12/8/01 5:33pm
sometimes my life IS a surrealist painting - fuck these art tests. methamphetamine-jarred body shaking for sleep and still aching to push it just a little bit further. my psyche is torn to opposites simultaneously. i want to prowl the streets of DC at 9am, watching the world wake up through night-hollowed eyes, sneer at their daily routines and their predictable dramas, shut myself off from that everyday world and live this fucked up half-sanity to its death. i’m terrified of looking back in 20 years and regretting all my inhibitions and reservations and unremarkable evenings.
but a limit exists and one day i will reach that line and where will that leave me? i’m not a drug-addled clubrat working the same jobs addicted to the same drugs as i will be in 5 years, 10 years, 30 years. im not living these post-adolescent years in some limbo before finding a man to marry. im just a stupid little girl – so often i feel like im not so young anymore but i am, i have no experience in this world, no precedent of wisdom to base my truths around. sometimes i can’t close my eyes to the things i’ve seen. i can’t expunge all these chemicals with two liters of water, can't soothe these aching synapses and tingling nerves with a multivitamin and eight hours of sleep. these nights spent watching myself with half-interest as my body moves in all the right ways and my mouth whispers these unknown sentiments in intonations i dont recognize – these pictures dont easily fade from my skin.
its that dissociation that frightens me more than anything else. i think i am losing grasp of some innate ideas that i’ve always held close to me without knowing why. i am happier now than i think ive ever been in my life, and no, i am not willing to throw that away in some futile search for something “profound,” but still i think it is some sort of superficial happiness, the kind on which i looked with half-envy and half-disgust all throughout high school. is there some parallel between the lives of those girls in high school filled with their vapid shit, their football games and shopping trips and post-prom beer, with mine with its ever-present basslines and its drugs and these constant bullshit boy dramas? is it all just different manifestations of the same universal struggle to take up the space with anything that fits because there is nothing substantial to serve as anchor? i think people are inherently afraid of simplifying their lives of the bullshit for fear of being left with nothing. nature abhors a vacuum and all that. maybe i have lost whatever tentative ideas of fulfillment that i used to have and am now diving headfirst into this pool of overstimulation and craziness to drown myself in its rhythms.
i like to think that isn’t true. certainly this past chunk of time has taught me its lessons in its own way; i’m a little older and a little wiser and little bit more self-aware; i have learned something about connection and something about friendship and something about identity, about my life on my terms. maybe i should not expect anything more from a life so young and as of yet unlived. i don’t know why i feel so pressed for some deeper meaning; i should be experiencing as much crazy shit as the world has to offer me right now.
i guess i’m a little afraid that after these many years of emotional isolation and aimlessness that if i don’t start figuring something out soon, i never will. i’ve said it a million times before: old habits die very, very hard. this bothers me particularly concerning the whole relationship inability i possess. i feel no need to find the man im going to marry any time soon, but i’ve spent so much time watching helplessly as i destroy every potential good thing that seems to be forming. i try to convince myself that it wont happen, that this will be something good, ill give it a fair chance to make it work. and i find myself recoiling slightly from their touch, making nasty comments in my head to every well-intentioned thing they say, annoyed by every gesture of affection. and two weeks later i am alone again, gulping deep breaths of the space and just a little more numb to what im doing. telling myself that arm’s length really isn’t that far away.
like everyone else in this world sometimes i just want to be held by someone who can tell me everything is gonna be okay. of course i want someone who can break down these coarse layers of whatever the fuck it is. i want a kiss that makes my insides turn to jelly like they did when i was sixteen, a touch sending goosebumps up my skin. i want some reciprocity; i want to have emotions that mirror those of my lover. i want someone who will lie shivering with me on the roof of my car to watch the stars. i want someone who can make my throat burn with their lips. and i’ll tell myself i dont need anyone, i dont need love, all i want is inspiration, but isn’t that what love it?