1
I’m in a mood where anything could happen. At any given moment, I could hop in a car and drive cross country without packing, or I could walk in the dark to the lake down the street and drink shitty wine coolers with the sleeping ducks, or I could hack off my hair, give myself some bangs, dye it black. These are moods I used to get in often, and I would act on them. I would dance half-naked in cages at gay strip bars, or I would pick up in the middle of the night and drive across the state, or I would drink two bottles of wine and get things pierced.
I would smash things and corner people and roll down my windows and burn my belongings in a shed behind the school, but now, I think: no, you need to simmer, you need money, you need a focus, you owe your parents and your friends and your boyfriend and yourself, to some degree, an achievement of something, some success, some semblance of self-reliance.
So I don’t drive to New York and I don’t climb buildings and scrape my palms on brick walls, and I don’t cut my hair, and I don’t go home with strangers, but I want to. There is a constant battle in me, and both sides lose, and I end up not being responsible and not being impulsive, but going to sleep at 9:30 on a Tuesday instead.
2
I’m looking for disconnection. I go in and out of it, but I so often want to erase my online life, disconnect my phone and leave. I’ve always wanted to be the observer. I just want to watch and listen to people without having to give myself away, unless I want to. I hate the feeling of being demanded upon, in any fashion, though that’s selfish as everything is give-and-take. I can’t just take people’s stories and emotions without giving my own. There are social rules that require I do more than just sit back and take it in, without a word.
I hate the phone because it feels intruding. It rings, some unwritten law requires I answer it. I like e-mail, but only if I can reply on my own time. This is why I’ve begun to shy away from IM – the insistence of it, how people will think I’m ignoring them if I don’t say something right away, how I have to say: okay, I’m going to the bathroom now. Okay, I’m back. The phone rang. I need to go, my ride is here.
This all feels so bratty. I love people. I love their dramas, their heartaches, their happiness, their kindness. I wouldn’t be able to pick up and leave, live in a musty cabin in the middle of nowhere. But I’ve caught myself up in insincerity. I feel like the extroversion and bubbliness I take on when I am with people is false, though I don’t feel like I’m faking anything at the time. The truth is, if I behaved how I really felt, I wouldn’t say a word. I would watch, listen and be empathetic. I don’t know how to describe this. I hate the feeling of disappointment; therefore, I don’t want to disappoint, and I’m beginning to believe I disappoint people because I can’t put myself out there. I am a hermit, a hobbit, a peeled snail. I sometimes wish I could be on the other side of the one way glass, and only reach in when I feel it.
I’ve started typing up my paper journal from my first two years in Minnesota. Reading it makes me feel like I’m choking. I’m not detached from the events during those years, but, rather, completely immersed. The boyfriend and the friends and the feelings are running parallel.
In the bar Thursday night, I was overworked and feverish. Pictures of You, my favorite Cure song, started playing and something lightened. Two weeks ago, when I was in a casino swimming pool, I was thinking of something that happened three years ago. And then I thought how I’m always thinking of something that happened three, two years ago. In every memory I have, I’m not present. In every picture I have myself, at the moment the camera clicked, I’m sure I was thinking of an old boyfriend or what I ate for lunch three months ago or summer in a state I didn’t live in. I’m never here.
I just ate a bagel with pepperjack cheese. I’m wearing a green shirt, given to me by an old roommate, and worn-out jeans. I’m listening to The Cure. But I’m thinking of a summer morning three years ago, when I opened the window in my Duluth bedroom, and grinned at the street.
Now I grimace, but you knew that. I thought finally holding a job and being an adult and providing for myself would fix things. You should’ve told me: don’t do that. You know better. And now I’m sleepy and displaced and bored. Creating chaos has always been my magic cure, but I’m too old for chaos.
There is something missing, but we all know that. It’s not enough to kick the gutters or wish for wine. There is a need for an inner drasticness, an orgastic break of glass. I am seething, sad and contained.
I am a complete and functioning member of society again, and magically have no time for the internet, or am too tired to sit in a chair and type, because we all know the amount of energy that takes. I have a lot of things I’m going to throw up here, so look for that. (Ha, I said “throw up.”)
Last Friday, I went to dinner with a million cool people, and many pictures were taken, though not by me (link NSFW as one dinner member flashed some private parts). Again, I ask: when did I turn into a smiling, extroverted, bubbling socialite? Because the whole time I’m yapping and laughing and clinking wine glasses, there is a small voice in the back of my head that whispers, “Uh, you’re really shy and awkward, remember?” Lately, I’m only shy and awkward when I’m alone, in my room. Suddenly, I don’t know what to do with myself in silence.
It was 80 degrees yesterday, and Lucy the Cat has pinkeye. I got caught in a wild thunderstorm last night after sharing a turtle sundae with my boyfriend at a pizza restaurant. I jumped rope today and ate licorice. I’d say all is well.
P.S.: I just discovered when you work as a writer for a paid living, you don’t want to do much of it when you get home.
I don’t take the huge catalog pictures I used to. I think I’m actually participating in social events as opposed to laying back and being the historian. There is deep psychological meaning in this, and I’ll search for it just as I get back from the grocery store. It’s popsicle season again. And: here are 16 pictures from the past few months. Some are blurry and trying to be artistic, but most were taken with no other intention than remembrance. Also, new pictures will be scarce as the fall that bloodied my knee also took out my camera.
Well, I had more adventures this past weekend than I’ve had in many many months, the highlights of which include getting lost in a casino and winning 15 quarters on a slot machine named “A Whale of Cash.” I wish I could say my busted knee was from something dangerous and exciting, like skateboarding off a hotel roof or, at the very least, a bar fight, but sadly, it’s from an Easter egg hunt. I’ll have many more stories, but I actually have to get to bed on time as I acquired two new jobs in the past week, which is two more than I had last week.
I think I was 12 the last time I had a scraped knee. Then, I cried my bratty head off. This time, I laughed uncontrollably and then wore shorts the next day in 40 degree wind, just so everyone would ask me what happened.
Click to get tickets
This time two years ago, I was running down my house stairs in Duluth, scream-singing Tenacious D at the top of my lungs. Beth, Dane and Corina were waiting for me by the door with absolutely no jackets or scarves or mittens in sight because it was at least 60 degrees outside, and the sun was blasting through the cracks in the wall, and we were all so giddy we couldn’t stand it. It was the first true Spring-like day, and if you’ve ever slunk through a Minnesota winter, you know exactly the kind of pure joy a day like that can incite. We didn’t need coats, and we were going to Goodwill to shop for Geek Prom, and then later that night, we were going to have a party. (Geek Prom, incidentally, is exactly what it sounds like. Some excellent nerds in the city put together an adult prom where the only goal was to look as – you guessed it – geeky as possible.)
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The Local Coffee Hole
How many in here are pretending? The day planners, the computer screens fat with type, the highlighters – three in a neat row, the perky gavels of education. I think the truth is: I’m the only faker, and I’m not even faking by much – I’m reading a novel for pleasure and holding a pen, as if underlining important passages for class. I am not a student of anything presently, and the way things are going, I am may never be again. But I am the great pretender, and underneath my clothes are eighteen years of unfinished essays.
. . .
Every time a small, red-cheeked blonde walks in, I think it’s this girl I’m always looking for in places like these. There’s no logical reason she’d be wanting coffee in this part of town, but even so, I’m convinced I see her each time. It’s all symbolism, anyway. She’s the path I didn’t take, and I’m the path she didn’t even consider taking. I’m her, gone considerably wrong, the dream a ghost of some holiday past would show her as a warning. But, my cold coffee is chalk and it’s Daylight Savings Time and the moon and I are full of shit.
Spring is here, maybe, and to celebrate that, here’s a picture of a blond Norwegian pretending to water a plastic bird.