channonyarrow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
channonyarrow) wrote2006-10-21 08:19 am
channonyarrow) wrote2006-10-21 08:19 am
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Sometimes I wonder how much of who I am is false.
I remember being sixteen. I remember that like it was last week, I remember trying desperately hard not to stand out in any way, except when I couldn't help it, and then I did everything I could to stand out. Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. I remember hiding from people.
I remember the time the bus was packed full on the way home - some guys were going to fight near my house, whoop-de-shit, I remember THAT, too - and the person who had to share the seat next to me sat on the very edge. And he was one of the nice people.
I wonder sometimes if I was actually offensive in some way (did I smell?) or was it just, you know, generally the remains of high school ostracism? I mean, I know why I was ostracised - and anyone who wonders why I don't post pictures should probably bear in mind that they know why, now - but maybe it was worse than that. Maybe there was something else that people reacted to. I don't know, and I never will.
On a related note, I plan to go to my 20 year reunion. I also plan to get arrested there. But I am not entirely sure who I want to glass in the face most.
I know full well that I have no balls. I would rather hide than not. I only play the extravagant fool at work because I'm comfortable there. I don't go out, I don't date, I don't, in short, expose myself to people. And it's easy to say that part of that is because people are, generally, idiots - they are - but that's only part of it. Another part is the constant belief that in the ways that don't matter and don't impress anyone I'm still riding that bus, watching Carl practically fall off the seat and knowing full well that the only reason he took that seat was because he was the nice one.
Knowing that there are things I cannot discuss and will go to great verbal lengths to talk around, assuming I can't kill the person who brought it up. Those scars are deep. I think I could have killed myself and the cuts would have been shallower, in a metaphorical sense. I have done things - not illegal, nor even necessarily stupid - that I cannot discuss. Literally.
But I also know that much of what sustained me through my twenties was passion. I was damn well angry enough that I was going to win something, somehow, by the skin of my teeth if necessary. I was able, partly by virtue of being alternately 75 and 5000 miles away, explore my life, knowing that I could drop back into total anonymity if it didn't work out.
I think I have considered suicide perhaps twice in my life. But it was never, ever a consideration in school - the default reaction was that if I did that, someone else who was still alive won. It was never that I didn't want to hurt people, it was that I didn't want to lose. And in my twenties, it was always that I didn't want someone else to out-succeed me, on the playing field of my choice. I wasn't going to go into science, but I could by god go far.
I don't have that passion now. Why would I write a book, when I spend all day reading either the sort of tripe that gets published (and does well, sales-wise, but not well enough to quit your dayjob on) or I'm rejecting really ghastly shit that might even make the Pit Of Voles take notice (and when I feel better, I'll tell you all about how you don't have the daughter of your main character comment on how beautiful her mother is, and you especially don't have her remembering comments her father has made because it's the Chernobyl of Incestometers). The costumes I make have no bearing on anything. I have no relationship, nor the likelihood of one. I have nothing to be passionate about that has any merit at all.
I have no passion now, nothing to be angry about, nothing to strive for, and no reason to do so, nor ability to. I don't know what to do. I do know that I wish I was ten years younger and just starting a new decade and could say that it was going to be better. And the thing I would take from me then is passion.
I have always liked bold images - the idea of writing one's name on the sky in stars, for example. That scene in the Crow where he lights the gasoline on fire and it makes the shape of the crow. I like those images, where someone has overreached and achieved it anyway, but right now I don't think my life is like that. And then I look at someone who's just starting out, back where I want to be and I remember what passion is.
I wish, honest to god, that I were not as boringly normal as I am. Everyone I know with a fractured life has a story to tell and a voice to tell it in. I feel like the girl in Black/White, in the poetry slam group listening to everyone else talk about their favourite artists and how it's all these black artists I don't know and her favourite group is the Cranberries. I would be amazed if that group didn't know that she was a white girl in makeup at that moment.
My life is so normal that the soundtrack for it is probably something like the Cranberries. I want to tell stories, but they're not in me. There's nothing I'm reaching to tell, not without descending into the Far Side's "Adult Children Of Normal Parents" cartoon.
I had pain and passion once, and I spent so long trying to make myself feel better that I succeeded, and now I have nothing except a bunch of meaningless shit. And it sucks. I want to be sixteen again, because the only thing that's the same is my face and I don't like the hiding I'm doing now but I don't know how to stop, either.
I don't even have enough passion to become an alcoholic. This is not good.
I remember being sixteen. I remember that like it was last week, I remember trying desperately hard not to stand out in any way, except when I couldn't help it, and then I did everything I could to stand out. Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. I remember hiding from people.
I remember the time the bus was packed full on the way home - some guys were going to fight near my house, whoop-de-shit, I remember THAT, too - and the person who had to share the seat next to me sat on the very edge. And he was one of the nice people.
I wonder sometimes if I was actually offensive in some way (did I smell?) or was it just, you know, generally the remains of high school ostracism? I mean, I know why I was ostracised - and anyone who wonders why I don't post pictures should probably bear in mind that they know why, now - but maybe it was worse than that. Maybe there was something else that people reacted to. I don't know, and I never will.
On a related note, I plan to go to my 20 year reunion. I also plan to get arrested there. But I am not entirely sure who I want to glass in the face most.
I know full well that I have no balls. I would rather hide than not. I only play the extravagant fool at work because I'm comfortable there. I don't go out, I don't date, I don't, in short, expose myself to people. And it's easy to say that part of that is because people are, generally, idiots - they are - but that's only part of it. Another part is the constant belief that in the ways that don't matter and don't impress anyone I'm still riding that bus, watching Carl practically fall off the seat and knowing full well that the only reason he took that seat was because he was the nice one.
Knowing that there are things I cannot discuss and will go to great verbal lengths to talk around, assuming I can't kill the person who brought it up. Those scars are deep. I think I could have killed myself and the cuts would have been shallower, in a metaphorical sense. I have done things - not illegal, nor even necessarily stupid - that I cannot discuss. Literally.
But I also know that much of what sustained me through my twenties was passion. I was damn well angry enough that I was going to win something, somehow, by the skin of my teeth if necessary. I was able, partly by virtue of being alternately 75 and 5000 miles away, explore my life, knowing that I could drop back into total anonymity if it didn't work out.
I think I have considered suicide perhaps twice in my life. But it was never, ever a consideration in school - the default reaction was that if I did that, someone else who was still alive won. It was never that I didn't want to hurt people, it was that I didn't want to lose. And in my twenties, it was always that I didn't want someone else to out-succeed me, on the playing field of my choice. I wasn't going to go into science, but I could by god go far.
I don't have that passion now. Why would I write a book, when I spend all day reading either the sort of tripe that gets published (and does well, sales-wise, but not well enough to quit your dayjob on) or I'm rejecting really ghastly shit that might even make the Pit Of Voles take notice (and when I feel better, I'll tell you all about how you don't have the daughter of your main character comment on how beautiful her mother is, and you especially don't have her remembering comments her father has made because it's the Chernobyl of Incestometers). The costumes I make have no bearing on anything. I have no relationship, nor the likelihood of one. I have nothing to be passionate about that has any merit at all.
I have no passion now, nothing to be angry about, nothing to strive for, and no reason to do so, nor ability to. I don't know what to do. I do know that I wish I was ten years younger and just starting a new decade and could say that it was going to be better. And the thing I would take from me then is passion.
I have always liked bold images - the idea of writing one's name on the sky in stars, for example. That scene in the Crow where he lights the gasoline on fire and it makes the shape of the crow. I like those images, where someone has overreached and achieved it anyway, but right now I don't think my life is like that. And then I look at someone who's just starting out, back where I want to be and I remember what passion is.
I wish, honest to god, that I were not as boringly normal as I am. Everyone I know with a fractured life has a story to tell and a voice to tell it in. I feel like the girl in Black/White, in the poetry slam group listening to everyone else talk about their favourite artists and how it's all these black artists I don't know and her favourite group is the Cranberries. I would be amazed if that group didn't know that she was a white girl in makeup at that moment.
My life is so normal that the soundtrack for it is probably something like the Cranberries. I want to tell stories, but they're not in me. There's nothing I'm reaching to tell, not without descending into the Far Side's "Adult Children Of Normal Parents" cartoon.
I had pain and passion once, and I spent so long trying to make myself feel better that I succeeded, and now I have nothing except a bunch of meaningless shit. And it sucks. I want to be sixteen again, because the only thing that's the same is my face and I don't like the hiding I'm doing now but I don't know how to stop, either.
I don't even have enough passion to become an alcoholic. This is not good.
no subject
I don't know how you manage it, having to live the life you're living. What are you getting out of Texas now? Anything?
no subject
no subject
*confused*
no subject