| Journal Entries |
| nothing is different now but nothing seems the same and it's all right it's my life. I really do love it, maybe to a point that it's unhealthy. but I just can't give up this diet of eating and drinking and breathing the theatre. I never want to go home. I would sleep in the auditorium if I thought I could get away with it. I want to be a phantom and not need anything or anyone in the world but theatre. i only want to curl up in a corner and listen to the voices onstage until i'm needed. and i can't be heard. october i can't remember the day my eyes sank into my head. it was probably some night on the hearthrug. probably when i got those damn notebooks. when i drew stupid pictures and wrote a poem every night and made up a mystery life for myself. the only worthwhile idea that ever came from those notebooks was the music about ghosts and destruction. there is a big dark monster that i'm afraid of (but it's not the kind i used to be afraid of) and it's following me around and twisting my mind all up in knots. the monster unravels my mind like pig intestines in biology and ties it up in knots so i can't think clearly. suffering in this dream, i was dancing. and i was beautiful, i was precious. soft ballet shoes on a fragile foot. then he came in, dancing too, louder, better. harsh tap shoes snapped where he danced. i panicked and spun myself silly until i winded down and fell to the ground. but no one noticed because there was a boy tap-dancing for them, and the ballerina had wilted before midnight. pieces of you i once knew a boy who hardly ever smiled. he hardly ever smiled because he could never find things worth smiling about. He was confused all the time and could never figure out the people around him. he knew that they thought he was weird, but he didn't know what to do because he didn't know what he was, exactly. he didn't believe in angels and he didn't believe in devils and he wasn't sure you were allowed to believe in humans anymore. I miss you, soo kou. Where are you, big brother? the show must go on now, more than ever... I said, it isn't fair. and the universe looked at me, amused, and said, what, a rebel, little girl? what's fair? I screamed then, the show must go on! it must go on. my existence depends on it. stark raving maybe i've hidden so well that no one can see me anymore- hidden far away and in a different family with a different body. i've got friends there, and i say things there that i don't dare say here. sometimes i bring my mind back here just to say those things to people who deserve it. but not very often. because in real life, i'm one of the deserving, and i learned a few things in italy. let he among us without sin be the first to condemn. i thought that it would be easy to change, wiping my tears as i stepped out of the empty confessional- i had confessed to a blank wooden wall, just as i pray to the inside of my skull and hear nothing but the echoes of my own voice- but america, and people i know with pasts that i'm a part of, and relationships that i'm entangled in, muddle my senses and make me forget the burning guilt and the way i felt as i stared up at statues of people who were burned or skinned alive because they were the kind of people that i want to be. i can only relax with josh. he is non-judgemental and of no particular interest to the demons of my life. he listens to me, and when i tell him things have changed, he believes me and goes with it. he is as shifting as sand. i understand sand. and you are as steady as a rock. i understand rock. divided this is so stupid. this is so stupid. i can't express in words how stupid this is. my mind is divided, truly divided into more than hemispheres. i'm two different people living on different sides of the world. the happy me is so, so far away. fairy way. i'm crying as i type this. if emily thinks she's anxious it's nothing to what's threatening to vomit out of my stomach. and i wish it would. just so i could be rid of it. i'm worried about you because you've got the weight of everyone's worlds on your shoulders- let me walk that last mile in your shoes, under the weight of the wood. i'm worried about you because you know so much and feel so much and change so much, even you don't know what you are today. you can't seem to decide whether it's better to know the difference between right and left and right and wrong. johnny can't decide- johnny wants to hide. i'm worried about you because you are the beautiful me, and i must scare you when you think of how alike we are. i worry about you because you worry too, and i can't do anything for you but be another worry doll. i'm worried about you simply because you are so close to me, you are my solnishka lisnoya, and it can't be long before my grip on you takes you over the edge i'm precariously balancing on. and you are so happy and i daren't tell you how barking insane i am for fear of losing my only friend. there are shadows of the past, nameless ghosts of worry that flit across my confused and screaming mind. and i lash out and go rash and all that i get for it later is regret and fear, lurking around my muscles. sarah told me all your friends had abandoned you. i am the remorse in the painting looking backward. with all the black i wear i can't see the naked truth, where's she pointing? i can't be her, shrouded, and the laughing wine god too. they are hemispheres away. already i am feeling foolish. i don't really deserve to feel like this. you got to be really cool to have real emotions, around here. your failure give me a number. it's the sad little snippet that keeps going through my head. give me a number instead of a name. please. i'd love to see you do it. i know the number, even: one, chalked on the surface. the first. the guinea pig of destruction. a failure of a project. because here i am, still laughing, still living a productive life. with a future, you little streak of piss, which is something you can't take away from me. with friends. real friends who can sit with me and say: don't mind him; we love you because you are our friend. and i can say those things to them. it's not a matter of who said what to whom and when, it's a matter of once upon a time there were some people who realized that they liked being with each other, and called it friendship. with family. something you do not understand, because my family is not one of betrayal. you cannot comprehend a family of protection and comfort, and that will be your downfall because families don't let each other be torn apart by some starved malicious wolf. even small furry creatures will turn and fight like hell when their own flesh and blood, clay of their clay, are threatened. that is why you did not succeed with me, and that is why you never will. i hope it says something a little more reassuring i am picking up plastic bags from jitterbug wings in the classroom. "i'm really stressed out." parker is playing the guitar, a tune i don't recognize. the set is being pushed by techies and stage managers, filling in for freshman stagehands who had to go home at ten. it spins around, ridiculous, turning around itself like scenery ballet or a titanic maypole dance. willie has turned off the stopwatch in exasperation. i am biting my knuckles, trying not to laugh, but parker's face turns pink with laughter. the skin around his eyes wrinkles, he coughs and wheezes and seems very, very old. the rainbow projector is beautiful. parker watches while eric adjusts it on the catwalk, higher, higher, lower, get it off the torms. parker sings: "some day we'll find it, the rainbow projector-" i burst in, "the lovers, the dreamers, and me!" it's one of my favorite songs. the lyrics are on my bedroom wall. "we are in the shadows. no one will applaud for us. no one will say we did a good job if a show goes well, but they'll blame us if it goes badly. that's what we have to give up." "this is where the fun is," i say, watching willie teach the next scene change to the stagehands. "it's not for everybody," parker says. "curtain calls can be very difficult. sometimes caitlin had to leave because it was too hard for her, because it wasn't her up there taking the bows. me, it makes me feel like a father when i see it." i don't know how i'll feel when i see it, but i know i won't leave while my cast are taking their bows. the song i will save for another rainy day, after another late night, on another lonely morning before the theatre awakes. rats now we are seniors, but we are still theatre rats; we bite each others' tails and fight in the aisles, scrabbling for lordship over a few feet of a vast vaccuum, a gaping blackness enclosed by thick, inescapable walls. in so many ways we are still freshmen. sunday when the sickness is catching it's sunday and i feel all wrong again. i don't belong here sitting next to my open window reading. i feel like going somewhere. i feel like going somewhere and picking an apple off a tree and walking off into sunlight. i feel like walking while my shadow gets longer and longer. i feel like riding my bike through a thunderstorm. i feel like standing in the wind my hair streaming out behind me and screaming. i feel like screaming until the earth opens up and screams with me. "that's the way it was in my mind," she said. sunday is for rest and sleep and family. but we are missing a little bit of everything here. these walls are filled with wordless sorrow. the radio plays and the sink runs but the living dead walking in this house are silent and hollow. we can't live without a piece of our hearts. this little piggy was at college this little piggy was in the school play this little piggy played video games and this little piggy was locked away wednesday, post meridian in my dream, people are running in and out of our room, past me in the hallways, around me wherever i am standing completely still. they all have a mission and they all know each other. some voices call to me, some demons are beckoning- one of them is david. he is changing his name after he marries deedra. my brother and my father need towels; they are going to the banya. Liz and mike have places to go, things to do, but I remain in my bed, paralyzed with sleep and sloth, and when I wake up I am hovering in the place between sleep and awake and the words are ringing in my ears: this is purgatory. toy-land why do old scars suddenly look so dramatic on my arms, and yet-untouched skin look so inviting? this is what comes from self-loathing and tears that can't escape my eyes. this is what passes between my ears when i stare off into space and see nothing, nothing, except a world that doesn't want me in it and vomits its filth in the street and i have to pick my way through it, following my own shadow in a dream that won't end even when i fight to open my eyes. |