Like Holding Jell-O in Your Hands

You see, I have always been so sure I … am jell-o in your hands. 

Cumbersome, an odd and perplexing undertaking, one with no real reward. I am a mess that never quite fits the mould, so quick to lose its orientation, wilting down the sides of your bowl. 

“Too much”. 

Once the effort to hold me exhausts you, I’m put down in place of picking up someone sturdy  and solid instead. 

This feeling — it lives in the curly and frizzy, hardly ever tamed hair that my mother used to aggressively blow-dry straight, my head bent down between my knees, blood rushing to my cheeks as she wielded a brush that slapped my scalp down so I wouldn’t be so unmanageable. 

This feeling — it lives in the thick arms and robust thighs, that frustrated yanking down of my shirt’s sleeve, my skirt’s hem as it rides up over pools of flesh that I always wish were frail and bony so I wouldn’t be so heavy. 

This feeling — it lives in the dark and pointed eyebrows, the prominent and harsh  cheekbones — everyone saying, side-eye in action, “Why are you posing?” when I am simply just there — that I always wish were mousy and demure so I wouldn’t be so unsubtle. 

It lives in the bark that comes out when I’m tense and the laughs that come out when I’m nervous and the pup-like excitement that has me jumping up when I pass a view I like. I wish I wouldn’t, I wish I wasn’t; I wish I could stay still, so they could hold me better. 

But alas, I’m just like trying to hold on to jell-o with your hands. 

I don’t know exactly where this visceral image of jell-o held in hands grew from, but it’s been  in my head since I can remember. 

I like to think (maybe for the sake of giving myself a laugh) that it grew from when I was a  kid and my aunt ran a low-budget inner city summer camp that I attended; one of the inexpensive ways she came up with to concoct “fun” was to put jell-o on paper plates and have the kids, hands behind their backs, race to suck this jell-o up with a straw held between lips. 

It was a game that always seemed like vivacious fun, ridiculous and simplified, a sweet and sticky gluttony … until you inevitably choked, every time, on a sudden sludge whipping its way up and it wasn’t much fun anymore. 

One day, someday, inconveniently caught in someone’s throat or dripping down someone’s wrist … I began to see myself as the jell-o in life’s game. Full of qualities that, sure, get complimented, admired — from a distance, sans investment. Like everyone is window shopping my personality, my existence. 

Keeping a pane of glass between us, they’ll point out what’s interesting to look at, what’s amusing to see in real time; they’ll take me for a test-drive. My hopeless form gets momentarily scooped up and pried open, raw in the jarring and industrial jaws of life; undressing me just to see what’s inside, a sick curiosity fed. 

And then they always walk away, a purchase nary made; the commitment is never worth it, is  it? 

This feeling has always had a hold on me; a rusty claw machine standing the test of decades’ time. This feeling that I’m falling through life, a shapeless character, and I’m searching for hands outstretched to catch me, to relieve me from this endless tunnel I sink down. A tunnel  that makes moments move too quickly by, that leaves me feeling insignificant and has me  unsure of where I stand in a world that I only ever seem to graze but can never grasp. 

A mother’s hands outstretched — but she’s distracted by so much else: pleasing her husband, maintaining her thin figure, buying the nicest dress in the shop … and her hands are accidentally about five inches too far to the left to catch me. She only notices at the last second, she tries to make a quick adaptation — but I’m jell-o; I don’t land with an effortless and gentle thud, but instead I swish around in her preoccupied palms as she tries to recalibrate. Soon enough, I’m lost over the edge again, booted by the husband or the thinness or the expensive dress. 

Descending by a father’s hands, they are reaching, but only halfway and there’s a cavern between them that he makes no effort to close. I glide right through that careless middle, and I don’t even think his gaze is on me as I tumble by.

A sister, with the frustrated hands of a child looking to hold more than it can handle. Small and weak, fingerprints barely pronounced in the ridges of her digits yet, I am far too heavy; I am a gelatinous heft, and she crumbles under my weight. 

I don’t blame her — by now, I’m old enough to know it must be impossible to keep a grip on  something as horribly inconvenient as jell-o in your hands. I learned quickly that I was tiresome, big, clingy, messy; I learned quickly to silence needs and adapt to unsteady ground, understanding nothing else but. 

There were aunts, there were teachers — the hands of grown-ups that could see a child slipping through life’s fingers. They took turns juggling jell-o over the years, trying to hold me afloat in a tenderness that could not be maintained. They had their own families, their own responsibilities, and no palm seemed to have enough space for me to settle into. I was jostled around and out by that which was more important, those who were an easier fit; space had to be made in these palms of theirs and jell-o is always the first to jiggle and slip. 

I watched through the years as, all around me, friends fell with languid ease.  

Not precarious, garish jell-o but soft and light cotton candy or perfectly round, saccharine berries, they dropped from above and landed into hands hungry to know their taste. I dribbled down the edges of life, begrimed and stained. 

The feeling and the fall persisted into adulthood, where there was nothing but a racing heartbeat and rushing wind in my ears, visions blurred as I only ever seemed to pass through and by the lives of others. 

Soon, it was time to land in the hands of a lover. Some were uncomfortable; unkempt and cantankerous, I suffered to stay in the dissatisfaction, but I was determined to just be held. I was passed around for several years, and my tacky exterior collected a filth; the next person to find me never wanted to bear the task of helping rinse me clean. I grew intrinsically certain that I was the problem, so sure I caused a treacly havoc. 

Some hands were tragic, and the tragedy lays there still: the top luring flesh was plush and warm, and, on rare occasion, I could sink in to someone; I could rest. I would sink quickly and too deep, losing myself — but determined to change, determined to become worth holding, determined to be less, I was more than happy to lose pieces of that jell-o-shaped  woman.

I didn’t notice a lover’s second hand a layer beneath was gangrenous until I sunk down far enough to come face to face with death. Suddenly, my jell-o form wasn’t on warm skin but on sickly bones, riddled with disease that was seeping into my permeable core. I would try to  stay; I remained grateful, even as wasting fingers clawed away at me — at least they were clawing, unlike all the others who had brushed me off. 

Years went by, my jell-o stagnant and stuck, there; I was melting away from the world, a violent heat exhausting my form … 

Then, for the first time, I found myself jumping out of a set of hands, terminating my stay; saving my self, instead of praying any set of hands would.  

I didn’t think I would spend my forever falling, but sometimes still, I worry that I might. It’s been nearly two years since that first conscious descent, and I’ve spent what feels like every day since not seeking hands but instead trying … to seek legs in my jell-o form. 

I’ve been trying to stand up tall. 

But that conscious descent taught me that nothing I had ever done before had bore any intent. I had never known why I did things, who I did things for, where they would take me — I just fell through the world, down my tunnel, waiting for someone to figure it out for me. 

Did I ever even like the hands I was chasing to land into? Had I wanted to be there, had I ever asked myself why I fought so hard to stay? Some hands were bright in the corner of my eye and I ran to them, thinking their glint was the sun’s rays on a river; it was always too late when I discovered what I’d seen was a forest fire, burning hot and causing catastrophic wreckage in my world. 

I wasted years fighting: I had fought to tame my hair as a young girl, I had fought to control my body’s size as a teenager, I had fought to mute my personality as a growing woman — I only knew how to fight, never giving myself the capacity and time to learn how to accept. 

I wasted so much time worrying that I would always be jell-o, when I could have been using that time to accept that I am jell-o. And learn to be okay with, understand that, love how I am jell-o. 

I was engrossed with seeing the tunnel I fell down as dim and ceaseless, dropping forever, forcing visions from my past to grow smaller and quieter with time; I thought when I slipped through someone’s grasp, it was my fault, and I was lost to them for good. Years were spent obsessively trying to figure out how to be held all the time; spent busy staring behind me at my past with the cruellest of eyes … Never turning around to see ahead at the unprecedented power in flowing freely, and to let the soft descent it-self be what carries me. 

As I search for legs to help me stand tall, I make sure I take in this beautiful view of a round universe, full of hands new and old, coming and going in a myriad of places during a whirlwind of times — and me, buoyant through it all. 

I begged for so long to sit still but, like running water, this life never grows stale. And this how allowed me to realize why I had yearned to be held for so long. 

It wasn’t for the reasons I’d always thought: it wasn’t so I could be formed into a different shape, so I could be muffled down into silence, so I would look “normal” from the outside …  

It was because I like my jell-o form, and I think it’s worth holding on to. 

Maybe the images of abundant jell-o cascading forever didn’t come from my children’s summer camp messy days but instead because, whenever I eat, I like to do so with my hands and food is almost always gliding down the sides of my palms and wrists, hungry for the joy.  

Maybe I always saw myself as something deserving of being devoured, savoured.