Human, not God

You are human, not God.  

When you put it that way, it seems silly all of these expectations that we have to make things just so.  

Get the career right.  

Have the babies at the right age before you’re one of those ladies at the fertility clinic picking her hang nails and barely managing to fake smile at each passing nurse and patient who opens the door.  I know, because that was me.  

You are human, not God. 

And she is too.  And her and her and him, and them over there also.  

So why am I reassured by my friend’s messy Tupperware drawer and clumps of accumulated kindergarten worksheets, mail, and random shit on the counter? 

The pile that won’t go away no matter how hard you try.  

What is this thinking so ingrained in me that other people have it sorted out.  

That other people are somehow exempt from the humbling reality of humanity and I haven’t ascended?  Or evolved enough? 

So silly, really.  

Of course, we’re all human.  

But why then, does it feel like honey on my throat to hear that I’m not the only one making pilgrimages in good faith across the bay for obscure natural remedies for my child’s mild ailment.   

We are human, not God.  

It is messy, not clean. 

Complicated, not simple.  

Beautiful, not pretty. 

Grueling, not easeful. 

I want to embrace it more, this knowing,  this not being God, this humbling humanity.  

I want to do the human—not God—thing without so much goddamn noise around it. 

And spin joy out of that.