| The Story of Red |
[May. 23rd, 2005|12:48 am] |
The Story of Red
Before I was born, my father and mother and brother Anu lived in an ugly green house on Woods Hole Road. They Had many people who would come and stay with them from time to time, waiters and waitresses from the restaurant they worked at, hippies passing through town... And my mothers siblings who travelled out from Michigan...
My uncle Robert came to stay for awhile- he was a teenager then, and very strange one. Robert liked guns and motorcycles and looking ugly. He was actually quite a handsome man, but he would grow a messy beard to hide his face and always chose the most hideous eyeglasses on purpose.
One day Robert came home with a present for them. Two kittens, one black, and one red. He named them "Black Boy" and "Red Man," which my mother though was terribly rascist and would go on and on about.
Eventually Robert left, probably back to Michigan to go shoot his guns and ride his motorcycle and be ugly, and something happened to Black Boy. I do not know what, but neither Robert nor Black Boy were not still around when I came along.
Only Red Man remained, and eventually he became simply Red.
They moved to a summer house on Gardener Road, which was not equipped for winter at all. When it was cold the four of them would huddle around the small wood fireplace, and they all slept on a large futon on the floor together.
That following summer I was born, in that little summer house with lilacs blooming outside the window, or that's how the story goes. I entered this world surrounded by my mothers friends, a cat, and an angry little boy.
"Put her back!" yelled the angry 2 year old Anu. Those were my welcoming words to this world. If only I could remember!
Needless to say, he hated me.
Red became my brother, my partner, my companion. He was a very mellow cat.
When I was three, he ran away for three days, and we thought he might be dead, but eventually he came slinking home, bruised and broken- his tail had been run over by a car, and hung limply from him.
When we took him to the vet, they said his poor tail was not dead, only paralyzed, and that amputating it would be bad for his balance, so they left it alone, and he lived to be 14 all the while dragging his poor paralyzed tail behind him.
I think, probably because of his pathetic state, he became an even more mellow cat. The mellowest cat in the world. I would play tricks on him, step on his tail while he sat- he would never notice until he tried to walk away, and never understood why something held him to the spot- he could not feel my little foot on his tail.
He would never meow, only look at me with large pleading kitty eyes.
My mother had been catholic, when she was a child. For her confirmation she had to wear the silliest little white veil, and she gave it to me when I wanted to play dressup. I don't think she ever knew the real reason I wanted it- to make Red wear it and drink tea with my stuffed animals and I.
He never complained.
</end story> |
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| and now it's real |
[May. 21st, 2005|04:14 pm] |
Being sick can make you crazy. At least that's what it does to me. Yesterday was hard. The lopsided chipmunk thing is slowly going away, but I feel so weak, and inside me I have that feeling like heartbreak. Breathlessness. Regret.
In my delirium I said many things I don't mean. Mean things I should have known better than to say.
I had wanted him to marry me, to be done with it. To live together in some shitty little house, no yard, 'cause yards are hard to come by here, and a shitty little house would be all we could afford, but what would it matter? If we had each other that would be enough. I could make him sandwiches for lunch, barefoot and pregnant, and chasing little rascals around our shitty little house.
I would smoke misty 120s and not worry so much about the inches as the accumulated around my waist. There are more important things.
But he said what I already knew, but in saying it he made it real. He said, "I'm not that guy," and he isn't.
I cried, and he cried, and we wouldn't let ourselves hold each other. Holding each other leads to bad things, good things we regret later. If only we were not drawn together like magnets. Our bodies fit so well.
But they are just bodies. Just bodies. Just bodies.
The love I seek is in the mind. Can a mind hold another mind and comfort it? I do not know. |
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| Say Anything |
[May. 4th, 2005|12:03 am] |
Post anything that you want (in the comments), BUT post it ANONYMOUSLY. It can be anything. A story, a secret, a confession, a fear, a love -- anything. Be sure to post Anonymously and Honestly. Post twice or 40 times if you'd like.
Then, put this in your LJ (if you have one) to see what your friends (and perhaps others who you don't even realize read your LJ) have to say.
p.s. I have temporarily disabled the logging of IP addresses in my journal, because I know some of you by your IP's- and I want to keep this completely anonymous. |
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| Last Night |
[Apr. 30th, 2005|05:42 am] |
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Lm4d%2CKcKNP90Ga-NL2bYTH%2CL6Z0YYH%2CL2hGM*9R6Z54f%2CK_cZ
lZYXj--END-- |
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| May 3rd 2002 (Flashback) |
[Apr. 22nd, 2005|05:41 pm] |
This is a transcript of me talking on a day when I was still struggling to get clean, and stuggling with my place in the world. It's long, and meandering, and more for my benefit than anyone else's
( click to read ) |
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| Discovering The Game (flashback) |
[Apr. 21st, 2005|04:44 pm] |
DISCOVERING THE GAME
It all started over some sushi at little Japanese joint in Harvard Square. I'd never had a guy take me out for sushi before, as a matter of fact I'd never really had a guy take me out, just like I'd never had a guy buy me roses, either. I didn't come from that kind of culture.
They guys I always dated were punks, and they never had enough money for a decent bottle of whiskey, let alone a sushi dinner.
I never really dated them, either. It was like, one day I'm this guy's drinking buddy, then I wake up naked next to him in a park somewhere, and all the sudden I'm his old lady.
It's not a bad situation, really. It seems to work for the hobo kids. You end up with a decent partner half the time, and everybody hates themselves anyway, so it's not ike you expect too much from each other.
It never really worked for me, though, 'cause I was looking for Love, and you sure don't find it like that.
I discovered later that you also don't find it by 'dating' guys you don't like, whether or not they buy you sushi or roses or whatever, but at this point I was very new to the game. |
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| Summer of Death (flashback) |
[Apr. 21st, 2005|04:17 pm] |
A word of advice to those who would follow in my footsteps,
or
'SEMANTICS ARE A BAD IDEA WHEN YOU ARE TALKING
ABOUT YOUR FRIEND WHO JUST KILLED HIMSELF'
"What happened to the story?" Dare asks.
He is playing with my hair, which is turning his hands blue. My hand are always blue. Anna says my fingernails look like those of dead people, which is terribly morbid considering how many dead people occupy my life right now. Five? Six? I don't want to think about it.
"You just mangled it. The idea-"
"Look, just shut the hell up. I already feel plenty bad about myself."
"The idea is great," he says, "what you you've been talking about... You vision... It's captivating. Hearing you talk about it made me excited to read it-"
"I don't want to talk about it. Maybe I'm just a bad writer. Maybe stupid people will like it... But I did accomplish what I was going for, I mean, you're pissed off at me, right? Well, that was the idea, you knew that from the start. I win!"
I laugh nervously.
"I'm not pissed off for the right reasons. I never got attached to the characters, so when they died it was just sort of anti-climactic."
QUICK! Rationalize! You can't beat a writer at their own game, and I'm not a writer like Dare is. I'm a meandering storyteller who can't tell her ass from her elbow when it comes to grammar, and I'm beginning to think I ought to just stick to writing in the first person, because he's right- I can't develop a character for shit.
"Life is sort of anti-climactic, doncha think? It's a commentary on life... Though I guess you're right, and if I want to write 'commentaries on life' I ought to just stick to that and not try to write bad fiction." |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 20th, 2005|06:31 pm] |
It's not so far, the store on the corner, it's only a corner or two away- that's why we call it the corner store. We might call it the convenience store, but really it isn't.
It smells like mouldy leather and bad milk, and there is always a cat laying on the freezer in the summer, sucking up the cool air. He looks so happy there. I'd like to be him, except for the mouldy leather smell- all day trying to nap and all you smell is mouldy leather and bad milk, I can't think of a worse thought. Not now, at least.
They never remember how old I am. I show my card everytime I buy those nasty Newport 100's, buy one, get one free. I am poor so I snatch them up like candy. They always remind me how young I look, and I tell them if I keep smoking eventually maybe I won't and they won't have to card me anymore. I say this everytime, and laugh. It never gets tiresome.
It was so hot today I thought I'd burst from my clothes, sweating. I wanted to be naked, but of course I can't do that- the desk is in the hall and everyone would see.
It is cooler now, and perfect. The world is new. Every day the world is new, but more so in springtime.
There is a squirrel basking on a rooftop across the alley, and he's been there everyday this week. I though for awhile he was dead, but one day he moved and it frightened me. Now I know it is just his favorite place to bask, and sometime I watch him while I do the dishes.
I walked down the hill and up again, and that was all. To get my cigarrettes, you know?
It was enough, to touch the world for a moment.
Everything was so slow, the sun setting so subtly casting a warm glow over us, the trees and their little buds beginning to blossom, people meandering, and all the squirrels and I having such a wonderful day, just walking down and up the hill again. |
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| mommy, am I growed up yet? |
[Apr. 18th, 2005|11:56 pm] |
I never got those breasts they promised me, that hourglass figure. My face still breaks out at least once a week and I see no wrinkles in the mirror.
Am I all grown up now?
I can give you all the fucking html advice in the world, all the advice I have, which isn't much- but more than I had a few months ago, which was nothing... But inside I am crying.
I know all about having your heart broken. I know all about giving yourself over to someone 100% and dying when they leave you. Because when they leave, they take you with them- and you are left with nothing.
But then time comes and picks up the pieces and puts you back together again. Time is the only thing that can.
I have had 3 great loves, and you are one of them. My heart was broken twice, and I have broken two hearts.
Does That make me even with the world?
I did not know that in breaking your heart I would also break my own. I cry as I write this.
I had forgotten about crying. The computer and the Klonopin do that to me, I become a numb machine whose sole purpose is to memorize codes and regurgitate them. There is no feeling in this but the elation one receives from learning something knew. From knowing things. Intellectual elation is some how different. It doesn't stop the tears from falling all over my fucking keyboard.
I met you at a strange time in my life. A time when I had finally been freed from heroin and liquor. A time when I realized I had never had a childhood, and it was all I wanted.
You were my childhood. You were those crazy teenage years I missed, you were my PG-Rated, happy go lucky, fuckitall world when I needed it more than I'd ever needed anything. You were my little handsome prince on a skateboard, and I fell so far for you because you possessed a quality I have never found in anyone... and I have met and loved and fucked and screwed so many people.
You are truly honest, and truly trustworthy. I never believed such a person existed until I met you.
All I remember is the good times- and it's not because this is the end, but because there never really were any bad ones. For me.
I know you struggled as you held me so many nights in my hysteria, as I tried so hard to put my world back together you held me. No one ever made me feel so safe as you. I know you struggled as you tried to smile, me in a hospital, me in a little ball in a corner, me shaking with hurt that came long before you did.
You deserve so much from the world, so much that I cannot give. I hope you can forgive me.
I love your smile, your belly. I love the little sound you make when you are thinking. I love the chest tapping and the way you chew off the tips of your fingers, even though it grosses me out. I love all the things you think are wrong with you. They make you so much more loveable.
I'd hate it if we were perfect.
I am so old, not old but still old. I don't know if you will understand this. I am only 25 and yet I've lived a thousand lives, all non-linear. The life I lived with you was supposed to come much sooner. We could have been each other's first loves, and broken each others hearts, and been even- but you are so young.
You have so much more of life to live before you will be able to give me what I need. I could never really ask you to marry me now, because I know you are not ready. If you said you were, you would be lying. And that's okay, though it hurt me so much to realize.
When I realized how much you needed to live, I realized I had to let you.
I know you don't think you will survive this, but you will. I know you don't think you will be able to love again, but you will. I promise.
And I promise I will never stop loving you. And maybe someday when you are older and ready I will still be here. I hope so.
I am so scared of being sick. Of not being able to ride my bicycle, and carry the groceries up the stairs. I cannot lift the bucket of litter anymore. I cannot walk up the hill now without stopping. I was always so strong. Maybe it's my turn to learn how to be humble.
I needed to be sure, in the face off all this madness, or to be alone. I had to be alone. It's not your fault, you are young. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 17th, 2005|10:10 pm] |
though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 15th, 2005|06:17 pm] |
I was out today... by myself.
I know this may not seem like anything to most of you who walk through the world, but for me it is something. Mostly I hide now.
I walked through Harvard Square in a daze almost, only trying to get to the bus stop, but there was so much between that bus stop and me.
I saw the ghosts of payphones, now only oddly shaped holes in the brick sidewalk. I sat on those benches so many times, often crying. Sometimes I wonder how many tears are in the wood of those benches, the desperate tears of junkies. Like me.
I am reminded so often that the world I walk through is my own, mine and mine alone, built by those experiences that shaped me, that shaped my experience of the world.
We all walk through our own lonely worlds- and every day we are new.
There are places that are alive. They are alive with the ghosts of things which might have never existed, which only exist as passing memories our my minds.
So I walk through those places, I walk through Harvard Square and I experience those payphones, and those tears, and I am the only one who knows they even exist. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 12th, 2005|05:48 pm] |
If I could die eating fresh strawberries, I would die happy
It's snowing outside |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 10th, 2005|07:56 pm] |
Tom Waits makes me cry.
I ate fresh strawberries today, and they were yummy.
That is all.
p.s. I shaved my armpits. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 9th, 2005|09:01 pm] |
Must type fast... while this is still fresh in my mind:
Anu came over to interview me for a paper he's working on about the influence of Disney's versions of Fairy Tales and how they relate to the developement of body image... Some references to the original versions (Grimm's) also, but not so much because he is studying the uses and influences of fairy tales as they relate to different cultures, and as America's relationship with fairy tales revolves almost completely around the Disney versions, it is the most poignant point of reference for the study of the american psyche in relationship to the subject.
Very interesting stuff... I am always very tentative with my answers in the beginning of interviews, and it took about 45 minute before my mind could truley flow, so the interview lasted almost two hours- and was quite amusing and reflective.
The thing that is most singular to american culture's interpretation of fairy tales is the stress on beauty and innocence as the feminine ideal. In other cultures the overlying ideal reflects, of course, on the culture's ideal of the woman's role in the society. So in contries which have a history of communisn, the most singularly stressed feminine ideal is obedience and servitude, so "how hard a woman works" is the equated as her value to society.
America is the only country where fairytales have been so completely morphed to reflect our own media's ideals of feminine beauty. But I think I said that already.
The one universal theme in fairy tales, no matter from which [western or eastern block] country they originate, is the idea that a women's role in society is to play something of classic christian role of "marter", to remain somehow helpless, to not have an ingrained self preservation trait, but to leave the role of protector/savior to the "Prince Charming" character.
I have noticed that over the last 20 years, probably originating with the release of Disney's "The Little Mermaid", american fairy tales have begun to allow the "heroine" figure to own more power over her own destiny, as opposed to the very strict helpless victim/marter role assigned to the primary female characters in earlier Disney movies, such as "Cindarella" and "Snow White".
What is troubling, however, is that even though the "heroine" is allowed more control over her own destiny, she is still utterly characterized by the unhealthy american ideal of feminine beauty- the hourglass figure, waiflike presence, the woman-child, such as Mattel's "Barbie" Dolls characature of feminine beauty...
This bring me to the troubling subject of "Barbie" dolls... Mattel has changed the standard body formation of these dolls over the last few years in response to overwhelming demands by parents. Barbie's 'new' body has smaller breasts, and a more 'normal' waiste and hip configuration than the previous standard models, but, and I think this is the most offensive characteristic remaining: Barbie continues to display the grotesque appearance of "woman/child"- a doll with breasts and hips, and the face of a child. I find this very disturbing.
To juxtapose the representation of female sexuality with the facial charactaristics of a child: pouting lips, abnormally large eyes- it says something about our cultures obsession with equating youth and beauty, which is this case seems like stoking the fire for pedophilia.
I recognise an amount of irony in my statements, them coming from a twenty-five year old woman with an abnormally young-seeming face. You could literally photoshop a nose ring onto a photo of me when I was five, and it would look so similar to a recent photo as to be quite alarming, but, I feel that as this is not the 'norm', feminine beauty ought to be equated with the characteristics of true "womanliness" and not the above mentioned unhealthy juxtaposition of two seperate stages of female developement.
But back to fairy tales for a moment... We are taught again and again that beauty equals innocence and goodness, and that ugliness equals "evilness" or bad intentions. Where does that leave the woman in our society who are not "beautiful" according to our ingrained standards? And remember for a moment, that the vast majority of women are not beautiful according to these standards. We have effectively been brainwashed by our society to see the majority of women as "evil" or simply bad, undesireable, manipulative, et cetera.
These poor women! Me included! We are forcefed stereotypes which we will never be able to embody and brainwashed to continuously strive for this unnatainable goal, be it through eating disorders, plastic surgury or the use of drugs, among other self-harming behaviours. |
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| Medication Time! |
[Apr. 8th, 2005|10:22 pm] |
| [ | feelin' |
| | gross | ] |
| [ | listening to |
| | Tom Waits | ] |
So today was the first day of the gross medicinal smoothies. I still feel like I'm going to throw up. I'm going to have to get keifer or something to mix it with next time.
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| It's okay to be vain once in awhile |
[Apr. 8th, 2005|01:53 am] |
How Can A Little Box Make a Person So Happy?
 
I think I may continue to post photos regularly, to have documentation of what the treatment does to me... and also because I remember I used to take pictures of myself every week to remind myself of what I look like... Mirrors just aren't the same... Cameras don't lie... well, that's not completely true, but they don't lie to me the way I do.
My brain is a gigantic sponge. I learn, and yet I must learn more- I must be always learning, and not wasting these precious moments. It's okay, at least I tell myself it is- that I never go out, at least without sunglasses and those hedgehog gloves Patrizia knitted me... That I never touch the world anymore.
It touches me through these little boxes, and I learn so much, I am always learning.
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| More Boring Treatment Updates: |
[Apr. 6th, 2005|07:37 pm] |
Saw the nutritionist- and all went well- he seems to agree that I have a good grasp on what is healthy and only suggested that I add more lean protein to my diet (as if y'all really care!)
I have to take some new supplements for my immune system, costing me around $50 every other month out of pocket at the buyers club- a good deal compared to their retail prices- but this will put additional strain on my already so limited finances.
More work on budgeting... I know if I quit smoking I'd have alot more money to spread around- but I'm really not ready for that yet, and since they went with the IUD as opposed to estrogen based BC, I don't really have to worry about the smoking so much, because the liver/breast cancer angle is nixed... Except it was recommended I start taking more vitamin C as long as I continue smoking.
Sweet jesus I have learned so much medical crap over the last year I might as well go to school and become a doctor... on second thought- no. I don't like people enough for that and 12 years of college is my definition of hell. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 6th, 2005|12:49 am] |
Things are moving swiftly now- I will be starting the treatment in about two weeks. Tomorrow I see the nutritionist, who will more than likely tell me what I already know- that I need to go to the grocery store more often.
Living on bagels and coffee has caused me to lose too much weight over the last couple weeks, and I must be in good health for the treatment to begin.
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