It doesn't feel like I'm leaving in days. It doesn't feel like anything. I only ever seem to journal in times of great stress -- that conference hotel early in 2012 when I couldn't figure out how to pay the fucking bill and sat at the desk crying -- but I need to tell it. I only ever seem to be myself in front of an audience, but this is. Too personal. Isn't it?
So I'm writing it to you. No, not an imaginary figure, but actually You. This is a public post; it begs discovery, and let's be fair: part of the hook in any good street magic show's that all the clues are there for how the trick's really being played. If I have a choice regarding what I'm going to grow up into (and please let that thing involve coherence, for a start), then I'd like to be human sleight of hand.
Someday I'll stop hiding things, stop lying and stop being afraid. Probably not today.
Back to subject: mixed feelings about leaving home. Got blackout drunk again last night and fell asleep while hoping that I'd manage to do my applications. Of course, I didn't manage them. Woke up with the same mild anxiety that I always get in lieu of actual hangovers (except on 80-proof silver rum, god, that shit was awful to me last year) and now I'm writing this instead of doing anything productive. Thinking, in part: maybe if I talk this out, I'll be less scared. Thinking: it's better than actually being useful. Thinking: so many magazines of supporting your child at university lying around the house, so many SAT prep books. I'm proud (?) of my baby sister, but I'm envious too. Mum gave up on me a long time ago. She knew she'd never win with me -- I am, at least, that good -- so, being an Aries*, she gave up rather than lose.
(* I pretend that I buy into horoscope shit partly because it's funny to have a character trope and partly because a lot of it fits so well. I'm no longer sure whether I'm pretending, or only pretending to pretend. Scorn's involved. A lot of scorn.)
Running around in my head's the thought: I could get a retail job here, move out into the city and build up my funds before I go anywhere else. Move from state to state. Mum, S. and the lot all have good points: this plan isn't stable, I am not emotionally stable, and I am running away from at least ten different things (including reality!) just by plotting this out. This house is a delusion. It hasn't been home since I moved to Cleveland -- the loft wasn't home either. I feel like I'm trying on a stranger's kid gloves every time I move through the rooms.
What I fear most, as I told S., is this lack of stability. I'm a liar, sure, but I'm emotional and sentimental as hell: I need an anchor before I can go wandering. Ange is not an anchor; she's a relief. I don't feel safe loving anybody (the idea of reciprocity as ugly only comes, I imagine, from the fear that one day it'll end) so I fixate on my baby sister and pour all my affection into this single relationship. In part, this helps; it means I'm not vicious about my jealousy and the support she gets from mum. It means that I don't feel utterly alone. In part, it makes me angry -- because this isn't a balanced relationship either. I don't expect to get devotion -- as the past's proven over and over, devotion only makes me resentful, makes me cut ties and run.
But my closest friends are an emotional flake with whom I have fights and long distances for the sheer sake of catharsis, who analyses her relationships even more than I do, who doesn't need an anchor because she's always been secure in herself -- and an absolute moral compass who makes me feel like a pet. Excessively emotional (which I am) and protective in that yappy, bite-y way chihuahuas have. But it means that there's a certain level of restraint that goes into both those relationships, and I can't work with that. I need at least one relationship where I can be wholly selfish and absolute and endlessly affectionate: the anchor, the fixed point. And I can't talk about these things to either of them, because this admission is a self-indulgence in itself. I don't need to be this sentimental. So it goes into the feeling of unreality too. This concept of needing an anchor is bullshit, and only exists because I can't seem to believe in myself, so must depend on other people to give me worth.
(I imagine the audience concept ties back to this too.)
Rambling. If this were meant to be anything other than temporary relief, I'd go back and edit, but as it is, let's try stream-of-consciousness. So I lack anchors emotionally, and soon I'll lose the physical anchor: soon there will be no fixed point, no "home". I've never been entirely comfortable in this house, but it's always been here. Lucky. All those sevens. It's familiar (which breeds contempt), but as I'm contemptuous of myself too, it's been -- company. Better than no company. I am terrified of this concept of being completely anchorless, no one to love, no point to go back to, nothing I want out of life but the possibility of an eternal drift.
The last is a lie, of course. Wanting makes the possibility of failure. Maybe I do want to write. Maybe I'm scared, still, of failing that too. Either way, nothing's being written, and at the end of the day, words on a page are all that count, and my pages have run blank for an awfully long time.
Anchor, anchor. What an ugly word. I feel formless: I haven't grown into anything.
(Ditto.)
So I'm leaving on Sunday and all I can think is I don't want to leave her. The closest I get to an emotional anchor. The idea that, if I stay, the house will stay here for me too. The whole idea of exiting has an unreality to it, because I've looked up mid-points but I haven't actually started to pack. That is, of course, my method -- and as S. pointed out, for someone like me, moving isn't really a complicated process beyond the physical dimensions. But it's unreal, and as long as it's unreal, it's a nebulous and ugly fear.
New starts and a new regime. It sounds so hopeful when you put it like that. I don't know if I can believe in it, that's all.
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So I'm writing it to you. No, not an imaginary figure, but actually You. This is a public post; it begs discovery, and let's be fair: part of the hook in any good street magic show's that all the clues are there for how the trick's really being played. If I have a choice regarding what I'm going to grow up into (and please let that thing involve coherence, for a start), then I'd like to be human sleight of hand.
Someday I'll stop hiding things, stop lying and stop being afraid. Probably not today.
Back to subject: mixed feelings about leaving home. Got blackout drunk again last night and fell asleep while hoping that I'd manage to do my applications. Of course, I didn't manage them. Woke up with the same mild anxiety that I always get in lieu of actual hangovers (except on 80-proof silver rum, god, that shit was awful to me last year) and now I'm writing this instead of doing anything productive. Thinking, in part: maybe if I talk this out, I'll be less scared. Thinking: it's better than actually being useful. Thinking: so many magazines of supporting your child at university lying around the house, so many SAT prep books. I'm proud (?) of my baby sister, but I'm envious too. Mum gave up on me a long time ago. She knew she'd never win with me -- I am, at least, that good -- so, being an Aries*, she gave up rather than lose.
(* I pretend that I buy into horoscope shit partly because it's funny to have a character trope and partly because a lot of it fits so well. I'm no longer sure whether I'm pretending, or only pretending to pretend. Scorn's involved. A lot of scorn.)
Running around in my head's the thought: I could get a retail job here, move out into the city and build up my funds before I go anywhere else. Move from state to state. Mum, S. and the lot all have good points: this plan isn't stable, I am not emotionally stable, and I am running away from at least ten different things (including reality!) just by plotting this out. This house is a delusion. It hasn't been home since I moved to Cleveland -- the loft wasn't home either. I feel like I'm trying on a stranger's kid gloves every time I move through the rooms.
What I fear most, as I told S., is this lack of stability. I'm a liar, sure, but I'm emotional and sentimental as hell: I need an anchor before I can go wandering. Ange is not an anchor; she's a relief. I don't feel safe loving anybody (the idea of reciprocity as ugly only comes, I imagine, from the fear that one day it'll end) so I fixate on my baby sister and pour all my affection into this single relationship. In part, this helps; it means I'm not vicious about my jealousy and the support she gets from mum. It means that I don't feel utterly alone. In part, it makes me angry -- because this isn't a balanced relationship either. I don't expect to get devotion -- as the past's proven over and over, devotion only makes me resentful, makes me cut ties and run.
But my closest friends are an emotional flake with whom I have fights and long distances for the sheer sake of catharsis, who analyses her relationships even more than I do, who doesn't need an anchor because she's always been secure in herself -- and an absolute moral compass who makes me feel like a pet. Excessively emotional (which I am) and protective in that yappy, bite-y way chihuahuas have. But it means that there's a certain level of restraint that goes into both those relationships, and I can't work with that. I need at least one relationship where I can be wholly selfish and absolute and endlessly affectionate: the anchor, the fixed point. And I can't talk about these things to either of them, because this admission is a self-indulgence in itself. I don't need to be this sentimental. So it goes into the feeling of unreality too. This concept of needing an anchor is bullshit, and only exists because I can't seem to believe in myself, so must depend on other people to give me worth.
(I imagine the audience concept ties back to this too.)
Rambling. If this were meant to be anything other than temporary relief, I'd go back and edit, but as it is, let's try stream-of-consciousness. So I lack anchors emotionally, and soon I'll lose the physical anchor: soon there will be no fixed point, no "home". I've never been entirely comfortable in this house, but it's always been here. Lucky. All those sevens. It's familiar (which breeds contempt), but as I'm contemptuous of myself too, it's been -- company. Better than no company. I am terrified of this concept of being completely anchorless, no one to love, no point to go back to, nothing I want out of life but the possibility of an eternal drift.
The last is a lie, of course. Wanting makes the possibility of failure. Maybe I do want to write. Maybe I'm scared, still, of failing that too. Either way, nothing's being written, and at the end of the day, words on a page are all that count, and my pages have run blank for an awfully long time.
Anchor, anchor. What an ugly word. I feel formless: I haven't grown into anything.
(Ditto.)
So I'm leaving on Sunday and all I can think is I don't want to leave her. The closest I get to an emotional anchor. The idea that, if I stay, the house will stay here for me too. The whole idea of exiting has an unreality to it, because I've looked up mid-points but I haven't actually started to pack. That is, of course, my method -- and as S. pointed out, for someone like me, moving isn't really a complicated process beyond the physical dimensions. But it's unreal, and as long as it's unreal, it's a nebulous and ugly fear.
New starts and a new regime. It sounds so hopeful when you put it like that. I don't know if I can believe in it, that's all.