and all you see is all your life will ever be

I am my father's daughter. So much. From the length of my fingers to the curl in my golden brown hair. to the overwhelming guilt, the shame of never being perfect. ever ever reaching--a constant, unreasonable goal.
I don't want to be my father's daughter. Just lately I got another chance to experience simplicity and calm. Just this time, I can't let it go. I go back to whatever the hell last year was. my eyes closed whenever the people i was with opened theirs. stacked against a door frame lazily, displayed like the imibicle i had to be for a year to experience that kind of life because it was easy. About to fall into new lives as much as i could. yes. that was easy. Knowing the end result was to tear a little part of my morals, dignity and shame out of me forever.
Amazing how partial those memories are. Just like the little chaotic nightmares they were at the time. The only thing i've retained is the shamelessness, maybe. It's helped me to break down in front of people, made me want to scream at people when they put on too much face, bumbling about some dreary materialistic lifestyle as if it's something to live for. made me bawl my frustrations and embrace everything because freedom is the appeal of being human.

see the way every other half lives. i want to stare at city lights over the Baltimore Beltway, only cement and speeding cars underneath my feet as I stand fixed on the bridge, the gas fumes and the wind sucking the life straight out of me in a streaming horizontal fog.

i don't know if i see all that much beauty in truth. i think i see quite a lot of it in all the lies we can pump into our minds, convincing ourselves we're spending some worthwhile time like this. the unintentional will power within us all.

eating alone

As usual, I sit by myself toward the back of the dining hall. People look at me as I set down my tray and pull out my newspaper, feeling sorry for me, I imagine. Some of the nicer girls, I swear, murmur a prayer for me over their overcooked chicken and potato salad. Bless them, I think before I start to shovel a mountain of salad into my mouth. But there is reason behind my being alone. Truly, this is what I find most awkward—trying to maintain a constant conversation with someone else while eating. Especially with the foods I enjoy. I hate to have to watch their expression change as I dribble a mixture of cottage cheese, raisins, lettuce, and Italian dressing down my chin. As they try to ignore my feeding faux pas, and continue with their account of the day, maybe I reach for a napkin and knock over the three glasses of juice, milk, and coffee in front of me. Maybe I laugh at myself, or mumble an apology, only to increase the ever present food dribble collecting on my lower lip. This is what eating with other people is like for me. It’s just more considerate of me not to ask anyone to accompany me to dinner.

As I sit there, and occasionally notice as people stare or a glance at THE ONLY GIRL SITTING ALONE IN THE DINING HALL, I wonder if it’s more than my eating habits that have brought me to this state of solitude. Am I indeed very different? I may not be wearing Victoria Secret sweatpants stuffed into my Ugg boots, but I’m certainly not entirely out of fashion. Quickly, I do a once over just to make sure I haven’t committed a fashion faux pas, as well. My tapered pants are stashed safely away in my closet. I’m not wearing oversized glasses, and my skirt is a reasonable three inches below my belly button. All good.

But then I start to think of less shallow attributes, more peculiar acts of strangeness in which I indulge. Today I bought an eight-dollar bottle of biodegradable laundry detergent. Now, on this devoted trek toward environmentalist justice, I do occasionally stop to consider that there are just one too many options for the activist to prove him or herself. But if there is one thing I have learned from my father, it is that our guilt shall know no limits. I might be a poor college students with four hundred dollars left to live on for the next ten months, but god knows I will not be held responsible for the phosphates killing off all those poor darling fish and bacteria in the Athens’ streams. God knows. I shrug. Maybe it’s all in the music I listen to, and that my favorite playlist combines a selection of 1998 MTV Grind classics and a new instrumental cd titled "Monkey Chant." Perhaps.

I return to an article in the newspaper and take another slobbery bite of yellow pepper. My over salivation is a fortunate thing, I tell people. I will never ever ever know the pains of a cavity. Though I try to feel absorbed in the current debate over Hillary Clinton’s crying episode in the New Hampshire primary, I’m distracted by the conversations bubbling around me. I have to admit, every time I hear the mention of beer pong or flip cup, I feel more justified in my choice to abstain from conversing with almost every undergrad on campus.

By the time I’ve heard three accounts of drunken Friday night stupor I am nearly done with my salad, and happily notice I’ve managed to spread only about half of it on the table. I finish my third glass of soymilk (my mild OCD forces me to sample every variety the dining hall offers), and carry the tray to the conveyor belt. Before I exit the dining hall, though, I fill up my customary to-go cup for later night snacking. First goes in a healthy glob of peanut butter, a few sticks of celery, and a quaint sprinkling of granola to top it all of. Yes, you know I get off on my low cholesterol levels. I glance at a few girls, horrified by my concoction as they toast their little fucking English muffin pizzas to near perfection. I tear off a piece of celery, chewing noisily as I watch their mild disgust grow into complete and utter fear. They hurry off and leave me wanting to throw some ham and a few chocolate chips into my snack cup, just to see their reaction. Of course, I then realize I would also have to throw in some of my own dandruff, completing my transformation into that crazy girl from the Breakfast Club. Probably the only movie character I’ve actually felt a connection to. However, I resist this final temptation, accepting that it really wouldn’t do my reputation any good. Instead, I walk out of the building, hoping that, because no one in there has ever heard by entirely American voice, that they just attribute my strangeness to the thought that maybe I’m European.

the rain on the steel roof three stories above

During the times that I try to remind myself that my thoughts are not unique, I often try to picture the person who shares my life. I think of a girl about my age sitting alone in a second story room. The window she's behind faces a street in a small town; the square of it sets in ashen white wooden siding, and the light comes through in a fading white slant. She has long wavy brown hair, much nicer than mine. The walls, the dresser, even the bedspread are all a shade of blue or teal; she is listening to records. This is an image I believe I saw once in a movie--the girl a character I didn't even very well relate to. And yet she is what I always picture. There must be thousands of these girls in their blue rooms with their records and their notebooks. Maybe even some of them are sixteen, maybe others are sixty-five, or maybe thirty two. (We all share something and will never meet)

Those people must also be starting to question their self worth and purpose, must also be starting to understand that their lives are for loving. I wonder if they're all debating whether or not to embrace it. Eventually the only other choice to kill yourself if travels and new experiences can't fufill instead.


. . .


God, the heights and levels of relationships. So much excitement at first to cloud any fear or hurt. To kick all that thought of the future into a dustbowl at our feet, carrying it clear up to New York along with that prairie dust of nineteen thirteen, when the new frontier was roped off and set aside for preservation, and we decided to conserve what was truly good for us, not just exploit all the richness of the land to feed our hedonism.

and when you're warm, i mean really warm

sometimes i can't listen to John Lennon because the music is too beautiful. i feel as though i cannot say it is amazing, it is so spectacular. what it is is him. it is so much his own and i can't help but feel awkward trying to absorb someone else's thoughts. what a commitment, to put yourself out there for all these people to try and understand you. to relate to you without ever having met you.

New Years-
candle wax, mothers worry about drapes catching on fire. a short girl in a black dres with a crush. a clear shot of smirnoff, a dark room and some movement. cold. running. Loud loud loud. every thing every where but really it's just music and people all rocking and pushing together as one. Bartender. white dress. Line to the bathroom. Talked as if everything was just a dream. Treated everyone as if they'd dissapear in the morning with all the fake intoxicated closeness i shared with them the night before. that they'd bury it, drown it, three hundred and sixty five miles away. talked to someone about feeling a woman's stockings through her dress. it was one of the most beautiful ideas in a book i just read. you've probably heard of it.

Night drive. night drive. night drive. a phrase, two lanes, made custom, patented with my youth here. A town in which I was young and allowed to make mistakes. Now older, being durg down into the same mistakes twice over. Now it's time for everyone to feel as hurt and ashamed as i did years ago. now it's their turn to face the the music and i feel as though i am involuntarily playing it, screeching it shamelessly in front of their faces. Their failures, lyrics to the songs that open wounds.

It will be my turn again soon though. to face up, to feel the shock of failure. the circle is spinning. the cycle will soon land on me for long again.