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you can't sell me on your optimism tonight Today was a fairly typical day... i set my alarm for 10am and left for work at 10:25. I worked until around noon... then came back here and did nothing for a little while until i got a phone call that said my 1:15 class was cancelled... and then i surprised even myself by being responsible and productive in my new found time... i went to the bank and deposited all five of the checks i had sitting around, waiting to be deposited. then i went to wegmans and rented a movie i have to watch for my hitchcock films class, and bought pasta (because i have sauce but no pasta) and caffeine pills (because they're cheaper than the mass quantities of pepsi i've been buying and have fewer calories)... i then went to wal-mart where i dropped off the two rolls of film i've been carrying around for three weeks... then i came back here and after washing down a caffeine pill with my third or fourth pepsi i managed to talk my way into a class that is technically reserved for computer science majors and set a time to take a make-up exam i need to take... I even went to the library, with the intent of studying... but my ex-girlfriend's first boyfriend was in the room i always study in and he distracted me and i left and it made me mad becuse he won, he probably doesn't even know there was a battle to win, but he won it.... so I started to watch north by northwest and got maybe halfway through it when magen came over... and promptly talked me into smoking without ever really trying. I got really stoned, went to class really stoned... and this is not recommended for a hitchcock films class, by the way... the paranoia factor goes through the roof during the birds, when you're surrounded by people who would notice if you screamed... i came back after class and ate half the food in my room and i feel like i'm going to throw up and i had an argument (i think) with melchelle on the phone and my mind keeps going through the list of work and it just makes me feel worse... and i know the root of this, i know that i'm doing this only half-unconsciously because i don't want to be here, i don't want to be in school, i don't want to come back next semester and i don't even want to finish this semester. half the time i want a job and an apartment and half the time i just want my car so i can go far, far away but either way i can't see myself getting through another semester of this. and i don't understand why. i've made it through three and a half years already. and i keep telling myself that this education is a privilege and that i should embrace it and i should at least try and if nothing else i should do it to prove that i could, to prove to myself that i'm stronger than i think i am, or maybe i should just do it so that i don't waste the last two years of telling myself "only 18 more months" "only one more year" "only six more months." i can't make myself care. I want to, i want the me back who cared about school work, i think i like that me better, the one who would spend 6 hours in her pajamas in the study lounge on a study just to figure out one elusive calculus assignment... the one who worked for a month on a 10 page term paper assignment, turning in a 16 page paper that was finished a week before it had to be. I don't know where that me went and i think i want her back. i have this amazing desire to take the substances i own (i have enough to last a while, i think... i only had half a bowl tonight, that's all that's necessary to get me fucked up and keep me that way for hours and i have enough to last a while like that... and i also have some alcohol and the resources to get more...) and i have a desire to take them someplace that's not here and just spend several months fucked up until it all goes away and i don't have to think about it anymore because the decisions been made. and i understand there is something inherently wrong with that, i understand that substances as a coping mechanism is not what i should be striving for... and i don't care. i'm having doubts, i'm having doubts about everything. I don't know who i am or where i'm going or why i'm here. my life revolves around avoiding my responsibilites and hanging out with whoever will hang out with me. I structure my life to spend as little time alone as possible... but when i do find myself alone i find i like it that way, and i don't want it any other way and that confuses me. i wish i had less confidence in myself. I know, beyond a doubt, that i am capable of this. i am capable of getting a b average this semester, even though i've really fucked it up until this point and i'm running out of time. i'm capable of graduating with honors still, even though i'm doing my best to fuck that up too... and even beyond that, i am capable of getting through the classes and graduating, even if i keep going like i am. And the knowledge that i can do it makes me feel obligated somehow. like i owe them this much. so many people helped me get where i am, and i can't let them down. because they also know that i'm capable, that's why they fought for me. and i'm realizing more and more that everybody knows about me and i don't know about anybody. all my friends know me better than i know them. i think because they ask questions and i answer because i honestly like talking about myself, especially the deep stuff that i haven't quite figured out yet... i talk to everyone i can, everyone who'll listen, especially everyone who asks, because the more sounding boards i can find the better. but i don't ask questions, because even though i like it when people ask me i feel like i'm intruding when i ask other people... and when i complain, they tell me i'm more interesting, that i've done more, that my life story is somehow more worthy of telling and that theirs is somehow unworthy of my time... although they never specifically put it that way, it amounts to that.... because they consider my life to be more interesting it is somehow worth all the time and their life isn't worth any. and i don't agree with that. i don't understand how i'm supposed to figure things out if i don't know what other people are doing. and everyone must have a story, maybe their story isn't as eventful as mine, i will admit that i've had my share of crises... that doesn't mean their story doesn't exist, there are always stories and the stories shape you. melchelle tells me she doesn't remember her childhood and i don't understand that, and i can't really accept it. everytime i try to tell myself there is a time i don't remember i think of something small i do remember. and i think of that something and i remember more. and the more i think the more i remember and i am convinced that this means i remember almost everything, especially almost everything of importance, i believe there is a filter in most people's memories and there is a reason some moments get discarded and a reason some other moments, even ones which seem insignificant at first glance, are kept. and i believe every moment i have ever lived has shaped me into the person i am now and i believe the more i remember of those moments the more i'll understand who i am now. this could be the definition of living in the past, i suppose. "when you look in the mirror do you see visions of your past, i don't have time for halfway, i don't have time for half-assed," ...ani doesn't seem to agree with my approach... but it works for me. it might only work now, it might only be because my future is so uncertain, because i haven't got the slightest idea where i'll be after may 15th and i can't even promise to myself that i'll be here, i keep trying to give myself the option of defeat and so far it hasn't really worked... i want to give up. i want to say that i can't do this anymore, that there are too many uncertainties. i say that everyone should live their life as if they had six months left to live... and that doesn't mean spend all the money you have and travel, that means go about your daily life doing whatever will make you happiest now and worry about later later as long as you continue going about your daily life... and if what makes you happiest now is dropping out of high school and moving in with one of your friends so you can take a job at a little restaurant in the city then so be it. one of our friends just did that, and he's a common topic of conversation, how much they think he's wrong and how big a mistake he's making... and i can't do that because i admire him, he's 16 years old and brave enough to say, "I know i'm supposed to be in school but school isn't where i want to be right now and maybe that'll change and if it does i'll let it but for now..." i want to make that decision. and i want to ask for advice but i know that's not fair, i know i won't listen to it anyway, i know advice is impossible because i am the only one in this situation and none of us can really know what would make me happiest in the long run because last time i checked we just can't see into the future... last time i checked i didn't even want to. and the fact remains that tuesday at 1:15 i have to have a rough draft of a 10 page literary analysis, and at 6pm i have to have a final copy of a 10-15 page term paper about the legal rights of gay teenagers, and wednesday at 3:45 i have to have the final copy of a 10 page paper analyzing nita lowey's connection to her constituency based on a theory i was supposed to read in august and still haven't, and thursday at 6pm i have to have a 3 page technical analysis of one shot of a hitchcock movie. i have to take a movie still and write three pages abotu what makes it hitchcockian... not that i've ever opened the book or watched half the movies or stayed awake through a single lecture. and then the next week, on monday i have a final in a class that i've missed at least 5 times since the last test, meaning i've missed at least 7 1/2 hours of lecture, all of which will be on the test, and tuesday i have to give an oral presentation of the gay rights paper, and thursday i have to take a hitchcock films final which is, once again, on movies i haven't really watched. i'd watched all the movies on the midterm and still only got a C+ and the fact also remains that i spent the first half of the semester surviving on about 4 hours of sleep a night and now i am barely functional after 8... which i don't usually get, because i spend the day guzzling caffeine which just isn't out of my system when i collapse into bed at 2am. and i know i'm fucking up. i know that i'm doing everything wrong and that i need to get my act together and make a decision before i make it accidentally, because i can't just say, "I don't want to work right now... i'm going to smoke so i forget about it" because that in and of itself is a decision and i need to acknowledge that my primary impulse right now is to give up. and my impulse has always been to give up, run away, let go of everyone who cares about me to prove that i really don't need them, i got along fine without them once i could do it again... i always run away and i always get what i want in the end. those are the two main characteristics of sarah... i win every argument that's important to me, i get people to do things they don't really want to do, i'm not above bribing and threatening and i always act like i know what i'm talking about when i really don't, i make it up as i go along, and i am one hell of an actor. and i've run away from everything that ever got difficult... when my family relationship got difficult i stopped talking and locked myself in my room. when school got difficult, and when my last relationship got hard, when we got to the point we needed to work through differences we'd never discovered before, i ran away. when i couldn't deal with living at home anymore, i left. and i think maybe this is getting too hard, i think maybe either they're getting too close or i'm getting too close, i'm letting them get too important and the conflict, friends vs school, is getting hard, i think it's getting too hard, and it scares me because i want both and if i keep going like this i'm going to end up with neither. and i knew there was a reason i was alone for so long, there were about three years between my first and second relationship, i forgot what it was for a while.... and it's because this is harder. it's because all of a sudden there is someone else who depends on me and i'm folding. i don't have the option of insanity because if i go i'll take her with me and i've done that before, i don't think either of us have fully recovered. so i'm trying. and i don't want to. i want to run away and let go... it would be easier on her, for me to run away than for me to go insane with her watching. she's not the most stable person i know, i don't think i'll ever be attracted to a stable person, even if i could find one she'd probably be straight.... stable doesn't come with the territory, it just doesn't. maybe people grow stable as they grow older and learn to accept more... or maybe they don't, maybe it's always like this, maybe the whole fight is worthless. four years ago i was contemplating suicide, now i'm contemplating isolating myself with a lot of substances... they're related, one of them is easier than the other, it doesn't take a lot of guts to drown your pain... in some ways i admire people who make honest, serious suicide attempts. i've never had that much bravery and i think i'd like to, i think that much bravery could be redirected into being enough to get me out of this, i think if i was that courageous i would be able to face this, to make a decision.... i've never made a concrete decision in my life. all of my decisions have been made out of default, because it's the easy thing to do. and it's hard to explain that to people who think it must be hard to be a college senior at 18... it's hard to explain that i didn't choose this and probably wouldn't have, if it had been a choice. i fell into this. i dropped out of high school, the only other option was college... i was 14, i couldn't get a job, i couldn't not go to school... i live in the country, in the middle of nowhere, with no possible transportation to another public school, the closest other one was 20 minutes away, and they're all the same anyway, rural conservative farming communities... there are two private high schools, i visited one and the entire ninth grade had 9 people in it. Nine people. and one of them kept shooting down ideas with, "that's so gay!" ...when a history teacher was describing something stupid somebody had done, i don't really remember the circumstance, i know it was in a class to a teacher, and the teacher just agreed. I couldn't deal with either of those options, so i ended up in community college. i could hang out there before my first class, if my mom had to drop me off early, and it was on her way to work, and i could do it, and it made my parents happy and it made the guidance counselors happy and it was better than any other alternative... i never chose it. i never named college as a goal i had to work towards, i've never successfully worked towards any goal. i think i am one of the weakest people i know. i'm not even strong enough to get through four college classes, four classes i could do in my sleep if i could just make up my mind to do it... and in order to graduate i've got to get through six classes next semester. and i've done that before, i took 7 once... and that was a choice i made to get me out of community college so that i could move out... i suppose maybe that's the one goal i've actually worked for, moving out, but i did it for the wrong reasons, i did it because i needed to run away from something not because i needed to run towards something. there are things i want that i can't ask for, and there are things i've done i wish i hadn't. i only say no to the unimportant things, and usually the really bad ideas are mine anyway so it doesn't matter.... i don't know what love is. i'm not sure if i've ever known. i was so sure i loved emily, i was sure that i loved her and always would, ilyfauteotautsfoots. now i don't remember what that felt like, i don't remember what it felt like to be so sure, and i don't remember how i knew. and i'm worried that by definition you love someone when you just know. and i don't, now. i tell her that i love her and i really think i do, but i'm not sure, and i don't know how to be sure. i think she's sure, i also think she was sure very early on, we started going out on the 16th, i believe, and she told me she loved me on either the 25th or 26th. Of september. and granted, we knew each other before then, and i said it back, because it seemed like a good possibility and i seemed to have nothing to lose. and that doesn't mean i don't love her. i think i do. i know i do, to some extent. we've been together for two and a half months and we're already talking about next year, about how i might follow her, where ever she goes to school... and i keep trying to tell her i can't promise anything, because some days it seems to be the only thing i've ever wanted and some days the thought is enough to make me want to run. and i do run. my room shrinks, and i have to leave it, and if i can't leave campus for some reason i wander the building, and it never starts to feel better, and i have visions of going outside and just running, full speed, until i get someplace where no one knows me and no one expects anything from me.... and today is one of those days. and i worry that if i do follow her, it'll be the easy choice. it'll be yet another major life decision that i just fell into, it'll be something i did because it was the easiest thing to do at the time, it involved the least amount of fear and the most amount of comfort, the least amount of responsibility and the most fun. and i tell myself that's not how i should make my decisions, i tell myself that for once i should challenge myself, i should figure out what the hardest thing is and do it. and the thought makes me tired and sends me running for more caffeine or my bed and my bear. i don't know where i'll be in may, i know that i really have to decide before then. i know that i've told all my friends i'll stay here for the summer, and most parts of me think that's okay, that the summer months aren't too much to commit, that i need time to just have fun and that that's the easiest way to do it, and that i deserve easy for a couple months, if i graduate. but then there's after that... and the number of options scares me, i can invision a lifestyle where i am happy that just doesn't seem to be realistic, when i picture myself happy i'm in a home office with polished hard wood floors and a lot of sunlight listening to the kids in the next room doing something on the computer in front of me... and the something is never clear but the message seems to be... i want the life in the snap.com commercial, i want to be the woman with two kids whose husband gets her a home office for christmas. and i was at wegmans at 1pm today and saw dozens of young women with kids in their cart and i was jealous. and i can't let myself do that, i've done everything else in my life several years too early, i think that's half of what this is, this is sarah regressing to claim back the years she was too responsible for her age, this her catching up for all the college parties she missed because she was 14 and living at home. and i can't just go out and have kids because i think they'd make me happy, i'm 18 years old and i haven't even come close to figuring myself out yet and i think maybe the reason i want kids is because that's something i know how to do that would make me happy, it's one of the few things, really... and i firmly believe watching your kids grow up (even if they're not yours biologically) helps you figure yourself out in the process... and i think that's part of the attraction. but i can't do that, it would kill all of my options in one fell swoop and i'd end up with one fucked up kid when i got sick of it after a couple years. and i wrote about this last time, didn't i? how my mother did the best she could and there's absolutely nothing that should make me think i'd do a better job than her... and i think if i ended up with a kid as fucked up as i am i would consider myself a complete and total failure. yeah, the third time i had to check my kid into a mental hospital before her 14th birthday i'd be pretty much convinced i fucked up somewhere along the line. which isn't to say i really blame her, i don't think you can blame people for things they did unintentionally... and i know it wasn't all her, i think i probably would've been difficult for most anyone, i think that's just who i am... i have an alanis t-shirt that says "question mightily" and my mother commented i've been doing that since i was 2 years old.... and i don't think there is anyone who could've completely satisfied me, i asked too many hard questions and demanded far too much and i broke down a lot, even when i was little, and when they asked why i always made up something because the real reason never seemed good enough, the fact that i couldn't get my lego piggy bank to open and close the way i wanted it to didn't justify sitting in the middle of the toy room floor crying so i told them i was crying because i didn't have any friends. ....i got frustrated a lot when i was a kid, i still do, really... and "i'll be the last to help you understand..." i sometimes think i know who i am and i sometimes think i need to find myself and i don't know how to find myself, it doesn't seem okay to me to define myself in relation to my friends, because that's not me, and it doesn't seem that i can define myself without them if they exist. and those two things put together mean that in order to define myself i need to be alone... and i've done that. i think i was damn close last year, before i made friends... and i don't know what's more important to me, having friends or understanding myself. and maybe i put too much emphasis on understanding and figuring it all out, maybe it doesn't matter as much as it seems to. nobody else seems to care, it doesn't seem to me like there is anyone else trying as hard as i am to figure themself out which could either mean they already understand or they don't care and i'm leaning towards they don't care... or maybe that they just don't want to know. but it matters to me, and i think it'd be helpful if i could define the questions that need answers, but i can't, and that makes it even worse because how can i answer the questions if i don't know what to ask? so i'm sitting here, drinking vodka and fruitopia (tremendously tangerine, my favorite) in a concerted effort to stay as fucked up as possible for as long as possible and i don't know why, i can't figure out why i'm doing this. and i know the last time i really went downhill, the last time i went really crazy (which isn't to say that's what i think is going on this time, the entire point is i don't know) ...i was doing it, at least in part, a rather large part, to affect the people who knew me. i never had any intentions of hiding it, i wanted everyone to know then exactly how fucked up i was, and i think maybe it was a perverse kind of test, i think maybe i wanted to know who would stand by me, and what i discovered is that there are people, there seem to be a lot of them, who will stand by you when you're fucked up, who are there for you simply because you're fucked up, who will leave as soon as you start to get better. and you're left to wonder if they were just biding their time, if they even meant it or if they were just doing it because they didn't want the guilty conscious of abandoning someone who was already suicidal... and then there are the people who don't even start talking to you until you're already fucked up and then get mad when you start standing up for yourself, and i wonder if they're the same people who stop at car accidents to "help" because it makes them feel good to be in the midst of other people's pain while deluding themselves into believing they're helping, and i wonder if they really believe that's why they're there and i wonder if they ever question their motives... when i came back this week i made a calendar of what needed to be done when... i was very proud of it, and stuck to it on monday.... it's thursday, i'm 3 days behind. i think i'm currently doing my best to push away everybody who cares for me and i'm doing my best to self-destruct and i wonder if i'm even going to go to work tomorrow, i wonder what would happen if i stayed in bed all weekend, without answering the phone, without working, doing nothing but sleeping and reading the books that i actually want to read, the ones on the shelf that have been tempting me all semester while i was trying to talk myself into doing the required reading... at least once, for one of my classes, to prove the buying of the textbooks wasn't a complete waste of money... two weeks from now i'm going to be selling back books that have literally never been opened. and i wonder what would happen if i spent my weekend lying in bed reading atlas shrugged or one of the many margaret atwood books i desperately want to read... would i fail all my classes for not writing the papers i was supposed to write? would i care? would i learn more from lying in bed with margaret atwood than i would from sitting in the basement of the library with photocopies of reference books? would my friends all hate me? would they come knocking on the door? would they give up and go home if i didn't answer? would they have fun anyway? would my parents notice? would i like myself better at the end of the weekend? or would i have panic attack after panic attack, my brain unable to forget the work it's supposed to be doing? I'm tempted to figure out the answers to these questions, even though i know it would be basically equivilant to a decision to give up this semester and not graduate with the class of 2000... i don't remember why that year was so important. i think maybe i made it important to get me through the semester i took 7 classes. i think it lost it's charm, i think it wore it out. i don't remember why i'm doing this, i don't remember why a bachelor's degree in a subject that doesn't matter to me is important. i remember, not that long ago, hearing stories of people who dropped out of college in their last year and thinking that they were stupid, that they should've just stuck it out, i understand now... i think my final analysis is that i'm a coward with no decision making abilities who does things to get a reaction and is to passive aggressive to just say what's on her mind... she has to get stoned and write it in a place the involved parties will find it. and i don't really like myself. and people keep telling me i should eat more and i keep telling them i'm not hungry when in reality, i know, and will occasionally admit to myself even when i'm sober, that my food choices are almost always motivated by either a desire to lose weight or a desire to not be alone. when my friends are here, i eat more. because they are and because we'll sit at the table and eat and sometimes even talk... when i'm alone, like today, i ate popcorn around noon and probably wouldn't have eaten anything else if i hadn't smoked... it was microwave popcorn of the light variety... i won't even eat the butter kind. the day before today (I suppose that would've been yesterday...) i ate instant mashed potatoes for dinner, with less than half the butter in the recipe and skim milk... and i tell myself that i like my body the way it is, and i can only convince myself of the fact that i didn't like it before i lost 30 pounds last year and i told people i wasn't trying to lose weight and i wonder if any of them believe that i only ate the fat free italian salad dressing because i liked how it tasted... and the reality of it is i feel fat and i (usually) look fat when i look in the mirror and i hate that about myself because it is so ordinary, it's what's expected of me, an 18 year old female college student... the story would be much more interesting if i honestly didn't care, but i do. and i don't know how to make it stop and honestly i usually don't want to. I've stayed the same weight for the past three months.... and this website says i'm overweight and i did the yahoo personal health exam a while ago and one of it's first suggestions for improving my health was "Reduce your weight with diet and exercise." ...i'm about 5' 6" tall, i weigh 155lbs. I wear size 12 jeans and have never tried on a bra that was too big. i lost my momentum, my mind has gone blank. ~me |