in my face. I'm sure I looked as disheveled and slightly insane as I always do, like a hobo sleeping on the floor of a train station.
Except that no one sees me. No one touches me. No one cares. And I'm all sinking into this grass letting ants crawl all over me and plant matter all stick to me and time is all ticking away and I couldn't give two shits because I'm. So. Angsty. Like, old Taking Back Sunday albums style angsty.
And I'm sitting there in all my contrived and awkwardly forced hardassery, totally oblivious to this hazy, wavy sun smacking me in my forehead. Running over my skin like lizards. Pumping me full of this pulsing and buzzing elan vital.
And sure, it's killing some perfectly healthy epidermal cells, but damn, it's bringing me life.
I tell this story to demonstrate the fact that I often feel like I am disappearing. Like if nothing calls me back right effing now, I'm just going to disintegrate into a cloud of atoms and float away into the cosmos.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If I am slumped over in this corner and no one sees me and no one knows where I am, do I even really exist?
And then there was this sunburn.
And it was like, yes, fool, you are here. You are now at a higher risk of getting skin cancer and you are here.
