LustingforNightmares

tumbleweed
2019-03-30 22:39:38 (UTC)

Good, Bad, Same Diff

"The Weather" by Built to Spill

Nobody’s hoping for better days
No one knows what to do.
You’re okay in your secret place,
With no one bothering you.

[Somewhere on songmeanings, someone said this song could be either sentimental or romantic, and I am glad for that flexibility]

March 30, 2019 Saturday 9:42 PM

I am in Chicago right now, but tomorrow Marie and I will be boarding a plane to head back home. Well, back to school. Home for me, not for her. I wish I had a place like this, that I knew as "home." It's not perfect but it's here. We talked about it and Marie said she thinks it's because her family is concentrated here. Which makes sense to me. Mom, Dad, Caroline and I—we're floaters! I've almost always felt that way. Far from whatever my identity is supposed to be.

Chicago has made me depressed, but I can't tell if that's because:
1) Maria's fluency in spanish and Central American culture makes me ache for a sense of belonging within that same identity, under which I supposedly should fall. And I, subsequently, feel inadequate for not knowing things that lots of other American-born Central Americans know.
2) Or because, being in someone else's small home, I haven't had a space to be alone and do work, and just think, concentrate, feel productive. We tried to go to the library once but were too tired.

Either way, the result is that I keep looking myself in the mirror and thinking mean and vain thoughts. And I always see people, either strangers or my friends, and I wish that I was them, and all of that kind of sucks. I think about everything that makes them better than me and suddenly I want to occupy that, even as I am aware of the ways in which I am better. But instead of channeling that into something healthy, like a genuine compliment, I just hoard that sort of information. Damn inferiority complex.

And now, even though I really really don't want to, I am going to recall some good things that went down this week:
1. We saw Karina (lives in Chicago) and Sophie (visiting Karina) (have I ever mentioned her? Was it by a different name?); went to the Art Institute with them and had a good time, and then ate food and went shopping for a bit. It was so lovely. Karina is always so kind to me, it kind of makes me want to shred myself up and settle down as human confetti into her cupped hands. Ya know?

2. I met Maria's cousins and they were so cute and nice and kids are scary. They're scary to me mostly because I am so insecure and I am worry they will sense it, take advantage of it, or I won't have the strength to defend myself when they inevitably overstep my boundaries. But it was fine and it was nice to feel... validated as an all right human who will not make children cry as soon as she turns the corner, lol.

3. I re-read some of Elise's diary on a whim. I haven't really looked at it in... probably at least a year. It always makes me sad. Very, very sad. And deeply jealous, too. I still get jealous of how easily things slid off her back, and how she was able to love and forgive herself and others. She never seemed to let her feelings overwhelm her. She just observed and waited for them to pass, or if they were good, observed and reveled in them.
I remember back then I would avoid talking to her because afterwards I'd feel so inferior and ashamed. Because she was someone I admired a lot (I still do). Now I just regret not talking to her more. But I also know that, being who I was... I would have never done any differently. Elise was years ahead of me. I don't (or shouldn't, really) blame myself for this. I have a lot of trouble developing healthy emotional control and I always have. I don't know if I went wrong somewhere, or if someone else did, or if it was an accident. It's how things are.
But I wish she were still around so that I could talk to her and remember that she's a real person. And I could see how she developed, and where she went to college, and what she was studying and what music she was listening to, and what her thoughts were on such-and-such. It's not that she didn't deserve to die (although she really, really didn't—but that kind of statement is so useless anyway). It's more that now would be a nice time for me to reach out. Now I feel I'd be able to handle it without getting crazy.
It hurts that I can't even act on that impulse. I've never come across a person like her.
But re-reading her writing was nice. I wasn't exaggerating, thinking to myself that she was such an amazing and brilliant person. She really was, that was real.

4. I've managed to spend, like, 9 days with Maria in close proximity the whole time and I don't hate her. So that's nice. I thought maybe I'd explode if I had to spend that much time with someone, but it turned out okay. We can be quiet together. And maybe I'm just older? Less shy? I hope so. One agonizing step closer to not being a spinster, lol.

5. I finished a book (called Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh) and it was very good, very gross. I've also almost finished re-reading Catcher in the Rye. God, I forgot how brilliant that book is. It made me feel so sad to re-read it. I imagined myself the way I was when I first read it: in the psychiatric hospital when I was thirteen years old in early April, almost 6 years ago now. Holy shit. Six years. It's been six years since I attempted "suicide," six years since medication and outpatient and therapy (which would've begun in January before the hospital) and all that started.
Back then it was shocking to find a book that read how I felt. And later I read it again, and now I'm reading it for the third or fourth time. And I'm seeing it differently. I'm seeing the technique and the structure, the way Salinger maintains a fluidity between past and present by grounding everything in Holden's long, interrelated internal monologue.
And I'm seeing how deluded and depressed Holden is. I don't think it was obvious to me before. I didn't think Holden was depressed and I was very surprised when towards the end he was hospitalized. I thought maybe there had be an undercurrent I missed throughout the reading. And there was. And I ignored it because they were my own thoughts and I thought that meant they were normal. I felt bad, but I always felt bad. I was in a hospital, but I thought that was because I had manipulated my way there. It was a tangled mass of, like, guilt and fear. But I didn't believe it when a doctor would tell me I was ill. To be very fair, they were wrong about the illness and they overmedicated me by, like, a lot. And I asked to be there at first. And then when I felt I couldn't ask again I forced their hand. I just wanted to step out of the world for a while, catch my breath. I felt so horrible back then.
I am better now. Not good, right? No. I keep thinking about killing myself this week. It's not serious. Just indicative of a lot of anxiety. But, like, it's nice to be reminded that I know much more than I did then. I can at least recognize that it wasn't my fault, even if I really really don't believe it—and I can kind of believe that one day I'll forgive myself.

6. We watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off today and I realized it's an amazing movie. I used to secretly not like it. "Secretly" because Alexis loved it and so did Isaac. I missed Isaac. I keep missing people. And also it bothers me that I also want to talk to Isaac whenever I'm sad now. This never happened before. I think it started in late September, because that's when I realized I no longer had a way of contacting him. And now that I know he is out of my reach I can feel comfortable re-imagining him. The problem is when I talk to him and I remember why we didn't get along. Now that time has passed, I can imagine we've both changed and that we'll fall in love again and I can look at his eyelashes. I saw this man's eyelashes today and they looked just like Isaac's: long and dark and curved. I've never wanted to talk to someone so bad in my life. If anything, we could talk and I'd come back in my body: remember I'm still stupid and so is he. I'm too sentimental. We're both sentimental and sad. It's dumb! Haha.
But what do I remember? Not his insistence that we talk on the phone every night, not his continuous disregard for authority figures, not his sad-boy aesthetic, lol. Nah. I remember his dumb hazel eyes and the half-smile (ugh disgusting. But cute. But mostly disgusting, people are so gross) and the weird chin tip and the slow speech. I want to punch this memory in the face. It's so fleshless. It's just that half-finished painting I made in high school, with the cheekbones and the vague lines in his shirt, no face. And the way when we kissed that one time and it was very bad (he scrunched up his lips), he wanted to "try again" so he could get better. In retrospect, quite a cute gesture, but at the time I was horrified and I didn't kiss back. I closed my eyes and tried not to hate him. I always get that way when people are near me.
Lance and I talked a bit about it in therapy and he thinks I am not grounded enough by touch. Like, I should join a touch-heavy sport or activity to get used to human bodies being near mine, and reminding me that I exist in a capsule with borders instead of, as, like, a floating cloud. I don't want to. I feel nauseas just thinking about it. It's not like I can't lean on a person. It's just the extended contact, especially that which is not casual. Some family hugs or kisses qualify, but mostly romantic stuff. It makes me hate them. Mostly me. I imagine they must have my cells on their lips or skin. I shouldn't be staining people like that.
It's an egotistical thought. That's why I liked that book Eileen so much, 'cause the girl was just as painfully self-aware and brutal as I was. Always thinking of her various moistures and stinks, and imaging romances that she'd reject if faced with. That doesn't do it justice. I saw myself in there. It was both terrible and impressive. That's where I get that new description, "vain," from. Obviously, I knew the word, but never thought of it as applying to myself until, in the book, Eileen talks about how she stares at herself in the mirror; and she doesn't shower very often, and she looks plain and has acne, but she still describes herself as "vain" because her appearance matters to her so much. And she wears her dead mother's clothes to hide herself and I understand that because I hide myself too, in different ways.

7. Sophie and I have both started the 100-baby challenge in the sims! I always forget I'm a normal person until I do things that everyone else does, like holding conversations and making friends and, um, the 100-baby challenge.

8. Maria's family has fed me so much!!! Tonight we had pupusas and they were so fucking goooood!!!!

I think I'm done for now. I am not going to bed. Gonna try and write. I'm very stressed because I have to have things ready for class this week and I definitely don't, lol. And I didn't work on it this week!




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