Straight No Chaser

Uphill

okay, i finished the book, and i have to agree with the aaron who argued that its redeeming merits were in the writing itself. i think i loved it. i actually don't think i'll see the movie. it was bad enough looking at kirsten dunst's face every time i closed the front cover; i don't think i could bear two hours of the novel being completely cheapened, plus i just wouldn't be able to sit through it, the way i almost couldn't with the book. my mom saw me reading it and got that infamous sneer on her face, the slightly curious but thoroughly disgusted one, and when i summarized the basic plot she just sucked her teeth. "that's so ridiculous," she said, physically taking it out of my hand so she could flip disgustedly through the pages, practically yanking them out. "why would a thirteen-year-old kill herself? no, forget that, why would you want to read this? you know we're not into this kind of stuff." "we" being, of course, upwardly mobile black women, who are so centered within and connected to the world by which they are so crucially needed that they would never consider removing themselves from it. suicide is for the weak. that's not us, she says, and has said for years, and plus, if you kill yourself you go to hell. duh. and she probably thinks delivering that litany once a year is enough, maybe even overkill.

i think she'd probably have a stroke if she knew how much more seriously i've thought about it this summer than at any other point in my life. she really thinks i'm moody, pouty, maybe even depressed (not that there's anything we can do about that, because "we're not into that kind of stuff," either). i don't think she's ever actually considered that i might be legitimately unhappy with my life, or with life in general. which is the basic misconception shared by most people who see me for what i am on paper: the child of affluent parents, a generally good student who slips up sometimes, acquaintance to many, close friend to few, decent writer (she actually doesn't know that, though, having never read anything i didn't write for a class), physically healthy, et cetera. people who see that respond to any show of unhappiness with, for lack of another word, disgust. how dare i be anything but perpetually grateful for my wonderful circumstances and my brilliant future?

forgetting, of course, that the only thing i really have is potential. no guarantees, just some of the right conditions in fortuitous alignment. i might not be anything, ever. i already won't be a doctor, which i really wanted to, once. i might be a lawyer, but not if i ever meet another marcus, and i won't be happy. i don't have any lucrative talents. in fact, i'm pretty close to talentless. no trades. just a bunch of random, disconnected academic skills that are good for internships and probably for eventual jobs, corporate america, things like that, but nothing i want to develop because i'm really only passionate about three or four things, all of them useless. useless in the strictest sense.

no one is ever going to love me. period. i am way too needy and i don't offer any substantial return. i am loyal beyond reason, yes, but no one actually values that. without exception, it always becomes a liability.

i saved a turtle from getting run over this morning. i jumped out of the car in the middle of the street and moved him, put him in a little pond and watched him paddle off. if i'd run over him instead, or if he wasn't a swimming turtle and he'd sunk when i put him in, i probably would have just done it then. jumped in after him or something. but that's not how i'd want to die, not at all. all year at school i had elaborate daydreams about leaping off the overpass outside of the gates, one second before marcus got there. i would have called him beforehand, handed him the enormous responsibility of explaining me to my parents and my friends, apologizing to my brother for me...this in exchange for speeding along my demise, because i'm almost sure that if i did it anytime soon, it'd be over him. something stupid and trivial he did. but it would have been a long time coming, and i wouldn't tell him that--needless guilt. and he would hate me for it, not himself. sanctity of life, and so on. i'd be a sinner. it would suck to look down from heaven(?) or up from hell(?) and see him spitting on my grave or something, or using me as an example of one of the "lost souls" he left behind.

i don't mean to belittle any of that. just to say that it wouldn't be worth it, for a reaction from him. if i really did it, ever, it'd be because, looking back, i'd see twenty (or thirty, forty, whatever) hard years, and i wouldn't want to find out how much harder i could get.

if i didn't, or don't, it won't be because i've magically found the meaning of life, and recognized my own as exemplary. it would just be too too too too selfish. my parents would die, krystle would quit school (literally, or so she says), a few other people would really miss me and chad would probably take a machete to everyone he thought had ever hurt me. i really wouldn't, ever, for him. then again, he appears in several places on that list of "maybe if," which seems to get longer and longer by the day. maybe if things get a little bit worse than they are now. maybe if i ever send anything in for publication and it gets rejected. maybe if one day i don't fit into my favorite jeans. maybe if i drive home and see that turtle cracked in two on the highway. maybe if the next book i read warps my impressionable mind any further. maybe if i get into another fight with my dad that ends with him calling me worthless. maybe if the cramps are even a tad bit worse this month. maybe if marucs cancels the august visit once and for all. maybe if anything happens to chad. (i really couldn't be my parents' only child. the strain of that alone would kill me, all by itself.) maybe if it turns out there is a god, and it turns out i'm in trouble for being an iffy believer. if there is one, though, i'm fucked either way, because suicide unequivocally equals hell, if such a place exists. i'm not sure. i'd really rather not find out.

these are an awful lot of words to waste on such a basic premise. i'm sure everyone feels the same way sometimes, as meg may or may not point out. i somehow really doubt it, though. the world would just not keep turning if everyone hated it as much as i do sometimes. we'd put in a tremendous group effort and tear it apart, leaving only a little island on which to put the beautiful things. music and marcus and johnny depp. the emerald forest. other things i invent to occupy myself. but then we wouldn't want the world to end, we'd want it to go on, and all live there, on that island. and then the island would turn into hell, because it would be overrun with hateful people. the beautiful stuff would get squeezed out, or voluntarily jump ship. then we'd turn our hate inward and kill each other, ourselves. i'd die a virgin after all. and mr. eugenides would write a book about me.