The journey up to a point
I.
In The History of Love, there is a passage that reads, "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." And it was beautiful, but also impossible to understand until you have stood there. As the bus turned a particularly large corner on the way home today, I bumped against my seat a little and understood how I felt.
I thought: He is a question.
One that rings like silver against a lake, where the ripple creeps out to the ends of the water, and knocks against a blade of grass.
Another time, I was talking to G---, and I told him that even though my entire life, I had made it my business to be invulnerable, I was willing to let myself be open around him. I didn't think I was giving too much away. But he knew exactly where I was and told me I was fucked.
II.
I can't exactly remember my life. That complication has led to a lot of confusion, and usually leaves me conscious of myself only when I'm feeling tiny and hopeless and forlorn. In eighth grade, there was an assembly where a speaker told us that goldfish have memory spans of eight seconds. I have told this story before. When a goldfish is dying for eight seconds or longer, it believes that it has been dying its entire life. Because I can only remember the places where I have felt like shit, sometimes it seems like my entire life has been composed of shit. Once I had a theory that said this: Isn't it unfortunate and terrible when we say things that are not who we are? If we could live our lives and every day choose what we want to leave for others to see, and what to take back-- wouldn't that also show who we are? Many times, the planes and angles of people and life glance off one another and believe that to be reality. It would be easiest if that is what was true.
III.
My written journal is an exercise in being true to myself, no matter how many lies I dispense to the rest of the world.
This is good, because when I am disconnected from myself, it is like somebody who has had a body part nearly severed. The little skin, muscle, sinew, tissue that still holds the first part to the other, dying part, is one of the most painful and frightening bridges left in the world. Like this:
August 27, 2007 (By my estimation)
I want to tell my mother that I have ghosts that keep me from sleep. If I could write this all out in a letter, it would say this:
Dear Mother,
Just by keeping that pronoun on its own line and not shifting it to the one below has changed my future. I think about Paris and England only when I am trying to sleep and feel guilt. I apologize-- am so sorry-- I made you suffer so immensely that week. One spring break, either sophomore or junior year, you took me to Europe to try and calm me down. I did not (never do) mean to hurt you. I was so full of anger and of the certainty of the world's cruelness. I was to the brim with pride and decay and you-- something living, naturally-- just happened to blow onto my course of devastation. I wonder how much of my life can ever be as it might have been. How much can I salvage-- only so much. Life can only fill the arms of a person so much before the thing stops becoming a thing and completely falls apart.
IV.
Sometimes at night, when I am certain of death or terrified of another thing, I recant with words like God.
In The History of Love, there is a passage that reads, "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." And it was beautiful, but also impossible to understand until you have stood there. As the bus turned a particularly large corner on the way home today, I bumped against my seat a little and understood how I felt.
I thought: He is a question.
One that rings like silver against a lake, where the ripple creeps out to the ends of the water, and knocks against a blade of grass.
Another time, I was talking to G---, and I told him that even though my entire life, I had made it my business to be invulnerable, I was willing to let myself be open around him. I didn't think I was giving too much away. But he knew exactly where I was and told me I was fucked.
II.
I can't exactly remember my life. That complication has led to a lot of confusion, and usually leaves me conscious of myself only when I'm feeling tiny and hopeless and forlorn. In eighth grade, there was an assembly where a speaker told us that goldfish have memory spans of eight seconds. I have told this story before. When a goldfish is dying for eight seconds or longer, it believes that it has been dying its entire life. Because I can only remember the places where I have felt like shit, sometimes it seems like my entire life has been composed of shit. Once I had a theory that said this: Isn't it unfortunate and terrible when we say things that are not who we are? If we could live our lives and every day choose what we want to leave for others to see, and what to take back-- wouldn't that also show who we are? Many times, the planes and angles of people and life glance off one another and believe that to be reality. It would be easiest if that is what was true.
III.
My written journal is an exercise in being true to myself, no matter how many lies I dispense to the rest of the world.
This is good, because when I am disconnected from myself, it is like somebody who has had a body part nearly severed. The little skin, muscle, sinew, tissue that still holds the first part to the other, dying part, is one of the most painful and frightening bridges left in the world. Like this:
August 27, 2007 (By my estimation)
I want to tell my mother that I have ghosts that keep me from sleep. If I could write this all out in a letter, it would say this:
Dear Mother,
Just by keeping that pronoun on its own line and not shifting it to the one below has changed my future. I think about Paris and England only when I am trying to sleep and feel guilt. I apologize-- am so sorry-- I made you suffer so immensely that week. One spring break, either sophomore or junior year, you took me to Europe to try and calm me down. I did not (never do) mean to hurt you. I was so full of anger and of the certainty of the world's cruelness. I was to the brim with pride and decay and you-- something living, naturally-- just happened to blow onto my course of devastation. I wonder how much of my life can ever be as it might have been. How much can I salvage-- only so much. Life can only fill the arms of a person so much before the thing stops becoming a thing and completely falls apart.
IV.
Sometimes at night, when I am certain of death or terrified of another thing, I recant with words like God.