SheFallsSoftly

The defining characteristic of this week has been the sheer overature of time constraints and activities needing to be done… All of this stress is causing me to dream more often, and the dreams are more and more disturbing. I imagine that what causes this is something like the following;

Like all animals, Casey creates waste must be released from her body in order for her to live. Trees do this by releasing oxygen, aerobic respirators by releasing carbon dioxide, and so on. Casey generates extra "emo" in everyday life that must be released into her journal or some other mechanism. When she doesn’t find the time to release this emo, she suffers from what is formally known as emo obstruction. This is a backup of emo waste that has lodged itself into Casey’s subconcious that causes disturbing and over-emotive dreams which trouble her ability to properly rest. This is supposed to trigger late night emo-release via panicked phone calls and journal entries, however this may not always work. Emo is a toxic substance, and can be deadly when left in the body for too long of a period.

Next week, I’ll draw diagrams.

"Half the world and the broken sea lie between you and me"-Sarah Teasdale, Sleepless

So I overstimate the distance. We’ll call it poetic hyperbole.

I’ve been listening to Death Cab for Cutie pretty much nonstop for the last 3 weeks… this isn’t so boring as one might assume, as I have five full CDs which I shuffle through. The music is incredibly apt to describe my life.

My older sister makes fun of me a lot, because she and I are so different. Robyn’s always had some problems with focusing in school, never really cared enough. She’s been struggling, recently, trying to decide what to do for a living. Even at her current job, she never stays in one place very long. She is, however, dating a boy that she’s completely in love with and will likely be with for many years to come. She’s got the relationship thing under control. I, on the other hand, have always been spectacularly able to devote myself to school. I can work one completely atrocious job and feel completely contented in it. Relationships, however have always been very turbulent in my life. I’ve never really been able to commit to the person I was with fully, whether it be by my own fault or theirs. I never quite get over the last before moving on to the next. Maybe it will take me more time before I can become the sort of person who settles down, maybe I’ve just been waiting for the correct set of circumstances. My big fear is that I’m not that sort of person… but I have trouble believing this.

Although it is not  facebook-official, I’m dating the afore mentioned Chris Allen now. I’m pleased with this, as well as a little mixed up. My gut’s telling me to just suck it up, be honest, and do what makes me happy. I think that sounds like a rather good plan.

I can’t let things that are done and over affect things that are happening now.

Who I am is who I allow myself to be, and no one else. I am not the sort to dwell. I am, however, the sort to commit myself fully and always give my all.

On another note, Latin is going nicely. Slightly more difficult than I would have hoped, but I’ll still likely get an A. Livy is inordinately boring though… Hopefully Catullus will be more interesting.

Work is also going well. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a pretty good waitress now. Not great, but pretty good. I keep drinks full, I don’t drop things, I try hard and smile… The actually "knowing things" section of the job will come with time.

You are
Summer days
Tire swing trees,
Barefoot, licking
Dripping dreamsicles
Hose drinking,
Cloud gazing–
No worrying
No thoughts of
sunburn, wrinkles,
global warming, just hot
And happy
Drenched wet from the hose
In the warm–
You are all of this
All wrapped up in the light
of the morning, and the makeshift skin that is the sheets,
in the single
kiss and smile and touch
You give me and
I do not fear.

My life is so terribly uninteresting… Don’t think that I don’t know that the vast majority of you come here just waiting for me to say something insane. It’s like Nascar–not worth watching unless some good redneck needs a can opener to get out of his car.

These days are all about easily sliding from one role to the next, class, work, prospective girlfriend… All of these parts we play so we don’t have to face the terrifying choices that are ahead of us. This constant denial of choices, and claiming of roles, serves only to bring me further from myself. I make choices I hate, tell myself they are inevitable and justified, and never quite move past that feeling that I’m behaving some way that I don’t approve.

Many evenings with a certain Chris Allen recently… terribly enjoyable times, much intellectualism and  cuddling abounds in our hours together.

My summer plans have changed, instead of going to New Mexico to see my aunts and uncles, I’ll be going to Las Vegas to see my sisters. Vegas doesn’t feel like home, and that’s what  I like about it.

Nothing ever comes out just right, in the math of the universe… The numbers are just fuzzy enough that while we try to round them to perfect, they’re a few billionths off…. in that 2+2=4.000000…6 kind of way. This is what I am blaming for the fact that as far as affection in my life is concerned, no one has the appropriate amount of it. Everyone is burdened with too much or too little.

He’ll be surprised when he figures out that I have no more idea what’s going on than he does. Just a lot more confidence, and a healthy dose of cynicism.

I have a theory. Love is like mexican food. It’s better, but harder to get when the person giving it to you speaks another language. In fact, it’s best when you leave the country for it. There are essentially five ingredients, put together in different orders and called by different names. You never really want to know what it is before you get it. It can give you an outrageous stomach ache. It looks a lot worse than it really is. It’s messy. Most of it is canned or jarred, but it’s better fresh. The sketchier it is, the better. You can get it cheap, and you can get it expensive, and all that changes is your state of mind about it. Some need it milder than others. It’s best with a margarita. If you coat it in cheese, anything looks delicious. And Patrick hates it…. well not so much on the last one. But you get the point. There is indeed a case to be made for these similarities.

I don’t know if I can repeat this enough… This was not the way I expected the night to end up. Can’t say I mind it, though.

I’m starting to worry that I’m one of those "only happy when it rains" kind of girls, who wants nothing more than a relationship more complicated than she can handle and a breakup too hard for her to get over. More, I’m finding that I miss the adrenaline of the cat and mouse games, and I’m wondering if that means I ought not to even try… Rationally, probably.

Rationality never did stop me, though.

I keep telling myself to hold on to these moments as they pass, and I keep feeling that they’re not so urgent as to be recorded. Maybe it’s a sign that I’ll take things slower, be less headstrong this time… maybe it’s a sign that I’m just not feeling it. I spend all my time, now, wishing I could feel more or less. Contentment is hard to find.

How odd of me to spend my morning in early morning light waiting for the poetry to come to my mind that I would have to lay quiet and wait, repeating it again and again, until I could sneak away and write all down. No words came, no grinning surprised moments of "I must write this down." I tell myself it’s just the recency, but deep down I believe that I’ll never find it the way I had it again. As much as I wanted it to be in, I kept my head out of it…

In the event that I don’t come by here tomorrow, an early birthday to darling Patrick…  Ellison calls Juneteenth "the celebration of a gaudy illusion." I try to consider it more along the lines of a celebration of a glam existential phenomenon.

If I could hide myself right now, I would.

I made a piece of artwork, once, trying to explain a few things… How when we build boxes (buildings) around nature trying to contain it, and only manage to contain ourselves. How even when we try to hide, when we try to keep nature (or anything for that matter out) it pushes through and we’re still bare.

Nobody knows, but above the ceiling the stars show,
Outside the brick the wind blows,
Beneath the floors the grass grows.
Nobody knows.

It’s about the private being violated, and more, the private being a construct. An important construct because without it we feel exposed, and helpless. Food, water, shelter are the three things we say we need to survive. Without shelter, we are at the will of nature. I got called pretentious and told I was trying too hard for this piece of artwork… but I felt like it was worthwhile. What makes me think of this is something I’d rather not think of at all.

A good friend of mine, two years my junior, Destiny, was raped recently. This was not the first time. All those walls she put up, he pushed through, all her attempts to hide meant nothing because the wind still finds a way to get through.

All I can think is innocent, sweet, delicate Destiny. Frail little Destiny who we had to coax into eating… Beautiful, gentle, kind, trusting Destiny, at the whim of the wind and bare in the cold.

If I could find a way to put all my walls back up, today I would.

This sounds far fetched, and sort of pathetic, but I never really realized how crazy I am. A harm to myself, sure, but capable of such reckless acts of idiocy? This is news…

I don’t want to be this person. I don’t want to be this unstable. I hate to be a breakup cliche, but I just scheduled a counseling appointment. I honestly think it’s the best thing to do, not that that means much at this point. I’m a little scared, to be honest.

Billy quoted some Matlock episode a few days ago, told me that when times get tough you go to a friend, not a stranger. I have friends here for me, and they can give my sympathy, and they keep me calm and happy but it doesn’t change the underlying problem that my chemicals are just off. That it’s getting worse, and i’ve felt it doing this for months. And it needs to stop before I alienate my friends any more than I have… if that means medication, then that’s what will happen.

When I was younger, and they put me on antidepressants and mood regulators, I believed sincerely that being medicated was the worst thing in the world. It made it impossible for me to write, I started slacking in school, I felt sort of numb to everything.

That is not the worst feeling in the world. Not being able to control your actions, not thinking well and fully, knowing that you’re making a bad choice and doing it anyway, those are the worst things I’ve felt, so far as I’m concerned. This sinking feeling in the pit of my stomaches, the anxiety attacks I get late at night. The nightmares, the neuroses, feeling like I am a child when I think like an adult.

When I was young, I had obsessive compulsive disorder. My whole life centered around control, controlling food, controlling feelings, controlling how many times I washed my hands, the texture of my ceiling, trying to establish patterns and order when before there were none. I could handle it if I had grown into a restrained and order person by means of my disorder concerning control. That is not what happened.

"Played with Kaylee, the sun came out, and I walked on my feet, heard with my ears… I hate the bits, the bits that stay down and I work, I function like I’m a girl. I hate it because I know it’ll go away, the sun goes dark and chaos is come again. Bits. Fluids. What am I?" –River in Firefly, "War Stories"

One moment I feel like I real girl, I hear with my ears and walk with my feet, and the next I’m having an emotional breakdown and incapable of controlling my actions.

I wrote once, a long time ago, that the worst thing would be for him to call my by a month and a psychotic disorder. "Borderline June girl" for instance… What he calls me, how he feels for me, is not so much the point anymore. The point is more who I am and how I can fix it to be who I want to be.

It seems poignant that all I’m trying to do right now is get far, far away from the worst thing. I don’t even know what the best thing is anymore, but I’m certain what’s going on is the worst.

this is the part where i do my best to stay calm, and generally feel pretty dumb.

i am that crazy girl i always hoped i wouldn’t be.

There is wind here, and sunlight, and trees… Any place so beautiful could not be such a bad place to live. Norman is gracefully lovely, in its small city sort of way, with the barely hidden disdain the residents have for the college students. I like it here, I’m happy all in all. Is this the place I want to be for the next five years?

I ask myself that question and I can’t imagine myself wanting to be anywhere, geographically speaking, in five years. There are little romantics wanderings that tell me that five years from this moment I should be cleaning up from the post-church lunch my family ate… But I suppose that’s a bit further down the line than five years.

What do I want to do with my life?
Live well.

But how?
Success, family, happiness.

But HOW?
Love, dedication, luck.

These are the sort of perfectly logical but evasive answers I give myself when trying to plan for my future. I don’t want to become a lawyer for women’s agencies, I think… I’m too passionate. Work should be sterile, challenging but not gripping.

Family should be flour flying in the air from pancake batter messy, stories and kisses goodnight warm, waking up next to someone you love soft, and I could die for you passionate.

I don’t need a job I love, just something that will pay the bills and keep me interested. I want to be a lawyer, this much I know, but where? Of what sort?

This summer, I realized how much I love to learn language. Any language, every language, and I feel sad because I want to take German, Italian, Russian, French, Spanish, and anything else I can get my hands on… I want to spend all of my time in grammar, translation, teasing out the meaning… I love to learn about feminism and philosophy, it’s true, but I don’t want to advocate women’s rights like I want to see every single part of the world, express every feeling in every language that can be used to express.

Where do I want to learn to be a lawyer? At OU? That would be free, which would be very nice… But there are so many other schools that I think I could get into and might look so much better.

My dream schools, at this point are University of Michigan, Oxford, and Cambridge. I’m sure next year I’ll apply to a whole slew of schools, Harvard Law, and Chicago U, and Yale, and Princeton… I’m sure that I’ll get accepted to one or two. Where do I want to be in 5 years? I have no idea.

I know that this summer, this city is too much for me… I miss my sisters, and my mommy, and all my aunts and uncles. I miss the feeling of Las Vegas, the resounding anonymity. Being in a city geared toured tourism is a constant reminder that we are always coming and going, nothing is ever permanent. Norman has gotten so heavy with meaning for me, I take it all too seriously it feels terribly and utterly real and not at all transient. I need to escape for a week, be with people I love and who love me back unconditionally. I need to see Elaine, Becca, Liz, Shari…

Being here has gotten so bad for me, so far from self knowledge and so caught up in the feeling of being free. Behaving as the wind that flees, not the water that reflects.

Do you ever wonder if the wind gets tired of running and wants to stop, just to look?