Do I really live in New York City?
The past 24 hours have been bizarre. Just bizarre. I can barely describe. Last night I was in such a funk, I wrote a plan. It didn't help. I left Amherst depressed, and being here has not made it any better. I wish I could say that I'm happy to be home, but honestly, I'm not. I got home at 8, and no sooner had I taken off my coat, when my mother began telling me how the cats were sick, and the vet bills were killing her, and she had to buy special food for Tiger's Eye, and that's why the house isn't clean. I told her I didn't want to think about these things and please not to tell me because I'm on vacation for god's sake, and I can't deal with these things. I can't explain why I'm so on edge and upset; maybe it's that I have so much more to worry about here than I do when I'm in Amherst. I feel incredibly lonely. I feel desperate and despairing and worried and bleak. Totally bleak. I saw Emma and Julie and Miranda tonight, and ended up watching Transamerica (all of which I enjoyed), but none of this seems to ease the torment of being here and having to think about the fact that my mother is practically destitute, and my cat probably has diabetes, and all the other inescapable realities of my family and all this shit I have to deal with. I just can't. I don't have the strength to put up with my mother's problems. Everything here seems completely alien to me. I've fallen completely out of love with New York. Just being here distresses me. The thing is that pretty much the only people I have to see here are my family, and I can't spend time with them without being deluged by a sense of catastrophic failure. The only person I'm really excited to see is Toni, partly because I can talk to her about all this shit. But I won't see her until tomorrow, so for now, dear livejournal, it's all you. I don't know how I'm going to make it through this week. Never mind the fact that I'm almost out of money, and I'm scheduled to buy drugs I can't afford, and this whole trip just seems like a self-deprecating waste of bus fare and time. Maybe I'll feel better when I see Joanie and Julie and Toni and Harvey; in fact, I probably will, but the time I have to spend here, in this apartment, with a mother from whom I feel totally disconnected, whose worries now have to be my worries, and to whom I can only tell a watered-down story of my life. I'm just not supposed to be here anymore. Like, profoundly not supposed to. I'm really unhappy here, and I don't know why, and I hate it. I just hate it. I want to go back. I think I should have gone to Oregon with Alex and Lissa. I think that really was the right thing to do. I feel selfish for saying that, but is the sense of obligation to spend time with my family really a justifiable reason not to do something I really, seriously, heartily would have preferred to do? Oh well. I'm here now. I guess I'll make the most of it? Maybe it'll all seem better in the morning.
-J
-J