It is freaking cold here, and my porch is unpleasant, and my feet are like icicles, and I hate it. Boo. Time for hibernation. And a hot shower.
I had a dream last night about an old friend. She was someone I went to high school with and then to college with for the first year, and for the first couple of months of that year, we were the best of friends. We hung out, we gossiped, we shared a video rental card. Then she got a girlfriend (who was also her roommate, which... bad move; but I digress) and a whole host of new friends, and I was dropped like the proverbial hot potato. I think I only saw her in passing after that, after maybe a month of trying to salvage at least an acquaintanceship, which only made me feel worse, because it was like driving the thorn of friend-rejection even deeper and faster into my tender 18-year-old heart.
God, that hurt, and it still does when I think about it. And I still don't understand what happened.
But in my dream last night there was no rancor, and barely any of the usual dream-weirdness. Just chatting and catching up and pleasantries. And when I woke up, I thought about all the other people I miss, people who have left my life for various reasons, particularly those who have left in confusing ways. I imagine the leaving might be my fault, but I don't know. And maybe I don't want to know -- maybe they think I am annoying or mean or boring or a huge pain in the ass or not worth the effort of knowing -- but maybe a hard dose of the truth would be better than wondering. It wouldn't linger as shapelessly in my subconscious, and would sting for a while like a hard slap and then fade and dissipate. And maybe it wouldn't take almost 15 years for me to dream of a bland and pleasant reconciliation.
I think this sounds a little angry, like an accusation, but I know I've been on the other end of this too, and really it just makes me sad, and it made me cry for a bit this morning before the clock radio clicked on and drowned out my small sorrows with the sounds of bigger ones.
#1: I know I'm not a loser. I was just having a little pity party for myself, but I think I'm over it now. It happens to the best of us.
#2: I'm going to watch baseball AND eat pie (strawberry rhubarb) tonight. Yay.
I am grumpy this week, which takes a lot of energy, and I hit the end of my reserves last night. I was tired of trying, tired of organizing, but also bored and lonely. I wanted to do something, sort of, but didn't want to make the effort. "Let them come to me!" I thought, in a nasty, snarly way.
When I feel like this, when I have things to say but haven't, when they've been gnawing at me and poisoning my brain and my gut, when I feel like no one gives a shit, when I'm in "nobody likes me everybody hates me I'm going to go eat worms 'cause I suck" mode, I like to formulate tests. Super secret tests that no one knows about and that absolutely everyone fails.
Because people CAN'T READ MY FUCKING MIND. Duh.
So, really, everyone fails my tests, but I'm the one who loses. And I felt like a loser last night, and I still feel like one today.
In one episode of Top Model (shut up), the "models" were tasked with posing halfway up a rock-climbing wall while wearing couture gowns and stiletto heels. When asked what she was thinking while she was posing, one girl -- the one from Yale, who is clearly very smart but also irritating (which is a refreshing change from clearly dumb and also irritating) -- said she "felt like a sea nymph on acid scaling a wall in the sunshine."
I laughed.
I think I need to get out more.
Somehow, after staying up to watch the end of the blowout last night, I woke up this morning at 6:30 and stumbled to the gym. And proceeded to put my pants on backwards and reinjure my hip on the demonic elliptical trainer.
I think the rest of the day might be devoted to watching America's Next Top Model (shut up) and eating rice pudding.
To illustrate further my domestic insanity, I will tell you that I just scrubbed the kitchen floor. This is no small feat, which you know if you've seen my kitchen floor, which is large and wooden with a million dirty crevices. I scrubbed it on my hands and knees, with a scrub brush, working in clockwise and counterclockwise circles, loosening the dirt and cooking grease and dried garbagey splatters. Then I mopped up the grey sludge with more soap and water, and then I mopped/squeegeed it again with more water.
It still looks kinda dirty.
I finished a project on Monday, spent most of yesterday thinking and moping, and today I have turned into Suzy fucking homemaker. Folding laundry, doing more laundry, cleaning, washing dishes, and making rice pudding. Really, rice pudding (sans zombie fruits, of course). And clearing out my space in the refrigerator to make room for said rice pudding. (I threw away some truly disgusting, oozing things, and now have only bread, cheese, apples, condiments, and vitamins.) Oh, and drinking coffee. Lots of coffee. Zooooom.
These things had to be done, and I have the time now, so why not, I guess. Though I suspect I am drawn to busywork now because I am tired of thinking and silently raging and questioning my tenuously constructed reality.
Maybe later I will take a Valium and chase that with a pitcher of martinis, like homemakers of yore.
You can all thank me for wearing my lucky sweater.
When I was 8, maybe 10 years old, after I had experienced some kind of deep disappointment (I suspect it was when my school was going to be on Double Dare but then couldn't at the last minute, which was totally devastating after daydreaming for weeks about getting slimed and winning fabulous prizes), I remember thinking, "I am never going to get excited about anything ever again. It just makes it worse when it doesn't happen."
I was precocious that way, realizing early on that the Universe is perverse and often cruel, and sometimes seems hell-bent on quashing any feelings of euphoria. I think around this time I also developed my deep streak of magical thinking, and turned the original thought, "It just makes it worse when it doesn't happen," into "It makes it not happen." It seems a little ridiculous when I articulate it, but I do think that way sometimes, and see myself as a little feelings-trickster: by pretending not to care about something important, I can somehow make things go my way. If the Universe doesn't catch a whiff of my deep desires, it won't try to block them.
I was thinking about this last night, and it made me so fucking sad. Approaching life this way is no way to really live, buried in pessimism and suppressed hope. It's numbing and blunted. It's paranoid. It's cheating myself, not the Universe.
Acknowledging it, though, made me feel happier, lighter. I felt free, and there was some clarity, and I bounced around a little bit as I listened to The Ramones on my way home. Gabba gabba hey!
It won't be easy, but I'm going to try to replace this chunk of perverse thinking with something better. Hope for joy and feel it and and feel grateful for it and not worry so much about when it's going to end.