The Wrong Feet

Originally published June 11, 2019

Comfort zones were a topic of focus today.

“That’s why I dance,” he said. “That’s why I sing.”

“It’s not for entertainment, although- (as he gesticulates with his washboard-straight-close-hand-poised-elbow-perfectly-pressed-business-suit) -it is entertaining.”

He’s right. It is. There’s something magical about a man who occasionally climbs down from the ivory tower to sing his heart out in his own state-of-the-art entertainment basement with the people still looking for ladders.

“It’s about getting out of your comfort zone,” he says.

And I look around, wondering where exactly my comfort zone is. If I've ever had one. If I'd recognize it the same way I recognize the scar on my left hand from the bike crash back when I was ten or so. Because you'd think you'd recognize this thing that's following you around and setting limits on your life all the time. Wouldn't you?

But I’m not sure I’ve ever been comfortable. So I don't know what a comfort zone is, or where mine might be hiding.

My life fits like insanely expensive leather loafers worn on the wrong feet. Not entirely debilitating, but just awkwardly enough that my blisters never go away. The leather never settles into the places its supposed to; there's never a day where I put on life and look in the mirror and think to myself- it finally fits.

I don’t have a negative body image but my skin sometimes feels like I left it in the dryer too long, like it’s keeping me from being the graceful creature God intended. Like I’m taking up space I wasn’t supposed to take up. Like I wasn't supposed to be here in the first place.

I’m in the way when I’m looking for my bank card in line at a cash register, I’m awkward about open doors. I’m confidently tripping over most of my own nervous words. I say weird things to total strangers because silence is reserved for winning, and I’m never quite sure what I’m being sold.

I wonder sometimes if it’s the boy who passed me a note in the ninth grade. He folded the words, ‘Will you go to the Homecoming dance with me?’ into this origami heartbeat, evidence that someone saw me. And we went, and we danced. To the End of the Road.

We were all temporary, though, the kids I knew. Our existences passed by each other with brutality and abruptness, young relationships at the mercy of the United States Government. Maybe we traded in comfort zones for adaptability, because the only thing we could count on was that things would change. And we didn't just move to another school district, or across state lines- no. We got senior years in foreign countries and AT&T calling cards where your after-school job paid dearly for every minute of laughter and tears until the dreaded robotic voice would interrupt you to let you know you only have ONE minute left. Death sentences, over and over and over again.

Comfort zones are envious places to me, if it means for a moment you get to just be.

I think about this as the guy serenades his wife with Chasing Cars. My husband is as absent as my comfort zone and I’m an old metal fan violently oscillating between “I’ll take my life over easy, just this side of comatose” and “hell, yeah. Challenge accepted.” There’s nothing comfortable about wanting to do everything so choosing to doing nothing instead, or worse; doing something just because someone said you would never…

I wonder if people with comfort zones are content. Because I have been grateful; I am grateful. I daresay I can be quite happy. But I don’t know all that much about being comfortable, or content. And if life is waiting for you right outside of your comfort zone, then where am I?