Here it is. The entire month of September for the year 2001. Don't you just feel like a part of my life? Doesn't it make you all warm & fuzzy inside to know that I'm sharing a part of myself with you? I know it does. Read on, starting from the bottom.
September 28th, 2001: This year feels good. It feels good to know people and to know this place and to know my place in it. Last year was all about being lost and confused and unsure of myself. I felt like I had to force myself to make friends and to do everything that my roommates wanted me to and to go to clubs and bars and frat parties because that's what normal college students are supposed to do. But I'm not a normal college student. I went to clubs and bars and frat parties last year, and I did have fun, but while I was at those places, I knew that I wasn't being myself. I'm anti-social by nature but social by habit. I go to bars to see bands and parties to see friends, but I don't want to be a drunk and I don't want to be picked up by drunks and I don't want to feel like I have to dance because my drunken friends think I should. And therein lies my problem. I have no idea where I fit in, and because of that, I've become three separate people for my three types of friends:
There's the Katie I was as a child. I held high my Christian values and morals, was nice to a fault, and was all right with being just like all of my friends. Christian Katie is still very prominent around my church-y friends, when I whip out Biblical knowledge, tell everyone that I believe that pre-marital sex is bad, and say that homosexuality is definitely a choice (though I usually try to avoid voicing my opinion of whether it's right or wrong to protect myself from lashings). This is the Katie whom my grandma wants me to be, for this Katie would end up with a good Christian husband and raise a slew of good Christian children and be incredibly repressed and close-minded. And really, I'm all about finding a good Christian husband who wants to impregnate me with one or two Christian children if we decide that that's what we want. The problem with this is that none of the good Christian men I've met seem to care about the same superficial things that I care about right now, things like indie music and clothes. I don't mind that I care about superficial things, and I don't think that it's ridiculous to expect my husband to care about those things, too, but I don't want to rule out anyone who doesn't care about those things in case I later realise that those things aren't important. Actually, I know right now that they aren't important. But I like them, darn it! The problem with this group is that I don't think they would accept me for who I really am, so I feel like I really can't get close to them.
Then, there's the uninhibited Katie. This is the Katie whom all of my beautiful, art-y friends know, because along with beautiful and art-y comes a large capacity for drinkin' and sexin', it seems, and this Katie is about having fun. I can drink whatever my friends buy for me. I can nearly rebuke my religion. I can talk about nothing but all of the men that Uninhibited Katie's friends believe I've been with. I can even agree to smoke cheeba with my friend Sue sometime, just because she thinks I would be fun to be high with. This Katie's beautiful comrades only care about indie music and clothes and are either so incredibly clever that I feel tiny next to them or so incredibly dim-witted that it hurts me to be around them. I enjoy these people because they like the theatre and art museums and ballet and writing poetry and singing and playing music and all of the things that I like. They all share my style but have so much more of it that it amazes me. The funny thing about this group is that even though I know that they would accept me for who I really am and be impressed with the fact that I'm so confident in myself, I still feel like I need to be someone else around them.
And then there's Katie Ett. I'm one big ball of mass confusion. I'm a mixture of believer and doubter, pure and impure, repressed and open-minded, used and user, lover and hater, dork and geek. I don't know who would ever want to be friends with me, really. I don't know how anyone could possibly dig through all of my impossible to uncover my incredible. But a few have. Tracey, Chicago Mike, Katie (The BIG K.N.), Jonathan, Bethany . . . maybe Dave's Mike. Wow, I've never realised how lucky I am to have five or six people who I feel know where I'm coming from. That's amazing. Lately, I've made this rash of good-time friends, which is something that I absolutely cannot stand. I feel like I'm constantly searching for truth and beauty and fulfillment, while my shallow acquaintances are searching for ways to fit in. Let's take my friend Joshua, for instance. I have no idea what to think of him. One minute, he's shielding me from Jarred's evil and divulging his secrets to me, and then the next, he's suddenly not talking to me because he's interested in one of my suitemates. That's not cool. And it's certainly not cool that all of the people on my floor are the type who only do things that everyone else is doing. To use Joshua as an example again, he was going to go see the movie Bandits last night, because Jarred had picked up a load of free tickets. However, when practically no one on the floor could go, he suddenly got all sad and pouty and said that he didn't really feel like going, either. Now, had I been one of the people going, I would have beaten Joshua with large trout. I have a feeling that he wasn't motivated once he found out that the suitemate of mine whom he digs wasn't going, but still. Even if he and Jarred would have been the only ones able to be there, he still should have been proud just to have been invited.
Maybe I give myself too much credit. Maybe I'm just as empty as everyone else. Maybe there's nothing about me to understand, and that's what makes me so difficult. I feel like I've made myself into this person who can't be as simple as everyone else. Like the more snob I am, the more I complain about the state of things, the more ready everyone else is to call me on my actions. Which makes perfect sense. But it's like one massive cycle. I honestly think it's going to end up being the death of me. I'll set these standards for myself and then begin to question whether or not they're high enough, so I'll set them higher and the pressure to live up to them will become so incredible that I'll just implode. I'll implode into my belly button.
September 10th, 2001: I just discovered today that I don't like the taste of garlic. I know that I'm not supposed to like the taste of garlic, as no one is supposed to like the taste of garlic, but I really had never considered the thought that I may not like it. I had garlic butter spaghetti last week sometime, and although the pasta itself was fantastic, the sauce left something to be desired, though I didn't know why at the time. And then today, as I tasted my first bite of some random garlic-flavoured boxed mashed potatoes that I bought during the school year when I was without the means to make homemade mashed potatoes, I realised that the garlic was what had killed my spaghetti. But wait! What about garlic toast? Garlic toast is good. Maybe it's the butter that always accompanies the garlic on the toast. But wait! That wouldn't explain the garlic butter spaghetti phenomena, would it? Incredible. Someone help?
September 9th, 2001: So, I'm an infatuation junkie. I find it absolutely necessary to be pseudo-obsessing over one or many men at any given time. The number of men and the men themselves rotate every week, every day, or every hour, depending on my mood. I do it for fun, to simply amuse myself. My actual standards for husband material are far too ridiculous for me to ever buckle down and spend time searching for someone to live up to them, so I whittle my life away with easy prey. Oh, how I love easy prey. You know the type - simple-minded, without passion for anything, very accepting of their places in life. Easy prey is fun, because their easy acquisition leads to easy disposal when needed. And disposal is always needed. I've realised and accepted this. But sometimes I can't force myself to do the disposing.
One such experience involves my friend Nick, whom I've cuddled and cursed and been consoled by. I swore that Nick loved me. Or I at least swore that Nick wanted to love me but couldn't because of his perpetual state of girlfriendedness. I didn't love Nick, but I certainly wanted to. He's just so attentive and seemingly selfless and all-around boy-next-door type. I like that, and I wanted a little piece of it. Well, after waiting around for weeks or months or years, I finally asked Nick if he was going to admit to loving me or not. And he asked me if I could try to keep myself from loving him. Apparently, he didn't love me. I had taken a whiff of my own emissions and passed out on them. See, I'm a never-ending supply of false emotions. I have a bad habit of letting people think that I'm attracted to them when I'm not. I'm not hurting myself in the least, and it gives other people a bit of a self-esteem boost. I've always thought it to be a good thing. And then I was attacked by Nick's forked tongue, which said all of the right things and allowed my believing brain to think that I could love him.
But the aftermath of the whole incident has been wonderful. I got to pretend to be mad at Nick for a few short minutes, which was exciting. Actually, I was angry that he had told me that he wasn't sure about his feelings for me earlier when he had actually been quite sure of them all along, but I'm terribly good at forgetting things like that, so I was all about maintaining a normal friendship with him. And then, I came to work the next day, and there Nick was, walking toward me, so what did I do? Yes, I marched myself right into an office where he couldn't bother me. But when I emerged, there he was still, and when I turned the opposite way to avoid him, he called to me, reaching out his hand and asking if I was all right. And I totally blew him off. It was just something that I needed to do. I needed to be the one in control for two seconds. I needed him to know that I wasn't about to waste my time with him.
And then things were normal. In fact, that night, I invited him to meet Mike the VTL and me at a little bar called Bernie's to see a little band called The Proms play. He acted as if he was going to come, but I highly doubted that he would put in an appearance. And that's when things started to make sense. Things so rarely make sense. I don't think that things are supposed to make sense. But they did last Monday at Bernie's. When I got inside, I scoped out the place a bit and saw about 400 of my acquaintances, but I didn't want to attach myself to any of them, so I took a quick trip to the bathroom to wet my eyes and then stood by myself for the remainder of a random punk band's set. When Random Punk Band was finished, I scooted toward the back of the bar to find myself a bench on which to mold myself to until Mike showed up, and lo and behold, I found him already there. Apparently, I had walked right past him on my blind trip to the bathroom, my eyes only able to focus on Modest Mouse-lovin' Adam, who had also been seated. So I sat with Mike and mocked the literature that he was hoarding in his bag until he moved toward the front to watch another random punk band. And during Random Punk Band #2, I thought about Nick. I thought about the fact that he wasn't going to come and the fact that he wasn't going to call to tell me that he wasn't going to come and the fact that I didn't really want him to come.
That was a shocker for me, my not wanting him to show up after all. But I realised that Nick doesn't fit into that scene at all. Where I adapt myself to my surroundings, Nick is Nick is Nick wherever Nick is. I could never take Nick to a Modest Mouse concert, because he would be totally out of place. He would wear a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts and would want to be listening to ZZ Top instead, and I would pity him. An awakening! An epiphany! It was then that I really began to feel in control of myself, and I'm really not sure that that should be allowed with someone like me. Having control over my life lets me feel too powerful around Nick. It's incredible now to see him at work and to have the ability to recognise that he's not right for me at all, which he tried to tell my unhearing ears. And I don't mean to just be wanking off at the mouth about Nick, because he really is great. He's great for listening to my pettiness and liking me in spite of it and for walking me out to my car every day after work and for loving his girlfriend like he does.
But Nick could never make me feel inferior, and I've decided that that's what I need. I need to know that the man I love could belittle me in all ways if he so chose. But I need him to think that I'm superior to him in every way, too. I don't know if that's logical. I don't know if I'm logical. But wow, do I feel like I am. And I don't feel the need to obsess over anyone right now. I am the captain of my soul. I'm not it's noisiest passenger. Give me a day or two, I suppose.