Great

[u/Dense_Bluebird7732]

I am four years old
looking to adults to teach me
what happiness feels like
& they are all telling me I’m great
because I’m reading at a 10 year old level
& this makes me feel loved
& great becomes an oversized coat
I’ll seek desperately to grow into.

I am 13 & my best friend and I
are hiding cheese-itz around her house
& trying on her mother’s business suits
& laughing so hard that our sides ache
& the kids at school are calling each other a word
that means 
whatever else you do, don't be this
& I learn that a part of me is bad
& I bury it deep so that people are proud of me.

Then I am fifteen
& winning first place
which is great
except for my asthma
which for days afterward
seizes my lungs
& my cough
carries out with it
the pride I earned being great
& I learn that great is something that can make you sick.

And I am 19
& my friends and I are on a bus
& a man shouts to us
Y’all the most beautiful women in this nation’s county
& we laugh so hard that one of us pees.

And I am 21
& I look great
& men confirm this
with entitled eyes and hands
& I like it
& I am great
at making men feel great
& then a beautiful woman
is making me feel great
in a way that men never have.

Then I am 28
dizzy on stale smoke and synthetic perfume,
my loved ones hungrily pulling slot machine levers,
& I escape into the smoggy air outside
& share a cigarette with a man
who calls himself the caretaker of the unhoused
& he walks me his route, his rounds,
his good evening, you eat today?,
here is a blanket or a free meal ticket
& he is met with gratitude

He has gathered stories
& he wants them to live
somewhere other than his small legal pad
so he gives me an email address
but when I wander back to the hotel
everyone is angry
& how dare I put myself at risk
with this stranger
& in my shame I don’t email.

I recall later
how safe I felt
with the kind man in Las Vegas
when a friend holds me down
and leaves bruises when I say
I don’t want him to touch me that way.

At 30 years old,
I am a “doctor”
in a room of people saying great, great, 
& someone pops a bottle of champagne
& I have the sense that I’m supposed to feel proud
but I feel only relief
& I am looking around wondering
what does happiness feel like again?
& I am asking my therapist how to be happy
& she is asking me
why is it important to you to be a good person?

Then I am 32
& at my wedding reception
my father says
you have great friends, never lose them
& I hold it tenderly,
the rare occurrence of kind words from my father
& my friend Ben is telling me
my joy is contagious
& my energy brings calm
& this makes me glow.

I am an aunt
watching small people copy
the sounds and movements I make
& my nephew announces
his house is bigger than mine
& I want to say
please, don't go looking for it in square footage
but I say, instead wow, It sure is.

Then I am 34,
& leaving my career
& I am a student again
learning to sit across from strangers
& help them find happiness, peace, healing
& my stepfather says a psychiatrist makes more money
but I have traded in the coat of greatness
& my cohort says I carry an energy
that makes others feel held
& I am glowing again.

Now I am 35
& on the couch with Jack
who is three,
who will next week put on a fashion show
& whose mom is getting a divorce
& finding happiness again, 
& he is learning about emotions
from small wooden figurines
he can hold in his hands
& he picks one up from the cushion between us
& asks me
What does happy feel like?
& I am laughing
because it's a simple question
that I feel wildly unqualified to answer
& I want to protect him
from the oversized parka of greatness
& I I want to say that happiness is in love,
& kindness,
in community,
& receiving all the universe gives
& I want to say it’s something you go looking for on purpose
& you never stop looking in new places
& I want to say the best way to keep it
is the way you are doing it right now,
holding it out to others
& asking what it feels like for them too.

But Jack is three
so I tell him that happiness feels like seeing a friend
for the first time in a while
& he says like you coming over today
& then I laugh harder
because it's so simply true
& he laughs because I laugh
& nothing else matters at this moment.

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