Oh, but my blessings get so blurred
Tonight I am seeing Wilco for the first time in my life, an event I've been looking forward to since I was a much different person sitting on the couch in my bedroom, reading the lyrics to Summerteeth when I should've been studying for AP tests. Since then Wilco has been one of a handful of bands that seems to always fit my mood, whatever it is, and I'm so grateful that Zuhair is taking me at this point in my life. I expect it to be an emotional concert for me, and I am excited to share it with such a good friend.
Life is confusing the hell out of me lately. I'm not sure what I want to make of myself, what I can possibly do with my life, or how to survive in the meantime.
I've begun to dream of my parents in the past tense. For months they've filled my sleep as their vibrant, active selves from the years before they got sick with lung diseases and depression, from before they were kept apart by the weekly commutes and the invisible barriers between computers and televisions. In the dreams we would run everyday errands to Longs for milk and the lottery, or relive summer fishing trips in Mammoth, or even reenact silly arguments prompted by my own brattiness that I look back on in great embarrassment. All these activities were underlined by an unspoken truth, a silent awareness that I was dreaming it all because they were dead and I missed them, which infused every action with meaning and gave every word significance.
But now in my dreams I am mourning their absence. I see their caskets lowered down into graves that don't exist, or I see myself carrying their personal items home in the bag the hospital put them in, or I'm taking box after box of junk that has accumulated in the house and angrily throwing it in the dumpster. Occasionally I find my dreamself confiding to a stranger how guilty I feel for not being home more, during the past few years in general and during the hard parts in particular, or how I regret not forcing them to let me clean out the house while they were alive. I truly believe it would've kept them here longer and any reasons I had for demurring seem weak at best.
And now that I'm living in their home - in what used to be their room, no less - I find myself slipping into their dangerous routines. I struggle to get myself to dispose of their garbage, of the dusty piles that helped to kill them, of the useless surplus that both fueled and weighed down my mom, and the clutter my dad couldn't bear to part with since it belonged to his beloved wife. I hate the "stuff;" it's everywhere and I have no personal attachment to 99 percent of the items that take up 99 percent of the house, but the transformation is proving more difficult to create than I anticipated. It's not as though I expect their ghosts to creep out from behind a rickety shelf covered with boxes of staplers and personalized pens; I don't care about the money wasted and how upset my mom would be by our sheer abandon of the financial value of some of her odd eBay finds; I am just so angry. I have never been so completely and utterly furious, and it breaks my heart, which angers me even more.
There are moments in my life when I realize how distant I have made myself from people I love, and each time it happens I worry that the distance back is too far to traverse and I wonder how I let it happen again.
There are also moments in my life when I find myself on an old familiar path, excited to have my footing again. In my first of three quarters back at UCR, I got 2 A's and 2 B's. I am upset about the B's because I know I could've gotten A's if I had just attended class more often, but with everything that has happened in the last couple months, I'll take them gladly. I also just took the CBEST with Tracey and I am pretty hopeful for the both of us. I think I want to zoom through school and be an English professor at a community college while I get a doctorate in something. I would either end up as a professor at a four year school or become a librarian, unless I figure something else out in the mean time.
For now, though, I plan to immerse myself in old Wilco favorites and to take on the task of finding something to eat. I know this is a gloomy post that does not at all reflect my excitement for tonight properly, but listening to Wilco kind of brings the truth out of me, and this has been on my mind lately.
Anyway, I love you.
Life is confusing the hell out of me lately. I'm not sure what I want to make of myself, what I can possibly do with my life, or how to survive in the meantime.
I've begun to dream of my parents in the past tense. For months they've filled my sleep as their vibrant, active selves from the years before they got sick with lung diseases and depression, from before they were kept apart by the weekly commutes and the invisible barriers between computers and televisions. In the dreams we would run everyday errands to Longs for milk and the lottery, or relive summer fishing trips in Mammoth, or even reenact silly arguments prompted by my own brattiness that I look back on in great embarrassment. All these activities were underlined by an unspoken truth, a silent awareness that I was dreaming it all because they were dead and I missed them, which infused every action with meaning and gave every word significance.
But now in my dreams I am mourning their absence. I see their caskets lowered down into graves that don't exist, or I see myself carrying their personal items home in the bag the hospital put them in, or I'm taking box after box of junk that has accumulated in the house and angrily throwing it in the dumpster. Occasionally I find my dreamself confiding to a stranger how guilty I feel for not being home more, during the past few years in general and during the hard parts in particular, or how I regret not forcing them to let me clean out the house while they were alive. I truly believe it would've kept them here longer and any reasons I had for demurring seem weak at best.
And now that I'm living in their home - in what used to be their room, no less - I find myself slipping into their dangerous routines. I struggle to get myself to dispose of their garbage, of the dusty piles that helped to kill them, of the useless surplus that both fueled and weighed down my mom, and the clutter my dad couldn't bear to part with since it belonged to his beloved wife. I hate the "stuff;" it's everywhere and I have no personal attachment to 99 percent of the items that take up 99 percent of the house, but the transformation is proving more difficult to create than I anticipated. It's not as though I expect their ghosts to creep out from behind a rickety shelf covered with boxes of staplers and personalized pens; I don't care about the money wasted and how upset my mom would be by our sheer abandon of the financial value of some of her odd eBay finds; I am just so angry. I have never been so completely and utterly furious, and it breaks my heart, which angers me even more.
There are moments in my life when I realize how distant I have made myself from people I love, and each time it happens I worry that the distance back is too far to traverse and I wonder how I let it happen again.
There are also moments in my life when I find myself on an old familiar path, excited to have my footing again. In my first of three quarters back at UCR, I got 2 A's and 2 B's. I am upset about the B's because I know I could've gotten A's if I had just attended class more often, but with everything that has happened in the last couple months, I'll take them gladly. I also just took the CBEST with Tracey and I am pretty hopeful for the both of us. I think I want to zoom through school and be an English professor at a community college while I get a doctorate in something. I would either end up as a professor at a four year school or become a librarian, unless I figure something else out in the mean time.
For now, though, I plan to immerse myself in old Wilco favorites and to take on the task of finding something to eat. I know this is a gloomy post that does not at all reflect my excitement for tonight properly, but listening to Wilco kind of brings the truth out of me, and this has been on my mind lately.
Anyway, I love you.