Feeling Slightly Haunted (X-posted from OD)
It's as if they are all coming to haunt me... at once... during one eight hour period of sleep, I dream about nearly all of them. All of my past failures.
I dream about my senior year of high school, yet it's a mixture of college work and high school teachers. It's Susan Nussbaum with packets of SPA 211 homework. It's about how I just could never seem to please them once I was 2nd in the class, how I could never seem to get all of the makeup work done every time I was out sick, how they were unforgiving in so many instances and how I loathed them all. And it's about how much work I have now and how impossible it seems as the weeks press on. And how this road feels, tastes and smells so familiar. I dream about Mrs. King, no Silver Knight she says, no Hall of Fame. I'm just not good enough.
I dream about how I didn't get drum major, four times now, and how that little twig of a girl did this year. She's sweet, nice, friendly toward me, but more quiet and insecure than I could ever be, and her stature is so small she's nearly invisible. I dream about telling Dr. Dressman to his face what a fat fuck he is for not stepping in to deal with the insanity that he called "voting" in the "student run organization."
I dream about RA. How fresh, visceral, the smell of failure is. In my dream, I am with my RA, Kim, and there are others from our floor in her room. We talk a lot but I feel as if I'm being judged. Later in the dream, she tells me (after I talk to the group of girls there about some previous party) that the reason I'm not RA is because I can't keep my big mouth shut. And that I made her look bad, because now everyone knows that she let us have a party on PT11. And I kept trying to tell her, "Kim, nobody knows anything! Nobody knows if it was on PT11 or not and nobody knows who was here!" I'm squirming, trying to get her to understand that it's a misunderstanding, and she goes on talking about her sexual habits. I writhe with this uncomfortable hatred that I feel burning into me from all sides, and she throws me out of her room. Only one person I know on PT11 would do that -- it's not Kim.
I later approach Fletch to talk to him about why I wasn't chosen. I see him sitting in a restaurant, and a sign on the door is for my cousin's band, Endo; says they'll be performing on campus soon. Does that mean he's successful? I sit down with Fletch, he says nothing. I finally ask, "is there anything you can tell me about RA?" He tells me, as he finishes up his dinner, "Absolutely not. There's nothing I can tell you. Other than the fact that you eat poorly." He tells me that I eat Ramen cups of soup and microwave pizzas late at night, and that they feel those who eat poorly, also sleep poorly and are sick often, and thus won't make good RA's. And then I offer to lend him a hand with boxes of food for the orientation program. My family sits waiting in some car, in some gas station, as if we're going on a trip. They watch me from afar, as I work for no purpose. Brand work-horse onto my head and jack-ass onto my ass if you must, but there is purpose... it's me. I'm trying to prove myself to them. To him. To the world. It's proven! I'm a hard-worker! I'm worthy! You messed up again! I lift the boxes, the weight of someone else's job in these hungry hands. Large pizzas in larger boxes, and then boxes filled with the smaller, microwave pizzas he referenced in our conversation. I grit my teeth, burn with anger, and lift all of the boxes myself, one-by-one. Boxes filled with icy cups of water. And more pizzas. Heavy. Cold. Like stones. And the weight of all of my past failures.