Seul Dans la Nature

Subconscious word choice ruining my intended speech, I've been bucking up, ignoring feelings. I can't say how I feel anymore without implications, the insinuations unplanned, not meant, that could leave me utterly singular on this planet. The older I get, the more being alone leaves me feeling like a loser. But then, a thought: we're all just turning down the covers in our lives, ready to hop into bed, most of us hoping someone will share the sheets. Even if they hog the comforter, isn't it reassuring to know we've got someone who's comfortable next to us?

I'm by myself at this spot at the park where the creek, (as I pronounce "crick,") leaves some rocks dry stretching out off the bed, even when the water level's high. I come here to dip my feet in, to think and be as alone as I can be in the populated suburbs, while a family paddles by in a worn silver canoe, "Hotel California" pleasingly drifting out of some device on their boat. I catch sight of a yellow monarch as the music fades, and the family chatters down the waterway back toward the boathouse. Some animal I can't quite identify croaks as I ponder and the song changes and I catch sight of a black butterfly joining the yellow... Fluttering around the rocks, I see the mates hover low and inconsistent, settling here and then there, unsure of an ultimate move or placement. So I spark my cigarette, and lightly inhale the smoke, whilst on the path behind me a group of four or five boys walk along, discussing the general behaviors of "Villa girls," the students at an all-girl Catholic school where my youngest brother used to perform his hip-hop dance recitals years ago. They're apparently as uniform as the outfits they wear. 

"Villa girls always... Yeah, all the Villa girls," I hear, when I see a second yellow butterfly, joining the first, and the black one. I don't for one second think my eyes have fooled me, but I do think the chances of this occurrence are rare, and I long for just one of the winged things to approach me, land delicately at my elbow, just to be able to see its lovely insect features in detail.

Later, maybe not even the same day, sometime out with friends somewhere, a bar or their home or something, where I’m drunk and feel alone in a crowd, I think, "I just want to leave, because it's nothing." I actually write it down. Feeling sick like teeth, tongue touching teeth, soaked in acid, absorbed, corroded, out of place; I'm void of life. But I stay, because it's my obligation, and since I want nothing of the empty bed in my bedroom in my father's cul-de-sac home on Sunset Ave. So I stick around, waiting for...? The sickening stupor to evade me, though I'm already consumed by it, I conclude. It’s not the company; they’re amazing, kind people. I've been trying to escape this all like the flick of a switch, reminding myself of mind-over-matter; reminding myself that no one will be able to stand my presence if I appear so blatantly miserable. 

So I've stopped showing my feelings, pretending the ones I have don't really exist. Because if I don't believe it, it can't be real, right? I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life, so I simply must forge my way through pretending. And when I appear to be solid enough, maybe someone will flutter along the creek bed to the rocks I occupy by my lonesome and I won't feel so isolated in the crowd. But maybe not. Probably not. Optimism has never been my strong suit, but I can lie just as long as I have thoroughly convinced myself.
Mostly, (I believe to fix this,) I guess I just wish to feel surprise as it comes from someone else, like when you kiss a person who's so truly beautiful and hasn't the slightest inclination. The person who reveals their unworthiness to you and expects nothing from you but rejection. The way that in one moment they believe they're solely capable of disappointment, yet in the next, your lips meet, and all the hope that lies in the world coats them in a honey warmth, a sticky ooze overcoming skin with the idea that perchance, they might be something. They might be important. I want to bring that to someone, to feel their surprise at my kiss, so that I can share my surprise, my surprise that they didn't think they were worthy of me. I want to make them flutter, and I want to make them feel, and I want them to tell me every detail about every experience, worry, dream, idea, so I can fix in them the wound so intensely ingrained in me. 

But don't for one second think my eyes have fooled me; because if I don't believe it, it can't be real. So tonight I fall into my bed alone, pull the covers around my neck and simper, because though optimism's never really been my strong suit, I think the only one that could ever surprise me--the only one whose wounds I could heal to let them feel again--is the girl laying here smirking maddeningly.

Whatever you say I am

May 12, 2015

9:15 a.m.

"I can only think in Twitter-speak. I’m drunk, and I want to talk to you. I need to talk. But when it’s time, when you ask me “about what?” I’ll pretend I didn’t have anything to say, because I’m terrified. I’ve never been so confused before, but then again, I’m drunk.

I need to tell you what’s on my mind, but I can’t. It’d ruin you. And I need to write a paper, but I can’t, I’m drunk. Do you love me?" 

A month or so later, and Dear God, am I enlightened. A Tumblr queen. The voice of a generation. Someone get me a fucking whisky on the rocks and talk to me about education reform or the problems in mainstream journalistic media. I'm not confused, I'm confident, and I love your romper, where'd you get it?  

"When I go to California..." I'm so young, I can do whatever I want. No real consequences, I pretend to believe. I'm applying to grad school but they haven't opened the application yet. Yeah, I do go tanning, and I know how horrible it is for me but I hope the cigarettes kill me first; skin cancer is visible, and only blackened lungs would mean a prettier presentation in the casket. Bury me in that sunflower dress, I hope it still fits when I'm dead.

Woe is me, pity parties and exaggerations and read receipts and upside-down cross tattoos. Sickening stupor, mind-blowing disbelief, I'm so young; I do whatever I want. I can only think in Twitter-speak. I'm the voice of a generation, if only you want me to be.  

Huh

I'm doing a bit more here, around the office. I feel useful, so, here's a start. I'm drinking more water, eating less. Enjoying the warmth of the sun. Trying not to be so one-track-minded. Thinking about different things. Concentrating on the immediate future. I think about the pool, lying next to it, swimming in it. So here’s a start.

~

Margo tells me not to smoke. I just love that name. "Smoking is bad," the 12-year-old sing-songs. I tell her that when she's older and I catch her smoking, I'm gonna smack that shit right out of her mouth. "You won't," she means catch her, not smack her.  That's what I like to hear, I say. "I took D.A.R.E.," she says. So did I, I say after a light chuckle, so did I. I think shouldn't have said shit.

~

I'm more useful at the office. I can answer questions. I know without having to search for answers. 'Cause this is how I see it: growing up means finding something to cope. Food, sex, alcohol, drugs, religion, exercise, career, anything... Loosing your innocence means losing the wild blind hope in a future you couldn't quite comprehend in youth. But the world was yours. Now you realize, no, I can't do whatever I want. I can't play in the WNBA, no amount of hard work could get me there (though that metaphor in no way reflects the author's personal opinion.) Damn, wasn't it so much easier when my family came to student of the month ceremony and I wasn't “allowed" to have a “boyfriend” or wear make-up and I rode my scooter up the street to my friends' homes and I came home when the streetlights came on? But damn. 

~

Last night in my sleep I was raped in my dream. Which is terrifying, because I concocted that image, the feelings, and I couldn’t escape them because they were in my mind. I’m stuck in my head all day at work, and I’m stuck in my head all night asleep, and I can’t run away from the creep with glasses because the creep in the glasses, my rapist, is me, isn’t he? For fuck’s sake, I’m my own offender. Damn. But I’m more useful at the office, and I know the answers to most questions.

~ 

This is what I do: I write, I eat, I don't cry, I sleep. I watch Netflix and waste gas and time 'til someone distracts me. So here's a start. I work inside my head all day, I post on social media because I'm exploding, but can’t read anyone else's posts, can't scroll for more than 5.6 seconds before data overload sends me further back into my scull, this buzzing shell of pointlessness. I talk and talk and I shouldn’t have said shit. How does it end? Lying next to it? Swimming in it? Leaving it? Damn. 

It's Always Prose and Cons

Long dark mane dances into knots,

the window down, sun sparkling bliss

yet Underneath her crown all reason quavers.

The static loop that used to play

when cable clicked over to VCR

her Contemplations, always anesthetized.

She aches to fight unvarying, shake dolor,

to no avail, piles dirt over guilt  

for loving some too much and some too little.

Her Cadence ruptures casually 

reveling in chaos, changes the channel

and the show on which she settles, Nothing. 

Nothing considerable as matter of usual practice,

wonders, “what is Truth?” and how

one can be certain truth can be trusted.

And Underneath long dark shadows

dance into Nots and she slips backward 

focus into cable swapped for VCR.

But Someone forgot to be kind, Rewind,

Outside a young boy's voice exclaims,

"I'm going where the wind takes me, mom!"

Then nothing is the same.

Detachment

It's been sunny for a while, and finally the shadow looms back over, but unlike Peter Pan, I'd never try to sew it on; I'm looking for a seam tearer through wetted eyes, choked up cries. Stoic. I've got to shake it without crying.

I imagine really crying to my best friend, how she'd react: "Don't cry," she'd waveringly offer in a high-pitched tone, most sympathetically, though, as if my wails might set off her own water-works. And I'd try to explain that I always feel like I'm crying when I talk to her about what she already knows, that shadow that's glued to her heels, too.

So I wonder if when I'm upset and express that without crying, if people understand the gravity of the situation. Because its over 6-foot depth is filled with clay-laced dirt, suffocating, weighing in at around triple my own fluctuating mass. So when I talk about the source, or rather, "triggers" of my shadow's presence, it's taken god-awfully lightly. I'm expressing my emotion, but not crying. Which is why it pisses me off when people call me "emotional," or "soft." I'm allowed to feel, and I'm trying to explain that, without crying, so how am I soft? 

I'm not returning phone calls, playing it safe, so no one hears the shake in my voice. I'm writing through it, because if not, I'll crack. Nothing a phone call couldn't fix, yet I can't let people know. They think I'll take a razor to my wrist, so best not to induce worry. I just want to take a razor to the seam at my heels, just to shake the darkness that follows, but it's no use. Nothing can stop it, and it's stopping me from crowing.  

A Theory and a Criticism of a Generation of Non-Conformists

This may seem a little redundant, but at the present time, I feel it necessary to address what may be to some, a culture that lacks refinement, yet propagates the past in an attempt to mimic or yield former art or style as sophistication. Did that thesis statement-esque lead not entice you? Read some fucking scholarly articles. 

...Because we all love Bowie and listen to vinyl records. I know, we're not addicted to anything, but yeah, we've tried a few things... except pot. We smoke a lot of pot, and maybe cigarettes, but maybe not, or maybe too much. And we all play guitar covers of our favorite bands from middle school, or at least know someone who does. And we read Salinger and James, but Henry, not E. L. 

We walk in the park and go to preservations, yet binge-watch television series on Netflix because there's nothing on regular cable t.v. We post photos of our puppies and kitties and American flags and sushi. We want to be real American guys and gals, so we pound $2, 16-ounce cans of PBR, and we don't love IPAs, but if you're cute and 25 and wearing black-rimmed glasses, sure, we'll take one. We’ll just have to add a couple of extra reps at the gym tomorrow—for gains.

We idolize Lana Del Rey, dreadlocks and not identifying with a political party. Gen-X thinks we’re lazy and non-committal; passive; uneducated; unaware. Blasé blah, Gen-X. We learned from them that when the going gets tough, give up. The whole lot of them? Divorced.

We’re active online about issues like Ferguson, but if a meme of a dress pops-up on Twitter, it's all we'll talk about for the weekend. Then it’s, "that Michael Brown case is still a thing?” 

"Oh, there's a picture of Chris Pratt. I love him, he seems so down to earth. Didn't his show just end?”

“Emma Watson can’t act like she knows anything about inner beauty, she’s fucking gorgeous on the outside! What a crock of shit."

It’s an endless ADD feed that we've conceived. It’s all our own creation, but it controls us. 

And bouncing from one timely topic to the next, we still find ourselves hung up on that thing we said when we were drunk, or the look that girl just gave us, or our empty bank accounts, or the things we cannot change. We’re awake all night, whether it be dwelling or drinking, and asleep until 2, and we wanna drink again tonight but we're broke, but we'll see you at the bar anyway, after Taco Bell and a nap.

This is our lifestyle. We’re not original, but we believe ourselves to be. We romanticize the idiosyncratic, that at one time people found shocking, or taboo. We reinvent things that shouldn’t be imitated; they were better left untouched. We venerate the different, the eldritch, in the name of aestheticism. And I cannot ascertain if this is good or not.

Have we twisted history’s Greats to fit our own societal mores' desires, or can we simply not come up with anything unique on our own, because we’re too distracted consuming all of this media, all of the time? To know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been, they say… But if we’re redoing what’s already been done, we can’t go anywhere.

We’re all trying to figure out who we are and what we want. And I know who I am. I am a refinement snob. I am better than the pop culture standard set by Justin Bieber and "Twilight." I listen to real artists, like Sinatra and Led Zeppelin. I love the "Three Stooges" and the original "Twilight Zone." But I am not too good for HBO or Lady Gaga. See the contradiction I deny? Enough Taylor Swift, I want more Lorde! These examples have less to do with taste, and more to do with criterion I’ve established.

I know who I am, because I hate that person, and I wish for the life of me I wasn’t that person. She is the least original who claims to be a non-conformist. I am the pauper pretending to be a prince. I too wish for the life of me I had an effective conclusion to my thesis. Yet, in the interest of representing my generations’ value of the avant-garde, I choose to quote the infamous Cary Grant; “Ah, beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of one’s own past failings.”

For you, Little Girl

Dearest Child,

You are 7 right now, and this is mostly when your memories will begin. You have a long way to go, my dear, and adulthood isn’t all that you think it’s going to be. Don’t rush it. There will come a time when all you’ll want is to return to mischief in the woods, building forts behind the shed, (you haven’t done that yet, but you will soon.) You’ll miss the plastic jungle gym that you’ll soon grow much taller than, even when it’s replaced by the pool. And enjoy that pool, you’ll move a few years after it’s built to a brand new house with no fence, no pool. Don’t worry, though, you’re not moving too far from your friends, but eventually you’ll understand that the true friends are the ones that stick by you no matter how far away you are.

You and your closest brother will grow apart soon since the baby’s here, and you’ll come together again in a while, but those in-between years are going to be tough. Just remember not to get upset when he kicks your ass, and that’ll end anyway when you get to high school. Forget about the terrible mistakes he’s going to make, because you know they’re not intentional. When you reattach, he’ll ask for advice, and when you realize you don’t know anything, he’ll drop almost anything to help you, often. The doofus that’ll soon strike you with a Wiffle ball bat as you climb down from the tree in the front yard, (yeah! you’ll get to climb that!) will turn back into the kid who ran down the sidewalk to greet you as you hop off the bus, home from your first day of kindergarten. I bet you don’t remember that. (I don’t either.) Except in the future, he’ll be racing up route 81 at 4 in the morning to pick your ass up from jail. 

Those Christmas presents from Santa are really from some non-profit who got in touch with mom, and that’s okay—she’s doing her best. You know, she had to file bankruptcy when she lost your sister, (that’s why dad buys those angels for her every year,) and her hospital stay without insurance drained mom and dad’s accounts. I know you kind-of know all this from the whisper-conversations at the kitchen table, but I want to make it clear that you shouldn’t be embarrassed. Your parents are poor now, but that is going to change in a few years, and when it does, you’ll miss this old lifestyle more than you could imagine. You’ll realize that “poor” has less to do with money and more to do with relationships and possessions and worth. Everything has worth, dear girl. And how you value it establishes its worth. And if you value everything as gold, you’ll be far richer than Oprah, (she’s a billionaire, you’ll learn.)  

Someday, you’ll resent your mom for trying to control your life. Be patient. Then, you’ll be best friends. Appreciate it, because when she breaks your trust and ruins your hope in love, you’ll miss her. She won’t really leave you, but it won’t ever be the same. Tell her you love her, even when you’re mad at each other. Things will be complicated, but you never know what could happen.

Then, dad, you’ll come to butt heads with, and you’ll realize that nothing you do is good enough for him. But that isn’t true. When he asserts after your duet in the 6th grade chorus concert, “you did good, but you could have been louder," know that he only sees your potential. He only wants the best for you. That’s why he works so long and often, and when he unwinds with too much bourbon at the end of the day, understand that his frustration is not with you. You’re too much alike, you and him, and you’ll see one day that what you think is your own inadequacy disappointing him is really his own dissatisfaction with himself.

When cousin Brian tells you that Santa isn’t real, and you still believe for two more years, don’t be ashamed. It’s not the figure so much that’s important, it’s the ability to hope that you’re carrying out. It’s spirit. I’m proud of that. And when he tells you that your parents smoke pot, relax. You’ll end up doing the same, and no matter what you present in your 5th grade D.A.R.E. speech, don’t ever believe that weed is a drug. Alcohol, however is a different story. Be careful. You’ll see. And don’t be so hard on mom for smoking cigarettes, because you don’t know how you’ll cope when you’re her age and have her experiences.

Those girls at the bus stop will continue to torture you; forget what they said about your bandana and your haircut. Let no one tell you your style is anything but exceptional; it’ll save you from vying with timely trends in the future. And in any manner, those bully bitches will develop into your longest best friends. Don’t try so hard to fit-in, you’ll only lose yourself. And when you find her again in, oh, maybe 11 years, you’ll question all the fads that you mimicked along with the crowd.

Appreciate the people that call you Cassandra. You don’t like it now, but when you grow up you’ll long for the respect of someone calling you by your beautiful, serious, full-name.

You’re smart, Cassandra. Oh sorry, Cassie. You’ll go on for several years thinking you’re the smartest 7, 11, 14-year-old you know. Hell, you might be, kid. Then at point, you’ll be one of the smartest people you know. But wayyy later, you’ll figure out that you’re no different from everyone else, and that you’re good at some things, but not excellent at anything. You’re not special, like they told you all throughout school. And that trait, humility, understanding, will save you years of worry or regret or disappointment. Just remember, you’re going to make a lot of promises that you think you’ll keep forever, but you’re going to go back on your word from time to time, and that’s good, because that means you’re gaining perspective. Never stop looking at things from someone else’s point of view. 

You’re going to lose a lot. You’re going to be disappointed and hurt, and scared, and very lonely. It’s not going to be easy for you. You’re going to lose a lot of friends, and that’s okay. Treasure them while you have them; they’ll each teach you so much more about yourself than you could learn on your own. Forgive them when they leave on their own accord. Forgive yourself when you leave them behind. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

When you don’t make cheerleading in 6th grade; when the kids you thought were friends call you a "whale;" when you get your first “C” in algebra; when your best friend completely ignores you out of the blue with no explanation; when you quit soccer for the musical, and mom says she misses watching you play; when you can’t go away to your first-choice university because dad makes "too much money;" you are innovative. You can cope. You are strong. You are enough for you, and me too.

And you’re going to make a fuck-ton of mistakes, (sorry, that’s not appropriate for a 7-year-old, is it? A lot will change in 16 years, hon,) but you’re not going to regret a single one. Because if you did, you wouldn’t grow up to be me, and even though we’re not the smartest, or the best at anything, or special, we are worth something. I’m not sure what we’re meant for, or who we should be, but you and me, kid? We’re gonna be valuable. Maybe I’ll tell us in another letter when we’re 35 and God only knows what’ll be happening. But I’ll tell ya what, I’ll never forget you. Because you made me, you’re why I’m me, and we’re not special or important or wise or smart, but we are all that we’ve got, and we’re gonna create substance of consequence, relevance, effect. We’re gonna be important and good and all that we can, and if anyone expects anything more or less, then we don’t need ‘em. We’ve got each other. 

Love,

You, in 16 years