Sarah Jordan

The first time I saw Sarah Jordan, she was weaving through crowds of people in between classes, looking like she had important business to attend to. She was taller than the other girls and her neck was long. For weeks, I had been hearing her name.

Sarah Jordan
Sarah Jordan
Sarah Jordan

And wondering about her name. And wondering why nobody just called her "Sarah."

 A girl from orchestra was nice enough to invite me to her party one day and I sat quietly watching everybody talking and laughing, I noticed that Sarah Jordan's laugh stood out among every other laugh. Full of breath and pitch. I wondered if she noticed me. She looked like the kind of girl who would never notice me. Who would never invite me along to go see a movie.

She complimented my sunglasses and grabbed them out of my hand. She looked at them like she had actually fallen in love with them, then put them on and showed them off. Everybody looked at her as she made movie star poses and I suddenly felt shy with my cheap tank top and long, unruly hair. I wanted to be like her but it seemed impossible.

At the end of that semester freshman year of high school, Sarah Jordan had a big party in the middle of the afternoon. We decided to race razor scooters. I started turning towards the right to go up the hill, but Sarah Jordan quickly turned to the left and began rolling downhill. I knew it was a bad idea.. racing scooters down a hill... but she seemed so confident and I quickly switched directions. We rolled faster and faster. I could feel the tiny wheels underneath me becoming more and more unsure of themselves but  it was too late to stop. I heard a gasp and suddenly saw Sarah Jordan fly off her scooter. I screamed and slammed the brake down, causing me to fly off my scooter too. I looked over at Sarah Jordan and back at myself. We had bits of gravel stuck to our bloody legs and we just stayed there lying on the street for a moment. We finally pulled ourselves up and hobbled back up to the house. Though the yard, into the house, and up the stairs we marched as our friends stared at us. Sarah Jordan's mother instructed her to get into the bathtub so she could wash off the blood and gravel. I sat on the seat of the toilet holding a cloth up to my chin.

"I am so sorry" I whimpered.

Sarah Jordan looked up at me from the bathtub, "This is all my fault." Her voice cracked and her eyes began to fill with tears.

We started crying as we sat slouched over and holding washcloths to our wounds.

This girl I thought was so beautiful and confident and everything I wanted to be had transformed into a bleeding, crying human being. And I was just the same.

I looked at her with her messy hair, dirty clothes, and bloody legs just sitting there in the bathtub. I decided then and there that I loved her.

She's not as popular as she seems, and doesn't even shop at Abercrombie any more. She drinks too much milk and sometimes uses her friends' toothbrushes. She never walks in straight lines, but instead winds around and looks in all directions and always finds something interesting to look at and then finds the perfect words to describe it. Men think she's hot but she's actually just beautiful. Sarah Jordan is my best friend and I'm proud of the scars she's caused me. I would follow her down any hill, any time.

really, we can't help it

art by david shrigley

With every photo and remark I post online, I step back and ask how it will shape my identity. I can scroll down and click a few buttons to trace back conversations and pictures that would never have been remembered. And if one decided to go back far enough to uncover this fragmented version of myself, a screwy story would unfold. So I continue to add to this story bit by bit and occasionally ask myself how it fits in to the larger narrative. Every now and then, a comment or photo makes no sense in my story and with one click, it can disappear forever. Sometimes, I go far back in my emails or facebook messages to remember an interaction from years ago. It feels wrong, but it's so easy.

The internet lets me escape the physical world. I spend so much time learning to play a big, awkward instrument. When I finally get in front of people and it's time to perform, my hands might get sweaty or my heart might beat to fast or my fingers might be too cold because some jerk left a window open. There's no getting around the realness of it all. But I get on the computer and I create and destroy with so little effort. I can pause and plan and delete sentences and friends and pictures. It's a high.

Because it's Knoxville, I run into old friends constantly. I'm always surprised when one of these friends says something like "How's your arm?" or "So you're dating Steven?" I shouldn't be surprised- that's how the internet (especially facebook) works. But I forget sometimes the hundreds of people who can so easily keep track of these little bits of my life. And I've caught glimpses of so many lives myself. It feels like I'm looking in the medicine cabinets of everyone I know. And I'm not saying that anything is wrong with all of this, but if you're one of those people who says things like "That guy is facebook stalking me" or "It's so creepy- she comments on all of my pictures," just remember that you signed up for this. And if you think the girl who comments on everything you do is creepy, think about all the people who are afraid to comment because they feel somehow ashamed or undeserving about having full access to so much of your life. What's creepy is that so many of us are in denial about how excited we are to have this power to drop in and check up on somebody's life. And we're in denial about how excited we are to have the power to create our our own stories about our own lives, whether they are comedies or tragedies or just plain boring and cute.

Don't feel creepy if you're reading this right now. I think that.... I love being caught up in this for now. I've created a version of "myself" that I feel pretty satisfied with, and I'm starting to believe that "myself" is more important to the world than myself.

made this in high school. thought it was cooler than it was. but it fits.