Just old senioritis
I don't know if everyone else is experiencing this, but I feel like something changed while I was away. Something fundamental clicked. I've been trying to describe it to myself in terms of biology movies, psychology movies; the human brain transitions, even into adolescence: what is impossible one day becomes developed the next. I feel like I went away a teenage kid looking forward to a break from homework and came back someone living real life, adult, in-the-world life, and waiting for the world to catch up. Does that make sense?
It started from thinking about where I wanted to go to college. But to decide that, I had to decide who I want to be. Who do I? I thought about it. I don't know but I consistently hit bizarre landmarks, mental images that seem more like fate than anything. I pictured being proposed to. I pictured my fiancee in a suit, in a city, walking to the transit by choice, yelling at older men in a board meeting. I pictured myself in a new house, with new furniture, alone there for the first time after he left for work, standing in the rooms. I pictured the same image except with a silent baby. I pictured discovering infidelity, and do I stay with him? I don't know, but skip ahead and now I'm old, and I can't relish touching things as much, and I wait in these rooms and my old husband shuffles in and around and we make sandwiches and buy groceries and little else. Crosswords. Read newspapers. Ask about something to each other and sleep in seperate beds to avoid snoring. Thats what I'm picturing in my head.
And around me, people poke me with pens and say 'do your calculus.' I think incessently about school ending, about travelling in Europe, about seeing things and trailing my hand out the car window as I drive in some rural nowhere. I think about arriving by ferry on a beach. And someone suddenly says do we have to talk about this now? Do we have to no, what do we talk about then? This moment? We'll I'm a horrible Buddhist. I have never lived in the moment for a second- you can ask my parents, I was in the dream-world as a child and I still haven't woken up. What am I enjoying right now? More work than I can handle. No, there's nothing there, is a bunch of elusive attachments and buddhists say don't get too attached. Lots of people say that. I don't want to get too attached. Such a silly thing. If your in the dream-world you will get attached, and if you're not you'll get over it in a month or so. Yes, thats how it works. You miss selfish things but otherwise, gone. And no, I don't want to work. I'm watching him go down on one knee, holding out that tiny box and in it I see the house and me in the middle of an empty room.
It started from thinking about where I wanted to go to college. But to decide that, I had to decide who I want to be. Who do I? I thought about it. I don't know but I consistently hit bizarre landmarks, mental images that seem more like fate than anything. I pictured being proposed to. I pictured my fiancee in a suit, in a city, walking to the transit by choice, yelling at older men in a board meeting. I pictured myself in a new house, with new furniture, alone there for the first time after he left for work, standing in the rooms. I pictured the same image except with a silent baby. I pictured discovering infidelity, and do I stay with him? I don't know, but skip ahead and now I'm old, and I can't relish touching things as much, and I wait in these rooms and my old husband shuffles in and around and we make sandwiches and buy groceries and little else. Crosswords. Read newspapers. Ask about something to each other and sleep in seperate beds to avoid snoring. Thats what I'm picturing in my head.
And around me, people poke me with pens and say 'do your calculus.' I think incessently about school ending, about travelling in Europe, about seeing things and trailing my hand out the car window as I drive in some rural nowhere. I think about arriving by ferry on a beach. And someone suddenly says do we have to talk about this now? Do we have to no, what do we talk about then? This moment? We'll I'm a horrible Buddhist. I have never lived in the moment for a second- you can ask my parents, I was in the dream-world as a child and I still haven't woken up. What am I enjoying right now? More work than I can handle. No, there's nothing there, is a bunch of elusive attachments and buddhists say don't get too attached. Lots of people say that. I don't want to get too attached. Such a silly thing. If your in the dream-world you will get attached, and if you're not you'll get over it in a month or so. Yes, thats how it works. You miss selfish things but otherwise, gone. And no, I don't want to work. I'm watching him go down on one knee, holding out that tiny box and in it I see the house and me in the middle of an empty room.