the shorter story

Things are tentative, and it's been a sad year. Or at least that's what the calendar says. Where did all that time go, mapping out the future, darting around the present: shifting, worrying, letting things go. Letting days turn to days, as if days were just days and nothing more.

--

Things that scare me:

(at the moment,) myself

(and as always,) the uncertainty of the future. Not having something to do with my hands

(and at the moment,)

, or any of my limbs, now that I think about it. Not having prepared adequately for the present, at least not this present, one that, at this point, is largely a museum (shockingly undusty) anyway. Leftovers from another lifetime. Things I've lost, resurfacing in daydreams.

oh, shit.

The things lost, not even countable. Not quantifiable, cannot be communicated. A whole life.

What I want: to be someone who is comfortable having everything.

Because I know I can have it, if I want it

Instead, what I am: someone who is comfortable only having nothing.

and I have it, because i want it.

I can't be so surprised.

How can you expect to build something when you only know self-destruction?

How can you build a home when all you know how to do is leave?

And who will you allow to be there when it finally gets hard, when you're only the shadow of a persona?

But just because it's not surprising, that doesn't mean it isn't sad.

I've never really just

listened

to someone cry. I've never just received someone's feelings. I don't know if I've given them in a way that's real.

Always the same: rationality, logistics. F e e l b e t t e r s o o n feelbettersooner.

These things are easy, yeah, everyone loves easy things. But these things aren't honest.

My life's been simple before, yeah, everyone loves a simple life. But this life hasn't been honest. This life hasn't been intimate. This body has been dependable, but the person who lives in it hasn't. I don't want to feel fine, because things aren't fine. It's as simple as that. Alone now, I answer only to myself. This can go one of two ways:

1) The way it always goes

2) The way it's going to go this time

It's time, finally, to grow up. What better time than the present. What better time to do something hard than when things are already so hard. Why bother to go easy on myself, when, all this time, life's been going so easy on me, and here I've been, just along for the ride.

But this is not a ride. This is real. No longer a game of winning or losing. This is decisions. These are ramifications. What you do is consequential. WHAT YOU DO IS CONSEQUENTIAL. What you do is consequential and this life is yours and what you do is yours and who you love is yours not to own but to care for and if you don't own up to these things, then these things will disappear from you, life will continue to happen to you, you will live, or you won't, but most likely you will live, you will live even if you hate it, and you will live because if you don't, then these grains, all these grains that were once so individually small, they will sift and switch and slip through your fingers and will never slip back, they will never un-fall, because

gravity

still

exists

, and suddenly - so suddenly - there is nothing in your hands.

--

I miss the future, the infinite possibilities, and I miss believing that things are good and that i am good and that it was so simple to live int he present tense, even though things are never really simple at all,

except for re-attaching laptop keys or taking out the recycling.

And the tragedy of growing up seems to be that growing up is only a tragedy.

And the truth is that the truth is maddening.

And in the tallest, widest windows - windows so large that they are only the dark - I catch glimpses of ghosts. But, no, it's only the light off the computer casting itself onto me in a reflection.

Just me, and I didn't want to lie anymore, so I told the truth.

And the truth was maddening.
Because I forgot - or i didn't consider - that it's not about the lies we don't tell, but about the things we do or don't do so that no one has to build their reality around them.

Confessions of a Teenage Runagay

AND THAT'S WHAT IT WAS. Running away was supposed to be arduous, maybe treacherous. And although it was terrifying, when it came to the rough-and-tumble-hitchhiking-living-out-of-a-knapsack lifestyle, I lucked out. There was a small house, there was a big house, there were a bed and a couch respectively, and each night I played out mild nightmares of prodigal return.

I was high every day. I was drunk every night. And in my sleepy mornings in between desperate glasses of water, my headspin caused the makeshift sleeping bag glide against the floorboards. It felt as though a reckless inertia was driving the particles of my body away from each other, which made sense since - as far as Rockland County is concerned - I've vanished into a black hole anyway.

And there you were the whole time, unfalteringly, unwaveringly beautiful. Like watch you in the car when you close your eyes to sing along beautiful. Like hazy teenage trips to the back of my mind when I would trace the shapes of girls for the first time. Now at 19, I'm old enough to feel embarrassed about it but young enough to clumsily hope for more.

We couldn't always hold hands in public, but we could make out in your car. And we did. In a very specific way. Like gravity, like collision. Like the way two teenagers make out in an airport parking lot, hungry and impatient, because that was who and where we were. An agreement made in a fever dream. We felt scared, but never alone. We felt right (we were right). We felt stupid ("We are so stupid"). We felt big (it's still true).

Because I knew that if I knocked long enough at the curve of your ribs, if I lingered just a bit, your anachronistic heart would wake, answering me suddenly, and I would be granted permission to live within the walls of your body.

And you didn't even come with any weird surprises. Not even a tacky winter coat.

In my time here I learned to talk to animals. I feel like that makes it sound like I fell flaming from the sky into the desert, where I was rescued by Bedouin people and given special powers. Or like I'm Eliza Thornberry (and however she got her powers, I don't really remember). In actuality, I just met a dog that didn't know she was a dog and a cat that thought I was a cat. Animal-queer is what Charles said. And I thought it was funny. And then I hid behind your best friend because the cat kept hissing at me.
--
Postcards from Mexico.
Postcards from Dallas.
Postcards from the road.

I am in none of these places, not right now, but they are from where I'm sending my love. It's unrequited, the way we all secretly like it, because there's no return address. Because there's no return, not really, anyway.

I just can't believe I left all my underwear at home. Scratch that, I can't believe I left all my underwear where my parents live.

I'll eventually have to trek it back to the East Coast. And if I could go back on wheels, I would. Fuck, If I could go back on foot, I would. I would send my love not from the places I am, but from the places I've been, so even if you try to go looking, you'll just find tire tracks and whispers, if that.

This is my pledge to never stop moving.

(If anyone feels so moved to read more on the adventures, check out my Autostraddle piece toooo).

Things I UnLearned in College

This was going to originally be a finals week rant about how frustrated and exhausted and pressed for time I was. But somewhere along the line I changed my mind. It may have been at midnight on the seemingly inaccessible patio on which, only six floors up, I could view the entire school, silent, consumed by their books, while I exhaled and watched cigarette smoke float through the still, humid air over the top of my Red Bull (the two have been a strangely familiar but not unwelcome combination from high school) as I prepared for one more caffeine-soaked evening devoted to conquering the evils of microeconomics. It also may have been six-and-a-half hours later, when, dazed but bright-eyed, I emerged onto the quad to find the air as still as ever and witness a few individuals milling about under the newly grey sky.

Or maybe it was just that substance-induced sleep in the amphitheater the other night. Who knows.
The point is that I realized that all this stress and pressure and unhappy-making nonsense was just that: nonsense that a series of events and places and people socialized me to believe were necessary to a generic, synthesized form of happiness and normalcy. And that, as much as I've learned in my first year of college, the things that I've unlearned are just as, if not more, important in deconstructing everything that I had assumed I wanted.

So here we go.

They told me I had to be a business major because that's how you make money, and money buys you success, and this success makes you happy. Money makes you happy because you're always entitled to new things, such as a new wardrobe each season bought from the nearest mall with the money you've been earning at that dead-end minimum-wage suburban-kid job. But you know you're happy because why else would you keep trying to earn money to buy things? You still want it, really, you do.

To be a woman, they said, your hair must fall at least to your shoulders, and you must use it to lure men. This and your feminine wiles. Failing at either of these disqualifies you as a real woman, and you'll never be beautiful. For that you must be ashamed and scared and spend your time shielding yourself behind another person.

And yes, you do need another person to make you complete. You can't do this by yourself because if you're not in love, then you're not happy, and if marriage and children aren't in your future, then you're not normal (did you ever notice that everyone you talk to is mysteriously and definitely married when they talk about their futures? What makes that a given?). If you blew it the first time you loved, then you'll never find it again, and you probably didn't deserve it in the first place, so you have to go and ruin everything you touch because it'll never be the same anyway.

Pants are necessary around others.
So are shoes.
And you can't get there if a pair of wheels won't take you.

Carrying all this shit around, it's no wonder everyone is so damn unhappy.
The problem is where to go from here.

I think I'm going to spend the summer (when not flipping burgers and fending off angry pool moms) alone on buses, wandering through cities, bumming around friends' places, losing myself (though not really getting lost, because that's terrifying) in the woods, reading, reading, reading, hearing other people's stories and making my own.

Company is always welcome.

This Business of Business

This entry is coming at you live from Global Corporate Citizenship.

Yes, it is as horrible as it sounds, and yes, I am here because of my greatest kept secret: I am a business major.

Not so well-kept secret: I hate being a business major.

The classes are tedious and uninteresting, and I'd swear that there's nothing in the content that you couldn't figure out yourself. Even the professors tell us time and time again that success in business is dependent largely on personality, not whether or not you can list the differences between sole proprietorships and corporations.

I wouldn't necessarily mind pursuing a career in business once I graduate (though my degrees, if successful, will end up being conducive to a career in music journalism), but as far as education goes, quite frankly, this shit is a waste of time.

Business education benefits the pocket, not the mind, and if you cannot expand your mind, then why bother with a college education?

I miss my history courses, my literature analysis, and the intricacies of DNA. There are no questions in business, nothing to explore. Only facts and statistics and fifty-dollar ghetto public speaking pamphlets (not how to public speak in a ghetto manner, rather an expensive poorly-assembled packet).

And yet, I. am still. here.

I cannot leave, despite my overwhelming passion and desire for other subject matter.

And last night I finally figured out why.

How my life was to proceed, according to my parents:

1. Birth

2. Elementary eduction

3. Prestigious Jesuit university

4. Church on Sunday

5. Graduate with a business degree

6. Pursue a career conducive to earning lots of dolla dolla billz

7. Marry a nice man (Filipinos appreciated, but not required, score!)

8. Pop out children

9. Die

My life plan:

1. Check

2. Check

3. Find my inner radical queer at American University

4. Hungover on Sunday (getting better at this. In addition, that's not the only reason I don't go to church. Reference my first entry for vague thoughts on religion)

5. Fail my business classes, pursue Women's and Gender Studies, Anthropology, Biology, Journalism (anything that will earn me no money in the future)

6a. Live in a box

6b. Not mind living in a box, because all my friends from AU live in boxes anyway, and we're in love with our lives so whatever

7. Gay. (not the only reason I don't see myself getting married, but that's an entirely different post)

8. Gay AND irresponsible (and kind of selfish and totally disapproving of the way that childhood is rapidly disappearing for newer generations, also another entry)

9. We'll see.

If I could, I would make a bitchin' venn diagram of this, and it would become even more apparent that I've ballsed (yes, balls as a verb) it all up already. I'm not sure how to reconcile this, because here, away from home, I'm finally able to pursue what I truly want, free from direct restriction from my parents and able to get all my quality out-of-classroom-learnin'. But. My weekly phone conversations with my family serve as a constant reminder that I'm nothing that they expected. Worst of all, is that I've got the feeling that even if I didn't decide to earn a Catholicalicious education and ironically pursue a soulless business degree, all would be well if I'd just settle down and get married.

None of this is happening, and as far as I know, my life is better for it.

But business, right now, it's all I've got.