I drink a beer to offset the nauseous twitch of adderal. I drink a beer because the motivation with too many directions offers me no real place to go to, nothing to achieve. I drink this beer for old time’s sake — I am in my parents home, I’m alone for now, up too late and yet — I’m not miserable. I drink this as a nod to the former incarnation of self which was always crawling up the walls here, looking for a way out of what - i don’t know. Not this house, but something less clearly defined. A state of mind.
And of course — I drink the beer not least of all because a part of my procrastination involves reading the theory work for Friday’s class — and I’m so into it, so utterly down with what the author is writing, that it feels more like a social event than an obligation. I savor each bite. I don’t skim; this is taking forever. It doesn’t happen so often, but when it does, then damn — do I ever love the feeling of enjoying what i’m supposed to learn about. Every second of “higher” “education” should feel like that; it’s worth a toast or two.
I’m thinking about myself and I’m looking at a handful of mistakes and a bucket of paths not quite well tried. If I don’t think too hard about this — and i’m planning not to — then if I think about this I can reason that the bigger the jump, the more interesting the results. Or even — the better.
I jumped to an art school from a prep school and that was quite smart. I think I felt my brain grow that year; it made me feel a little ill with my highschool self and it made it even harder to swallow the less admirable parts of education, but it was probably a good thing overall. A good jump. I made friends with the friends of people who I had known 2 years before, and then I made the choice to spend most of my free time with the people who felt safe. A small jump, hardly a jump at all, maybe a jump back or outright — a fall, into what felt best, most comfortable — maybe like falling into a pile of pillows, maybe like falling into a pile of shit. Hard to tell until I had to run away from that situation with what I had left of myself.
But it’s sort of like that. When I jump to what I know, when I jump to what is safe, when I jump to what is easy, convenient, accepted —- I take two steps forward and I take two steps back, I take myself too seriously and I take too much effort to stay in one place, really. When I jump to what I don’t, the blank spot on the map or the spot with a mythy illustration of sea monsters — it’s something. That’s where the sweet spot is.
When a tree falls in the forest, new growth occurs. To know such a thing is to make it difficult, almost impossible, not to romanticize the burning of bridges.
I open another beer. Nostalgia? Derail me, Captain! I contemplate my navel all too well, the myth of self, a creature who can only see itself through mirrors and the accounts of others — never in the first person — always through re-interpretation, distillation, simplified and second-hand. You can never really see yourself, suggests the article, you can only see the flattened reflection, personal-projection.
So once again you prove that you know me because you ask the thing that I’ve been meaning to say, and I answer you, relieved to have an excuse to bring the thing into existence, relieved that it comes called-for and not out of the blue. I say what I meant to say, and I try not to shield my words or make evasions, and I hear another part of my brain screaming DON’T HURT DON’T HURT DO NO HARM. First rule of interaction, it’s okay to hurt feelings, but really, in the long run — do no harm.
And you, you’re kind of quiet, you admit that what I said you expected me to say. And you don’t really say your own heart, you look like you are thinking but you do not have the words. But maybe I know you well enough, I know what you want. Can I take that leap?
To jump to what is close, easy, and comfortable — this is a bad, bad thing for me. To jump towards what is blank, a little terrifying, the experience which almost spells disaster — I said it, already, that is where the growth occurs.
I’m not old enough to say any of that. I’m full of shit, I’m faking hard — I make most of my decisions based on gut feeling and tarot cards. I actively denounce and dismantle myself from the things I seem to want the most.
And I look at you through a mediator of technology and you look at me, you’re lying in the dark, you’re nothing but a blanket and the shimmer of a screen across two eyes looking back at me. Sometimes I find that when I need to say something really important I can’t make eye contact. The irony of computerized communication is that if I look down, I’m looking at you, at the screen. I see your face, I’m looking you right in the eyes. If I look straight out ahead of me I see nothing but the edge of the laptop, but the effect is that I look you in the eye. You see me look at you — I’m looking at the light, the lens, I don’t see your reaction at all. Little cues of communication are always slightly off. I don’t get to see if you’re shifting your feet, you don’t get to see my gestures. Intimacy is interrupted in more ways than one. Maybe I want to own you, but mostly I want to sit side by side and experience similar things in real time — have someone to discuss it with later.
I know how to settle very well, but I only settle two years at a time. Tragic-domestic, I incline to be somebody’s pet dog until that thing in me decides to bite. I don’t know what to say.
So we stare, stupidly. I don’t say, you don’t say, we both look like we’re looking down because we scrutinize each other’s faces close, maybe even closer than technology permits. And finally I admit, I want to say something stupid.
Like what.
Like, I want to ask, I mean, I want to say — I need to know, are you breaking up with me?
I make a few plaintive sounds as if I would continue to speak and don’t have the words, and he doesn’t smile but kind of does that type of exhale that a person would do just before they smile, relief.
“I was about to ask you the same. I wasn’t sure.”
I said that it was a stupid thing to say because the whole thing is a farce. To say “I hope he isn’t breaking up with me” is a slap in the face of logic because officially, in reality, we aren’t together anyway. We never were. Not like that. It’s nothing, passing interaction, alarming degree of intimacy apart from the sensible confines of romance and —- that’s it.
So to say — ” are you breaking up with me??? “
It’s like pretending it was normal, pretending high-school or pretending serious-like, pretending we were or could be together in any conventional sense of the terms. It’s a farce.
But it also speaks the truth. Because I am existing with you in a space between language, in some ways we use our words but in most ways we use purely the meaning, we say things three times if that is what the conversation takes, we outline a sentiment in gestures and sounds so that it escapes any misunderstanding. — And maybe, the same thing occurs with this feeling. Hard to say, sounds foolish if you try, but real - for a fact - and inescapable in personal thought.
***
I know. I have said it a dozen times. It will be ironic if I die a pedestrian casualty, because in a day, in a week, in a year, in a month — I could be hit by a bus, and then long-term plans wouldn’t matter. The payoffs two years down the road would be moot — the college degree, the network of friends and connections, opportunities down the line — gone. It wouldn’t even matter, I’d be no more, and the only dying thought would be, am I happy now, am I happy today, did I do it right while I could?
And in that respect I don’t worry. If that is the case, I can say with no doubt — I have loved you the best that I could — & it meant something here, affected me now — it was worth it, for what it was worth.
But I can’t hope for that.
I don’t want to get hit by a bus, it’s only the qualifier of what’s worth doing as I’m doing it, and only because I don’t like doing things that I hate just because somebody promises me I’ll feel good about it five years down the road.
So then.
To the third beer, alone.
I can’t make sense of it — and i’m going to stop making sense entirely before too long, by the end of tonight at least. I am too far in the direction of two thoughts.
If I should go to find you and go true, it might work and it might not. And I know that the thing that I fear most is not the thought of coming back after a year or maybe two — but rather, at the most I fear success, at the most I fear approximating the ideal of relationships I’ve raged against for years.
Listen. If I knew a way to queer this, straight girl that I am, I’d jump off of this cliff no looking back.
There’s no solution in sight. I have at least six months to formulate a legitimate response but I know the things that I say now hold weight, carry water, indicate directions for the things to come.
So I don’t know.
I could tell you everything I’ve ever thought, I could tell you everything I’ve ever been told, I can draw you diagrams and I can write you poems, I can speak in metaphors or purely concrete terms, but the fact is - I’m lost, and you might see how I think, but then you’ll be quite lost too.
And thats okay, I’m not afraid — At least not yet. Say something, say nothing, what I want, what I need — and maybe in the end it doesn’t matter.
Keep moving. Regardless, don’t stop.
Our direction — each respective — will provide us with the orientation for the days to come.
