Tuesday, December 4, 2001
recollections.
Disect a word to its base roots. Re - collect. To gather again. Is that all it is? Sometimes recollections hurt more than that. Sometimes a word is more than its meaning.
Definitions aren't always enough to define.
Once in a while, you have to leave all your preconceptions at the door and just take things as they come. Stereotypes and past experiences, all your "recollections" - they don't matter to other people. Stop making them matter to yourself.
I was fifteen; a sad girl from a less than stable family. Denial of my short-comings was bred into me, though I tried tooth and nail to fight against it. Usually, I lost. Badly.
I met a boy who liked music I wanted to get into. Mainly it was an image thing, my liking for him. THat and I've always been into shy guys. Somehow we ended up together, though at first we were pretty rocky.
Hell, the entire three years was rocky. The beginning was just more innocent and noticeable because it involved me breaking up with him every couple months because he was too shy to talk to me.
The only time it wasn't just me breaking up with him was the final time. The only mutuality. Ever.
I loved him somehow. I don't think I do anymore. Funny how I used to think love was some sort of forever creation that could never die. Funny how I'm only a little sad he's such a fuck up now. In a way it's payment for the detachment I showed when we were together.
My depression was incredible when I was with him. It took me years to fully admit it, let alone realize the extent in which I fucked him. I can't blame him for going back to pot after me. I don't blame him for being an asshole.
And yet, I also don't blame myself.
How do we reconcile with our genetics and the environment in which we were raised? I was almost always called a good person, but when it comes to relationships I generally suck. I end up with either wonderful people or total assholes. He could be either. Maybe he's just neutral now.
Yet empathy was not a strong point for him. Melodrama generally held sway in my arguments. I had headaches, heartaches, screaming, and total and complete unfairness. One of my three wishes was to not have been together with him the last year of our relationship. It was stupid. It was pointless. It was totally and completely co-dependent and unnecessary.
Disect co-dependent and you have everything you DO NOT WANT in a relationship. Everything I fear.
People since then have said he had no personality. I disagree. Sometimes he borrowed from other people, but he was more colourless than lacking in personality. Generally I don't miss him, but he did have a tremendously good taste in music. The mix tapes and punk shows, I do miss.
Just like then, I can't get out now. I can't end this. I've never been good at clean breaks.
Here it goes -
08:56 p.m.
Thursday, November 29, 2001
the things that define us.
Clara put her hands on my shoulders before I boarded my plane. Her final words were sweet and needed- "Be Whole."
I wanted to write it all over me, I wanted to take a permanent marker and etch it into my clothing, into my being. Above all else, I wanted to it to become true.
By wearing that emblem, "be whole," I hoped to push the idea into everyone else and into myself. I never did it. No one else would have understood the sentiment like I did. How could you understand unless you'd been where she and I had been, strangers turned friends through a strange sleepless night of talking at LAX?
I have two photographs of her, some old journal entries, and a first name. She was a California resident, going from a protest back to school or home or something. I was a Pennsylvania girl trying to follow a poorly thought out dream, and escaping when it all collapsed. Thrown out.
That night became such a big part of my life, even though it was only a few hours. "Be Whole." It shook me the entire way home, the nine hour flight from Hell, back into Purgatory. Purgatory, regret, shame, nowhere. Nothing.
That was two years ago, and I still think about Clara. I think about how she helped me, a stranger, survive what would have been an intolerably depressing experience and made it into something I can look back to with fondness.
Something I actually learned from.
08:07 p.m.
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
new.
Yesterday, time did not move.
The entire day took a moment to pass, but lasted a year. As was expected, no one remembered the importance of the day. If they did, they did not contact me.
My life is not so small that I place much weight on the reactions of others in regards to such a day. Ironic that I should feel that way now, when the truth behind yesterday was forgetting that others care.
Yet I am alive now. Yesterday passed (or did not) in a strange happy/sad medley. Things went well, but behind it all was the knowledge that I very nearly wasn't around to experience it all. Time stood still to accomodate all of the emotions I was and was not feeling.
It's nice like that.
11:35 a.m.
