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Category Archives: Life
I just watched the Sex and the City movie with KL, and I feel downright optimistic. It’s funny, I hardly ever talk to people online. I feel like I don’t translate well to facebook chat, like it’s so much harder to come up with something to talk about, and because the talking is all there is, it gets a little awkward. And I practically spent the weekend hanging out with Miss L and I realize I miss all my high school friends- but I’m not going to miss them any more when I go to Mexico. Because they’re already gone. They’re already off in their own lands, spinning away at their own lives trying to make sense of it without me. I might visit band before I leave for Mexico, but on the other hand, maybe not. That high school world is just gone and behind me. I like seeing the younger kids, but it’s really not the same- they still live in a world where passing English is important, where the science teachers are mostly incompetent, where they don’t know if they’re pretty or ugly or whether anyone will ever love them or if they’re just in a relationship for the sake of being in one. I’m rapidly leaving my teenage years and I’m glad of it. I may continue to lead a dramatic and exciting life, but I’m not going to do it with that teenage angst attached. And I’m going to remember that some of my friendships may fade, but often, you see someone again and it’s like you were never apart. I can hear the Oktoberfest music through my window, and it sounds so much like life, you know? You spin around and you laugh in each others’ arms, and then you spin off to another partner and keep laughing, keep turning with the music. Of course you hope it never stops, but the musicians can’t play forever. You just try to have as much fun spinning as you can while it lasts.
To all my girls, I love you. To all my boys, I love you too. And to all those of you who aren’t mine yet, I can’t wait to meet you 
…Mexico!
So here’s the deal. The most likely Americorps assignment called and told me they couldn’t offer me a position since they’ve got no money. Since no other Americorps people have contacted me and I’ve heard of all these college grads who are languishing with no Americorps positions, I just thought, screw it, I’m looking elsewhere. So I found this NGO called Projects Abroad and decided, hey, this doesn’t sound bad. Yeah, I have to pay out of pocket and I don’t get a scholarship or anything, but it sure beats sitting around here doing nothing. Plus, it’ll be teaching kids English. So I applied, I got in, and I’m leaving for Guadalajara around October 15th. I’ll be gone 3-5 months. I’m super-psyched about it.
I’m going to miss everyone, but I’ve already said goodbye to a lot of you and I’ve been getting antsy about sticking around. So off I go!
Sometimes I avoid people. Sometimes I avoid people I like because I don’t really want to talk about the things they want to know about me. Sometimes I suck myself into a ridiculous little cocoon and hope nobody notices what I’m doing, hope people will just leave me alone because although I have nothing to be ashamed of, I’m not really proud of myself anyway. Living without a deadline is killing me. Have you ever really thought about the word “deadline”? It kind of suggests what it is: this is the point at which something dies. It suggests mortality in general. There’s no life without death, and right now, I feel like I’m drifting through life because I’ve got no deadline. I suppose part of this problem is my overdeveloped sense of perspective- nothing REALLY bad happens when I miss a deadline. My life doesn’t get unbearably worse- it just doesn’t get better. I should want to get better way more than I do, but I think I’m overly grateful that my life isn’t terrible, so I’m too willing to settle for mediocrity. Perhaps I have a brain, but I don’t really have any use for it. I dislike being purposeless, but I don’t dislike it enough to really try to change it. My central quality and greatest sin is my own sloth. People want to know what I’m doing, people care about what I’m doing and I don’t answer them because I don’t really want to tell them that I’m doing nothing. My talent and my cute blue eyes and my charm and my humor are sitting here, whiling away the hours, not doing anything. I don’t really want to tell people that- they react badly. They always think that it’s through no fault of my own, because that’s the way I tell my own story. My habit of telling it more optimistically than it is comes to bite me in the ass now- I’m never going to be destroyed by outside forces. I am so powerful that the only person who can bring me down is myself. But good lord, it’s so likely…
My natural state of being seems to be sleeping in a box, like an abandoned kitten or something. That seems to be really apt, now that I think about it- I’m happy when I’m asleep, and when I wake up, I just want to be taken out of my box and loved, petted and told that I’m beautiful. So often, though, there’s no one to pick me up out of the box. So I scramble and scratch, trying to reach up the sides of the box, reach out to someone. Someone who might love me and talk to me and tell me about their day, maybe scratch me behind the ears, make me purr. And when I reach out, I usually can get that. I find someone to do all that for me. But when they’re done, they just put me back in the box. And the next time I want to leave the box, I have to do all this scrambling again. They always just put me back in the box, because I’ll be “safe” there. I want to get out of the box. I want to be out of the box, where all the nice people are. And for once, I don’t want to have to scramble to get out and find them- they don’t really come find me. I tip myself out of the box, they pick me up because I’m adorable, and then they put me back in the damn box as if I’m supposed to be in there. I hate the box. I don’t care if that’s where you found me, it’s my prison. But I can’t tell them about how much I hate the box, because all I can do is purr when I’m happy and mew when I’m sad- they don’t understand the pain in my little kitten eyes, they think I’m homesick or something, and so they think I should go back to my home, into my box. I wish one would just take me to their home. But you know something, they’d probably just put me in another kind of box. I don’t think I can ever win. All I can do is scramble outside and enjoy the freedom while it lasts. But I’m getting so tired of reaching out…
You sit there, regretting your past. Regretting the future, regretting this unproductive limbo in which you find yourself. Do you really find yourself there? I hope you don’t. Limbo isn’t really a good place to find yourself. People are supposed to find themselves when they help starving kids in Mexico or move to Sweden or finish their lives in existential novels- they shouldn’t find themselves languishing in the lackadaisical. You’re likable, but lazing around in your land of too much of nothing is no way to love yourself. How can you claim to love anyone if you don’t love yourself first?
Sit down and shut up. I’m telling you how it is. You can’t sit there and beat yourself up; you’re making excuses by taking the blame. It’s socially simpler than making amend, but saying sorry just won’t cut it, sister. You’ve got to stand up and start rocking the damn boat. That’s right, now you stand up after I just told you to sit down. But stay shut up. You don’t have to whine, you don’t have to apologize, you don’t have to explain. In my new program of productive production, you do not have to say anything. In fact, speech is discouraged. The time for words has ended. The time for tears and nagging and arguments has passed us by. We will be fine in this commune of mutes. We will listen to the trumpets (with and without mutes) and we will not say a word, because we will know. We will know how to work it out. You sit there waiting, passing the time, no- letting the time pass you. We’ve got to take charge of this time business. We’ve got to hang on to the horns and not let it swing us around, and if we get thrown we have to find a new bull because no one’s going to help us. Everyone else has their own damn problems, they don’t need ours. We are our own damn problems, and so we can fix us ever so easily. Let’s do it, bitch. Let’s get down to business to defeat ourselves. We will not stand for this crap any longer. It’s game time.
Somehow, I’ve found it and lost it simultaneously. What is it? Maybe I’m sure, but perhaps I’m not. I think I won’t tell you. You’re gorgeous. I hope you know that. I hope you sit on your roof in a swimsuit and shades, soaking up the summer sun into your skin and miraculously not burning or tanning, just basking in the warmth and the light. Maybe you’ve got a bag of apricots up there and you take one out and bite into it and make seductive sucking sounds with your beautiful lips, slowly consuming the delectable flesh of the sunny fruit. Is it just me or is summer the most sensual season? It’s hot, it’s delicious, so much of it is spent on the beach in tiny amounts of clothing… it just seems like the perfect setting for physical love. I adore being buried in the sand at the beach. The weight and the contrast of the coolly wet under-layers with the dry floating grains above makes me feel enveloped in the embrace of the shore in it’s fully sexual symbolism. I remember the first time my English teacher told me that the ocean was a female symbol in literature- between the sea and Saturn’s chopped of balls, Venus was born. How horrible is it that the goddess of love was the result of a castration? Poor Saturn was turned into a steer by his own son because there could be only one bull in with the heifers. What a sexist society. Really, couldn’t they have settled for just some of the women? I can settle for just SOME men. I don’t need that many, really. It’s funny, I always feel so protective of male bits. I hate it when someone gets hit in the groin, I really do. It makes me feel like carrying them to a safe place and sitting with him until he feels better, and then staying with him forever to ensure that his balls will be safe from attack. Oddly enough, I think that’s still my weird maternal instinct coming through. I just hate to see people in pain like that. I can’t see people in any kind of pain without having sympathy. I can see the hurt on their faces, and it makes my forehead crease and my guts churn and my chest ache in a way that suggests that their pain is double what I can feel and that I need to take it away somehow, that I need to help these people. There are so many people in so much pain in the world. They mourn and weep in this vale of tears. Sorrow often causes me to think of my Catholicism, like right now. Sometimes I wish my friends understood my relationship with God, but it’s not their fault that they don’t. I suppose it’s like anything that is uncommon among my social circle- love of football, cars, calculus. At least with those, however, I know someone else that likes them, and I don’t feel uncomfortable that my friends don’t like them because it’s not personal. My relationship with God is so personal, and not only that, any conversation with my friends about him involves some reference to the fact that they don’t even believe he’s there. And I know that they have justification for thinking that, that I cannot blame them or judge them for it, but I also feel like it’s so disrespectful, like talking about someone who’s right in front of you as if they aren’t there. And I know he doesn’t mind, that it doesn’t bug him. But it bugs me. It makes me feel so bad for him that people talk about him like that. Hell, it makes me feel terrible when people say things like “If God existed, he wouldn’t let things like Hurricane Katrina happen.” All those people who are angry with God, who actively hate him- it just makes me sad. And can you imagine how he must feel when he sees signs at funerals that say “God hates fags”? Taking the Lord’s name in vain isn’t about swearing, it’s about using God’s name to give credence to things he would never approve. Being God would be like being eternally misquoted in the news and never getting to write letters of correction to the editors. And yet somehow, he’s serene enough to deal with it. This is why I’m a Catholic. I cannot begin to understand how God is so great, but I know that he is because somehow, he deals with it. He deals with all the pain and suffering of the world and he manages to not break down and destroy the whole damn thing just because it’s too much for him. Because it’s never too much for him. Somehow he deals with the denial and the hatred and all of the other things that come his way, and somehow he finds time to help little old ladies and cheating middle-aged men, dying children and whiny teenage girls. He finds the time, and he cares about everyone and somehow, it’s never too much for him. He just keeps going, doing his piece with the grace and peace of his being. I suppose with that, I wish you good day.
I try to describe it. The lurid bliss of freedom, calling to me with its vivid hues and dramatic cliffs which everyone jumps off and either finds that they fly or that they fall flat, just seems ever so much more attainable. I’ve been listening to all this jazz (granted, it’s all by the Seatbelts, but still), and I think something about it is seeping into my moods, warming them, making them more spontaneous, making my spiritual cooking that much more innovative and carefree, laughing at life the way the lady sings. I went faraway and discovered that not only was I desirable, I was more attractive than I liked being. Perhaps flirting is the national sport of France, but I would like to not have to play if I don’t want to, but it was damn hard to avoid. I guess the gentlemen here don’t prefer blondes, but I’m a hit in Europe. Something about dressing myself better makes me feel just gorgeous too. I feel like it doesn’t matter if I lose out with one or two- there are just so many other possibilities just waiting to happen. I feel like I’m good with my money, like it’s nice to have money, like it’s nice to be generous and take my mother out to dinner, to not eat so much just because it’s there. If I’m not hungry, I won’t eat. So simple. I’ll eat a little, but if I don’t want more, I don’t need more. Gluttony is just silly. I feel like I don’t need the fast, cheap, half-assed pleasures of life. I believe in the sensual indulgence in the beautiful, the rich and decadent, but in nothing else. If I don’t really want it, I’m not going to bother. I will never go into a store and feel obligated to buy something I don’t want just because I went to the store. I will only buy something that really makes me feel fabulous, because nothing in my lifestyle should be less fabulous than me. I guess I know what they mean when they say “I feel like a million bucks.” Because I’m getting better at it. Normally I’m the lady singing the blues, and today, I’m laughing at life, not thinking of the ghost of yesterday. Screw yesterday. It can go wank because I’m off to glamourland without it. I just want to go around with a fairy wand in my new Italian suit and bestow good luck on everyone, because I feel lucky. I better not play poker right now, because when I feel lucky, I always bet like I’m lucky and then my luck runs out. So I won’t play poker, because I feel like I shouldn’t waste my luck on poker. I’m going to go off and be productive now, because this glamourgirl isn’t too high-fashion to clean her room. And I’ll do it faster than ever before, you just watch me. I am going to conquer the universe, and you won’t even notice that it’s happening. You’ll think I’m the nicest, most charming, prettiest girl in the world, and you won’t even notice that everything is going along to my scheme for world domination. Oh it feels good to know that I can run the world, even if I don’t. And well, this saxiphone sound is damn sexy. I can indulge in the grunge sound, because even dirty and sleazy can be just so delicious and jaded. There is a disgusting beauty in extravagent living, isn’t there? It’s horrible that people steal all the money in order to have gilded toilets while other people starve, but on the other hand, the gilded toilet is just so pretty. It’s what I hate about pop art. It should be prettier for the amount of decadence it represents- but it’s not. It’s not pretty. It’s just- cool. I feel like the emptiness should be more cleverly disguised than it is- more embellishment, more gorgeous material, more distinction. But it’s not disguised. The rich barely dress differently from the poor. They should. Without luxury, how can you hide the triviality of money? The ediface is what you buy, because you certainly can’t buy the happiness. I really can feel the cool washing over me just listening to this music. It’s from the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop, which is a beautiful anime, just so full of life and style. I cried at the end. That’s right, I cried over the death of an anime character. Some things are just so sad. I guess sometimes sadness is romantic- there’s something beautiful about it. The problem is that the sadness is not worth the romance or the beauty. Maybe beauty is just not what it’s about. It’s too bad, because I seem to be radiating it right now. I’ll just dream my little dreamy dreams I suppose. Maybe I shouldn’t quote things so much in my own writing, but it’s as good as biting a chocolate covered apricot, it really is. Oh summer fruit. I love summer. The heat, the beach, the long days, the fruit… it can’t be better.
So I was thinking last night, about this last relationship, now that I’m over the initial shock of the end of it. I think I understand it now. Much as my girl friends all want to tell me men are assholes or whatever, I’m damn sure that wasn’t it. I think it really was me who ruined this relationship. I remember him asking, “Do you think we’re going too fast?” My answer then was no, but it worried me when he asked the first time because it basically implied that he thought we were. I didn’t really get it until after he broke up with me, why he thought that. I was too caught up in me to see what he was talking about.
We were going too fast. Straight up, that’s it. Somewhere along the line, my words about not pushing him and not trying to be high maintenance stopped having any actual meaning, because I wasn’t really thinking about it- hell, I wasn’t really thinking about him. I was trying to be the world’s most perfect girlfriend, but I was trying to be the world’s most perfect girlfriend for a representative of Generic Manhood, not the world’s most perfect girlfriend for HIM. At the same time as I was making that transition, he stopped REALLY talking to me. I remember him remarking once on the fact that I did most of the talking in our conversations. That was back when it was still okay, when we weren’t in trouble yet really. Now that I look at those conversations, I notice the same thing he did: mostly me, a little of him. But at the same time, reading those conversations from the first month, when it was really good, there’s something different about them. We’re telling each other anything, not afraid of what the other one thinks, not afraid that the other isn’t listening. We haven’t had a conversation like that in ages, a perfect as you like it solid conversation. Somewhere along the line, I guess I stopped listening to him the way I had before. I started waiting for him to say something so that I could start a monologue off of what he said, to fill up space, instead of REALLY having a conversation.
He was right; we went too fast. Instead of thinking of him as a friend, I treated him more like “my boyfriend”, and I stopped really thinking of him as a person in relation to me outside that role. We got too physical, and to be honest, I started not thinking of him any other way. It must have been so burdensome for him. So degrading to be treated like that. In retrospect, I can’t believe I did that to him. He’s such a sweet, funny guy; it’s not like I don’t enjoy his conversation, his brain, his hopes and dreams; I just forgot about them in pursuit of his other charms.
I sure hope the next relationship he’s in is better than this one. And I hope the same for myself. I think there’s a snowballs chance in hell that we’ll get back together after all that I did to drive him off, so I’m not going to bother to hope. But whatever relationship I pursue next, I’m not making the same mistakes. I’m not going to throw all the responsibility on someone else, because it’s not fair to them. Maybe I got a D+ in this relationship (I don’t fail only because I made him fudge), but at least I learned something. I’m willing to bet that these lessons aren’t relevant in my next relationship because that’s how it goes, but I’m a better person anyway. In my opinion. I suppose you might think otherwise.
Thank you, subject of this post. And thank you, anyone who read this. It has been an education.
