Alone with Your Thoughts

Oppressive silence and heat. Lined grey roads and a lack of stars at 3 am - I have neighbors and they say hello. That will take some getting used to. A platinum blonde polish guy met me on the sidewalk and arrested my attention with a slant "hello, how are you?" Just when I'm alone in a fit of despair and angst I'm seen - seen and approached and focused on. I'm trying to be alone I think angrily...And that's the truth. How dare he interrupt my attempt at solitude. I'm not happy when I'm alone and I want to be. Alone is how we're born and die and it's (ironically) the most important thing we have to adjust to in life. The most common thing we find ourselves trying to escape.

Guys wonder why girls can't be alone, or at least that's what the boys who constantly message me on facebook for dating advice wonder...Why do women need a man they ask...but I can't even walk outside at 3 am and be left alone by men. On my solitary walk at 3 am I was propositioned by a suave asian man in a Mercedes, leered at by the clerks in CVS and had my thoughts interrupted by my upstairs neighbor as we walked past each other on the sidewalk - and I'm not all that attractive. I realize this is me making excuses for women's neediness and I realize this excuse isn't true in every case but if I can't even be alone for a walk when the world's supposed to be quiet then how do I learn to be alone? Women want one man. They want to be protected from that onslaught of attention. Sure the attention is nice and it's easy to be a woman in a lot of ways but only because men allow us to manipulate them into getting what we want. They do have a choice...right?

I recently got in a youtube argument over an incredibly sexist video and was accused of being a cunt who didn't realize that women torture men by dressing up and how women shouldn't wonder why they get raped or why men enjoy watching sadistic/degrading porn. Granted maybe youtube isn't the most stellar place to find prime examples of the male species but I can't help wondering if these aren't just purer sentiments than the ones I hear from men face to face. Many things men say reek of something deeply rotten. Not intellectual men and not fathers, but the men that I meet in a club, or on the street or that I live with. In every compliment, in their praise or advice there's this uncomfortable realization that I'm alone when I'm with them. They aren't talking to me, they're talking to my body, to my sex, to their satisfaction and it's disturbing.

So I'm walking again. And I see a man alone and I'm nervous. At 3 am a girl gets nervous when she sees a man walking alone but then I see a woman round the corner to meet him and I'm calm again. Men alone or in groups are frightening but when they're with a woman (or gay) suddenly things aren't so scary. I'm not sure what that means about me, or about society - it's just something I've noticed and I wonder where the truth ends and my irrational resentment of the typical male begins.

Sleep

I slept through work. I was talking to mom on the phone and had a few drinks and I slept through work.
Slept.
Through.
Work.

I can't even...wow. I'm pretty much retarded.

Birch Trees

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile but haven't really found the words to say it. It's 3 am now...maybe words will come easier when I don't have the world awake and distracting me.

Monday was a rainy pointless work day. The bartender at my restaurant, let's call him Tim, was at the bar and my new gay "lover", let's call him Will, was on the floor with me. Will and I have a strange relationship. The moment he met me he said that he felt like he had seen my eyes before and said that he believes we met in another life. The other day he saw me standing and eating in the sports bar and said that while I was standing there he was watching me and that I looked like a princess and that if he weren't gay he would be madly in love with me. Normally gay men say things like this to girls to be friendly but with Will it's a little different...He has the same look about him when he talks to me that boys who suffered puppy love for me had. It's not lust in any way but this kind of sickly adoration that makes me very uncomfortable but that I miss when it's gone. That said I liked Will from the moment I met him. He was kind and seemed quite gentle - a little spacey and unfocused but strange people are just part of the decor in the restaurant industry. I've learned to ignore peoples quirks.
On this particular Monday we were all bored and standing around bullshitting. All of our regulars were at the bar and I might have been busy save the fact that my section was half flooded from the leak in our ceiling and the few customers that did come in were choosing to sit in other sections. I was just hanging out wasting money at the jukebox when a man whom I first took to be homeless came in and sat haphazardly at a table. It was in Will's section so I let him know and didn't think much of it until I got a better look at the man. The man was decently dressed, his clothes weren't old or filthy just baggy, baggy because the man was not much bigger than a skeleton. I hadn't ever seen a person dying from AIDS until that day. I have had friends that were HIV positive and would contract AIDS at some point but this man looked like he was holding hands with death. I let this fact sink in for awhile and walked around the restaurant pretending to work, thinking about sickness and the betrayal of a body. I heard something fall over and saw that the man had spilled his coffee because he couldn't lift his arm and the cup - it was too much effort. Will came over with napkins but the way he was cleaning made me feel....sick....disgusted....surprised? I really am not sure what I felt but it was unpleasant. I watched Will walk over to a manager and whisper something and then I heard him refuse to serve the man. The man just sort of stared at him (I couldn't see his eyes because he was wearing very dark sunglasses and a hat) and wobbled to his feet. He couldn't even open the door to get outside. I helped him and then watched as Will put on sanitary gloves and threw away the menus and dishes the man had used. He and others at the bar laughed a little talking back and forth about how they wouldn't touch anything after him either. Now, maybe I'm underestimating the contagion properties of HIV/AIDS but I'm almost 100% positive touching the same things or touching the person will not cause you to contract the virus. I'm 20 years old. All of these people are 35+. Can that 15 years really result in that kind of a gap in knowledge that I always took as common sense? Does a gay man 35+ years old really not realize that the HIV/AIDS scare wasn't about the virus as much as a backlash on the gay community from the straight? A "valid" excuse for homophobia? I couldn't be sure. I didn't talk to anyone for the rest of the night. I was upset and still am upset. Will seems like a good guy...I really like him as a friend...but I can't get over what happened and I don't know if I should.

Idiosyncrasy

I have this bad habit of day dreaming. Often when someone is talking to me about something that's important to them. Or when I'm looking out at something that inspires me. Or when I'm operating dangerous machinery. Just kidding. Except not really, I definitely do it when I'm driving, I just don't drive any more.

Day dreaming is sort of a funny thing because it's nothing like night dreaming where your world is an untouched wall. Day dreaming requires a life to day dream about. People occupy it that are often very close to you. And not close figuratively but literally. My day dream today actually occurred tonight (mindblowing, I know) while I was sitting on the porch. I was day dreaming that my upstairs neighbor would come talk to me. Not for any particular reason. He's too old for me to be attracted to him and honestly a rather bland gentleman in general. But I wanted to talk to a stranger. I wanted to hear my life reflected back to me and I wondered if I would like what I saw. Strangers are like mirrors in bright light. Our friends are like the bathroom lighting at a club, dim and intended to make you feel wanted while our family is like the lighting of a fancy restaurant, soft and flattering to the extent that you get cocky and blow $200 more than you intended.
Strangers are that grimy truck stop lighting in restrooms where you feel like you've aged 10 years. Everything unflattering about you is accented. You look like you haven't slept in days and if you didn't know better you'd swear you were on a meth come down. It's often quite startling. Sometimes the stranger is nice and lets you down easy but regardless of how nice they are, they let you down. They see things clearer than you do in many situation. Sure they might have their own agenda, they might even be really stupid and totally misread everything you say but I guarantee you they'll misread it in a way you wouldn't have misread on your own. So forget what your parents told you about talking to strangers, maybe they just didn't like the way the strange light made them look.

Strong Enough

If it isn't you again. That ugly snake rearing it's head prepared to strike and wither the limb of yet another healthy relationship. Too "serious" or "strong" - like it's an insult. And it is an insult. Maybe once upon a time I wouldn't think it was. At a younger age I would consider them weak and unworthy and move on to my next victim but the more I watch myself in relationships the more I see it and I'm starting to know exactly what they mean when they say it.
Frankly, I'm sort of a bitch. I don't laugh at their jokes, I'm not agreeable, I make jokes at their expense whenever I can, I argue over things that simply don't matter. I over-analyze everything from car commercials to sports to humor to handwriting style to the way they cook, you name it I've diagnosed them with some form of mental illness for it. It's like this tick where I make sure to climb on top even when no one is fighting me for it. I can guarantee it's not control though. I don't want to be in control. I'm just afraid. Afraid that if I'm not on top then I'll drown underneath them - as has happened too many times before. I allow them a moment of my adoration and all of a sudden they've had their fill and are on to the next. The second I let my guard down. Over and over and over again. When you don't give a shit they're breaking down your doors and smothering you with attention until you feel like you'll choke on the powdery sweetness but the second you roll over and flash your underbelly they've slit you open and smashed the already mangled pieces of your ability to commit t someone irreparably. And you're over. Whatever non-committed relationship you had has suddenly ended through an ambiguous text with words like "we're just so different", "you're clingy" and "you're really serious", without any real sense of closure. You tell yourself you were foolish to care about them in the first place justifying yourself with all of the obvious early indicators of their insanity or pyschopathy.
As we all know girls are well known for their insanity and as my ex can attest I'm not an exception to the rule but clingy isn't exactly something I can be easily accused of. Out of all the people I've slept with there have only been 2 that I've texted/called an unusual amount of times and both know damn well why I did. One was cheating on me and I was pissed and the other was a psychotic stalker whom I thought might kill himself as he had tried to do once before. Other than that my hysteria over boys has been limited to furious blogging and the occasional facebook stalking. But time and time again the second a boy doesn't want to see me any more I'm "clingy" or "demanding" regardless of the fact that in the beginning of the relationship I was "cold" and "distant". Frankly my dears I am cold and distant. That has become my regular state after years of hopeless romanticism. It isn't until you start texting me every day accusing me of being cold that I catch the scent of rejection and turn up my temperature to lukewarm to try and show that I care in normal girl fashion. Now, I'm an excellent girlfriend/booty-call when I want to be but for me to be an excellent girlfriend and not slip back into single mode where I am critical of the way you breathe around me or I delete your number after 4 hours of you not responding you must also be an excellent boyfriend/hookup. That doesn't mean you should change the way you breathe but (honest) compliments go a long way. Or a hug. Or a kiss. Or a text. Or a great lay. They're cheap and easy ways to let me know that the fact that you breathe like a serial killer is totally worth putting up with because frankly you're awesome regardless of how you breathe. And in general, I think the latter way before I place "serial killer breathing" into my mental notes on you. I start off most relationships with "this guy is rad as hell and I love him, I just can't wait until we're at the 'I love you' stage" but as is custom nowadays in the modern dating world the criticisms build with each rejection. With each day of silence or perceived insult my list grows like I'm building a wall between us brick by brick. I'll be damned if I allow possible signs of trouble to fly under the radar and land me knee deep in some disgustingly complicated feelings like love. Can't let that shit happen. Crying yourself to sleep at 4 am thinking about the person you love sleeping with someone else is a waste of precious time that I absolutely refuse to commit to. I have way too much blogging to do at 4 am to let that shit get in the way.

Myst

I used to play the computer game Myst at my next door neighbors house as a kid. Her mom used to make candles so their house always smelled like myrrh, rosemary and candle wax. She had a Dali calendar and exotic throws on all of her couches - her house was its own world. Our houses were adjacent but separated by an alley that was frequented by neighbors with heroine and meth abuse problems so that whenever I visited her house it felt like I was much farther from home than I actually was.
When we would play the game we would sit in the dark. She would explore the generated world while I would write down codes and findings trying to crack the password to the next level as we found more and more of the puzzle. My friend was a compulsive liar so each time I would come to visit she would make up findings in the game that would make the game impossible for me to play on my own but as a naive 8 year old I didn't know the difference and fell madly in love with the perceived magical properties of the game. This time in my life left a lasting impression on me.

With each code break you would emerge into a new area to explore. You were welcome to explore the old ones but for the most part that was dull because you spent so much time at every level that the thought of revisiting one was nauseating. I felt that way as a kid. With each realization I would allow myself an abandonment of the things that felt childish and move forward in whatever direction felt right with my newfound knowledge. I would abandon the old "me" completely and move on with the code I had discovered. Strange how now I feel like there is no code. Learning used to lead me to where I needed to go but at some point the answers stopped coming. Somewhere when I hit 13 I began asking questions that didn't seem to have answers at all and I began asking them compulsively. The game ideals stopped working and reality set in. The lies fell away and the pixels became crystal clear. Since then I've always felt like my life took on this glaringly sharp edge. The more I learned the clearer things became - but the bright colors I was seeing from the new light cast much longer shadows. The dark became very real. Rather than just a blind spot in my peripheral vision darkness seemed like a force I could stare into for the first time and I became afraid of the world and afraid of living. The angst of my non-existence took over my childhood like a parasite and I sank into a deep despondency. That despondency led to run aways then to cutting then to alcohol abuse then to drug abuse then to sex abuse but it's hard to look back and regret those things - mainly because there's no use for regret.

Many of my friends today find it hard to believe I've done all of the things I say I've done. "You have such a great head on your shoulders", "you seem so calm", "you're so mature", "you don't seem like you would do anything like that". I hear this from people all the time. In many ways I am those things but I feel like I owe it to those times of despondency. I treated the aforementioned abuses like levels in Myst. What you have to understand with drugs and self medication is that with each level you feel trapped but as soon as you find the code and learn what you need to learn you move on and never look back. With each experience I had, sometimes after multiple experiences, I would come to a point where the abuse stopped making sense - or started to make sense in which case I knew with certainty that it needed to stop. With that the code would be broken and I would be free of it. Able to come and go as I pleased but more often than not, I was nauseated by the thought of returning to old lands - old habits. And with that I grew up.

I'm still a mess and my current code still seems impossible but I guess with every level things get harder. I'll just have to explore the places I've left unvisited.

Department Stores

I have never been good about knowing my size. I walk into a department store with a vision of strutting around whisking up hangers and taking pictures with my iphone in the dressing room mirror for instagram where 100 people will like my photos and I'll feel some unwarranted justification for myself. The reality is I'm awkward in department stores. I don't take off my headphones until I absolutely have to and I have to try on eight different sizes before anything fits and then, embarrassed if it's too big or too small, I just get a one size fits China version, take no pictures with the iphone I don't have and scuttle out. My projected self image is skewed and unreliable. I often exaggerate my size and end up drowning in a 10 or underestimate it and end up poured into a 5. I do the same thing with my plans. The unforeseen future is just one impossibly large department store. One where no one talks to you and if you ask a question they stare you up and down. Because frankly, lets be honest, you don't have money and they know it. You don't belong there and you know it. This world wasn't made for you and honey, no one really wants you here. I feel that way in New York all the time. There's this world and I love it more than anything. It's the best little black dress there is but it only comes in one size and it's not mine. I don't fill them out. It doesn't zip up in the back. It's itchy. They pinch. God it looks good, but who cares if you can't walk in them? Could it be that I haven't found the place to fit me yet? Dallas was so hot. Like wearing a parka in a swamp I always felt ready to suffocate in my own panic - drown in my sweat and tears and memories. Fuck that place. I can't go back there, not yet anyway. I want New York to be my size. I want to get it tailored to suit me but it's so damn expensive. Your soul? Really? The very essence of your being, doesn't that seem a little steep? For a week now I've been sleeping on sheets and wood with boxes all around me. Welcome home I keep thinking to myself. This is home. This is home. This. Home. Me. Home. Walls. Home. And it doesn't work. I can't convince myself of it no matter how many times I say it in my head. Sometimes I feel it but that doesn't mean I believe it. When I wake up to the pink roses on my porch or the curtains blow across my room and make the light dance - I definitely feel something. But maybe I could feel that anywhere. Maybe, somewhere else I could feel it more.