9:05 p.m. - 03/11/03
|||everybody hurts. sometimes everybody cries...hold on.:>
A few weeks ago someone asked me, "If I were going to buy you a book or CD for your birthday, what might I buy?" and after a few minutes of explaining how they didn't have to do that, I chose Imperfectly by Ani DiFranco. This morning I listened to it, an album I had once, an album I haven't heard in almost two years. I've been feeling vaguely sick, more emotions than reality, lying down because sleep is easier than living right now. And today my dad went somewhere my mom didn't expect him to go, and they had a heated phone call about how this living-states-apart thing works, and I wondered what has changed. I used to want the White Room; now I want Rogers. I used to have parents on either sides of a border; I've switched camps. I used to know that something was wrong with me; now I'm supposed to know how to make it better. But it's not better right now. Right now it's just...here. And here looks too familiar. I want to know what's changed. I want the answer to be everything. I want it, once, to be more than simply "me."
Somebody take me home and leave me there.*
chord
*ani
~
I wrote that a little before four, but my ISP (impromptu suckiness provider) decided it no longer knew how to access any Internet site. Which was bad considering, while writing it, I came up with this brilliant notion: When feeling as if you've gone back in time, do something you never could have done then. (In my case, call someone. But I have so few phone numbers, and I couldn't get on-line to access the ones in my e-mail, or to say to someone randomly on Instant Messenger, "Can I call you now and talk about silly things?" So instead I took a shower the way one jumps into a lake (or so I imagine, never having done so) and set up a camp in the tiny bathroom off my room - the only space I have with a door. Light. Door. Music. Sketchbook. Sociology homework geared toward fourth graders. I did alright in there for awhile, then chatted a bit with my mom's guests (clients?) who invade my home one evening a month. It felt nice for awhile, then I wanted my space back. I took to my parents' room, to continue drawing, and they reappeared- seven or ten women piled into a tiny space. I nearly started crying; I couldn't make it to the door. Smile and nod and be the good socialite. When they were gone, I reamed my mom for it. She didn't understand what she had done. But then, she never does. The truth is I'm hypersensitive. I don't know how to change that.
Earlier I was feeling the fog and shadow of depression; now it's pain. Pain around my heart, inside it, on the edges of everything. I've been writing a play in verse- or at least, the way that I write poetry. I've been writing more honestly than I have in any play, and I realize, this could go up someday, I could have to show this to my sister, and I just want to cry. We all know who should see it. We all know where I should be. Why does it have to be a fucking hospital? Why does it have to be states and states away? Why does it have to be temporary. I need love.
I'm so tired of trying to convince myself that's ok, or that's good, or that's anything at all worth considering. I'm so tired of trying to talk myself out of the only thing I can do. And of course, I'm depressed and stressed and going out of my mind here. Who wouldn't be? Who doesn't come out here and fall asleep within an hour? Who doesn't drive home to the comfort of the city? People go on vacation in order to come home. I talk about running away. Well, the truth is much simpler than that. The truth is I ran away from home a long time ago, and now it's just stop after stop while I wait to find something better. The truth is I haven't been home in years, and I can feel that ok- that takes a toll. So don't ever tell me you don't understand why I'm upset. I could wake up crying and have reason. I could open my eyes for the first time in the morning to a scream. It wouldn't be illogical. It wouldn't be irrational. It would be true and real and human and all the things I still am despite what they've done to me. No girl is supposed to be an island, but sometimes you get screwed that way. Sometimes the water builds up around you, and it's crawl onto the shore or die. Well, I hate this shore, damnit. I hate it here, and I want to leave, and I want to leave more than this town. I want to leave abandonment and loneliness and no one to hug and no one who understands and no one who's been there and people who say "great job" as a way of not taking the work on themselves. I want to leave it all and go far, far away.
I love my family, but sometimes...I could strangle that fucking stork. I don't fit here. I don't. I look exactly like my mother and have all my father's mental quirks, but I'm not theirs. I'm not like them. I've done my damndest to become someone else, someone who could live a life worth knowing, and despite that, I'm still cut off. And therapy is great, therapy is working, therapy is fucking changing my life on a daily basis- but in the meantime...? I'm still a long way from healed. And I just wish that when the day is done I could hug someone goodnight. I just wish that at the end of the battle, at the end of breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and don't cut, and what do you feel, and how are you doing, and what do you need, and how can we fix this, I could grab onto someone for a fraction of a moment. Just grab on and know that I was safe.
Even in the reality tv shows, they don't put them on the island all alone...
HOME.
home home home home home
chord
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