Some Bullshit, Not Knowing
I can't sleep. I can't sleep because I've only been awake for twelve hours. I can't sleep despite the Benadryl that I keep pretending are sleeping pills. I want to sleep because I want to wake up at six because waking up at six, especially when I've not slept long before it, has always felt the most glamorous to me. More glamourous than sleeping in after one's partied all night the night before. There's something about it that, to me, signifies some better type of human, one who does more, is more efficient, is stronger than those who sleep eight hours or wake up at eight or nine.
There have been these long phases of my life where I'll wake up at six after five hours of sleep or so and exercise for an hour. This makes me feel superior and clean and healthy and I like to subtly boast about it. When I fall out of these phases I feel like I've been broken up with or cheated on by my better self and I long to get back on. I don't guess it's that healthy to sleep so little, and that I can't do it permanently evidences my averageness. I'm not superior, I guess, because it is not my nature to sleep so little and to wake so early and to run so far and hard.
This summer has been really nice in part. I've had a great deal of privacy. A great deal of time to think. And in that I think I've tiptoed into some fine decisions that, were it not from those three months they give us off school, I wouldn't otherwise have made.
June has always been my favorite month. I remember my elementary and middle school usually got out after the first or second week of June and I'd always be so relieved. Even when I was so young I had these panic attacks on Sunday nights where I'd cry and hyperventilate and have to breathe into a paper bag while my mother scratched my back because I'd be so nervous about the coming work week and turning in homework and the cruel girls who'd ridicule and exclude me while I tried to get through it all. I still use the term "Sunday nights" when I feel really overwhelmed.
I don't think most get so overwhelmed.
But what I mean to say by all this is that I haven't panicked this summer, and I never have in June or July, really. Save summer school-- fuck that.
Russia was a beast confronting those long, puzzling stretches of lonliness. Once or twice a week Finnian would call and beg me to come to ther apartment or Persia'd command me to dress and go for a cocktail and I'd do it and really enjoy it. Or I'd call. I dunno. The whole thing was so efforted and calculated, but I made it okay. I don't think that when you have your group with you that this happens. And I don't think many young people are ever without their group, doing the painstaking-and-superficial-socializing thing.
I don't know how real others feel in their socializing, in their friendships. How effortless it is. How effortless it is to make it seem effortless.
And all that shit, I guess, makes me feel inadequate and like I need to fill my sphere with other glowing adequacies, like beauty or intelligence or the ability to wake at six and exercise in order to draw young and alive people to me and surround myself with (mutual) love and appreciation.
Anyway, I've spent a lot of time wondering about that crap because I've been knives OUT against being alone this year. My six best friends all sort of simultaneously (within a calendar year) got significant others and all of a sudden the privacy I once sought fell heavy in my lap. An endless bowl of alone time and a big spoon and eating myself silly. But growing up, too.
It's so luxurious to have a fifth year of college with this clarity and this honesty. I think I can avoid Sunday nights better than ever, which seems so good and rich and freeing in the face of a senior year where much will be demanded of me from the inside and the outside. I feel really confident about not having to breathe in a paper bag anytime soon. But also apprehensive that the aforementioned social stuff might be an actual handicap and not just a temporary and circumstantial cloud over all the good stuff.
I have high hopes. I have insecurities.
That's normal, no?
There have been these long phases of my life where I'll wake up at six after five hours of sleep or so and exercise for an hour. This makes me feel superior and clean and healthy and I like to subtly boast about it. When I fall out of these phases I feel like I've been broken up with or cheated on by my better self and I long to get back on. I don't guess it's that healthy to sleep so little, and that I can't do it permanently evidences my averageness. I'm not superior, I guess, because it is not my nature to sleep so little and to wake so early and to run so far and hard.
This summer has been really nice in part. I've had a great deal of privacy. A great deal of time to think. And in that I think I've tiptoed into some fine decisions that, were it not from those three months they give us off school, I wouldn't otherwise have made.
June has always been my favorite month. I remember my elementary and middle school usually got out after the first or second week of June and I'd always be so relieved. Even when I was so young I had these panic attacks on Sunday nights where I'd cry and hyperventilate and have to breathe into a paper bag while my mother scratched my back because I'd be so nervous about the coming work week and turning in homework and the cruel girls who'd ridicule and exclude me while I tried to get through it all. I still use the term "Sunday nights" when I feel really overwhelmed.
I don't think most get so overwhelmed.
But what I mean to say by all this is that I haven't panicked this summer, and I never have in June or July, really. Save summer school-- fuck that.
Russia was a beast confronting those long, puzzling stretches of lonliness. Once or twice a week Finnian would call and beg me to come to ther apartment or Persia'd command me to dress and go for a cocktail and I'd do it and really enjoy it. Or I'd call. I dunno. The whole thing was so efforted and calculated, but I made it okay. I don't think that when you have your group with you that this happens. And I don't think many young people are ever without their group, doing the painstaking-and-superficial-socializing thing.
I don't know how real others feel in their socializing, in their friendships. How effortless it is. How effortless it is to make it seem effortless.
And all that shit, I guess, makes me feel inadequate and like I need to fill my sphere with other glowing adequacies, like beauty or intelligence or the ability to wake at six and exercise in order to draw young and alive people to me and surround myself with (mutual) love and appreciation.
Anyway, I've spent a lot of time wondering about that crap because I've been knives OUT against being alone this year. My six best friends all sort of simultaneously (within a calendar year) got significant others and all of a sudden the privacy I once sought fell heavy in my lap. An endless bowl of alone time and a big spoon and eating myself silly. But growing up, too.
It's so luxurious to have a fifth year of college with this clarity and this honesty. I think I can avoid Sunday nights better than ever, which seems so good and rich and freeing in the face of a senior year where much will be demanded of me from the inside and the outside. I feel really confident about not having to breathe in a paper bag anytime soon. But also apprehensive that the aforementioned social stuff might be an actual handicap and not just a temporary and circumstantial cloud over all the good stuff.
I have high hopes. I have insecurities.
That's normal, no?