I’ve been singing this song since the INSTANT I woke up this morning. It must have been playing for about two seconds on the radio before we slammed on snooze. Funny how it gets so caught up and affects the rest of my day.
For lunch, I had organic tomato soup made with soy instead of milk. As is our usual daily routine, Jon and I went to the vending machines for an after-lunch snack. I stood there forever thinking of something to get and chose a Mars bar. But while Jon ate his Snicker’s ice cream bar and I read the ingredients, a sick gnawing in my stomach met the distaste in my mind and I could’t fathom swallowing milk and egg whites. I gave it to Jon. Should have thrown it away: one less person to eat it. More and more, the thought of what happens to animals just makes me feel terrible, and though I don’t eat meat, I do still eat animal products, like bread with whey and pasta and sandwiches with cheese. I’m growing a distaste for it though, and I’m glad to know I am. I need to feel sick to never eat the cheese I feel like I can’t live without. Ugh.
Tonight, I’m hoping that Jon and I will see From Hell. I tend to like movies that seem a little out of the ordinary, usually for reasons you can’t quite explain. From Hell seems this way to me. Dark City, The Professional, Brazil, Tom Jones, Barry Lyndon: these all strike me in a way other films don’t. Naturally, I want to appear as cultured as possible, but these are movies I actually like; however, I must admit that Brazil is one I’m not sure I’ll understand. I should see it again soon.
My sister writes to me: do your journal entries have to be so damn long? Yes. I talk a lot in life; I can only be as I am in life in my journal. Besides, I write this for me, right? Be prepared: this is a long one.
I decided I will continue my “history” at another time. When I complete my profile page, I’ll include a bio there and will give you my nerve-wracking life story that tends to annoy me whenever I tell it. It sounds like a crying game and I hate that. Though perhaps I’ll feel differently when I write it down. For now, I’m going to continue to post some of my stories online. One such story, [ Concrete ], will give you a brief glimpse. It goes back to when I was six years old. (This link will open in another window.)
I have a huge problem writing about myself, especially when I start at the beginning (which is why I love the old rule “start from the middle”). I forget if what I remember is real or imagined. I was an imaginative child and I think my dreams ran wild with humor which I felt at the time should have been my real life. Therefore, when I go back into the grey, purplish matter that is my memory, I swim for the truth. Once the purported truth is in my fist it feels empty and fake. A good story for a book, but not if I want it to be real. Unfortunately, I do remember the “middle,” and have written those stories as best I can. They all seem so utterly cheesy.
I’ll write something that, at the time, I’ll absolutely love. But after leaving them alone for a month, two months, rereading them reminds me of high school short stories that are filled with ideas but terrible, rotten, corny expression. EVERY SINGLE TIME. It drives me insane. I realize that someday, I’ll just have to trust myself.
My secret of the month is that I’m working on writing a children’s book. It’s something I have always wanted to do, but found incredibly challenging. Pyschology is involved, understanding reading levels, how children think. The things I want to write about, however, are self-help books for children. I read my first draft to Jon who found it “too grown up; a lot of issues.”
But my argument is this: those things happen to kids who are young. Not everybody is sheltered and safe. If a child encounters sexual abuse or foster care or learning that their parents are--in a societal point-of-view--“bad,” that child must find a way to realize it happens to others as well. They are not outcasts because life happened to them. Children who are in foster care or sexually abused, though they have read the pamphlets and listened to the school’s guest speakers, still cannot understand why, if it is not their fault, they are receiving bad treatment. To a child, you are being punished when you are taken from your parent(s) or are going into counseling. If it isn’t your fault (your child’s mind thinks), then why are you being punished??
I had to deal with sexual abuse when I was six, eight, ten. I had to deal with abandonment when I ten. Foster care at 10 and 12. I had to deal with learning what kind of people my parents really were. These are all things that “normal” people would regard as “a lot of issues; too grown up.” But to a child: it’s life. There should be something out there for them that can help to “normalize” their feelings. I don’t mean to say that this kind of life should be normal, but it shouldn’t make a child feel like an outcast. Children should know that when something bad happens to them, they are not alone. It has happened before, and still: their lives can be happy. Too much of my childhood was concentrated on ignoring myself because I tried so hard to be “normal.” That ignorance may have helped me get good grades, have a healthy outlook and get me to college (because college and school were my most reliable sources of distraction). But college is over. And now, more than ever before, I’m realizing, without distraction, how deeply the events of my life have affected me. Ignoring life has only allowed that small space inside me, where I’ve compacted terrible event after terrible event, to swell and seep out. There is no longer a lever of distraction to keep it down. It’s spilling over the edges and I find myself wanting to cry when anything goes wrong.
My sister-in-law and brother told me about a lecture a man gave in which he described each person as having a ‘beaker.’ When a person encounters stress, they tuck it away in their beaker. If they don’t relieve that stress, however, by facing it or what have you, they only fill their beaker even more and eventually, the beaker is going to spill over.
When my beaker spills over (it’s probably been spilling over since I was eight years old), I rush to find something to clean. My bedroom, usually. I do it FAST. I fold everything, I organize, I shuffle, I vacuum, I make the bed, I do laundry. I go absolutely insane with cleaning. I don’t talk. I feel pissed off and won’t stop to eat or anything. One day, I cleaned for eleven hours straight, feeling sweaty, tired, and exhausted, not to mention starving: but I could not stop. (I was sore for days and felt absolutely WASTED.)
Cleaning doesn’t do it anymore. I have to face it. I’m hoping that this book (and, of course, my therapy) is the right way to go. Somebody out there needs it. I believe in that. The problem, however, is whether or not people responsible for publishing will understand that. If they don’t have the experience I do, will they understand that when I was eight, any shared experience of that world in my terms would have helped me? There was so much trepidation, fear, a sense of hopelessness. I let the world and events in my life do what they wanted while I read more and more books, studied harder and harder, ignoring what I should have been understanding: I should have known that I could get through it. I should have known that facing it would not have made me too different. I should have know that despite those things, I still had the potential to do great things. I could have read books and studied hard without ignoring my life. I could have really reaped the rewards instead of using those things as weapons against life. If I had lived them instead of buried myself inside, I feel I would have learned more--not simply crammed myself up with papers and homework.
I hope I finish the thought and write the book. If it doesn't go anywhere out here in the real world, every kid in the waiting room of a social service office will pick it up. I'll hand make the damn things. Collages are fun.
It would feel so good to do it.
beam me up, scotty
back up : : index : : moving on
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