and by the way...
i caught myself waiting around again. waiting for things that never came. that never will come. get a clue. i try. i give. i'm there. i'm here. it's not enough. it hurts to constantly keep trying to figure out why that is. what i did wrong. what others have that i don't. that maybe i never will.
let's just say the night involved:
chatted with the boy again. he seems to be doing well. i'm still unsure of what he wants. should i keep trying to pursue this friendship thing, or should i just leave him alone?
saw a midget climbing a telephone pole. thought to myself, "am i still dunk from last night?" the taco bell lady said i'm looking skinny. the lady who cuts my hair said i'm looking tan. i love the jeans i'm wearing today. last night. hott boys in pink polos who look like they just fell out of an A&F quarterly. my shirt was melon. his was pink. that's what he told me when i flirted with him. we talked in the bathroom. that's where i have my best conversations i guess. you know where the evening is headed when i walk into the bathroom to drunk dial you. well, he does. tipped the bartender when he showed us his abs. nikki was checking out his butt. he was perfection. it's nice to have the bar ban lifted. watched him dance and sing for us. offered him more money to pull a coyote ugly and dance on the bar. he passed. he wanted to keep his job. he gave me an olive. nikki wanted a cherry. cherry jizz on a new white shirt kinda sucks. how she did it i'll never know. i just looked down and saw my arm splattered with it. bitch. playing songs on the juke box for boys who are a million miles away. another five dollar juke box kind of night. made our appearance at the other bar. danced on our platform. we're the life of the party. we're rockstars. we need to be on the new simple life, fuck those other two. discussed getting bartending jobs together. not sure if that would be the best environment for me, however. but we would have fun together. told her to stop grabbing my crotch. what is it about girls and my crotch? i mean really. came home and passed out with my nomad. a perfect evening. just what i needed to shake me from my funk.
me: i just want to live somewhere where everything is within walking distance.
every summer, it's always the same. i think back to 1998 when i quit my job and lived off my savings. partying, vacationing. the two weeks in florida with the girls. meeting lindsay. meeting the boy. staying up every night till 3am IMing or talking on the phone with one or both of them. hopping in the car at night. still warm as hell. windows down. music blaring. gin blossoms, evan and jaron, matchbox twenty. the best friend. the road trips. getting lost. more than once. running through corn fields in the dark. laying in the wet grass looking up at the meteor shower. the "community vodka bottle". three drunk pitiful fools sitting on a porch crying over the deaths of their dogs. stopping in to see a friend working the night shift at the grocery store. waiting in the parking lot for cute bag boys to get off from work. kidnapping them and forcing them to go get drunk with us. the night ms. b and i decided that waiting on ms. k to get off of work and come get our drunk asses to take us to the annual party in B's backyard was no longer an option. so we packed a bag, toilet paper for her, wine for us both and off we walked. who knows how many miles away he lived from me. lucky for us we called to let him know of the "great plan of 1998". lucky for us a car was on it's way to get us. lucky for us our walk only lasted a few minutes. every time the warm weather begins to make its presence known i can taste that summer all over again. taste it like the wine from that night. taste it like the hot dogs we roasted in my back yard at one of the weekly parties. taste it like the sweetness left on your lips from your first clove cigarette. i can feel it like the wet trampoline i passed out on drunk, face down, to feel the cold on my cheek. i walk outside into the warm night air, close my eyes, and it's all around me. every memory. every laugh. even the stupid drama with josh and G. i taste it, feel it, remember it and crave it this time every year. thoughts of quitting my job again and having an irresponsible and carefree three months of nothing and everything fill my mind.
lisa: i can't believe you're seeing madonna in NYC.
a steady diet of patty griffin and nothing but patty griffin tends to wear a brother down after a bit. with that in mind i woke up thinking, "it feels like an our lady peace kinda day". somehow on six hours of sleep i woke up early, was ready in no time and headed out the door. got in front of the traffic and rocked out the entire way to a little gravity. windows down, warm air at 7:30 in the a.m. what more could you ask for? well, not working but...
"and i'm looking through the glass where the light bends at the cracks, and i'm screaming at the top of my lungs, pretending that the echoes belong to someone, someone i used to know. and we become silhouettes when our bodies finally go." - the postal service
i betrayed you so beyond anything you've ever done to me. the things you've done on purpose. the things you've done without even knowing. they will never add up to what i've done. every time i'm reminded of it i pray that i could just go back to that night and stop myself from hurting you. a hurt that lingers. a hurt that's out there. a hurt that's floating right below the surface. how much longer until i see the look of disappointment, hurt, in your eyes when you discover what i've done? i love you more than you'll ever be able to comprehend, but you hurt me so much on that day. and i lashed out. and i was drunk, and i was stupid and those aren't excuses for it. they don't make it okay. make it understandable. it's just what i did. and i can't take it back. i got smacked in the face with it again last night. they all think it's a big joke. that your honesty is something that is okay to laugh at behind your back. they carelessly toss it around as if it was something so simple to mock. i hate them for it. i hate myself more for placing it directly into their hands. you were brave in that moment, sitting across from you in your apartment that night. braver than i've ever been. brave like i want to be. brave like i'm finding it hard to be. i hate who they've become. maybe that's who they were all along. maybe they were just better at hiding it before. i'm sorry. those are just words. words that will never matter. words that will never make things right. i quit them last night. i quit me. i quit this stupid town. this stupid life. twenty nine years and some days, this is the first time i've ever really hated it here. i want to pack a suitcase of the few clothes that i own that still fit me, dump all my cds onto my nomad, grab my cell phone and just get the hell out of here. leave everything else behind. everything that reminds me of me. of them. of you. of us. leave it all and just move on. a moment of clarity that hit me last night as she was screaming on the front lawn. i don't belong here. i don't belong with them. i don't belong anywhere. i've known you for twenty years and i hate the person i see when i look at you. the stranger you've become. there are pictures of you all over this room. i see them and pause and wonder who those people are. i laugh at the absurdity of it all when my mind tries to force me to belive that they're of you. of us. the guitar pick that you caught but gave to me because it meant more to me. the glass you took from that bar because i wanted it, shoving it up your sleeve as we awkwardly walked out of the bar. the picture you drew for me that still hangs on my wall. the mix tape with the skips in it because of your broken stereo that you overnighted to me so i would have it on my birthday. paying an insane amount of money to make sure it would be here since you couldn't. i have all of these things but i no longer have any of you. i don't want any of you. my friends don't judge. my friends aren't mean. my friends don't mock you behind your back. my friends don't stop talking when you join them at the table. my friends don't exist.
her: does he have a girlfriend?
with the best intentions to follow instructions from dood to "behave" i set out on a low-key evening of fun with an old friend.
her: i was out shopping last night and someone's phone rang and everyone around started feeling their pockets to see if it was them ringing.
plans with the past tomorrow have me feeling conflicted. i'm both elated and deflated all at once. it's nice to have someone right there in front of you who wants to listen to you. who hears. who cares. a struggle-free thing. especially when everyone else leaves you questioning your footing on what seems like a daily basis. one foot out the door. one hand being held, being tugged, back inside. it's almost over. one of us is already gone. so why not go out with a bang? indeed. i'm ending. you're ending. a heart breaks, and then a heart stops beating. when breathing in gets harder to do. it's painful to smile.
"now i know it's hard when it's through and i'm damned if i don't,
me: that's a cute dog.
my legs are tan. that makes me very happy. i feel like i'm back. after a month or so with my head in the clouds, i'm back. it feels good. isolation, however self-imposed that it was, was the wrong avenue. i thought i needed to get away from everyone. instead i ended up losing myself. i have no idea who i became, but i was getting tired of having everyone in my life question who he was.
me: hey
so i pick nikki up after the arm twisting that took place earlier in the evening. i wasn't feeling like going to the party. she didn't care either way since they were my friends. asked if we could do the pub thing first and then see where the night took us. she was down for that. so we hit a sister version of our favorite pub. what the hell? how dare they use that name. this bar sucked on so many levels. i'm an ohio boy so i don't have much of a frame of reference, but i know when i'm in a hole. this place made our normal breeder bars look wicked gay. but whatever, it had beer.
i can never matter enough to you.
i wish i could float. instead it feels as though i have two cinder blocks strapped to my feet. i wish i could shut my heart off as easily as you can a cell phone. i wish i was more, rather than feeling like less. i wish i was the priority i once was. not the effort i've become. i wish i had the answer for the question, "what's wrong?"
fuck an end. an end you never saw coming.
"i don't even know why we try, under the circumstance of why. nobody needs to see the play, isn't it over anyway. if this is where our story ends, i know i'll lose all of our friends, but they were your friends so you'll say. isn't it over anyway. isn't it almost over, can you feel the freedom from me. every day seems to be the last. everything seems to be the past. everything seems so hard to say, isn't it over anyway..."
...from the wasteland
...i'm sorry
"it's hard to know when to give up the fight. some things you want will just never be right."
"i plan to take every moment that you are, and hang them on the wall. i can't explain what you did for me, but i can frame them all. and when i say goodnight i'll find you there. i'll smile through the blue for you, even though it's hard to stay awake some days. i smile sometimes through the blue for you, even though i know you're a million miles away." -e&j
her: who are you talking to?
manager: will you make me a new one of these, pretty?
ever have one of those days where you feel like your life is being lived but you're more of an observer from the audience, rather than an actual participant? a lack of restraint when it comes to stupid words flowing from your mouth. to another's ear. typed in a letter. said in a voicemail. sent in a text. stupidity takes the foreground. you're the overly dramatic one. you're confused and you're hurt. and you're sad. but no one understands why you walk around with your head hung down. why you have to take a quick break to send out a few texts to try and repair something. something that you feel slipping out of your hands. however you do more damage with your overly emotional words. you're new to all of this, and you're trying. you just aren't doing so well with the succeeding thing. it would be easier with a voice, to hear a tone, but that's not your choice to make. so you deal with words typed out before you, and you have to make of them what you can. maybe you misinterpret them. maybe you're too sensitive. maybe you're reading too much into them. but the confusion and the fear blinds you to all of that. for once in your life you feel as if you've stumbled upon something good. a good friend. a real friend. a connection. and it's your nature to tend to muck up anything good that comes your way. usually it's a sort of self-inflicted sabotage. this time however it's because you're fighting too hard to hold onto something that was bound to change. you didn't see it that way. you didn't see it coming. simply because you've never experienced all of the good that led up to that point. you stop and look around and realize you've messed up again. it's not you that got you there, but you're wondering who did. you're just watching from the sidelines, right? your only point was trying to figure out how you got to this particular day. how we got to this day. and with that question you seemed to have overacted again. you explained where you were coming from, that's how this whole thing started. they let you in on their side. that's what you wanted to know. what you did. what changed. why. so you thank them, and you still somehow wind up saying the wrong thing. you feel stupid. bruised again. but all you can think to do is to say thanks. and somehow that just wasn't enough.
episode three
i remember brian and his tall tale. he decided he was going to try and freak us all out. the biggest chicken i've ever met decided he was going to scare us. so he tells us this story about this old woman who lost her husband many years earlier. she was never able to get over the loss of him, and to that day she still visited his grave late at night and stood there weeping by his tombstone. on certain nights, if you dove by slowly enough you could see her walking the cemetery. ms. k and i of course, being the fearless ones, called him on his story. he swore on his dog's grave that it was true. i'm not sure how much weight that was supposed to give it. so we piled into my car. brian, ms. k, deana, mindo and myself. we drove by the cemetery and of course she was there standing by the tombstone as predicted. i heard a squeal from the back seat. to this day i swear that it was brian and not one of the girls. ms. k declared it a fake. brian stuck by his story. she and i decided to prove him a liar. i pulled into the church lot and parked the car. mindo was close to tears in the back begging me to drive home. i looked at ms. k and winked and we knew there was no turning back. i informed the car that we were getting out to investigate. asked if anyone was coming with us. turned and saw three heads buried in the seats, yes, one was brian. so ms. k and i walk to the grave, my heart felt like it was gonna pop out of my chest, but we had something to prove. we walked up to the grave only to discover that it was a statue next to the headstone of a woman weeping. freaky? yes, but a real woman? no. i looked at the best friend and asked her if she wanted to have some fun. she flashed me her wicked grin, assuring me that she did. i told her to follow my lead as i began to run back to the car. i saw three sets of eyes peering out the back window at us as we came running towards the car. mindo started screaming. they asked us what happened. we told them that we found the lady, walked up behind her, reached out for her and she fell over. ms. k pretended to be hysterical. that got 'em going. "drive drive drive" they yelled from the back seat. i pretend that the car wouldn't start. they were this close to opening the doors and running the entire way home. i started the engine and decided to drive back by the "fallen widow". ms. k yelled that she was standing back up. more screams came from the back, this time it was brian. i drove away so fast they had no idea what was going on. i thought that mindo was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. to this day we never bothered to tell any of them that we made the whole story up about the lady falling down and picking herself back up. not even to brian who knew the lady was a statue. we laugh about it all the time. and whenever we're sitting around in a group of people, drunk or bored, one of us always looks around and says, did you guys ever hear about the old woman in the graveyard...
i regret pretty much every decision i've made in my twenty-nine years. the people i've dated. the people i just messed around with. the times that i exposed my heart to the wrong person. to the right person, just premature. to the right person, just far too late. walking away from you when you found it in your heart to forgive me. but staying with you would just have been another regret in the long list of far too many. my job. some of the people in my life. why i am where i am. why i can't seem to do anything about that after all this time.
my head is all over the place today. all up, no down, so that's a good thing.
