I am a particle. Literally, a little bit, but mostly metaphorically. Stay with me. Or don't. That's kind of the point of this.
      Sometimes I am charged. I get so charged, I turn into who I want to be. I smile and laugh with my head thrown back like a Pez dispenser. The jokes come easy, and flirting works. People love me. I trick them into loving me. I make them believe I am vibrant, and that I will always be this way. It's not that I mean to lie—I believe it myself.
      I am undefeatable, buoyant, impregnable! God tried to kill me at birth with mine own umbilical cord and failed! That is how I feel.
      I love everyone so much, in watercolors, and I want to tell them. I love how you always sneeze twice, never just once. I love how a flush blooms all over your neck and chest when you talk in front of a group of people. I love the gap in your teeth. I love that time you put your hand in your mouth when you thought no one was looking. Everyone is like a picture-perfect Hostess cake gleaming in the light, and I am unable to eat because I am overwhelmed, clenching my fists and shaking with big, charged love.
      So it makes sense that people are confused when I lose my charge. I go dim. I am a snaky car salesman selling you a lemon. This baby can ride for miles and love you so good that you'll wish you could both die at exactly the same time! But the car breaks down and doesn't call you anymore, and never wants to leave the house. Sometimes you see the car at the grocery store, flinching every time the intercom comes on, like God has tied a lasso out of that old umbilical cord and is going to take another shot at strangulation. Like God is swinging the lasso in the air and lulling the car into a false sense of comfort by listing the latest sales. This is not who you thought the car or the salesman was.
      Usually, when I get charged, I just bounce around inside my house like I'm a particle zooming through the Large Hadron Collider. Until I fizzle out and sink to the ground and stay there where gravity is like the heavy, callused hands of God settling on my shoulders, rubbing, massaging, up, moving my hair aside, wrapping around my neck.
      Sometimes I make up little games to zap myself into motion again. I make a playlist called "Songs to Play at the Large Hadron Collider," and the only song on it is "Collide" by Howie Day. Then I guffaw at my own joke with my mouth thrown open like a Pez dispenser and my skull getting flat in the back on the hardwood floor. And I think, is this it? Am I charging? But you can laugh all you want inside a jalopy, and when it dies down, you're still in a jalopy.
      My grandpa used to drive a jalopy. It was full of so much stuff that I had to make a little nest just to fit inside so that we could go to the Taco Bell where he would holler into the intercom, "Can I get two jalopies?" See, he didn't know how to pronounce "chalupa." We'd pull up to the window, and the employee would look at me from underneath their visor, the little jalopy in the back seat nest. They'd hand us our food, and Grandpa would hand mine back to me, and I would get so excited to eat that I'd peel back the paper and press the soft shell against my lips like I was kissing a big, deep fried mouth. That was one of my first loves. Before that, I loved soft shell tacos, but one time while I was eating one, a locust landed on my neck and I had to move on.
      I know I'm bouncing around like a particle, but what I mean is that sometimes you fall out of love like that. You thought I was a beautiful, warm soft shell taco. Then I landed on your neck like a big, iridescent green, buzzing particle, and the taste soured in your mouth. I'm sorry I did that. I couldn't see where I was flying. All I do is race around and wait for a collision. But do you think you could—and you're obviously not obligated or anything—do you think you could love a jalopy?

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This essay was inspired by my struggle to regulate my emotions and manage relationships, and by the song "Collide" by Mr. Howard Day.