Do you remember?

I will attempt to write these sorts of posts occasionally. It will be a story about something that happened in my life. I feel like changing it up and talking about something different here and there will probably be good for me. I am so buried in all of this; I need air occasionally.

I must be about 10 or 11, but I recall the memory better than most current ones.

I’m at a friend’s house. We’re in the backyard playing with her brothers, as usual. We invent new games frequently, trying to keep ourselves busy during the hot California summers. Their lawn covers most of their property, and we are running around on it or gathered around their oversized trampoline. I remember this patch of clovers used to grow in the circle of shade beneath it, and there we’d lay down on our stomachs concentrated on that spot, searching for four-leaf clovers. 

But this day is different. We’re more restless than usual. I think I woke at dawn to watch the pink on the horizon through the lacy curtains of my friend’s bedroom window. For some reason, though I have always disliked mornings, my body always awakened me at dawn there. You could see a sunrise like no other from their porch, and I hate to miss it.

We pack a bunch of things, mostly junkfood. We’ve called round to several of the neighboring kids. A few of the friends of her brothers who had also spent the night as I had, come as well, and somehow we end up with a fair-sized group. We all go to the same school, so there are no strangers, even if we are mere acquaintances. We start up the gravel road, trying to decide who else we should bring with us.

It’s hot, I remember. There are no clouds in the sky, just that cornflower blue of a perfect day. We’re all wearing shorts and t-shirts and sweating nonetheless. Up the hill we walk, clustered together as though afraid to get separated from the herd.

It’s the dead of summer, so when we get to the pond it’s a dried, cracked bed of dirt, where even the weeds are struggling to grow. It’s like one of those old western moves where the ground is so dry it appears to have patterns. We are all laughing, recalling the Titanic incident, wherein the oldest brother built a toy model of the Titanic that he had gotten for Christmas then sunk in the pond one winter. One of the other boys dived in for a snake on one long-ago occasion, swimming in the murky, green water to snatch it up as it wriggled across the surface. He’d ended up soaked, and had walked back to the house dripping wet and grinning, carrying the garden snake for us to look at.

But it’s all gone now. There’s nothing to see here. We drink some water and start walking again. Cars pass every once in awhile, leaving us in a cloud of dust. It’s not as annoying as it should be. We are too excited to care, hurrying along up the winding path of gravel, toward the top of the sagebrush-covered mountain. We avoid the dogs, all of which snarl menacingly as we pass, or bark erratically from porches.

We’ve never gone this far before. There’s an abandoned trailer off the side of the road, squared, old. It has broad windows in the front that glare at us in the heavy sunlight. We’re all becoming ever the more drenched in sticky sweat. It makes me think of taking a dip in the swimming pool when we return to the house.

The boys are talking excitedly. The girls are off to the side, though my friend is wandering closer. I’m trying to talk them out of it. I make some weak protests, but they aren’t paying much attention, laughing at what they see as cowardice. And maybe it is.

 The first rock is thrown. Glass shatters. A hole is made, surrounded by an intricate spiderweb of cracked glass. Now it has begun, with that one action. All the boys are leaning down, grabbing rocks between already dirty fingers. It’s loud, the breaking sound. I cringe a little, wondering briefly whose house it is. I’m walking away from them, toward the edges of the group, still saying things to them, warning them of what could happen, telling them to stop. I’m not interested in getting caught, and instead of joining them, I keep moving further and further away, hoping they’ll grow bored with their game. But they are laughing and carrying on, trying to find a way inside.

Then there is a noise. A car maybe. I don’t recall what it was. Suddenly, fear seems to grip everyone. They’re wide-eyed. Someone is coming. We’ll get caught. One of the boys is the first to run, and it starts off a chain reaction. I won’t stay behind, so I follow.

We run, a group of kids frightened of consequences. Faster and faster, following the road. We’re shouting at one another, encouraging everyone to move as quickly as possible. It doesn’t take long. The fear hasn’t faded, but the energy has. The sun is leeching us of endurance and we’re slowing, whether we want to or not. The sprint turns into a jog, one that grows weaker and weaker until the group is nearly separated, the boys in the front, leading, the girls lagging behind. Finally we get to a walk, panting and looking back, afraid. 

Then we start laughing, probably in relief. And on we go. Somewhere along the way part of the group turns back, thinking we’ve gone too far. They’re complaining that it’s hot and too far to walk. For whatever reason, I refuse to go back, even though I’ll be the only girl left. They try to coerce me into leaving with them, but with a few words from her brothers, I shake my head, watching them leave. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. We have gone really far and we’ll probably get into trouble. But I want to see what is at the top, and that desire is enough to outweigh any worries I have about getting reprimanded. I know the girls will be mad at me later, but I don’t care.

It takes a fair amount of time to reach the top of the mountain. It’s littered with huge boulders that we have to climb over, but we’re getting more enthusiastic, running over the clear spots. Now we’re going downward, through a cluster of bushes. Finally we climb over one of the biggest rocks yet, and there it is: the view.

We’re high enough above the brush that we can see all the way down the mountain. Our town is situated in a valley inside of it, and a the city lies far beneath it somewhere. We can see the lone road that cuts through the hills, the one everyone uses to get to the city, to ‘civilization’. I’ve never seen anything like it. The hills in the distance are just visible, green and rolling, and I feel like a bird watching the dot of a car descend the steep mountain. There’s a cooling breeze up this high, and I am thankful for it. I can feel the heat on my face, the sweat beneath my hair.

One of the boys is digging through a backpack, fishing out some fruit rollups that we distribute amongst the last of members. There’s a bit of talk about the others who left, but it dies out quickly. We stay for a long time, just talking. I remember wishing I had a camera.

I know that I won’t regret it, even if I do get in trouble. I have a lot to brag about when I finally meet up with the other girls at the house, all of which aren’t too thrilled to see me. I’m too happy to really mind.

A few years ago I spoke with the oldest of her brothers. He said to me, “Do you remember that time…”

All I said was, “of course I remember.”

You can always fall farther…

Sometimes we have to do things we don’t necessarily like. Sometimes we need to be punished and have all our hopes and dreams shit on in order to gain back pieces of our resolve. Other times, you just hate yourself so much that you’ll do anything to make even your simplest of likes about yourself disappear entirely.

Self destruction is the road to being able to exist, I think, even if it makes that existence nearly unlivable. Sometimes we have to beat ourselves into submission because we have no others to do it for us properly.

Haha, no one cares. Certainly not me….

I’m so irritated. There’s no quiet to be found anywhere. Even in my room I can hear voices through the walls, and it makes me want to throw things.

Again, I got left in the back by myself from 5:30am until 8:30 to stock,cook, and assemble for every order we got. A person finally came in to cook for me then, but I had to wait another half an hour before someone in training arrived who had a vague idea how to prepare the morning foods. Then it got worse. Not only was I trying to watch the new girl to make sure she was doing things properly, but I had to keep track of all the food, which I rarely do. We make an effort everyday to keep our waste down, which means trying to predict how many customers we’ll get and how much food we’ll use before we switch to the lunch menu. Once we switch there’s no going back, and all the food from the morning has to be discarded. Though the morning had been steady, the rush we get five minutes before switchover almost every day like clockwork…never came, and we had unfortunately prepared for it. We threw out so much food. Not only that, but I was told to go on my half an hour break right before then, which left the girl who’s training more or less on her own on the assembly line, making a few too many of certain things because she’s not familiar with our procedures just yet.  

I hate my breaks. When I come back it’s always a disaster if my favorite crew members aren’t there. Today, no one came. It was me and the new girl by ourselves until 1:30. We usually have three crew on assembly, people who are well-versed in what different orders mean (for instance ‘plain’ is not really plain, it means no toppings, though there is still cheese if that automatically comes on the sandwich. Think: plain cheeseburger), and who rarely make mistakes on special requests.

It was a difficult day. One of the managers came back to help, but she hardly ever does assembly. For some stupid reason our boss decided to put her on her own side and have me and the other girl together on the opposite side. It was…a trainwreck. It lasted about five minutes, and then I got ordered to take that side alone while the manager went to where I had been. The boss didn’t order this to happen, my favorite shift manager, one of the few intelligent people on duty, did.

It’s amazing to me that someone who is supposed to run the restaurant doesn’t know her own crew’s strengths and weaknesses. This manager who was placed with us often has to ask me how to make the sandwiches. She’s been working for this corporation for 15 years. There’s little that can be said to fully express how bizarre that is, and how our boss could not be aware of it.

Finally I cleared my screen of orders. They’re so slammed that I get called back to the other side…again. It was the biggest mistake to have this manager initiate. I’m still not quite understanding how it is that someone can work for a place so long and not have a clue as to what is going on. Earlier in the day I got so annoyed by the slowness of the crew in the front that I started bagging the food for them because all they seem to do is talk and mill around. I’ve never had the computer training for the front, but all it is is a screen with food listed on it, along with drinks and things like fries. It’s not that difficult. All you do is make mochas and ice cream (which aren’t exactly common), grab things from the fridge, and bag food. Everything is right there, and even the drink machine is automated.

 They don’t even make the pies or the cookies themselves, or even the fries half the time (which is their job, not mine). You know what they do? They stand there doing nothing and ask if I’ll make cookies or whatever, while I’m busy making orders. They have one person who bags the food, then two others milling around looking for something to do, yet they ask me to go. Oh yeah, let me get right on it while I got to stock my table, drop the bread, sweep and mop, and check meat. Then my screen clears and they complete their orders, and by the time I get back from the freezer, they are still standing there doing nothing. It’s incredible.

They start yelling when we get backed up, yet all they do themselves is stand there, waiting. I almost had a fit when they started complaining about how long it was taking us to complete the orders. Yes, well, when you have five items per order that all have to be tagged so your incompetent asses don’t fuck it all up and put it in the wrong bag and hand it out to the wrong people…it takes awhile.

The fact that they even thought to say this to a brand new crew member almost made me explode. She’s a nice girl, and already she is doing extremely well, probably the best I’ve seen so far. The only reason she is slow is because she has only been with us a few weeks, but even so, she makes few errors compared when people who have been working as long as I have, and unlike the fucking managers, she doesn’t have to ask me what goes on a sandwich every five minutes. Cut her some fucking slack for Christ’s sake before I walk up there, drag your ass to the fucking assembly line, and have you make the motherfucking goddamned sandwiches yourself.  

I’m tired of dealing with a bunch of incompetent retards. The only reasons I am staying is because there are some people I don’t mind working with, the pay isn’t as horrible as it could be, and I’m actually getting more than 20 hours a week.

My favorite shift manager came back to help us a couple of times, and she is insanely fast, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She favors the grill crew much more than the front, fortunately for me. She’ll leave them shorthanded before she’ll leave us, which is pretty rare. Most managers don’t seem to realize or care if we’re struggling. They’ll just watch and tell us to hurry up, while they stand there, ’supervising’.

 Oh yeah, it was a good fucking day. Let’s have a party.

Excerpt from October of  ‘08:

I think of people and it makes me sick. My stomach clenches and bile rises in my throat. I don’t know how I plan to get through a job, when I am always going to have to interact with others. That was the whole reason I left college, that and the fact that it was total bullshit, and disgusted me to the point of deeply considering suicide. And that will never go away, I don’t think. All I can hope for now is brief instances of numbness with fewer thoughts of death. I read all day so that I don’t think about it.

Is this how it’s always going to be, every goddamned day, every fucking year? On and on and on? Because you know what, none of it is even close to worth it! It’s a fucking disgrace, this place! And I’m still here, and the only thing I can come up with is the same thing that my brain seems to repeat to me….

I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t FUCKING care.

I might begin including these more frequently. I find them interesting, if not a little pathetic.

I never got to sleep last night. They called me at 5:30 in the morning, on my day off. It seems like a joke, almost, this life of mine. I don’t ever feel awake or asleep; it blends together into something indistinguishable. I also found out that coffee is free, which wasn’t the case at the first store I trained at. Needless to say, I’ve been taking advantage to the point where even my unaffected body finally gives in and reacts to the caffeine of all the black sludge I swallow down. I end up shaky and overly-alert with a bad stomach ache every time, but it’s better than being so tired that all I do when I get home is crawl into bed until the sky gets dark.

The opening shift is really killing me. It fucks off my routine completely. I have to get up a bit after 4:00 in order to allow myself time to shower and wake up somewhat. Then I spend most of the morning at work having to do everything on my own. It’s just a very shitty arrangement and plenty of people are unhappy with it, coming to me and complaining about my schedule, which I think is funny. I asked for the closing shift and I get opening. Shows just how much my boss likes me. She’s been sick, fortunately, so I’ve not had to deal with her.

And this is what everyone wants, supposedly. I think if it was my choice I’d only work 12 hour shifts so that I wouldn’t have time to think about it. They’ve cut my hours quite a bit along with everyone else, so I am doing a regular 40 hours a week instead of 50. The extra time is hard to make up for, honestly. I come home and don’t know what to do with myself. I sleep for a few hours then get up, generally going back to bed at least three or four times for short intervals, trying to sleep out of sheer boredom. I either fall to sleep, or give up and watch some shitty television program until I’m too tired to sit up anymore.    

Complaining accomplishes nothing, they say. But for some reason it makes me feel better.

The lies may just be for myself.

There comes a point where you have to admit that there’s a problem. Not just acknowledge, but openly accept that ‘hey I am doing this to myself’. This isn’t one of those ‘hand yourself over to a higher power’ things, this is a ‘okay, I am being fucking stupid’ kind of things. I know this woman from work who’s in AA to clear up some DUI or something. She gets drunk after every meeting. The irony of that is beautiful to me; I don’t much believe in self denial in any form. You do what you feel is necessary, even if it is self-destructive. Getting there is half the journey, I guess you could say, why waste it in more misery than is required?

My main concern is that I am stuck in a cycle of reward/punishment. Always have been. But with added…annoyances, it has progressed into a much more formidable monster. I’ve been bingeing/starving consistently, hurting myself, and growing ever the more solitary. In fact, there have been times where although I live in the same house as my father, I have not seen him for days on end. I sleep as much as possible, though it is not nearly enough. I deny myself painkillers for my useless back and whatever other ailments this ridiculous job has further irritated. I sometimes have trouble getting up in the morning. I find myself closing my eyes at every opportunity, and slinking off to hide in the parking lot on any breaks I might have, wherein I pace back and forth until my time is up. Caged, is one way to describe it.

Then the moods. These moments of panic where I convince myself that death is the only way out, my only escape, my only freedom from this place that has trapped me in this dark, grubby little corner. I want out, the voice says to me. And with an hour of crying and anxiety, I fall asleep. Sometimes I wake feeling better, others…only worse. I feel like part of me is constantly rebelling from life itself, and that yes, suicide is the only cure for something so diseased and fucked up as myself.

Many things do not deserve to be born. Many things that do are never given the proper chance. Then there are those of us who float along somewhere in between, these forgotten, lost children who can claim no god or higher purpose as their own. There will never be peace. Maybe that is why I always laugh when I so much as hear that word. For me, there will be no rest, not until I am gone. There is nothing shameful in pulling out of a race you know in your heart you can’t complete, however, there is a problem with lying about why you chose not to finish.

No, I am not fully done. Everything about me is incomplete. I am simply tired and no longer wish to try. And maybe that is cowardice, to shun a future, maybe it is weakness to not carry on because you refuse to summon the strength. But then, so be it. I will never be perfect; I can never see myself as what I always wanted to be. I am doomed to strive for it yet accomplish none of it. Sometimes that is just how it must be.

(Empty) Inside

The road to nowhere truly does lead to me. I have no idea what I am doing, why, how, or anything like that. I’m so emotionless when it comes to the outcome of my own life, that it seems all I can do is shrug and do my best to ignore all major decisions as though that will somehow make them less important. I think that’s the main problem: none of it seems to register in my mind as ‘important’. I have this nonchalant attitude about it that makes other people stop and stare. Someone at work commented the other day, “I’ve never seen you frantic. You’re always so calm.”

I have no self control anymore. It’s funny, really. I don’t know if it even matters anymore to me. What is it to be locked into control? Most of it is an illusion anyway. I have to wonder at times why I bother to obey anything at all. None of this applies to me; this world and its rules weren’t made for me. They were made for people who are afraid to die, people who were afraid to live a life where there is no such thing as a tomorrow, only the ticking of seconds. I don’t want a future. I want instead, a present that makes sense to me, gives something back.

I’ve come to believe however, that expecting or asking for anything at all is always too much. This life will always be too big a price to pay for someone like me. I think too much and I get punished for it.

You can go with the rushing water or be a standstill tree forever being torn violently from its roots. Either way, you lose.

I have so many decisions to make and a mind that cares not to make them.

I’m so unhappy. I don’t know what to do anymore.

I keep having dreams that I can’t recall. I wake up with a feeling and nothing more. My eyes open and it washes over me in the dark, creeping, until I tug at the blankets as though to hide beneath them. My cat keeps waking me, early in the morning. He meows in my ear and curls up in the space between my neck and shoulders. He gets so close that I usually grow irritable and shove him away. I don’t cage him much anymore at night. I want the company. I get afraid at night, staring up at the ceiling, my thoughts go to places I don’t wish to visit, so I grab the warm lump of fur blindly in the black, and drag him closer, and obediently he stays, until the crying stops and I finally become still. It’s only then that he wanders off to wherever he goes.

I spent all day in the woods. I asked my dad to go with me quading, for whatever reason, and he agreed. He was actually pretty enthusiastic about it and even went to the store to get extra fuel. I took him up to the meadow, miles and miles away, up steep, winding paths lined with trees. I hadn’t been there for awhile. It might have been since that last time. There was still a bullet hole in one of the huge stumps, I noticed, though I made no comment about it. We walked a ways through the meadow, which must stretch on for a few miles. I hadn’t known that it went so far; it really is a beautiful place. I should like to spend the night there sometime.

A storm came and we had to leave. The sky grew grey, and then black. I checked in my hiding place for the head I had left, but it was gone. Someone must have taken it. I took a ribcage home instead, awkwardly balancing it between my legs for the trip home. It still smelled putrid, so I stuck it in one of the garbage bags I had in my pack so I wouldn’t have to get any of it on my clothes. I’ll leave it in the yard to finish rotting, then maybe I’ll hang it up somewhere. I like the lines of it. 

I didn’t have too many repercussions from yesterday, which was most certainly a bad day. It was a night was one of excess, I’ll say that much. I was thirsty throughout this morning, drinking and drinking, with an upset stomach and not much more. I guess there are times when you don’t have to pay the price, at least not as badly as you would have imagined.

I ended up cutting my hair this morning, which I’ve been debating. I didn’t cut the length of it besides a slight trim; I won’t cut it. I feel like it has to be long, that there is some reason to why I am choosing to leave it alone. But I have grown tired of wearing it in a braid for work, since I can’t stand it pulled back from my face. I’ve always used it like a veil to hide behind, which I’ve noticed is a family trait. So I had my mother cut in some longer bangs, which are still too short to pull all the way back, but not to short as to be an irritant. Curly hair is such a pain. I may have to pin them back for work, but at least if I have to go somewhere right afterward I can leave them down and not feel so exposed.

I think I’ll decide what to do with the color on Halloween, since it is my favorite day out of the year. I’ve bleached it repeatedly, and taken the black to a reddish color, streaked with bits of blonde and stubborn black. In all honesty, I hate it. I can’t stand it. I want to dye it black all over again, stupidly, but I fear it won’t last the process since that particular coloring seems to be so harsh. It’s pretty much at its end, I think. I bleach it again and it will start to break off. It already has that strange texture to it when wet, this almost soggy feel. Expensive conditioners have helped though. It is already soft again, just a little drier than it should be. I don’t know, I’ll have to wait and see. Everything seems to work that way, unfortunately.

Head in the clouds.

Every day is becoming this agonizing trial in patience. I’m so used to my little world of nothing that this is all a complete shock to me. I was so far away from the petty squabbles and the gossiping, that even now I stand back and barely understand it. Why are feelings important, I wonder? I only ask this when I feel nothing at all. It’s as though all memory of feelings and what they mean gets shut down. I grow confused. Peoples’ reactions make little to no sense to me. Why do they concern themselves over such things? Why do they believe that I too am worrying over it?

It’s difficult to worry when you don’t care. I can’t form a normal attachment these days, and perhaps it is the people. But they are nice—a lot of them—we get along, yet the idea of carpooling with them or meeting somewhere after work makes me cringe. I instantly think, “how boring, how troublesome”. It would be my younger life over again, sitting in a friend’s bedroom in the dark trying to recuperate before returning to the screaming, giggling bunch in the next room. I often found myself bored and uninterested, and it used to drive me crazy.

And these days, the disinterest continues to grow. I’m losing hold on the things that meant so much to me before, and I have little explanation as to why. All I can conclude is that I am slowly letting go. I am slowly becoming something that finds no pleasure in anything. And it is so dull a mindset, so drab a future. I don’t want to bear more years in this room staring at the walls, or doing something new every five minutes to keep my mind moving. Why does it have to be this way? Why does this only grow worse? I am not sitting here alone all day, I’m interacting as everyone told me to, but yet I feel so much more discontent than before. It has solved nothing. I feel so ill when I think about it all later, when I’ve gotten home. I always regret every word I have said.

My little shows of rebellion are laughable. I am so weak now, moreso than ever. I’m losing sight of what I believed, falling in and embracing this hollow nothingness where everything is inconsequential. I didn’t want this. I wanted to be numb, but not all the way. Not to the extent that I can’t function. I can’t live in a place where I get nothing out of it, and even the suffering is pathetic.

All I want to do is lie down and sleep this life away. Sleep has become like a hobby to me. I still don’t hurt like I thought I would. It’s been days and I still don’t hurt. I’ve gotten past the worst of it, I think. I want to go on indefinitely, see what happens. See if I break. I don’t understand these extremes, but I will use them regardless. Sometimes I like to think I am indestructible, maybe because it seems funny to me: the thing that wants to die is the thing that cannot. I will fail; I always do. But I won’t think about that just now.

A Secret

Don’t you ever just want to be brutally honest? Don’t you ever just want to fucking say it? Say it all?

I have to keep asking myself why that is so difficult, even in a sterile environment like the internet. Something most be wrong with me, because each time I give away a piece of myself to this blog, I agonize over it—for days at times. Can I say it, can I live with it? Even if no one were to read it, can I live with the idea of my innermost demons being ‘out there’?

I can’t explain my own self-loathing, suffice to say that it grows with each passing day, for various reasons. My lack of self control is so vile to me that I feel suffocated, constricted, by this need to punish myself. There is no fate horrible enough, no amount of pain that could even out this score. I will always be awful and disgusting and n0t good enough. I will always be useless and pointless. I will always be a burden to anyone who dare comes into contact with me. I will never stand alone because I am too much of a coward to do so. I chose this for myself. I’m the one that lets it continue. I’m the one who doesn’t change anything, who sits back and whines but makes no move to alter my existence. I am the cause of all of my problems—I take full responsibility for that at least. 

Why was I born, I wonder? Why would someone bother to go to the trouble?

I haven’t had a restful night sleep in days. I feel like a frightened little girl again, running from these monsters, the people I don’t want to remember. My weakness is what I can’t stand. I still have scruples, and somehow that is terribly disappointing. I am not free of this place; I will never be free of it. I can’t just dish out what is deserved and face the consequences without fear. I can’t walk up to my boss, tell her to go fuck herself, then not be concerned about what kind of problems would be caused by it. I can’t call up the shift manager who was rude to my mother on the phone this morning, and say, ”You know what, you talk to her like that again…”.

This is a world of limitations caused by fear of consequences. And I hate it. I hate this world and the people in it, and the way I allow myself for the briefest of instants to imagine that I could possible have a place within it that would ever mean anything or even slightly satisfy me. What is the worst of it, however, is not the people. It’s myself. It’s this person who can see something unsatisfying, yet participate in the game nonetheless, purely from being afraid. Afraid that something is missing, that there is more. What is there, I ask? 

Nothing could possibly be worth the suffering, the torment of getting up in the morning shaking, with tears running down your face while you try to come up with a valid reason to do anything at all besides put a gun to your head or a knife to your wrists.

There is something worthwhile? Oh, is there?

Perhaps that is the biggest lie. Maybe that is just the excuse we use in order to live without guilt and loathing on our conscience.