Esss-Cah-Pay (Pardon My French)
If I could escape and recreate a place that's my own world...
.
I definitely needed to escape a couple times over the weekend. Well the problems did involve barriers, I suppose, but whether trapped or trapping, I was certainly the one who needed to escape.
.
Escape can be a bit scary, actually, which is why an evening Thursday with Katie, new friend Chris and a special guest was a convoluted mixture of potential escape into the supposed bliss of undelineated oddness and mental abandon and a battle with my own issues with facing what could be on the other side. Although some Bush issues that evening (thankfully relieved in the morning) weren't helping, in general I don't know exactly what happened but from then straight through until now has been something of a blur. Not a happy, how funny is that that Homer Simpson just said look at the colors kind of blur, but more of a oh my fucking god what the hell is that and why are they so mad and why do I feel so something I don't know the words with which to describe it and most of all why won't it all just stop kind of way.
.
And since substances can only be blamed for a discrete and relatively marginal amount of that time, I am even more baffled by my current bafflement, which has well overstayed its welcome and has resulted in some bizarre behavior that, had I been the only one affected, might be easy to get over, but it wasn't, and therefore it isn't, to an exponential degree.
.
I don't like to do things that upset Katie, and not because she gets upset without cause or without temperament. And I really don't like doing things that I know are stupid even as I do them, and not just stupid like whoops I left the water dripping but stupid like what kind of fucking idiot does this shit, especially one who so clearly knows how stupid it is? And upsetting her legitimately is more than upsetting to me; it's distressing and frighteningly powerful, if unfortunately too late to keep me from fucking up in the first place.
.
Then on Sunday, after Katie and I had the necessary discussion about said stupidity which could have been and was nothing other than a complete and entirely sincere one-sided apology and listening to the statement of grievances, I got up a bit too quickly to go ask her something in her room and in the middle of a sentence ended up on my ass on the ground by the television not sure how I got there. That has only happened once before, in my post-England pre-Los Angeles days, on one ill-fated attempt at traversing the tiny distance from my bed to the bathroom that resulted in me lying face down on the cold tile floor in a similar state of bewilderment. Couple that with an attempt to go get the keys copied; like a dunderheaded blue collar husband I returned with three copies of one key and no copies of two others, and I was already so flustered that trying to separate the old from the new from the duplicates was a confounding task.
.
This became even more painful when I returned that night from drinks and movies with a friend at 1:30am to find I had attached the incorrect key to my personal set and had locked myself out of the apartment, which of course Katie had foreseen and tried to forewarn me but I had turned off my phone to save the battery and her room is positioned such that she was not awakened by my half-hearted apartment door pounding. I realized then that everyone in my phone lives a significant distance away now; Yasmin and Aaron on the west side, Jon in Culver City, Andrew in Fullerton; even the aforementioned Chris hails from Bel Air and dwells in no-car land as well, and probably because it was by then half past two on a Sunday night the closest person, Jeffrey, wasn't picking up either. Although at the time I thought it was the worst possible situation anyone could find themselves in (I had an interview the next day and had to get my clothes for that if nothing else), it really wasn't that bad sitting on the sofa in the lobby feeling like I shouldn't be doing so (even though the security guard suggested it) and trying not to sleep so I wouldn't bring down the apartment's image by being the transient sleeping on the couch. And although I was the one who had to deal with it, the fact that Katie had to bail me out (even if that simply entailed opening the door when she awoke, and she did try to warn me) on top of what had happened before made me feel like I ought to return with my tail between my legs and groveling even if that was entirely unnecessary.
.
And my interview yesterday was amazing, just to put that out there. I was feeling so high after it that I told my dad it should be illegal, and regardless of what happens with the position (it's not, as nothing now will be, what I dreamed of doing but then again how many people get that on their first try?) it was a much-needed feeling of being successful at something; my sports column, which is published tomorrow, gave me a similar feeling as I think it to be the best of my weekly entries thus far in my acknowledgedly brief writing career.
.
Then last night I met up with someone I had seen on occasion back in the pre-England, pre-David with superbaggage era, and had at one point made a statement to the effect of saying I wished sometimes I lived life a bit more like he did, since he seemed like he was enjoying all of the things I have always made efforts not to enjoy and doing things I wouldn't let myself do due to my better judgment, the rare moments it exercised itself, and for a moment I wanted nothing more than to escape into the little world in the smoke clouds in which he dwelled. And as he then brutally and violently outlined the ways he had destroyed his life with drugs I felt him drag me down with him as he fell, even though he was really only falling from my perception into his reality, a fall he had already made and with a lot more bumps and bruises than I was suffering hearing about it.
.
But when I got home I felt dirty, like I had done something horrid even if my only sin was allowing myself to escape in the hypothetical world, not in reality. And suddenly my thesis, my bank account balance, my career, my romantic and sex lives, my health and even my friendships were flying about in front of me like an acid trip gone bad; I was hearing voices outside my window (which is normal, but they were talking about me!) and hearing Katie's voice asking why I was wasting my life (which is somewhat normal: I hear her voice all the time, but not saying things like that, plus I think she was at that time of the morning getting breakfast and ready for work) and everything in my bedroom was frightening to me and I just wanted to leave but I knew I was being crazy, overtired, perhaps going just a little bit insane for any of a long list of possible reasons, and I curled into a ball on my bed and shut my eyes and then heard new voices, voices I knew and liked, who weren't saying I was ruining my life or hiding outside my window and laughing whenever I made a motion, voices from NPR's Morning Edition, and I opened my eyes and everything still looked scary, but Steve Inskeep was talking and it was time to get up. And of course when I did leave the room Katie had already left for work; no one was hiding outside my window, at least that I saw. I was shaking a bit, which annoyed me because my body was going a bit strong on the like SO melodrama just then.
.
And here I am at work. And Max is here, and my broken iPod (which merely adds insult to the weekend-long injury). And I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow, and a car this week, and perhaps even a job. And I'm going to the library tomorrow and starting the damn thing once and for all. And I have decided that my bedroom needs some serious work, especially if it's turned into a place I don't want to enter whatsoever right now, and in fact the apartment could use a good scrubdown itself, both physically and, inasmuch as it is the location I will associate with these bizarre past few days of wackiness, mentally, so it will give me something to do when I return in a couple of hours, although what I really think I need is sleep (having been deprived of it by my own stupidity two nights running) to allow my system to reboot, reconfigure, get rid of all the temp files and spyware and reopen, refreshed, with a happy little song tomorrow morning.
.
Pressing the escape button in five...four...three...two...
.
I definitely needed to escape a couple times over the weekend. Well the problems did involve barriers, I suppose, but whether trapped or trapping, I was certainly the one who needed to escape.
.
Escape can be a bit scary, actually, which is why an evening Thursday with Katie, new friend Chris and a special guest was a convoluted mixture of potential escape into the supposed bliss of undelineated oddness and mental abandon and a battle with my own issues with facing what could be on the other side. Although some Bush issues that evening (thankfully relieved in the morning) weren't helping, in general I don't know exactly what happened but from then straight through until now has been something of a blur. Not a happy, how funny is that that Homer Simpson just said look at the colors kind of blur, but more of a oh my fucking god what the hell is that and why are they so mad and why do I feel so something I don't know the words with which to describe it and most of all why won't it all just stop kind of way.
.
And since substances can only be blamed for a discrete and relatively marginal amount of that time, I am even more baffled by my current bafflement, which has well overstayed its welcome and has resulted in some bizarre behavior that, had I been the only one affected, might be easy to get over, but it wasn't, and therefore it isn't, to an exponential degree.
.
I don't like to do things that upset Katie, and not because she gets upset without cause or without temperament. And I really don't like doing things that I know are stupid even as I do them, and not just stupid like whoops I left the water dripping but stupid like what kind of fucking idiot does this shit, especially one who so clearly knows how stupid it is? And upsetting her legitimately is more than upsetting to me; it's distressing and frighteningly powerful, if unfortunately too late to keep me from fucking up in the first place.
.
Then on Sunday, after Katie and I had the necessary discussion about said stupidity which could have been and was nothing other than a complete and entirely sincere one-sided apology and listening to the statement of grievances, I got up a bit too quickly to go ask her something in her room and in the middle of a sentence ended up on my ass on the ground by the television not sure how I got there. That has only happened once before, in my post-England pre-Los Angeles days, on one ill-fated attempt at traversing the tiny distance from my bed to the bathroom that resulted in me lying face down on the cold tile floor in a similar state of bewilderment. Couple that with an attempt to go get the keys copied; like a dunderheaded blue collar husband I returned with three copies of one key and no copies of two others, and I was already so flustered that trying to separate the old from the new from the duplicates was a confounding task.
.
This became even more painful when I returned that night from drinks and movies with a friend at 1:30am to find I had attached the incorrect key to my personal set and had locked myself out of the apartment, which of course Katie had foreseen and tried to forewarn me but I had turned off my phone to save the battery and her room is positioned such that she was not awakened by my half-hearted apartment door pounding. I realized then that everyone in my phone lives a significant distance away now; Yasmin and Aaron on the west side, Jon in Culver City, Andrew in Fullerton; even the aforementioned Chris hails from Bel Air and dwells in no-car land as well, and probably because it was by then half past two on a Sunday night the closest person, Jeffrey, wasn't picking up either. Although at the time I thought it was the worst possible situation anyone could find themselves in (I had an interview the next day and had to get my clothes for that if nothing else), it really wasn't that bad sitting on the sofa in the lobby feeling like I shouldn't be doing so (even though the security guard suggested it) and trying not to sleep so I wouldn't bring down the apartment's image by being the transient sleeping on the couch. And although I was the one who had to deal with it, the fact that Katie had to bail me out (even if that simply entailed opening the door when she awoke, and she did try to warn me) on top of what had happened before made me feel like I ought to return with my tail between my legs and groveling even if that was entirely unnecessary.
.
And my interview yesterday was amazing, just to put that out there. I was feeling so high after it that I told my dad it should be illegal, and regardless of what happens with the position (it's not, as nothing now will be, what I dreamed of doing but then again how many people get that on their first try?) it was a much-needed feeling of being successful at something; my sports column, which is published tomorrow, gave me a similar feeling as I think it to be the best of my weekly entries thus far in my acknowledgedly brief writing career.
.
Then last night I met up with someone I had seen on occasion back in the pre-England, pre-David with superbaggage era, and had at one point made a statement to the effect of saying I wished sometimes I lived life a bit more like he did, since he seemed like he was enjoying all of the things I have always made efforts not to enjoy and doing things I wouldn't let myself do due to my better judgment, the rare moments it exercised itself, and for a moment I wanted nothing more than to escape into the little world in the smoke clouds in which he dwelled. And as he then brutally and violently outlined the ways he had destroyed his life with drugs I felt him drag me down with him as he fell, even though he was really only falling from my perception into his reality, a fall he had already made and with a lot more bumps and bruises than I was suffering hearing about it.
.
But when I got home I felt dirty, like I had done something horrid even if my only sin was allowing myself to escape in the hypothetical world, not in reality. And suddenly my thesis, my bank account balance, my career, my romantic and sex lives, my health and even my friendships were flying about in front of me like an acid trip gone bad; I was hearing voices outside my window (which is normal, but they were talking about me!) and hearing Katie's voice asking why I was wasting my life (which is somewhat normal: I hear her voice all the time, but not saying things like that, plus I think she was at that time of the morning getting breakfast and ready for work) and everything in my bedroom was frightening to me and I just wanted to leave but I knew I was being crazy, overtired, perhaps going just a little bit insane for any of a long list of possible reasons, and I curled into a ball on my bed and shut my eyes and then heard new voices, voices I knew and liked, who weren't saying I was ruining my life or hiding outside my window and laughing whenever I made a motion, voices from NPR's Morning Edition, and I opened my eyes and everything still looked scary, but Steve Inskeep was talking and it was time to get up. And of course when I did leave the room Katie had already left for work; no one was hiding outside my window, at least that I saw. I was shaking a bit, which annoyed me because my body was going a bit strong on the like SO melodrama just then.
.
And here I am at work. And Max is here, and my broken iPod (which merely adds insult to the weekend-long injury). And I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow, and a car this week, and perhaps even a job. And I'm going to the library tomorrow and starting the damn thing once and for all. And I have decided that my bedroom needs some serious work, especially if it's turned into a place I don't want to enter whatsoever right now, and in fact the apartment could use a good scrubdown itself, both physically and, inasmuch as it is the location I will associate with these bizarre past few days of wackiness, mentally, so it will give me something to do when I return in a couple of hours, although what I really think I need is sleep (having been deprived of it by my own stupidity two nights running) to allow my system to reboot, reconfigure, get rid of all the temp files and spyware and reopen, refreshed, with a happy little song tomorrow morning.
.
Pressing the escape button in five...four...three...two...