January 18, 2010

He wore a green polo the first day I (re)met him. At home, sitting on the old ugly flower print sofa I told him that he looked like my mother. This was a lie but I felt it was an obligatory statement. The next morning we watched Jerry Springer while he made us breakfast. I remember it being very easy to talk to him and thinking this was odd because it's never been very easy for me to talk to anyone. Its seems like all of these memories are from so long ago. I guess 6 years is a long time. It's funny how much changes when you look back on the past, but how nothing ever seems to change when you examine your present. I wonder what this moment will look like six years from now. I wonder if I'll be happy, if I'll be living in this country or if this world will be nothing but a series of broken rocks floating through the universe. I can't center my thoughts lately. Something is very,very wrong inside of me. There was a man who turned into a woman in my dream earlier today. He spoke the most beautiful poem and I cried. I woke myself up with my sobs. I just remember being very, extremely sad. I remember feeling like I was looking into a mirror and watching all this potential die. Everything around me feels like it's dying. I don't want to die but there is something very, very wrong inside of me. I wish it was I who was boarding that airplane on the 29th, not my uncle. Everyone is always moving farther and farther away from me. Even the man in my dreams who became a girl who spoke the beautiful poem. Even he has left me.

January 15, 2010

Balance. We often overlook the importance of balance. We become wrapped up in our side of things and rarely are we placed in situations that spark our awareness of the opposite; but as the physics I never studied, dictates: "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Conservatives believe that God created the world. Liberals ascribe to the notion of evolution and science. I've been told that there is no happy medium. I beg to differ. To me, God is science and science is God. How is this possible?... Easy. Through balance. While I've always struggled with the notion of God as a bearded man in the clouds who has a son and at one point impregnated a virgin, I also can't fathom how people just cease to exist after death. (Afterall, energy can not be destroyed.) I think we're all just fabrics in a giant quilt. We like to tell ourselves that we're dominant over this world and this universe, but I think we're just small parts of a greater picture. We're just here to establish balance. Some of us hang left, some of us hang right... but we're all essentially complimentary opposites. We are black & white- polar but paired. People have always asked "if there is a God, why does He let such bad things happen to such good and innocent people?" I think the question is valid but flawed in its logic. If we think of the universe and the stream of events that make up life as a bigger picture, we realize it's filled with lots of bad and lots of good. For every machine gun patent, there is a patent on a new vaccine. For every war there is a steady increase in general global population. For every loss there is a gain. I don't think God is as one-sided as most people make him out to be. I think God is balance. This Higher Power that we all long for is both Satan and Christ, wrapped in one. Now, I don't know if this is written in a mathematical formula that runs the entire universe. Maybe God is a series of patterns constructed of complimentary opposites? I just know that we are so often at war with each other over opinions and personal preferances. We shouldn't be killing one another over politics or religion; because esentially we're all here to create a balance and keep the gears of this universal machine turning. Esentially, we're all here for each other, and none of us are here for ourselves.

January 11, 2010

We all want to leave. We all want to grow up too fast and get away from everything that reminds us of the children we can no longer be. Yet sometimes it seems that while everyone is running away from the receeding tide, I'm madly chasing after it. I know I can't change things. I'm not even sure that I'd know how to change them even if I could; but I feel like I've been jipped. I feel like this life still owes me something. Every day I wake up, I can't help but be a little more bitter about things; and I'm trying, I'm trying so very hard, to undo this and work against it. I am always double checking myself, making sure I'm keeping to my borders, and yet I'm losing this battle. The worst part is, I don't even know who/what I'm battling. It's like swinging angry fists at the wind; it's getting to be nothing but a waste of energy. I want to be a poet but I don't know how to do this. I'm not going to be approached out of the blue and offered a paying job as a writer. I want to fucking find myself already. Growing up is an awful lot like a Chinese finger trap. The harder I pull to break away from things, the more impossible it becomes to shake them. I've been having nightmares for a whole month now. Death is always present in them. The dead seem to be trying to tell me about something; but I'm not Joseph, I don't have a technicolor dreamcoat, and at this point I'm not even sure if there's anything left of me that is worth saving. I have no idea what to do about it. I have not the slightest clue about where to go from here. I know that here isn't where I want to be, but something tells me there isn't it either. My arms are tired. They hurt from constantly pulling at the tug-of-war rope, from holding my weight, and from cradling my heavy heart. I am tired. I am just so tired of it all.

January 8, 2010

I feel like I am scared. I am scared of how sad I have become. People always say it's not a problem until it begins to interfere with your life. Like, it doesn't matter if you drink 3 bottle of Jack a night, as long as you can function. I used to be able to function. I can't function anymore. I feel like I live in this body and I can't control it. I feel like I'm sleepwalking. I don't even know who I am anymore. I used to think this was just passing teenage angst bullshit, but it's starting to overwhelm me. I can't connect with people. I can't feel them anymore. I feel like I'm fucked up beyond belief and I don;t know how to get help or where to start. I feel so trapped here. I feel like I can't get away from this life. I don't want this life anymore. It just makes me angry. I get so very frusterated. I can't even articulate how I feel. I'm not even sure that this even qualifies as feeling...

January 1, 2010

Well the new year is here. I went to Kristen and Tasha's party last night. It was at Dode's house, but Dode was upstate. I can't decide if I had fun or not. No, that's not right. I know I had fun, but I find myself unsettled by that reality. I'd imagine it's an emotion very similar to the one Oppenheimer must have felt when he realized that in one action he both achieved a great success and paved the way for even greater tragedy. I just feel like I want to celebrate my progression towards adulthood, but I shouldn't glorify the means by which I achieved it. I feel very alone. Very incredibly alone. I'm often lonely, however this is something much different. It feels bigger, like it's going to swallow me whole. I feel like I'm getting lost in my own head sometimes. My memory has been terrible. I've been forgetting to eat. I think that's the result of stress and lack of sleep. Something deep inside of me is telling me to anticipate a breakdown; and I don't mean a panic attack. I feel like something in the air is stirring and a great change is coming. There's a line in You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan's character says something along the lines of "People are always telling me that change is good, but all that really means is that something you didn't want to happen, has happened." I feel like my whole life has been a happening that I didn't ask for. The other night, when I was in CT visiting Joanna, we got to talking and I told her a few things about my childhood. She ended up crying, and I ended in hysterical laughter. I guess that's just life? Comedy and tragedy seem to be conjoined by some vital organ; the two are inseperable. They complete each other, ironically enough. Fitzgerald has a quote about how being a genius is defined by one's ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and have them both make sense without cancelling each other out. I feel as though that's the perfect way to describe things right now. I feel like there are two polar opposite people inside of my head and both of them make perfect sense, I just don't know which to trust. I'm not implying I'm some sort of genius, but there is, afterall, a fine line between brilliance and madness. Or perhaps the two are simply conjoined at the spine.

December 20, 2009

Oh what I wouldn't give for a smoke right now. I don't even smoke, really. It's why I gave my whole pack of Marlboros to Kristen. It's not that I'm against it for moral reasons or am cautious about my health, I just never even think to light up a cigarette. It only occurs to me to smoke when I'm in a circle of people who are all individual smokers. I guess I'm a "social smoker" but honestly, who in New York isnt? Everyone here is so stressed out all the time; and I know that it's cool being healthy and self-aware now, but Big Tobacco is a part of culture, man. Anyways, I think I want a smoke right now because I'm really anxious and lonley. At this point I'm not even worried about finishing my term paper, I know I'll finish it. I'm just driving myself mad with self doubt. I feel like every sentance I add to this analysis is another nail in my coffin. It's stupid. Whatever, I don't even care anymore. It snowed like a foot of snow overnight. I was up until 6am working on my paper so I watched the inches pile up, and listened to the snow plows scrape along the roads. Snow is nice, but since Joanna moved to CT it's not the same. What was once this exciting big deal, is now just another small detail of life. It's like that joke that you told one time too many and somewhere along the line it stopped being funny. I guess I'm not a kid anymore, and nothing is new to me. Maybe this is why I want to be in love with someone. That would be new to me. I want to be in love and feel like there's still a whole plethora of things to experience. Right now I just feel cemented into this redundant reality. Right now I really want to call someone up and go see a movie, or make a snowangel. Right now I want to lay in bed and listen to Beirut. I want to have a fantastic conversation about theology with someone. I want to do anything but sit here and stare at this Microsoft Office Word Document and google MLA citation. I really need a smoke, or maybe I just wish someone else was around so I could watch them smoke. I don't even know anymore...

December 18, 2009

When I first met Emma she was, to put it blatantly, a badass. She lived over the bridge, dyed her long hair black, wore jelly bracelets, had her eyebrow pierced, wore eyeliner and listened to screamo music. She sat in front of me in Kumar's class and the first time I mustered up enough courage to compliment her outfit, she looked up at me and said "Thanks." That was it. As high school progressed, she went on to get her lip pierced on the street of St. Mark's and tell me how she couldn't go to public high school because some girl threatened to kill her. I was afraid of Emma and absolutely intrigued. She introduced my high school to myspace and when I went to friend request her, her profile page read "Emmabean the Scene Queen." She seemed to be so far ahead of everyone else and I never imagined that by the end of a few short years, she would go on to become one of my absolute best friends. The reason I'm telling you this is because, it's funny how things end up changing. Change is weird because often it's slow and you don't notice it until you look back at someone like Emma and realize how much is different. Today, Emma attends an all women's equestrian academy college in Virgina. Her hair is her natural light brown. She listens to Sufjan Stevens and studies media. She drives a Honda, and hosts our traditional game nights in her dining room. The only reminder of her old self, is her lip ring, which has been downgraded to a small stud. Her dorm room is scattered with polka dots, and she shops at H&M. It may seem like she's become a whole new person, but she hasn't. She's still the same girl who hates roller coasters, dates Nick, and works in a library. She still hasn't pierced her ears, and she still hates feet. She still loves hummus, talks in funny accents, and laughs at poop jokes with Kristen. She's always been Emma, but lately she's just been a grown up version. It's strange how much things change. It's even stranger how much things stay the same.