LustingforNightmares

tumbleweed
2021-08-17 13:57:15 (UTC)

sick summer (my coffee always gets cold before I can finish)

"Memory" by Alex G [It's always weird for me to skip the "(Sandy)" part of Alex G's name nowadays. This week has been an Alex G sort of week. There's a playlist on youtube titled "secret alex g radio" and it's about 2 hours long. I've been listening to it on repeat while playing Genshin Impact.]

"Nintendo 64" by Alex G [this one too]

August 17, 2021 Tuesday 1:59 PM

Ah, yes. It's one of those days. I can feel it. The ghost upstairs is opening and closing the door to my parents' bedroom. It's weird to listen to music on the computer speakers instead of headphones. I'm used to a direct pipeline into my ears and it somehow feels a little wrong, a little too open and quiet. Then again, I always get this irritated feeling after listening to music for hours. I can't just *not* listen to music—it's not in my nature—but sometimes it fills my brain not-enough. If anything, though, I should just be thankful it fills in the space where my maladaptive thought process would run wild in moments of under-stimulation.

The ghost upstairs is just minor shifts in pressure. The breeze drifting in and out of the window, spinning the dusty fanblades. In this area of Upstate NY, it's often cloudy or rainy. Olivia said to me yesterday that it rains more often now, but I disagree. One of my most formative thoughts, forever, has been that home has white skies and it's always a little moist outside. My dad said something absurd a few years ago—he was like "I think the humidity is what has kept my skin so youthful compared to my siblings." LOL. He does look younger than his age. He's in his early 60s but he's lively and healthy. It scares me to think of my parents getting old, so I avoid thinking about it, at the cost of some things. Things I don't want to talk about. I have anxiety right now and I don't need to pour guilt into the mix. I'm a fledgling grown-up, which means the time for active self-sabotage is over. I can't afford it anymore. Well, I haven't been able to afford it in a long time—anyway, I've got to fight against my self-indulgence. That's what I always tell myself.

---

Language is weird and I keep doing the thing, where the words tangle up on the way out. In English as well as Spanish. How is it that I forgot whether "ciudad" is "la" or "el"? It's a common word (city). Yesterday I said "bid for a bet" instead of "bed for a bit." Things like this just happen sometimes, where my brain melts a bit out of my ears for a while. That's totally normal, I think.

---

After I got home from Boston last week, I nursed a headache. I felt it behind my left eye as I was falling asleep and it was still around the next morning. I felt sickish and moody the rest of the week. Whiny. Some days it was hard to walk around and do things because I'd get nauseas and I felt so heavy. One of the days, my mom kept suggesting things to eat, and even though I was starving, I didn't want any of it. It was like being on my period, but I wasn't. She let me order pizza, because she's a wonderful woman. The pizza was OK. My headache finally faded out on Sunday. That's good—it really could've lasted longer. I think it was brought on by stress.

---

And anyway, I had plans to visit Alexis (from high school) down outside the city on Moday. Olivia and I went together, with me driving. It was about 2 hours.

Olivia was... interesting. I did my best to listen and refrain from judging too much. I think I succeeded, but at the very end of the day, I was overfilled by all the talking—I still haven't processed all the conversations and events, so I'm still carried by the feeling I had at the end of the night, of irritation and quietude.

I felt silent the whole time with her. She seemed to need to talk more than I did. I don't really need to talk at all right now. So I just listened. I remember feeling alienated from Lily and Laney—high school friends—after the first year of college. Laney had just started having sex, and so all they talked about was boys. I was at that time having the opposite of a positive experience with sex. Which was kind of the story of my life, but especially then, because I'd just had major family problems concerning the whole "molestation" thing, and I had had a terrible experience with love in which I sort of had to contend with the giant ego blow of not belonging with someone, with not even being able to kiss them without dissociating.

Anyway, all of that made me uncomfortable, and I remember leaving our hangout—I was 19 and thinking that our friendship had finally, finally, met the end. And I had seen it coming for so long. It was lonely.

---

Olivia talks a lot about sex right now. She started having sex a lot recently so it's on her mind a lot. I think it's a form of liberation for her; she's exorcising a lot of pent-up emotions through it right, using it to explore herself. Nothing particularly bad. I try my best to listen and encourage her to keep talking, because I feel old, but at the same time I just don't understand.

I never had the same relationship with sex as she had. She's always been very open and in-tune with it. Never shied away from talking about things like masturbation and such. She was always so confident with the way she talked about things, and I. I have always "lacked confidence," as evidenced by my elementary school reports by teachers. I can never say anything on a subject, because the truth is, I never have any idea of what I'm talking about. I wish no one would ask me anything.

Sometimes I have to pretend to be an authority. It's easy when I'm teaching people how to prepare and wrap silverware/forks for a catering job, or showing them the proper way to label orders, or where to find the nonperishable goods in the giant basement of the refectory where we worked. That stuff is easy, and maybe it'll be easy to teach Chinese students the proper way to shape their mouths when they pronounce "eee"— like a smile.

The way I did with my aunt and mom in the kitchen. "Beach" vs. "Bitch." "Sheet" vs. "Shit." In one, the mouth moves like it's smiling (that's why we say cheese when we take photos). In the other, the corners of our lips stay tighter together. Hum the same sound and move the corners of your mouth and you hear it shift, "Eeeeiiiiuuuu." "Ew."

When it comes to literature or history or sex or whatever—I don't really know anything, I just find it a bit interesting. Thanks for listening, but disclaimer: I'm stupid.

Someone was telling me to stop saying that. I think it was Gregory.

He was also telling me it was concerning that I would sort of detach while doing intimate things with people (I guess I talk about it too). But after I explained my reasoning, he said, "That makes sense now," and I felt a sense of accomplishment. I forget sometimes, that the way I experience sex is really not the way everyone experiences it.

And yet, that's also the very thing that causes me terror and a feeling of inferiority. Why can't I just like it? Why can't I just feel good? Why do I have to be so terrified and then so... ? It feels good, it really does. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. And I like it because I think it's a way to be close, too, and I like those connotations. Of closeness and being vulnerable. But then, I hate to do both things, have a hard enough time being touched in a friendly manner. A hand of my shoulder. I'm tense. Can you smell me? Feel me? Am I too soft? Too warm? Too moist?

---

In high school, Olivia would hug me and inhale deeply. "Ah, you smell good." That was the first time anyone said that to me. I wore perfume sometimes, but really, it was just my natural smell that she liked.

She also watched me when I slept sometimes and said I looked pretty. It was bolstering, but also in its own way alienating.

Last night, when I couldn't sleep, I accidentally listed off the people I needed to reach out to: Kyle, Diego, another girl. I always forget her name even though we're friends. I've remembered it again—how is it that I can forget a person's name like that? What the fuck? It's been too long, I need to say hi.

I want to be one of those people who stays in touch.

---

Are Karina and I even friends anymore? She doesn't reach out to me. I wonder sometimes if I did something, but I don't think I did, I think she's just busy with her life and grad school. It hurts my heart a little, but this is just what happens with people. I'm sure I'll see her again and it'll be nice. We'll say we missed each other and insist we keep in touch. This is just what happens.

---

It felt like a lie, yesterday— Alexis and Olivia and I talking about high school. We always do this when we get together, but I don't mind. I like it. I always forget about high school and it's nice to hear their experiences. I tend to negate mine or avoid them altogether. I remember being sad. I remember sitting on the floor of Sandwich's classroom reading, Adrian being his wavy self, and Sandwich alternately terrorizing and pampering me. The "pampering" being very obscure and hands-off, of course.

If I was sad or stressed, he'd usually say something jabby about it. When I cried, he'd bring up—obliquely—the fact that I tried to kill myself once and he'd say, "Don't do that again!" in a tone that was almost-joking but was not. His sister killed himself, I remember, with that one famous Fleetwood Mac record in her player. That's what he said, at least.

---

When Alexis and I remember hanging out with Sandwich, it feels less taboo than it does when I try to tell outsiders about it. They always tell me how wrong and toxic it was. Whatever. It was comforting and safe at the time.

I would never want to go back. I don't think I would even feel comfortable talking to Sandwich right now. But not out of any malice or anger—it's just that, I was weaker back then and I had a different context. Things that I thought were okay back then are clearly not okay now, and I don't want to contend with that now. Feel like a bad person when he says a slur (jokingly, but still) and I don't fight back because I'm afraid if I do, he'll stop liking me.

It's a privilege just to be loved at all.

I don't know—it's better now, that I have people, with which I feel free to mess up. I mean, I still feel bad, but they won't leave me and I know that.

---

Olivia is angry right now. She's just—very angry. I feel old. It's a fake-feeling, obviously. I mean, we kept looking at high school photos and I looked different. Glowing, and my hair was longer and darker, and I wore a lot of loose sweaters and tops because I didn't like my body (has that changed? Barely). There's a lot of photos of me laughing. You would not be able to tell that I had GAD and a mood disorder running rampant in my mind. Pictures of all of us hugging Sandwich on the last day of high school. Of us smiling next to Adrian.

Alexis said she heard Adrian has been doing a lot of coke lately. They haven't been friends for almost as long as Adrian and I stopped talking, but I guess Alexis still maintains more high school connections because she stayed in the area.

Not for long. Tomorrow she's moving to San Diego for grad school. :)

Hearing that Adrian was doing coke like that—I didn't realize how much I'd developed his image in my head. I was sad to hear it, but unsurprised. And then I felt a little bad for feeling any of that, because is it really my place to feel pity like that, for someone I left behind? I mean—do I want to best for him or do I say that to feel some sense of superiority when I say something "mature" like that?

In any case, I had imagined/hoped that. That he'd be different? That we'd sit down for coffee and then walk away. Like some stupid, neat, tied-up end to a story. Like the dream I had, where we sat on the curb. I walked away. I get to walk away, it's my decision and not his. If he walked away—I don't know.

What about that dream where we laid on the marble floor of a massive library? With the sun coming through the glass dome?

This is stupid. But I did feel sad to hear it. If I also felt self-satisfied, it's so small a feeling that I didn't even register it.

---

I can imagine fanfiction writers spelling "Nintendo" like "Nintendou," lol.

---

I'm glad to be alone again, a private person in this house with nothing outside me to prove I'm, you know. Here and witnessed. I haven't seen the cats in awhile?

I was playing piano and I couldn't concentrate.

Anyway, things are— well, nothing much has changed, but Olivia made me sad and annoyed in that familiar way of hers. We listened to "The New Abnormal" on the way home. She kept pronouncing "ode to the mets" as "odd to the mets." I'm so weak that I wonder if she knows something I don't, and that maybe she's using some different homophone to the traditional ode that's pronounced "odd." I even had to look up the pronunciation to "ode" just now to see if I remembered it right—not like I use the word a lot, but it's also not a hard word. And then I saw that it's also NYC slang, but I think that's pronounced like odee? I don't know.

But as you can see, I am— just. Weak. It can be exhausting.

I was glad to drop her off at home. I make it sound like I was just silent this whole time—I *was* talking. Talking so much. I always feel like I talk too much.

---

Ok—I think it's time I do some productive things. Maybe work a little on my horrible Mandarin. I keep avoiding it like I can avoid the future or something. The same reason I end up holing up and not talking to anyone once I reach the higher registers of my stress, like if there's no one around, time will stop, like I can remove the context for life and be a free-floating nothing for a while.

It's a bad coping mechanism. Time to get to work.

See ya. :)





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