So I wrote this for a sketch journal during the end of February at 11:30 the night before it was due. For the prompt, we were given a phrase to use as a title and jumping off point.
Being Here
Being here is harder than it should be. It’s more discouraging than I expected, more painful to see the blank page than it has been before. Not knowing what will happen in the space that links one sentence to the next is a little bit like being underwater in the dark or falling asleep in the daytime.
The sources of my worry have become endless. I am tired and I need to sleep, but there is too much to be done before tomorrow and the day after that. I don’t know where I am going to college. I don’t know what I will study in college. I don’t know what I will do after college, how I will make money, where I will find work, whether or not I will be able to make a living and succeed—I don’t have a definition for success or failure, either.
I don’t have a definition for a lot of things.
There is too much I don’t understand, like politics and art. It all seems far too complex to wrap my mind around, especially since I’ve started feeling tired and unfocused all of the time. It makes me nervous and terrified, in a sense. There are just too many things to fill my days, too many places I need to get to. There are so many books I need to read, so many stories I think I want to tell, but I can never figure out what they are about (if I could do this, everything might be easier).
Being here reminds me that I need to sleep but also that I have too many things I have to do before that. I’m feeling apprehensive, and my throat keeps drying out every five minutes, and the clock just keeps moving me forward. Being here is a funny thing, and I always prefer writing in the present, maybe just because it’s easy.
-
It's interesting for me to look at what has changed since I wrote this. I finally do know where I am going to college, but I am no less apprehensive about it and what will happen during and after it. If anything, making the decision has only made the reality of going away next year more real. I'm no doubt still in denial, just like I'm in denial that school is over and that I have to move on (though I'm not really done--I still have a final tomorrow, along with a make-up AP French exam).
This means that is the work is just about over, and that means summer. I am both incredibly excited and nervous for this summer. I worry that I will waste it, that I won't do enough, that I won't do anything new or take any risks. I never take risks. I worry too much about trying to figure people out that I reduce everything to a constant game of waiting. I've been complaining a lot recently about my irrational fears because they are truly ridiculous and make things a whole lot more difficult than they need to be. It makes me want to rip out my hair and sometimes my teeth. I have already done the bang-my-head-against-my-locker thing. I am sometimes a mess.
Anway, today I was watching Will & Grace (HAHAHAHAHAHA), and it was the last episode of the last season. It made me really sad because in the end, it moved into the futures of the main characters. Seeing them older somehow made the reality of aging more real than it has ever been. I am worried that I will waste not only my summer, but my entire life. I could see myself waiting it away. While watching the episode, I imagined myself never getting off of my couch, never doing anything, never accomplishing anything. It was pretty devastating. I'm nervous and worried and stressed out, and I thought it was supposed to be summer.
I really don't know what to do. I feel torn. I feel like I am stuck in limbo (like the tooth fairy in Toothless). I don't know whether I should be realistic at this point or do something risky, something semi-illogical. But is it illogical? I seem like a logical person, but really I don't have any sense of logic. I can rarely figure things out. I keep telling myself, "You will regret being static. You will regret sitting on your ass and not putting yourself out there." I can hear myself saying this, but sometimes I open my mouth and decide to wait.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Real Women
I wrote this story recently for class, and I feel like it is one of the few real stories I have ever written. It's a bit clunky, but I'm happy to have written something that has a plot. (Also, I don't like the formatting of this blog! I won't let me indent my paragraphs, so I inserted a line of white space for the break between paragraphs.)
Today feels like syrup. My mother has set Van Morrison on the turn table in the house, and his drawl curls out through the open patio doors into the backyard. She’s drinking a glass of ice tea the color of honey and listening to the music. Sometimes during a song her head falls back over the edge of the lawn chair and her body sinks down into the seat. I pretend not to notice.
“Mom, can I have some ice tea?” I am floating in our tiny plastic pool which is small enough that my head and my toes almost touch the opposite sides.
“Sure,” she says back to me, eyes closed, skin baking in the sun. “The pitcher is next to the sink.”
I stand up in the pool, the water reaching below my knees, and step over the plastic side. I pad across the grass and the concrete of the patio. Dark footprints appear like tiny leaves on the concrete, then fade in the sunlight. As I cross the threshold of the house, the music swells in my ears. The ice tea is next to the sink, just like my mother said, and light from the window above the faucet passes through the pitcher into strange golden shapes on the linoleum counter. I pull a chair up and take a tall plastic cup off the top shelf of the cabinet. I step back down and fill the cup halfway.
An ice cube stuck in the lip of the pitcher jumps onto the counter. I pick it up, press it to my cheek. It is cold and slippery. I drag it down to the spot on my neck where I can feel my blood moving, then down over my heart. My hand slides farther, and the ice slips into the divot of my bellybutton. It melts against my sunburn, stinging, and slips between my fingers, landing in the puddle stretching out from my feet.
I hurry to the hall closet in search of a towel to clean up the water in the kitchen before my mother notices. I always forget to dry off when I come inside. The towel I grab is green and blue with huge turtles swimming across it. I use it to mop up the water by the sink and on the chair I stood on before I go back outside.
My mother is asleep in her lawn chair when I finally step into the sunlight. Her ice tea sits on the concrete, almost empty. I return to the pool, but it is full of more grass than I remember, so I put my ice tea on the patio with my mother and then pick up one side of the pool until the water starts pouring over and out of the other end. The sound of the water rushing out and hitting the grass makes me think the yard is filling up, like the world is flooding or something. My mother would not be happy if she saw me like this, emptying all this water straight onto the grass. She tells me it’s bad for the lawn, but I don’t care. She’ll be asleep for another hour, if not more. The sun does this to her. It does it to us all. It drains me, makes me feel like nights when I come inside with dirty feet and damp hair after a day with the kids on the block.
When the pool is empty, I set it back down. The ground is soft beneath my feet, and I feel myself sink a bit into its muddy interior. I get my ice tea and step into the empty pool. I lie down, stretch out across its ridged bottom, staring up. The sun has washed out the sky, making it a pale blue, a dry blue. The clouds look lazy as they move through the syrup of the atmosphere.
I close my eyes, and, from the inside, my eyelids look red, like they are on fire.
I awake to a sky still pale and dry, to skin pink and sticky, to a nearly evaporated glass of ice tea. I sit up, and the skin of my back peels away from the burning plastic of the pool. I rub my eyes. My mother is still asleep on the patio, but now the shade from the house protects her from the violent hand of the sun. Beyond the cyclone fence our neighbor Jill is jumping rope down the sidewalk, and she waves as she gets closer.
“Do you want to play?” she asks me.
“Sure.”
“You’ve got a lot of sunburn.”
“Yeah, I know.” I stumble up and out of the tiny pool, knocking my glass over. I imagine the sound of ice cubes skating across the plastic, but they all melted in the heat. Wearing only my bathing suit, I hurry after Jill, who is already jumping rope across the street. She discards it on her lawn and skips up to her front door.
“My Mom is asleep,” she tells me. “So it’s okay if you come in.”
I follow her into the house. She takes off her sandals and puts them next to the door. My shoes are still in my backyard. Jill moves through her living room and opens her hall closet. She reaches up and grabs a tall white bottle.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“For your sunburn,” she says and beckons me to follow. We walk into her bedroom and plop onto her bed. Her comforter is soft and pink, and my burnt skin camouflages me in its folds. She untwists the top of the bottle and pours some lotion onto her palm. She offers me some, saying, “I’ve seen my Mom use this when she had some bad sunburn.”
Together, we are four hands rubbing the lotion across my pink shoulders, pink arms, pink belly, and pink legs, spreading and spreading until its white color disappears into my skin. The lotion cools me down, helps the sting subside.
Jill puts the bottle back into the closet and asks if I want to play house. I know that house is Jill’s favorite game. She decides that she will be the Mom and that I will be the Dad. We sit at the tiny table in her room and eat our pretend dinner. We cradle her stuffed animals like pretend babies and sing them songs before we put them to bed. She tells me that, now, since the children are asleep, we can go to the opera, have a night on the town. She brings me to her dress up trunk and opens it in search of our fancy clothes. She takes out a dark red dress for herself and hands me a green one with flowers racing from the shoulders all the way down to the hem. We work or way inside our dresses, getting lost in all the fabric. Jill gets into hers first and helps me find the hole for my head, guides my arms into their proper openings. We grab hats and shoes and stand in front of the full-length mirror in her hallway, admiring ourselves. I have never seen myself dressed up like this. We laugh at the two kids in the mirror swimming in dresses meant for real women. We do funny dances and make funny faces. Jill finds her mother’s lipstick and paints our faces bright red, beautiful bright red.
Jill’s mother is still asleep when I leave and cross the street barefoot. I look up again at the pale, dry sky and the flaming sun. It is late in the afternoon and my mother is still asleep, too, her body slumped deep into the seat of the lawn chair.
I take my glass from the empty plastic pool and my mother’s from the patio, and I place them in the sink. The pitcher of ice tea sits still on the counter.
I go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, at the red mess of my lips. The lipstick is still smeared across them. I shut the blinds and close the door and turn off the lights and just stare at myself in the mirror. I am red. And in the dark I am as deep a red as Jill’s dress. I look just like the image of Jill in that mirror, swimming in her red dress, trying to be a real woman. I wonder why I don’t look more like myself.
I turn on the water and scrub at my face, at the red lipstick. I scrub my skin until it feels raw, but it only gets redder.
Today feels like syrup. My mother has set Van Morrison on the turn table in the house, and his drawl curls out through the open patio doors into the backyard. She’s drinking a glass of ice tea the color of honey and listening to the music. Sometimes during a song her head falls back over the edge of the lawn chair and her body sinks down into the seat. I pretend not to notice.
“Mom, can I have some ice tea?” I am floating in our tiny plastic pool which is small enough that my head and my toes almost touch the opposite sides.
“Sure,” she says back to me, eyes closed, skin baking in the sun. “The pitcher is next to the sink.”
I stand up in the pool, the water reaching below my knees, and step over the plastic side. I pad across the grass and the concrete of the patio. Dark footprints appear like tiny leaves on the concrete, then fade in the sunlight. As I cross the threshold of the house, the music swells in my ears. The ice tea is next to the sink, just like my mother said, and light from the window above the faucet passes through the pitcher into strange golden shapes on the linoleum counter. I pull a chair up and take a tall plastic cup off the top shelf of the cabinet. I step back down and fill the cup halfway.
An ice cube stuck in the lip of the pitcher jumps onto the counter. I pick it up, press it to my cheek. It is cold and slippery. I drag it down to the spot on my neck where I can feel my blood moving, then down over my heart. My hand slides farther, and the ice slips into the divot of my bellybutton. It melts against my sunburn, stinging, and slips between my fingers, landing in the puddle stretching out from my feet.
I hurry to the hall closet in search of a towel to clean up the water in the kitchen before my mother notices. I always forget to dry off when I come inside. The towel I grab is green and blue with huge turtles swimming across it. I use it to mop up the water by the sink and on the chair I stood on before I go back outside.
My mother is asleep in her lawn chair when I finally step into the sunlight. Her ice tea sits on the concrete, almost empty. I return to the pool, but it is full of more grass than I remember, so I put my ice tea on the patio with my mother and then pick up one side of the pool until the water starts pouring over and out of the other end. The sound of the water rushing out and hitting the grass makes me think the yard is filling up, like the world is flooding or something. My mother would not be happy if she saw me like this, emptying all this water straight onto the grass. She tells me it’s bad for the lawn, but I don’t care. She’ll be asleep for another hour, if not more. The sun does this to her. It does it to us all. It drains me, makes me feel like nights when I come inside with dirty feet and damp hair after a day with the kids on the block.
When the pool is empty, I set it back down. The ground is soft beneath my feet, and I feel myself sink a bit into its muddy interior. I get my ice tea and step into the empty pool. I lie down, stretch out across its ridged bottom, staring up. The sun has washed out the sky, making it a pale blue, a dry blue. The clouds look lazy as they move through the syrup of the atmosphere.
I close my eyes, and, from the inside, my eyelids look red, like they are on fire.
I awake to a sky still pale and dry, to skin pink and sticky, to a nearly evaporated glass of ice tea. I sit up, and the skin of my back peels away from the burning plastic of the pool. I rub my eyes. My mother is still asleep on the patio, but now the shade from the house protects her from the violent hand of the sun. Beyond the cyclone fence our neighbor Jill is jumping rope down the sidewalk, and she waves as she gets closer.
“Do you want to play?” she asks me.
“Sure.”
“You’ve got a lot of sunburn.”
“Yeah, I know.” I stumble up and out of the tiny pool, knocking my glass over. I imagine the sound of ice cubes skating across the plastic, but they all melted in the heat. Wearing only my bathing suit, I hurry after Jill, who is already jumping rope across the street. She discards it on her lawn and skips up to her front door.
“My Mom is asleep,” she tells me. “So it’s okay if you come in.”
I follow her into the house. She takes off her sandals and puts them next to the door. My shoes are still in my backyard. Jill moves through her living room and opens her hall closet. She reaches up and grabs a tall white bottle.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“For your sunburn,” she says and beckons me to follow. We walk into her bedroom and plop onto her bed. Her comforter is soft and pink, and my burnt skin camouflages me in its folds. She untwists the top of the bottle and pours some lotion onto her palm. She offers me some, saying, “I’ve seen my Mom use this when she had some bad sunburn.”
Together, we are four hands rubbing the lotion across my pink shoulders, pink arms, pink belly, and pink legs, spreading and spreading until its white color disappears into my skin. The lotion cools me down, helps the sting subside.
Jill puts the bottle back into the closet and asks if I want to play house. I know that house is Jill’s favorite game. She decides that she will be the Mom and that I will be the Dad. We sit at the tiny table in her room and eat our pretend dinner. We cradle her stuffed animals like pretend babies and sing them songs before we put them to bed. She tells me that, now, since the children are asleep, we can go to the opera, have a night on the town. She brings me to her dress up trunk and opens it in search of our fancy clothes. She takes out a dark red dress for herself and hands me a green one with flowers racing from the shoulders all the way down to the hem. We work or way inside our dresses, getting lost in all the fabric. Jill gets into hers first and helps me find the hole for my head, guides my arms into their proper openings. We grab hats and shoes and stand in front of the full-length mirror in her hallway, admiring ourselves. I have never seen myself dressed up like this. We laugh at the two kids in the mirror swimming in dresses meant for real women. We do funny dances and make funny faces. Jill finds her mother’s lipstick and paints our faces bright red, beautiful bright red.
Jill’s mother is still asleep when I leave and cross the street barefoot. I look up again at the pale, dry sky and the flaming sun. It is late in the afternoon and my mother is still asleep, too, her body slumped deep into the seat of the lawn chair.
I take my glass from the empty plastic pool and my mother’s from the patio, and I place them in the sink. The pitcher of ice tea sits still on the counter.
I go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, at the red mess of my lips. The lipstick is still smeared across them. I shut the blinds and close the door and turn off the lights and just stare at myself in the mirror. I am red. And in the dark I am as deep a red as Jill’s dress. I look just like the image of Jill in that mirror, swimming in her red dress, trying to be a real woman. I wonder why I don’t look more like myself.
I turn on the water and scrub at my face, at the red lipstick. I scrub my skin until it feels raw, but it only gets redder.
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