I feel crummy. I don't know what's wrong. So many things are wrong, but that's ridiculous, seeing as so many things are right. Oy. My brain is twisting itself painfully through topics sexuality - gender identity, sexual orientation, et cetera, et cetera, until the pressure forces the entire thing to explode. My mom has come into my room twice in the past five minutes, and I've kicked her out twice in the past five minutes, and I feel like a horrible person, partly, for doing so. We have company. We have Marybeth. I could be more anti-social if I tried but barely. Partly, I think this must be the downside of having actual social stimulation, even though it's all taken place inside my own home. When John came over yesterday, he brought his best friend, and we sat around (the three of us, and then the five of us) and joked for awhile. It was actually fun, to laugh that hard, to have other people laugh that hard with me. Afterward, I felt like I'd been run over. I spent the night in overdrive, responding to everything with a quip, bouncing to the ceiling off a voice that wasn't mine. Not my main voice anyway.
I feel crummy! I don't know what to do about it. Mom comes in and asks me if I want to go to the pool for 30 minutes while Marybeth is at church, and I say no, and she leaves, and I feel crummy. I even apologize but of course, "there's no reason to." Maybe I want to go to the pool... did I think of that? How maybe I'd like to settle into the water for the first time in Godd-knows-how-many-years, settle into the closest thing I have to my natural habitat... but I can't because it means going outside, putting on a swimming suit, being seen by the rest of the world, and so on. It hurts so much. And I keep hearing the doctor say something he didn't mean to say, something I heard. I keep hearing him say that so long as I'm using this illness as an excuse to keep from going outside, I'm not fighting it, I'm not doing any work... I'm supposed to try, damnit. I'm supposed to go out into the world and try, and people are getting accustomed to me not ever leaving the apartment the way that grew accustomed to my not being able to eat properly. And I just want to go out because it's 'summer', and swim in the fucking pool, on my own block, where I have a right to be. I don't want to have to take any pills, or "process" it afterward, or come home because it's getting too hard and I have to leave. I just want to go. I just want to go. I just want to go like all the rest of the world could go...
I miss you. I miss it. I miss being alive. And so few people even understand that, even remember that. So few people even understand that when I'm declining their invitation, I'm screaming inside because I want so badly to say yes. And I can't yet. But I feel like I could. I feel like I won't say yes when really I can. I feel like I don't have a right to be upset, to be hurt by this because if I wanted to, I could make it work. It's a fucking abusive lie. I want to make it work, I try to make it work... it's a real illness... why can't I believe that? if one person could believe that, I wish it were me. I'd rather have my support than anyone else's. I'd like to be able to tell myself, even when the doctor's gone, even when I'm so angry at my mom for proposing something I want to do but can't do but would do but won't do but decline while wishing I'd accepted... that it's not my fault. That it's not going to stay this way. That I am trying, and it's not about a lack of effort or a lack of desire; I am trying, and things will change. I'd like to be able to believe myself when I say that.
the other day, I was really upset because I felt poor...which I guess means I felt deprived or something. I felt like I often did as a kid. we were never really poor, in the sense that I always understood what poverty actually looked like, and we were never anywhere near that. we were just always scraping to get by, sometimes more than others, but overall scraping... and we were always in a community where that wasn't the case. where everyone else seemed to have these crazy nice houses in sub-divisions and money to do whatever they wanted. where kids decided to go out shopping on a school night; six friends all bought a version of the same outfit and came to school the next day looking like picture-perfect childhood. and I was never one of those kids. we didn't have birthday parties. we didn't get cars when we turned sixteen. we didn't go on vacation.
...but those were never the things that really mattered, the things that mattered were the everyday ones. like the school paying for our lunches, and the way we couldn't buy a fruit-roll-up or an ice-cream afterward. never having what was trendy to have. never blending in. when I was in third grade, one of the really cool kids with gel in his hair and the exactly right clothes, asked me if I'd forgotten it was picture day. a very subtle way to tell a girl she looks like a freak. and I hadn't. actually, I had worn my favorite outfit - a teal t-shirt over a pair of stirrup pants that had a white/black diamond pattern, and I had a headband pulling back the front portion of my wild wavy hair. The pants were faded and worn in places, but they had been my sister's before me, and they were my favorites after all... and the shirt was just a normal t-shirt with the pocket on one side, but it was my favorite color of all my t-shirts, and so I just shook my head (without even hesitating, I would mull over all this later, and apparently, much later - when I was, among other ages, 19) and said, "No. Did you?" with all the friendliness in my being. He could have said, "What did you think of Paris?" and I could have been replying, "Nice, but oddly enough I prefer Spain. And you?"
obviously... or let's say, thankfully ... I was not flipping out over what David said to me on picture day, when I was in fourth grade. I was feeling poor because my mom is still unemployed, and I bought a few too many sci-fi books in slightly too short a period, and found myself very suddenly low in funds. I checked my "savings" and discovered that once again, I had quite a bit less than I thought I did, and even though I have no need that I can think of to use that savings, I feel like it needs to be of a certain number - which I'm not going to say because I feel like it will seem ridiculous. when I was a kid, I had a budget of 20 - 25 dollars for school supplies. chew on that.
anyway, I felt hopelessly helpless. there are all sorts of things I want, things I don't really need, but would just feel better having... things I'd like to try having - and things that are proven to improve my life. I need to replace my Winter Machine CD which died a grisly death, despite my caring guardianship, to be detailed at a later date. I want the new Alanis Morissette album, which I've been listening to as an mp3 and once again adore. I need my good face cream, and I'd kind of like to try moisturizer because I'd kind of like to feel ok with my skin. I'd occasionally like to feel pretty. (You have no idea how ridiculous I feel saying this. One voice: MOISTURIZER? You want fucking MOISTURIZER? What the hell is the matter with you? Other voice: You've never had moisturizer? What planet do you live on? No wonder you always look so weird! Did you forget it was picture day?) I need new stationery because suddenly my handwriting requires quite a bit more space. I can probably move around this by using colored computer paper left over from when I thought there might ever be a second issue of _Darwin_, made more interesting by a few stickers... on which I'm also running low. I was desperately craving a particular kind of new blank book - which I also "got around." I need to get a picture taken, and I don't have money for that, and I don't even want one. And then I need to cut and dye my hair, and take all sorts of pictures with the film left over from Wisconsin, which I then need money to develop. It's stupid, simple, little things like these... And I'm so, so practiced at getting around them. I can so easily sidestep my own desires, even the legitimate, within-the-stratosphere-of-possibility ones. but so much sidestepping inevitably leads to a feeling of, "my Godd, I can't have anything." (I need new clothes if I'm ever going to stop wearing what I've been wearing since junior high. and on top of that, things aren't fitting, and if I'm expected not to lose my mind to frenzied ed-bashing, I need to buy new clothes. So many stupid things I don't have any stupid money for...) And of course, on top of this, I can't go anywhere. So, I was feeling low. And then, I started to think about the release of the new Harry Potter movie, and how it would be fun, this time, to go to one of the more party-like shows, to dress up and shit. I still haven't worn my Luna Lovegood costume, or even finished it for that matter... but hell, I have a Lion hat, that's close enough. I enjoy the idea of being a walking spoiler for those who are only so far as the third story... So I look around and find nothing, nothing, nothing going on anywhere near where I live ... except for this showing Heather mentioned having tickets too... so what the hell, I go look at their website. I mean, it wouldn't be so crazy hard to talk with Heather for a few minutes of real time, would it? I read about the party beforehand, all the crazy fanatic shit that's going down, I read about the movie on the most impressive screen in the city and perhaps the state... I read that the movie starts at midnight, and even though that makes me groggy even hypothetically, I realize that it's not going to be a bunch of little kids dressed up as Harry Potter; it's going to be a bunch of nuts dressed up and crazy energized. And I read the price: 25 dollars.
It's nothing. Seriously... a two-hour party, a far-better viewing of the show, and everything involved for 25 dollars? It's cheap! ...50 dollars for a movie? It's insane. It's ludicrous. I am such an ass for ever wanting to go.
So, of course I tell my mom. She says, also, that it's not really a bad price. I tell her I don't have money for that. She says I have money. I tell her there are other things I need, and 25 dollars on a movie I could see for less than ten is ridiculous. She says, "Oh." I ask her if she wants to go. I tell her the movie starts at midnight. She raises a few eyebrows; she's known to go to sleep at ten. I say, "I knew it. I knew you'd be out when you learned the time." I'm joking. I'm laughing. I'm not crying, no matter what the hell is inside of me. I go away for awhile. I realize that I want more than anything to know that I can dress up like Luna Lovegood and go see the Harry Potter movie at 12:01 on June 4th with a bunch of fanatic semi-adults. I just have to know I can have it; I have to know I can have it, too! So. I ask my mom if she'd go, if I decided I wanted to? And she says yes. I feel a version of what I felt when I decided I was going to Wisconsin. Just that, "I'm actually doing something I so want to do." But I don't begin planning. I don't do anything about it. I don't buy any tickets, which are limited. Time is of the essence; I could already be screwed.
But I don't know if I'd even be able to go. I could freak the day of and not want to go. Who knows who I'll run into? What if it's like every other "party" I've ever been to (because you know, it was always a ton of strangers wearing Harry Potter garb) and I end up standing against a wall doing nothing? What if I go, and I have fun, and when I come 'home' there's some serious fallout? ...What about the fact that I'm 19 and bringing my mom, as a chaperone, as someone to lean on, as the only guest I have?
And the doctor's off for Memorial Day, so I have to figure this one out on my own. It's the same dilemma repeated a million times. Go to the swimming pool? Go to the party? Go to the concert? ...Any day now, my disability status could be approved, and I could have an actual "income" without many actual "expenses." (My mom told me we're not using it to pay the doctor, so other than rent or meds or something, I think I'm actually expected to spend it on amenities.) It'll be more money than I've ever had in my life, so I am of course dreading it and forgetting it will happen. I try to be mature in how I spend my money, forgetting I don't have a mature amount. I act like, at some point, I'll actually be expected to pay for an apartment and food and utilities and such on 10 dollars a week. And I won't. Ever.
Maybe I just need to go to the fucking Harry Potter show and show myself something. Maybe I just need to get tickets and realize that if I have to stay 'home' because of my legitimate illness, twenty-five dollars is a fairly negligable amount to have wasted. In the real world. In the non-scarcity-created-round-world.
In the world where my hair will be blue, and I'm the first person to wear my clothes.
~me