stream of consciousness

It is never how I imagine it will be. My jeans are soaked and the hood on my sweatshirt is barely keeping my face out of the rain. I wonder if I look beautiful. That desperate kind of beautiful like I need to be saved. This wet, desperate girl, who is lonely just wondering around a big city. Who knows maybe someone in one of these stores or restaurants will look up and see me for what I am. A girl that needs to be saved. A girl who just wants to take care of someone and to be taken care of. I don’t know where I am going but I know I cant go back, not yet . I need it to be quiet. I need to just think. I crouch down and put my head in between my legs.
I am naked. With a towel over and head and wrapped around my body forming a little tent over the heater in my room. I can hear my parents in the other room. Without knowing it I know everything. I know they don’t love each other. I know my mom isn’t happy. I don’t understand my father and I know I never will. I am not sad. I only get sad looking back. I sit there for hours naked, but warm. My hair unbrushed, but dry. I hear a knock on the door so I jump into my bed and my mother comes through the door. She lays down on the bed with me and stays there until I fall asleep. Sometimes I wonder if she ever goes back to her bed or if she stays there all night and just get up in the mornings before me. Just having her there quiets me. I can think, but nothing seems that important anymore. I am calm and everything is alright.
There is no point in keeping my hood on. My hair is soaking wet. I get up. I look around the city is dark and crowded, but I am lonely. I reach into my pocket. It isn’t there. Shit I must have left it in my room. Oh well no one is probably going to call me anyways. I look at my wet body. What am I doing? I am waiting for that chance encounter with my soul mate. He will be running trying to avoid the down pour and he will bump into me and we will lock eyes and in that moment he will see me. He will introduce himself and we will go get a coffee and begin to share our lives with one another and with each passing minute we will realize that everything in our lives all the good and the bad has simply lead up to this moment. And I will no longer feel lonely and I will be able to fall asleep quietly and calmly.
Women who seek the attention of males, and do not feel complete without it usually have a poor relationship with their fathers. They crave the attention of males because they lacked this attention in their childhood. Father daughter relationships often shape the way that women relate to men throughout their lives.
The rain seems to be coming down harder and harder. I am cold. I debate going back to my room. Walking up the four flights of stairs. Getting out of my wet clothes and putting on a warm pair of sweats and jumping into my comfortable bed, but somehow being comfortable is not appealing to me. I like being uncomfortable, wet, and cold it fits my mood.
My father and I were never close. When I was really young I would fall asleep in the back seat of the car on long drives home at night. I would almost always wake up when the car stopped in the garage. I would pretend to be asleep and wait for either my mother or father to come and pick me up to take me inside. If my mom picked me up I would pretend to stay asleep and let her put me into bed, but if my father grabbed me I would wake up and walk myself into the house. I was uncomfortable being close to him. Something about him was unsettling to me. When I was younger I didn’t know what it was, and now that I am older I have spent much time hypothesizing on what exactly “it” is.
What if there is no “it”. What if “it” doesn’t exists. I have wasted eighteen years worrying about “it” and I completely made it up. Maybe there is nothing wrong with my dad, and there is something wrong with me. All the things that my father has said to me actually are true. I am just a bitchy young women, who hates her father. I never wanted to be her. I wanted to like my father. I wanted to love my father, but he made it impossible for me.
When my mother divorced my father I was relieved. I couldn’t wait to move out of our house on Wyndham drive. I hated that house. That house held four people who were all lying to one another. My mom didn’t love my father. My father didn’t love any of us. My sister didn’t know who to trust or believe and I hated my father. All of these feeling and emotions filled that house, but they were never uttered it was like a horribly acted play and that house was the stage. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. My mother became a different person when we moved out. And I loved her even more.
My mother could divorce my father and remove him from her life, but I can not divorce my father. He will forever be a part of me no matter how many months or years go by without us talking. His DNA is a part of me and I can feel it rotting and eating at my soul. It is the driving force behind all my bad decisions. All the things I hate about myself. Everything ugly. It is because I have this thing in side of me. I feel like I need to have some form of exorcism performed in order to be pure again. In order to be the person I want to be he cant be a part of me.
When I was a senior in high school I took AP art. I loved that class because I would sit in this empty room in the art building and play music as loud as I wanted and just paint. I found that art became like a diary for me. The painting that unlocked this release of emotion through paint came to me in a dream.
I was in my room sick. I felt my stomach turning and I was sweating. I felt nauseous so I went to the bathroom. I sat there at the toilet kneeling down crying for what seemed like an hour, and then when I opened my mouth I felt as though everything came out. Everything inside of me that I hated. That I had been struggling to hide. When I woke up I was sweating and crying. I was crying. I wanted the burdened to be lifted I wanted the dream to be true. It was one of those vivid dreams. I could feel the cold tile under my sweaty palms. I wanted to will that dream into reality.
I found myself empowered with a huge blank white canvas brush in hand. On canvas I can show the world how I see things. I painted it just as I saw it. Recalling the colors, the dirty tiles, and the angle of my body. The more I painted the more relief I got. As the dream came into reality I struggled to draw what exactly it was that came out of me in my dream. It was so clear to me. I knew what it was, but how do I show the world. I wanted them to understand. To feel what I felt. Then I drew the double helix. A spinning strand of DNA from my mouth to the toilet bowl. It wasn’t what I saw in my dream, but I knew the world would understand. It took me months to complete. I don’t think it will ever fully be completed. It is my masterpiece.
I understand the beauty of bulimia. The physical purging of something. It is gratifying. Watching it flush down. The power of removing something that was a part of you. There is nothing like it.
I am by the reflection pool. Boston is truly a beautiful city. The rain is loud, but not as loud as my thoughts. Sometimes I feel like I cant hear anything. I will notice noises or talking after long periods of time. There is a man running across the street with a newspaper covering his head, although it is doing nothing to protect him from the rain. I want to yell at him to just stop. Stop. Look around. Feel the rain. Think. There is something truly magical about the rain. I can do anything when it rains. I will get married on a rainy day and I will die on a rainy day. I no longer care if I look beautiful in the rain. I begin to cry, but I am neither sad or happy. Maybe I forgot to take my Lexapro, but suddenly I am overwhelmed. I feel my chest surge with emotion and before I can fight it my eyes are filled with tears. My whole face is wet but I feel a warm drop fall down my cheek, and instead of fighting it I just let it go. If I was in my dorm I would pop one of my pale blue pills into my mouth like a piece of candy. I would immediately feel better even though I know it takes hours to circulate just knowing it was in me suppressing whatever was hurting me allowed me to forget.
I used to have this romantic notion about anti-depressants like once I began to take them everything bad would fade into the background and I could be that happy energetic girl I yearn to be. Sometime I wonder what else those little pills suppress. Do they suppress my happiness? My sexuality? My creativity? Most of the time I don’t care. I just want to get rid of that feeling. But right now I want to relish in it. I want to understand it.
I let the tears come. I don’t fight them I try to go to that place that I dread. I let my whole body slump into the darkness. There is never any clarity only more questions. I should just let go. Who really cares why he doesn’t call when he says he will? Or that he would rather take a trip to Monte Carlo then spend time with you? I try to convince myself that these things no longer matter. I am a stronger person for having conquered them, but the truth is I will never be able to rationalize it. It is too fucked up. Maybe I don’t want to understand because if I understand him then it brings me closer to him and I want nothing to do with him.
I am water and he is oil. We can be forcible mixed but when left alone we separate. It is natural for us to be apart. I don’t miss him. It is different. I don’t see him as a father. I can’t.
“Its about time /that I came clean with you/ no longer fine/ I’m no longer running smooth/ I thought that I/ found myself under something new/ just one more lie…”
I love acoustic songs. Strip everything away. Give the musician a mic and let their sore vocal chords sing the truth. It is raw. Untouched. It is beautiful.
Dear Dad, I don’t know what to do. I tell you that you hurt me and you don’t listen. I can’t see you any more until you understand. I’m sorry.
-Brigitte
I was ten.
I bite my nails till they bleed. It hurts to touch.
I sit down on the wet cement around the pool. If I fell backward into the water would anyone notice? If I held my breath until I passed out would anyone care? How typical. Unoriginal. I fucking hate myself.
A little boy runs by. He can’t be older than seven he has on a red rain jacket and matching rubber boots. His jacket sands out in the night and he runs around with a big smile on his face. He is splashing in puddles and admiring the reflection pool, and I hate him. He is innocent and happy for no reason. I long for that feeling. High on life. I used to get so giddy and happy when school was out for the summer, but then summer of fourth grade it never came. School ended and summer began and I remember being happy that summer had arrived, but it was different. I didn’t wake up in the mornings smiling simply because it was summer. Somehow my smile tolerance had been lowered between third and fourth grade and summers arrival no longer was powerful enough. I kept reminding myself that it was summer and I should be happy but it just wasn’t the same. Since then it has only gotten worse.
As more and more shit piles on I wish that my happiness tolerance would be decreased so that even the little things made me smile. Knowing what I know now I wish that seeing a little boy just enjoying life would make me happy, but instead I just want to run over and shake him until he sees the world for what it really is. Until he sees that drunk bum on the sidewalk, and that mother talking on her cell phone ignoring her crying child, and that man walking down the street with all that anger.
I cried for an entire night when this girl told me that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
I feel heavy. Every step I take my foot is digging deeper into the pavement and it is getting harder to lift it up again. I can hear the pounding. I am cold. I want to bump into someone so that they will notice me. I see no one I see nothing. There are no building. No people.
I peel my wet clothes off my body and leave them in a pile on the floor. Forget the cozy sweats I just get into bed. Hair is still wet but im too tired and desperate to do anything about it. I close my eyes and see red.
Red the color of love. Anger. Blood. Hate. Love. The boys jacket and boots. My finger nails. That pen on my desk. Love. Apples. Passion. Urgency. Stop.
Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
He wrote a poem
And he called it “chops”
Because that was the name of his dog
And that’s what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
And a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
And read it to his aunts
That was the year that father tracy
Took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
With tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of x’s
And he has to ask his father what the x’s meant
And his father tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it
Once on a poece of white paper with blue lines
He wrote a poem
And he called it “autumn”
Because that was the name of the season
And that’s what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
And asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
aecause of its new paint
And the kids told him
That father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year that his sister got glasses
With thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
His mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
He wrote a poem
And he called it “innocence: a question”
Because that was the question about his girl
And that’s what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
And a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her
That was the year that father tracy died
And he forgot how the end of the apostle’s creed wen
And he caught his sister making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed or even talked
And the firl around the corner wore too much makeup that made him cough when he kissed her
But he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do
And at three am he tucked himself into bed
His father snoring soundly
that’s why on the back of a brown paper bag
He tried another poem
And he called it absolutely nothing
Because that’s what it was really about
And he gave himself and A
And a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
Because he didn’t think
He could reach the kitchen
Elusive happiness. Like a beautiful dream. It comes and you have no control over it. Once you realize its beauty its already too late and it begins to slip away. Once it is gone it is hard to believe that it ever really existed. Yet it is the reason I get up in the morning. Everything comes back to it. What is this emotion that has completely taken over my life. Striving to obtain something I do not understand. The more I try to think about it apply logic to it the less it seems to make sense. All I know is that I want to be happy. “Sing with rapture and dance like a dervish. Shout from the mountain tops” kind of happy. Is that so much to ask?
My mom used to tell me “fake it till you make it” sometimes when I would get really depressed about something. It is an interesting concept. If you want to be happy just act happy even if you don’t really feel it and sooner or later you wont be faking it and you really will just be happy. Sounds easy but it isn’t. I intend to explore this theory more during my lifetime. I like the idea that I have the power to be in whatever mood I want to be in, but it is so exhausting to defeat sadness and apathy.
I am on a horse in an open field it is dark and I am lost. The horse is jet black with powerful movements. I can feel his muscles tightening underneath me. I stop and look around to try to find a recognizable landmark, but there is nothing. I have never been so alone. I have never been so alive.
I can’t sleep. I can never sleep when I need to. My mind keeps busy at night occupied with regrets and sadness. During the day I sleep. Dreamless. It is completely unsatisfying and I wake up tired and anxious. I wake up to nothing. Some days all I do I lay and bed and listen to the world outside my window. People talking, wind blowing, cars passing and wait for my phone to ring for someone out there to beacon me to join. When it finally does ring I usually let it go to my answering machine.
There was a time when you were my reason for getting up in the morning, but that motivation has faded to heartbreak and it makes me pull the covers over my body tightly wishing I could just go back.
Anxiety slowly built up inside me until it was suffocating and I knew the only thing I could do to stop it was call her. I dialed. I hear her voice on the other line “hello?” as soon as I hear her I begin to cry… “mom” I finally squeak out. I tell her how I am scared. How I need her. When she finally agrees to come I feel the air slowly return to my lungs and I gasp. I turn to dad and tell him I can not stay the night and then sheepishly pack my things. I hear her car pull into the gravel drive way and I slip out of my room to go meet her. As she hugs me I realize I will never feel as safe as I do in her arms. The second she begins to loosen her grip everything will slowly begin to seep back in. It is only there in her hug that I find peace.
In the darkness of my cluttered room I grab for my ipod. I place the ear phones deep into my ears and select a perfectly haunting song and wait for the notes to take me further. I close my eyes and let the beat guide me and as the singers voice kicks in with his beautiful poetry and for the first time I don’t feel quite as alone, but I can feel the tears begin to creep back up. Each song takes me to a different memory and a slightly different emotion. One song I am sitting in my car with the windows up and the rain coming down in sheets all around me as I scribble down horribly cliqued lyrics to songs I would write if I knew how to, and the next I am in the back yard jumping on the trampoline. Tears falling from the chin. Wondering why our dog loves me more than you do. I seek for answers in the lyrics. Answer to my misty memories of the end of innocence and the beginnings of heartbreak.
No one can love you if you don’t love yourself. That phrase haunts me. I don’t think I will ever love myself. There are too many cracks, imperfections ingrained into my being that I can not see past and how am I supposed to? When the person who is supposed to love me unconditionally only sees my flaws it makes it impossible to see anything but those things.
I have an apartment full of people. Handsome faces smiling and joking around with each other. The TV plays the highlights of the latest college football game. Boys sprawled out of the chairs with their feet up on the ottomans and a sea of energy and playful words are going back and forth around my dinning room table. I am in the kitchen cleaning glasses listening to all the youthful life in the other room. When I furnished the apartment it is how I envisioned the furniture would be used but there is one thing missing….me. I walk into the room and I feel invisible. No one looks up, no one jumps at the opportunity to include me into the conversations so I just remain unincorporated just occupying space and listening to all the life that fills the room. I try to be more visible so I laugh at the jokes and sit close to the table but I remain undetected by my peers. The more time that goes by the more painfully obvious it becomes that I am just a spectator in the conversation and in life.
I just want you to know who I am. That’s why I am slowly revealing myself to you one piece at a time. Gauging your response and understanding. With each talk I am removing a brick of my fortress
Sometimes I get this overwhelming feeling. It is like all of a sudden, all at once I am aware of myself. I am aware for a few brief moments of my existence and all I can think of this is really my life this is my body, my feelings my actions these people are really my friends, my boyfriend, my family and I am briefly conscious of my powerful role in my own life and I am painfully aware that I am not satisfied or happy with my own life but before this painful awareness drives me completely mad it fades