Oh don’t worry, it’s not your life!

This week has been terrible. I’ve been holding the anger in, making a pretty good attempt. But fuck it. It’s not like saying it aloud here, in the abyss of ‘anonymous’ internet is hurting anyone. The people who should be reading it—my parents—are about as likely to stumble on this as the spear of fucking destiny. But well, with my luck…let’s not even get into it.

I woke up on my day off (this was a couple of days ago) to find my parents trading car information back and forth. My mother is on her computer, my father on his. Apparently if I am registered with an older vehicle it cuts down our insurance payment by about a hundred dollars a month. So there they are, looking for a car. They didn’t even ask me. They’re talking about forking out some of whatever they’ve been saving, and I know that in the end I would have to produce something as well. Which is fine. I don’t care about the money. What I care about is when people make decisions for me, when I am legally considered an adult. Usually I am nonchalant about that kind of thing, so maybe that is why they thought it would be alright to start searching without telling me about it. But I don’t know…it made me furious. I may not have much of a life, or put forward much effort, but I think I still deserve to make a few choices in it. 

They had even called someone who was selling one of the cars. Without me.

Maybe I’m taking this too seriously. Maybe I’m being a stupid cunt about it, and I should get over it since they are being nice enough to even consider paying for part of it. But fuck, is it so much to ask that I be included from the beginning? I’ve talked a lot about getting an old car, for the purpose of having something that I wouldn’t have to worry about wrecking. But I’ve been working all of a month, so obviously, that is not at the top of my priorities right now, and probably never would be, because for one I don’t like to drive anyway. I was never all that serious about going through with it. At any time.

Then the other day, I was quading over in this area I wasn’t familiar with. I was about fifteen miles from my house, not a good place to get stuck in. The stupid thing was roaring and bogging down. It’s been doing this, even though the throttle was adjusted and it should be just fine. It has always had problems, so for the most part I ignore it when it acts up. Eventually, about halfway up the fucking mountain, I turned around and went back, because I could tell it was going to die. I did get it home, but only by gunning it the entire way to keep it from hesitating to the point of stalling.

Then I had left some money on the washing machine for gas—dad went and bought premium fuel with it. I can barely afford regular fuel, so now, instead of filling the gas canister in the garage all the way, it was only half full. All I do is use my ATV, really. There isn’t much else I do, so it kind of pissed me off. Yeah, I get that he wants them to run better, cleaner, but if it had been hismoney he would never have bought that fuel. He would have bought regular like he always does, otherwise I wouldn’t have had an issue with it. I’m trying to be lenient and show some trust and it just keeps blowing up in my face. I honestly couldn’t care less about the money, that’s what is so ridiculous. I’m not planning any future or doing anything with it. What angers me is that other people seem to think it is okay to do things without my permission. I’d like to have a fucking say in how my own life is run, thanks.

I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ve never shown an interest in deciding anything anyway, have I? So people assume I will continue to be the same way.

Those things are just a few in the long list of things that have gone wrong this week. I hope it lets up soon; I don’t have much tolerance to keep handling it all silently.

Umbra

I search and I search and I find nothing. Sides of me heatedly argue over and over until my head aches and even sleep brings no salvation. Days of sleeplessness, insomnia, are bringing me into a new range of consciousness where I only feel half here. And it is not the better half. It is the dark half, that evil shadow of myself that is not quite right. We tangle until we are one and the same, until shadows and reality can’t be distinguished and I am that darkest of parts.

There are only points to score in this war; victory seems so far off yet at times is so close, depending upon who I place my bet.

Say yes, says one. Say no, chimes in the other.

The man who lives by the woods and sits in the window petting his horse each day I walk by, his license plate says ‘Die for me’. The woman whose bike was stolen, she put up a sign asking if anyone had seen it. Then the other day I went by and the sign had changed. Do you know what it said?

“To the person who stole my bike: I forgive you. I hope you make some changes in your life.”

I don’t want to understand these people. I don’t deal in forgiveness or love. And it is this inability to forgive that puts me in my place most days. I am destined for this, I deserve this. There is no road to redemption: I was lost the minute I got here.

Forget your penance.
Forget your useless creeds.
You flounder and drown for naught.

This will set you free.

That is what it tells me. And how I want to believe it sometimes, how I almost do. But something holds me back.

Something always holds me back.

Keeping up appearances.

I think what I hate the most about having to be around other people is the smiling. That, and the pseudo-apologetic persona that I use to prevent storms from brewing when I am not in the mood to deal with any conflict. The other day a woman tried to order things from me while I was clocking in. I look up and inform her that I am unfortunately not trained to take orders and therefore don’t know how to use the machine. I always grin and say this politely, because it happens all the time. This woman says to me very rudely, almost under her breath, ”Well where is someone who can?” Oh gee, you know, I’m awfully sorry that my manager, who is over there kind enough to be helping with the chaos the grill people are dealing with, is delaying you from your greasy, disgusting food for ten seconds. Normally, when someone does this to me, asks me to do something I’m not sure/allowed to do, I’ll immediately go get someone who can. Instead I give her the grin that sometimes makes people back away from me, then I walk away without another word.

I went into a consignment store yesterday. One of the saleswomen was fluttering all around my godmother, completely ignoring me. This happens frequently, and I love it. Yes, please ignore me, I’m a shadow. Shadows don’t like to speak. They always think that because of how I’m dressed and how young I am, that there’s no potential money for them to claw out of me, which gives me the opportunity to shop without irritating interruptions or too much anxiety.

I actually found something that I liked, and couldn’t figure out which door was to the dressing room. I nearly went in the wrong room. I do things like this all of the time; I get nervous and I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing and I end up looking like an unobservant idiot. I’ve done some very embarrassing things while out, because I get stuck inside my head and put the rest of me on autopilot. I’ve walked into men’s restrooms before, broken things out of carelessness, and otherwise landed myself in situations where other people smiled at me sadly, as though they were thinking ‘wow, didn’t know they made things that stupid’. I do this at work too, and I’m sure by now that they think I’m a little slow in the head, because I repeatedly make mistakes, sometimes the same ones over and over because I am not mentally there. I either have no interest, or I’m too anxious to handle everything while I’m still thinking at full capacity. If I think, it will make me back out, give up, so…I don’t.

Anyway, it was ridiculous. I tried this dress on that was a little too small, but I really liked it and considered buying it since I keep dropping weight and would probably fit it just fine in a week if I wanted it to. Suddenly I was the center of attention. I awkwardly stood there letting my godmother state her opinion and all of that, and the saleswoman decided abruptly that I was the person to hound and flatter if she wanted to get at a wallet. I more or less got dragged to the mirror outside the dressing room, because the woman wanted me to look at it better. She said a bunch of the typical bullshit, repeatedly asserting that she’s a seamstress that could fix anything I don’t like about it, and that it was such a pretty dress and it was so me (she was very certain she knew…), and that it fit perfectly fine and I was lovely in it.

 The store was really small, so I knew some of the other shoppers were looking over at us curiously, and I was getting more stiff and unmoving by the minute. I pretended to examine it in the mirror, but was doing everything I could not to really look; I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to think about the fact that people behind me were looking, or that my godmother was looking or the saleswoman was looking. I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling horribly narcissistic for even thinking to try the thing on, and eventually managed to get away from them by more or less running to the dressing room. I stood in there for a moment, irritated and shy, trying to decide if I liked it. I decided that I did, and put my clothes back on as quickly as I could. I felt better with my suit of armor, and suddenly I was alright again, if not a bit jittery. I even let her have my mailing address because my defences felt too drained for me to argue with any real conviction.

I ended up putting it on hold, and went back at the end of the day and bought it after some thought, because I decided that it was me, at least the person everyone sees and believes is me. The manipulator. She wears dresses. She’s not a boyish misanthrope that covers herself up with layers of clothes and shrinks away from others. She smiles. She likes people. She treats them well and is always polite. She never thinks about how much it would please her to shout at everyone to stop fucking staring. She would never think to give the smiles that I give, the ones that are all threat and no happiness, and always follow as an unconscious reaction to some sadistic thought. She would never do that, think that. No, not her.   

Because she’s exactly what they want her to be.

It doesn’t take a mirror to really see….

My self loathing is at an all-time high. I seem more disgusting than usual, in all departments. Even my thoughts are more childlike and underdeveloped than they generally are. I can’t say what I want to say without feeling as though I’ve fallen incredibly short of my original intentions.

I’ve been…bad lately. I have no self control. It’s like a fucking game, yoyoing around insanely until something snaps and I have to face the inescapable damage. I’m having these episodes. It’s ridiculous. I want to strangle myself with one of the electrical cords. 

I’m preparing for death, that’s the trend. It must be. I’m thinking I’m going to die and I go into a right fucking panic, trying to get ready, to let go. I always eat when I feel like shit, so there it is. Refraining is not even a vanity thing. it’s a I want some fucking control thing. No matter how much I lose I will always still find something to point at and be grossed out by because I am everything I never wanted. Everything about me is somehow displeasing. I can’t sit back and think, “here are the things that are nice about me”. Instead all I can do is pick at every imperfection until I’m a bloody mess and all the farther from whatever ideal I’m trying to adhere to and become. All there is to torture anymore is a body. The head is long since dead. There’s no soul to shred anymore. I’ve ripped it apart time and time again, leaving it in frayed, ugly ribbons. You can only relive your most vulnerable, pathetic moments so many times when you are numb. Eventually you reach the point where your reaction is to blink dumbly, utterly unaffected, uninterested, which leaves you forced to move onto something else that will ellicit a reaction. 

It frustrates me that I can’t cause suffering in the way I want it. I want to push until there is no more pushing to be done, I don’t want to sit back in idleness and wait for the world to do it for me. Why should they deliver the death blow? Why should it be their strike that is the final crippling hit? Why can it not be my own? Why can my weapon not be the spear that is the beginning of the end?

I believe it can be, but that it would take more effort than I am currently willing to draw out of myself.

I just don’t have it in me. Yet another failure in my faulty design.

Crawling through darkness.

There’s a little demon in my brain that is laughing at me now. Laughing and laughing at how foolish I am, at my indecisiveness and cowardice. I am a coward, that I will not deny. I am afraid, so terribly afraid, but at the same time compelled beyond rationality. I can’t even type it out; that is the extent I let the fear grip me.

For the day it was not a burden, but a prize, something to hold above my head and look to when I felt the edge of weariness blurring my composure. Those thoughts come back and I shove them away, sometimes with more brutality and certainty than I think myself capable, until eventually they grow sick of the game and make their own retreat. But yesterday was such a terrible day. How can I look at the sun of today and not feel the ache that was there? Why was it not a sunless sky that greeted me when I woke? How can I live today and nearly forget what was there only an instant before? I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t know why I can shift as quickly as the wind, one minute beyond certain, others clinging to my life as though it is precious to me when I know it isn’t. There is nothing precious about it, and never will be. It is as precious as a grain of sand; the wind could swipe it from the shore and no one would be any the wiser.

I spent money today, for no reason other than that I could. I bought a fishing license so that my father wouldn’t have to go to the lake alone. He kept hinting that I should go with him, but I have long been ignoring the veiled request. It was hot, the sun was bright. We walked downs slopes, descended from a plush forest to a rocky shore where a lake of glass lay in wait at the bottom. The trees were the deepest green, and their reflections made the water equally so. We caught several fish, even letting a smaller one go. 

I sat watching the water, wondering over and over how I could have been so sure yesterday, how I could throw it all away when there are still a few things to be had. But I know that in time the feelings will return, and again I will turn my back to that perfect image of a lake and I will curse it. I will hate it and tear through it as though it were painted on canvas. It will be despised for what it represents: beauty in a world of ugliness. It too will be taken, raped and pillaged, changed to some asphalt superhighway. Nothing perfect ever stays. Something comes and greedily steals it for itself, distorts it to its own dreams of perfection, and how subjective those visions are. How I loathe them.

Only time will tell.

Tick tock.

Wash away your troubles….

Yesterday was a weird day. I’m still not sure what was going on with it. I was dreading all day that I had to go to work, yet I found myself pacing at the same time, willing it to happen sooner. When it came, I was relieved more than anything, so glad that I was going to be gone until late, until these thoughts had time to fully rot and lose meaning.

I ended up doing dishes. There must have been five people who walked by and made comments about it, thinking they were commiserating. I could not say to them, “This is keeping me sane. This fucking hot water and this sponge are keeping me alive today.” One of the guys was going on about the dishes more than the others, so I finally said to him in my monotone, “I like it”, which finally quieted him. He must have been bored, because he was hovering around the breakroom and then over by the dishes, not accomplishing anything. He came back later and asked me why. I could barely hear him over the spray of water.

“Because it is different. Because it is not the same process over and over.” There was more meaning to that than even I wanted to think about. But he took it at face value and finally went away.

I stayed over my time by nearly a half hour, even though I’m not supposed to unless it’s requested. I stood there stubbornly washing those dishes all alone until I was done, because I knew that the more time I would give myself at home, the more insane I would become. My manager was very busy; the night was full of orders and we were short a crew person, so he was over helping with assembly. He usually keeps an eye on me, more so than some of the others, but last night he must have forgotten, because he never came by to stop me. I was very grateful. I got home almost at midnight, somber and unable to sleep until dawn came to take that horrible night away.

The tables have turned again. There is no sadness to this desire, nothing but resolve. I got what I wanted; those feelings all waned and died out. And yet here I am again disatisfied and so out of place, only for different reasons. At least this way I don’t have any emotions about it. I washed the rest of them down that drain.

I’m not here to make you proud.

I’ve been waking up early every morning, much to my annoyance. The barest of light comes through the curtains and a roll over and groan. Not again. Not another one, another morning. I know that I do in fact need to get up. So instead of fighting for more sleep, I relent.

I end up outside in my pajamas, upon my mom’s recommendation. My dad is standing in the back with a can of spray paint fixing the rack for his truck before he puts it back on. After experimenting with the weight of it, we decide the safest choice is to use the framing of the garage to hoist it high enough, rather than having the both of us deal with back problems for the next week by lifting it with brute force. It’s heavy as hell.

It always times like that that he starts talking, when we’re working on something. I don’t know why. Every once in awhile he’ll say things to me, stuff that he won’t say to my mom. Occasionally he’ll mention something about the past, something about his brothers or some crazy incident from school. Today he starts talking about this kid from work who wasn’t paying his bills. This kid keeps turning up at my next door neighbor’s house, because of the girl who lives there. She’s a meth addict, from what I hear, and apparently he fell into that whole mess as well—hence the unpaid bills. My dad goes onto say how it is a complete waste, how all of these younger adults assume that other people are going to be there to take care of them. He says to me, “They just give up and don’t even try”.

The conversation got me kind of mad, but I didn’t say much. There’s not much to argue about, really. I’m not about to express sympathy for someone who throws themselves into drugs headfirst. I was around it, I didn’t participate, even though it probably would have gotten me some friends and their questionable respect. But I know what it’s like to give up, to want nothing but a temporary fix, because you come to the realization that there is no long term one, no surefire cure. I have, in  many senses, forsaken hope, a future. I go for what I can get, what I see as attainable. And how am I any different in what I do? I find things to slake the unquenchable thirst for anything, any kind of feeling that isn’t pain, and I let everything else fall to the wayside. I just have chosen different poisons, and am better at keeping them hidden.

It was a sad moment, but I didn’t feel it much, only acknowledged that it should have been. Blinding numbness is back in place again, my suit of armor. I’ve known that I will never be what I was expected, not even what I personally expected. Sometimes that is horrible to think about.  At the same time, I was never here to please anyone. I never signed up for this, and I will give this worthless thing what little I believe myself capable, until there is nothing left.

Is that not trying? Is that not in itself, an attempt?

It will have to do. It is all I have.

To keep.

There’s so much about this I don’t understand. Every time I open a new doorway, a million more appear for me to explore. It’s a labyrinth, and I’m beginning to think it will stretch on forever, if there is such a thing. It’s a dark, long road to either doom or hope; I still don’t know yet. I’ll face that door when I come to it. God, all I can do is speak riddles today.

I feel so wrong, standing there in my blue uniform with my pressed pants and hair pulled back. That person isn’t me. People always ask me how old I am. Even when I say 19, they still ask if I have children. It makes me laugh every time. And finally, the other day, I snapped a little, and said rudely, “I’m 19, of course I don’t have children.” All of the women are around 24-26 mostly married, and nearly all of them have 6 year olds at home. I can only look at them with amazement. Why? How could you? You are barely even done being a child yourself!

Imagine, this one girl I see frequently, had her first kid when she was twenty. One year from now, me, having a kid. The thought sends me into an absolute panic. The responsibility…. I almost can’t care for myself (let’s not even get into that…), let alone some infant that would be completely dependent on me. It’s just two very opposite lives, two extreme ways of thinking. Me, with my solitary, self-centered existence, and them working at a fast food restaurant to keep their kids clothed. It’s so fucked. I can’t understand them, that mentality. I simply cannot ever see that mindset applying to me. Everything that these people are is all that I am not. 

Another one of the girls at work is trying to befriend me, even suggesting we carpool (oh, the horror). I feel like this monster. I look over at her and find myself aggravated. We discovered we both moved to the area three years ago (and we lived near one another before too, apparently, which she thought was the greatest thing). Turns out we live a street away from one another currently, in the same subdivision. In fact, I think I figured out which house is hers. She was going on and on about things, and I could only swallow and grind my teeth as she went on to tell me how she hated where she used to live, how it was a terrible area and so on and so forth. My home. My beautiful home, was all I could think. Don’t you dare speak against it.

She inadvertently turned me against her with that insignificant conversation. That, and one of the first things she said to me in the morning was that she likes working in the front so that she can watch all of the hot men (she said this as she craned her neck around all the cooking equipment and giggled, pointing out some poor, unsuspecting individual who was prowling around the booths in the corner). That’s just not something you say to a person that you have met all of once. I don’t want to know. I don’t care. Girl talk is not something I can relate to or understand. Quite frankly, I find it fucking stupid, but you know, we all have our dislikes….   

I shouldn’t talk so badly of it. The people are extremely friendly. They always try to help you out. You have a tray in your arms, someone is usually ahead of you to open the oven, or take it from you. Today, my schedule got thrown out for some reason before I got to it. One of the guys dug through a pile of garbage and got it out for me. It was covered in grease and all manner of nasty things. I didn’t even ask him to. Shit like that makes me take a step back, as ridiculous as it sounds. Even the smallest kindness is not something I am used to getting from others.

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve struggled while taking my mother somewhere, trying to get her wheelchair to some impossible place, with people walking around me not even giving me a second glance. I don’t even expect people to open a door for me. My whole perspective of humanity is usually down in the negatives, but at work, it’s either everybody helps everybody or we all fall behind. It’s different when there’s a paycheck involved, at least in this particular workplace. I’m grateful for that, because I know I could easily have been shoved into a situation with a bunch of assholes who weren’t willing to help me learn the ropes. Everyone has made an effort to teach the newcomers. In all honesty, I don’t think I could have had it much better. I may not have anything in common with anyone, and I may not have any inclination to befriend them or any of that, but I’m more than willing to be cordial with them, which is more than I can say for the majority of people I come across.

On a side note, I got payed. My first ever paycheck. I couldn’t be disappointed by my reaction; I saw it coming the first day of work. Not even the slightest sense of accomplishment, nothing but stony, cold silence in my head, no flip of my stomach or surge of excitement. I looked down at a check and just sighed. I don’t know where this is leading, but I guess the best thing I can do is not stop to think about it so much. It’s only money. It’s only life.

Don’t look back.

I don’t like turmoil. I think everything is still building as it was before, going toward this insane climax that I am trying to ignore. Things keep stopping and starting, and I miss the sense of sameness that I am so used to.

The other day, my mom decided to have another of her moods. She gets distraught over things very easily. I don’t quite remember what it was (yes, it was that important), but she was bitchy when I got up, and she was pretty rude when I said good morning to her. I happened to be in an alright mood (a rarity for mornings), so it kind of irritated me, but I just thought to myself, “whatever” and rumaged around the kitchen, pointedly ignoring her. I could hear her talking on the phone, sounding tired and monotone.

She always changes her voice when she’s upset about something. She loses inflection and kind of croaks things out as though her throat is sore or something, and it really pisses me off for some reason. Maybe because I feel like that all the time but I don’t have to make a fucking show of it to get some sympathy.

So I decide I’m going to go out since it is relatively sunny, and I shower and get dressed and all of that, then go back into the livingroom to tell her that I’m leaving for awhile. She’s sitting there in front of her computer playing solitaire. Her head is bowed down and she’s crying. I can tell from across the room, even.

I say it flatly: “What’s wrong.”

It’s not even a question, because I know she’ll elaborate. She’s like that. If I do something that bothers her she goes straight to my dad with it, like a child that doesn’t know how to handle a problem. And she always sits there and prattles on about things to me, things she knows I don’t give a shit about. I have told her on more than one occasion that I could easily go into a monologue about the digestive system if she wants to keep talking about the price differences on food from different stores. We’re nothing alike; our interests are like night and day. Finding things in common is quite difficult, which is probably why we often fall into constant arguing.

Of course, she jumps on the chance to have someone to talk to. I know she’s lonely, but fuck. It’s not like anyone is going to pay me the same courtesy. She goes onto explain the whole thing, and blah, blah, blah. I’m standing there with a helmet in my hand, impatiently waiting for her to finish. I don’t bother to tell her that I’m missing half of what she’s saying because I have my headphones on. She doesn’t notice. But I make it obvious that I’m not in the mood to commiserate.

All I say is “Yeah.” 

She wants to say more, I can tell, but my heart is like ice to her. I don’t know what I feel toward her anymore. I’m a physical guardian, it seems, nothing more. It does not go beyond that much of the time, and it scares me a little. I should feel bad, try to help, but all I can think of is all the times I suffer alone, constantly. The ache of misery never leaves me, even if I am number than numb. I am not a savior, and I refuse to be hers. She can mourn her loss all she wants, I will not stand by her and offer my shoulder. Those times are gone.

I look at her. I sigh, more out of annoyance at being delayed than anything else.

I walk away.

Mindless pursuit of nothing.

Life for me is vices. You choose a few and you stick with them. You hope against hope that they will be enough to convince you to see the sunrise of tomorrow. It has to be enough, it must be. There is nothing else between these walls to have. There is no bright future to imagine, because no matter where I am, alone or not, I will never be pleased. I can smile, I can laugh, but the second I think beyond that moment…it all dies.

I acknowledge that this place is my own. I gave up my chance to get away. I could have finished college and gotten a degree that I hated so that I could make enough money to move the fuck away. I can still do that now, if I arrange it all carefully, but what does it matter? What do I plan to do? I will have my own house on some deserted lot and live my misery on the fringe of everything, as I have always done. It will be no different. Alone, surrounded…it’s all the same. I can’t get away from myself. All I can do is pick at the threads and try to pull myself apart more quickly.  

I want so badly for it to mean something, all of this. Not purpose—I will not search for that—it doesn’t exist. All I want is to wake without regretting it. I want to know that even if I am doing the most mundane of things, it is alright. I want to believe that it is not nonsensical suffering, that there is something here for me that will make it less terrible. I wouldn’t expect good. Hell, I wouldn’t even expect decent. I know it would always be horrible, that the pain would always far outweigh anything pleasant. But I want some fucking ‘pleasant’. Where is it?

I’m beginning to suspect I’ve become numbed to it, any feelings of satisfaction or pleasure. I am the most jaded thing. I find something and I drain it until there is nothing left, until it can’t even bring a hint of relief. What is there after those things have been burned away? Do I find something new, pursue something else? Repeat this, over and over every time something grows tiresome?  

Everything has no taste. Bland and fucking dry. I feel like all I have been doing all these years is force-feeding myself justification—reasons to live—in this endless cycle of unstoppable gluttony. I’ve gotten lazy and complacent about it, not bothering to change things up, to explore beyond what is familiar and known to me. Now it’s too late. I can’t taste it anymore; it’s sand on my tongue and means nothing. It doesn’t make any difference now that I need it to survive. I’d still obstinately push the plate away even with that knowledge, because I simply do not wish to tolerate the tastelessness and grit any longer.

The feelings have not passed still. It’s been too long. They’re dogging my footsteps now, waiting, those demons fucking lurking around the corners to come extract their pound of flesh. Come and get it I say. Come take it if you dare. I don’t want it. I’ll take my apathy back over this any day. I’ll take nothing over sorrow. I’ll take numb. At least then I can distance myself from this, see it clearly without the taint of a bitter, unneeded heart.

Put me back in my coma.