Sometimes I get these feelings.

Like, I’m lonely. Like, I don’t matter. Stuff like that. I feel like the only thing I can do to secure my existence in this world is to do something dramatic. Like maybe do something. Urge a rock to fall suicide off a bridge. To hit something. Maybe cut something.

But that would hurt, or leave a mark. I don’t want them to know I was here, trying to make myself known. I don’t want to get hurt but I want to feel something other than that tree on the edge of the cliff feeling, like the slightest breeze could push me over. Fall off the bridge.

But that would hurt. I don’t want to feel pain; I want to change the loneliness to happiness. I say I’m happy alone. I say I don’t like people. I say I don’t mind sitting and people watching.

Alone.

Don’t believe me; I never cut down a cherry tree.

And, sometimes I get these feelings.

I’ll look around and suddenly see a few faces I know in the most random bundle of personalities, see one familiar expression or quirk of an eyebrow of curl of a lip or lacing of a converse. I’ll hear my name directed to me.

But sometimes I’m stuck on the edges of the crowd.

No, I refuse to mold into the cyclones of interaction. Others stand on clouds and watch from afar the conversation inches from their hearts, their minds, but I don’t want to stand on a cloud. I want to be engulfed in the tornado, be the hurricane. No clouds for me, I’m the gust of wind that shapes the clouds.

But who are my clouds?

I return to the tree, barely able to hold on to the cliff face, waiting for a pebble to shift, for me to plummet, with faint whistling sound of a bomb following me until I land on a Pacific island and rain my radioactive guts on each grain of sand.

Maybe I need to rain on the sand. Or on the cliff.

Maybe I’ll hang on the edge of the cliff. I’ll stand with my toes over the air, my trunk leaning back just enough to ensure I won’t fall, unless, of course, there is a disturbance in my bubble and I fall in my A-Bomb way. I’ll hover on the edge. Yea.

But then I’ll get a text message. Or a Facebook tag. Or a twitter notification. I’ll get a smile in the hall. I’ll hear my name shot towards me in attempts to get my attention. I’ll lace up my friend’s convers in my special twist way, another as a ladder, another woven in way one, another woven in way two. I’ll laugh at mythical creatures while working on a project, scold them for getting off topic, and drag my friends off topic once more. I’ll look over their shoulder in lunch as they feebly try to tell me what team will win which game. We’ll throw baby tomatoes and carrots down each other’s shirts. We’ll draw sexy legs and shimmy and laugh at the worst times. We’ll fret over notes and class assignments together and wait for each other just for the heck of it at random times on random days simply because.

That’s what friends are for.

I’ll be the tree on the edge of the cliff. I’ll be so close to falling, but I won’t, my roots will be locked into the soil. I’ll hold on, no matter how the wind blows or the elements assault my hold on reality’s cliff, and I know, I will never fall, never send an inverted waterfall of emotion into the sky for no one to hear. I will make noise simply to make noise, not because I’m not heard, because I am. They hear me, the people I care about, the people who care about me. The ones who give me food and the ones I let have food because you don’t help provide nutrients to someone you don’t know. That’s not how humans work.

Humans are the best cliff hangers.