(no subject)
I left my journals at home. My home in state college, specifically. I can picture where they are. There's an orange one with a white cat tucked in a broken file box I stole from a staples' dumpster, and there's one with a shiny blue, cat-themed cover adjacent or on top of another with a picture of the Eiffel tower. Any one of the three would do currently, but alas--they're 3 or so hours away, out of reach and far too numerous to justify buying or starting another.
So I'll post here, for the first time in a long time. Share my thoughts out loud. My feeling thoughts or my thoughts of feeling--whatever.
My parents have boxes and bubble wrap and packing paper. We're actually, really, actually moving. I've been telling people my parents are "moving" for close to four years. But now, there are signs. Everywhere I look, it's a mess. There are all sorts of things upturned and it has brought on this wash of memories so tucked away behind my newfound knowledge of biochem and physics that I can't even begin to place them chronologically, to sync them up in any kind of sensible, linear fashion.
I can rule things down into specific eras of my 26 year period on earth. There’s the red mug with white painted birds I remember from when I lived in Pittsburgh, which my mother always used for water-color brushes and I never understood why because it's just so pretty. There are books from Sarah Lawrence now spilling out of shelves and falling into boxes, books I touch and I love and I want to reread all of them so much more so than the verbal passages I’m supposed to be reading for the MCAT. There are baby dolls in the corner, lying next to each other in the wooden bed my grandfather constructed from hand for me (he died before he finished the wooden ship in a bottle he was making for my brother), cheap products of the '80s with eyes that once opened when exposed to warm water. That was over two decades ago, and since then the color changing dyes have expired and instead of closed eyes the dolls simply have pale, washed out ghosts of blue irises surrounded by too many eyelashes.
My girlfriends and cousins all had creatures they slept with, and I remember I spent a week trying to sleep with my dolls so I'd have a security creature too. Every morning I discovered my chosen sleep-mate on the floor, usually by stepping on its hard plastic head, and I wonder if this was the same time I began to doubt in maternal instinct.
Moving is emotional. Highly emotional. For the obvious reasons, like the weeding of my roots, but for less obvious reasons too. I've spent the last half decade or more trying to evolve into someone I could admire. I forget when the concept came to me--that I didn't want to be anyone my five year old self couldn't look up to--but it did and it's been a long haul. Building up work ethic, understanding my likes and dislikes, learning how to socialize, learning how to like socializing--years 8 through 18 I've crushed together, like the machine I read about that can pack 200+ polyurethane lunch trays into a dense, tennis ball sized sphere. I needed room in my brain and I needed less memories of regret, and so I've been doing my best to pack these memories away just like that machine and its lunch trays.
Encountering all these objects is undoing all that work. Having these memories is really confusing, and terribly annoying. The same way I don't want those memories, I don't want this stuff, either. I don't like the baggage of making all this trash or the hassle of selling it or re-organizing it into some prospective buyer’s home-owning fantasy. I just wish it never existed, much like the years that generated it. I've spent a lot of my life trying to access the person I’d be had I never spent so many years isolated and depressed. It's a part of my past that nearly nobody gets. Some do though, and I’m so thankful for those souls. Sarah comes to mind naturally. We wandered the same gray woods, and though we weren't always together on the paths through and while we didn't necessarily find the same way out, we made it to the other side and we’re together now. We’re building roads to the future, and though said future isn’t necessarily the one our former selves predicted or envisioned, we’re still well on our way to composing an adult portrait our kindergarten counterparts can stand in front of proudly.
Some friends it's different. Ariela, I owe you a letter, and I want to do it but who knows if I'll ever get it out to you. Our respective woods were a little different, I think, and while it's conceivable we're on the same plane now, the field you entered into seems terribly far from mine. Dave, I'm sorry I didn't hang out with you last weekend. I read my first book, Persepolis, and was too affected by tragedy to enjoy a night out, but the birthday messages you left for me were touching, and I miss you, and we'll never be able to party together but I'm ok with coffee if you are. Lana, I left you behind, and it made me feel cold and unable when I splintered myself from your circling progress, but learning how to work your compass in a productive way is something only you can do, just like your decision to build a fortress and camp out is one only you can change, and one I can't entertain because my inner farmer demands open fields and deeper soils for all the vegetables I intend to plant. And while I can see the beauty of the trees and I can admire your stonework, none of that will ever help me to grow a good tomato. EMB, hello, how are you, I'm fine as well and I'm glad you are too, and I hope you don't mind my suggestion that the reward of my progress is you.
Anyway, doll babies, I have to go eat some toast and drink more coffee, but in the meanwhile I hope that you're fine and yes, I do miss you.
So I'll post here, for the first time in a long time. Share my thoughts out loud. My feeling thoughts or my thoughts of feeling--whatever.
My parents have boxes and bubble wrap and packing paper. We're actually, really, actually moving. I've been telling people my parents are "moving" for close to four years. But now, there are signs. Everywhere I look, it's a mess. There are all sorts of things upturned and it has brought on this wash of memories so tucked away behind my newfound knowledge of biochem and physics that I can't even begin to place them chronologically, to sync them up in any kind of sensible, linear fashion.
I can rule things down into specific eras of my 26 year period on earth. There’s the red mug with white painted birds I remember from when I lived in Pittsburgh, which my mother always used for water-color brushes and I never understood why because it's just so pretty. There are books from Sarah Lawrence now spilling out of shelves and falling into boxes, books I touch and I love and I want to reread all of them so much more so than the verbal passages I’m supposed to be reading for the MCAT. There are baby dolls in the corner, lying next to each other in the wooden bed my grandfather constructed from hand for me (he died before he finished the wooden ship in a bottle he was making for my brother), cheap products of the '80s with eyes that once opened when exposed to warm water. That was over two decades ago, and since then the color changing dyes have expired and instead of closed eyes the dolls simply have pale, washed out ghosts of blue irises surrounded by too many eyelashes.
My girlfriends and cousins all had creatures they slept with, and I remember I spent a week trying to sleep with my dolls so I'd have a security creature too. Every morning I discovered my chosen sleep-mate on the floor, usually by stepping on its hard plastic head, and I wonder if this was the same time I began to doubt in maternal instinct.
Moving is emotional. Highly emotional. For the obvious reasons, like the weeding of my roots, but for less obvious reasons too. I've spent the last half decade or more trying to evolve into someone I could admire. I forget when the concept came to me--that I didn't want to be anyone my five year old self couldn't look up to--but it did and it's been a long haul. Building up work ethic, understanding my likes and dislikes, learning how to socialize, learning how to like socializing--years 8 through 18 I've crushed together, like the machine I read about that can pack 200+ polyurethane lunch trays into a dense, tennis ball sized sphere. I needed room in my brain and I needed less memories of regret, and so I've been doing my best to pack these memories away just like that machine and its lunch trays.
Encountering all these objects is undoing all that work. Having these memories is really confusing, and terribly annoying. The same way I don't want those memories, I don't want this stuff, either. I don't like the baggage of making all this trash or the hassle of selling it or re-organizing it into some prospective buyer’s home-owning fantasy. I just wish it never existed, much like the years that generated it. I've spent a lot of my life trying to access the person I’d be had I never spent so many years isolated and depressed. It's a part of my past that nearly nobody gets. Some do though, and I’m so thankful for those souls. Sarah comes to mind naturally. We wandered the same gray woods, and though we weren't always together on the paths through and while we didn't necessarily find the same way out, we made it to the other side and we’re together now. We’re building roads to the future, and though said future isn’t necessarily the one our former selves predicted or envisioned, we’re still well on our way to composing an adult portrait our kindergarten counterparts can stand in front of proudly.
Some friends it's different. Ariela, I owe you a letter, and I want to do it but who knows if I'll ever get it out to you. Our respective woods were a little different, I think, and while it's conceivable we're on the same plane now, the field you entered into seems terribly far from mine. Dave, I'm sorry I didn't hang out with you last weekend. I read my first book, Persepolis, and was too affected by tragedy to enjoy a night out, but the birthday messages you left for me were touching, and I miss you, and we'll never be able to party together but I'm ok with coffee if you are. Lana, I left you behind, and it made me feel cold and unable when I splintered myself from your circling progress, but learning how to work your compass in a productive way is something only you can do, just like your decision to build a fortress and camp out is one only you can change, and one I can't entertain because my inner farmer demands open fields and deeper soils for all the vegetables I intend to plant. And while I can see the beauty of the trees and I can admire your stonework, none of that will ever help me to grow a good tomato. EMB, hello, how are you, I'm fine as well and I'm glad you are too, and I hope you don't mind my suggestion that the reward of my progress is you.
Anyway, doll babies, I have to go eat some toast and drink more coffee, but in the meanwhile I hope that you're fine and yes, I do miss you.