Instinct

I have this clock. (Well, I nicked this clock from a pile of my mom's stuff when I moved into my grandma's house two years ago.)  It's about a foot wide, faded green, with spindly black roman numerals lining up around its face.

Even though this clock hasn't been functional for probably five years, I glance at it instinctively, sneak a peek over my shoulder, look to it to tell me the time.  Those warped, slender black arms point resolutely to 7:33, but the clock observes more than that.  Today, gazing back at me from a heap of disparate artifacts (having recently been remove from its perch on the dresser), it cries out with a sharp swishing ticktick,ticktick,ticktick--getout,getout,getout.

I look around my little room: piles of my most prized possessions crowd the cold cement floor; the fainting couch I looted from my dad's disintegrating house is crammed between the enormous desk I never liked and the bookshelf that's too small; my clothes spill out of a plastic tub stashed away in the closet; my gorgeous golden mirror is half-obscured by cheap white curtains.

Everywhere I turn in this room, this house that I've tried to claim as my own, there is a token of someone else, the indication of an unfamiliar life.  Tucked away in every inch of this place, like scads of dirty secrets, are reasons that I cannot stay.  The longer I try to cram myself into this environment, the more reasons I uncover, and the harder it is to come home.

It absolutely is time to go.  These nine months have been abrasive, the walls of the house and the proximity to these people filing away at my composure, shearing off great scales of my carefully established serenity.  In its place, my anxiety has returned with a vengeance; I feel the melancholy creeping in through the cracked weather stripping, its dreadful tendrils grasping for my feet, longing to bind me to its emptiness.

I don't want to answer to that again.

So off I go in search of a basement apartment or a condo or any other place where I can leave my mark.

Moving won't magically make everything better, but it will give me the chance to breathe without apology and without begging for permission or acceptance.  I've established now that I can live on my own, that I can feed myself well physically, spiritually, and socially.  Now that much closer to discovering my taste in music, men, clothes, and adventure, it's time I find the space to let these things develop and take shape, to allow myself to take shape.

As soon as time allows, I intend to tuck that clock under my arm and set out on the unmarked path that blazes before me, in search of a room that will give us both new voice.

Neither Here Nor There

I am in limbo. I'm living out of a linen closet and sleeping on a couch while most of my furniture, favorite books, and blankets are at my grandma's, and my hopes and aspirations are in this little basement bedroom in a 6-person house in Midtown Orem. I no longer consider myself a theatre major, though I have not yet made the transfer official. I drive down to UVU for church every Sunday, but I never make the trek for mid-week meetings and I don't really know anybody in my ward. I'm playing a game of emotional twister, my feet and hands in all directions, not really accomplishing anything.

The meantime, the bit in between, the ambiguous phase before I move out and before I really settle in-- this is a time of reconfiguration. This is the point where I gather my thoughts, evaluate my position. I see equal parts inevitability and promise stretching before me, and I'm ready to topple into the future with all of its unknowable glory. But for this moment I stand on the meridian and gather strength.

I know that this coming semester is going to be difficult. I did it on purpose. I chose to retake most of the classes I've ever failed because if I'm going to start over, to reinvent myself as a good student, what better way than my conquering those classes that defeated me in the past? (When I say defeated, I mean they contributed to the development of my anxiety disorders. I'm not being dramatic for drama's sake) In the last golden weeks of summer, I am developing habits that will help me weather this self-inflicted storm.

Eliminating theatre has been so good for me. I never realized how much of my own life I was missing out on until I took a step back and really looked at it. Tonight I went to a little party, the first solid exposure I've had for a long while to people deeply entrenched in this world. They talked so much about other people's lives and business, and I saw clearly the toll that this lifestyle takes. I think theatre will always be something I do, and I know that I'm better for my little love affair, but right now I'm so glad to be walking away from it as a way of life.

I'm also working on a permanent assignment from Ann. She seems to think that it's okay for me to like myself, even though I'm not perfect. She wants me to try.

I am trying. It's so, so hard to find things about myself that aren't despicable, but I'm gonna give this assignment my best shot.

And I'm 'running' in the mornings and trying to eat better (ignore the twelve Oreo balls I've devoured this week), but those are far less interesting topics than limbo and self-loathing.

So while I'm poised on the Great Meridian of My Short Life and soaking up the pure energy of sunlit family-filled afternoons and early morning jogs and wisdom teeth surgery and meaningful scripture study, I acknowledge that the crap's about to hit the fan in a bigbig way, and tonight I'm perfectly happy to be neither here nor there.

~~~

Recorded 8/15/11

A Financial Update

August 25: "A correction was sent to CPS on your behalf. Check back."
"Free Application for Federal Student Aid Waiting for correction."

I did check back, and you told me just to wait it out.

August 30: "A correction was sent to CPS on your behalf. Check back."

And I thought, 'Well, at least the FAFSA has finished processing.'

August 31: "A correction was sent to CPS on your behalf. Check back."
"Free Application for Federal Student Aid Waiting for correction 04."


Eff my liiiiiiife.

We've un-progressed. We've regressed.

I might never get my money.

They're going to give it away to some awful person whose parents cut them off because they've been going to school for twelve years now and have accomplished nothing.

They're going to run out of money and the $2,750 I was expecting is going to be $65.38.

I'm going to end up living in a cardboard box on the road behind the GT.

I'm going to eat worms and bird eggs and flies. I'm going to make my clothes out of leaves and grass and pine needles. I'll make friends with rabbits and bears so they can cuddle with me and keep me warm at night. I'll sell my soul to the Theatre department to pay for tuition. I'll sneak up behind people who are studying in the library, render them unconscious with the forest ninja skills I'll learn from the bears and the rabbits, use their book for my home work, and then put it back so when they wake up it'll be like some awesome yet terrible dream that may or may never have happened. They'll write articles about me in the UVU newspaper. Three years from now, I'll be a Lifetime Original Movie. Tourists will flock to the road behind to GT to get a glimpse of me, to take their picture with BearRabbitSoullessTheatreGirl (which will be the title of the film). And after all of that, I'll still be paisley soup bowl-free. Because my loan money will never come.

I am destined to die, feeble and despondent, in the arms of my best bear friend, having never found true love because people will be repulsed by my stench.







These might all be legitimate concerns.




Homeless at Library Square - Salt Lake City, originally uploaded by inneri.

Watch for me.

Any Day Now, Loan Fairy

The problem with window shopping is that one often falls in love with something one cannot afford.

Tonight, in a fit of I'll-kill-you-if-you-open-your-mouth-again-type rage, Lou and I escaped to a shopping complex in American Fork hoping to find dishes worthy to be placed in the cupboard of our soon-to-be apartment. After a thorough yet fruitless search of Ross, we wound up at Bed Bath & Beyond, where my hapless heart set its pretty little hopes on these:
Paisley soup bowls! How perfect are they? Not too patterned, not too plain, big enough that they could potentially aide me in drowning my sorrows in ice cream or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and off beat enough for them to speak to me. Maybe I loved them so much because I wasn't expecting to find them. Maybe the cosmos aligned and led me straight to the dinnerware of my dreams.

"Alack, that heaven should practice stratagem upon so soft a subject as myself!"

Wouldn' you know it, these bowls, since they cost any money at all, are way out of my price range.

...

Poop.
And I had the whole kitchen designed around them!

Harrumph.

Perspective

Surer footing. That's what this summer has changed the most; somewhere among the washed-out parking lot jam sessions, picnic lunches, and late night conversations, I think I have finally felt that indescribable sense of self awareness that gives purpose and meaning to life.

When my mom died almost two years ago, I fell apart. No, that's not quite right. It's like I split in half. Or was pared down, the most complex parts of me sloughed off, dissolved away. I was left with a poor imitation of the thing I'd lost. I became, out of necessity, some form of a mother to my friends, my siblings, my dad, myself. And that was fine. Sarah-lucy says that's where I needed to be. I think, though, that I've grown out of that. I don't know whether it's because I've begun to heal... I have a hard time believing that I don't need a mother anymore. Whatever the reason, whatever the origin of this growth, I am ready to move on.

I need to live on my own. I need to be in an environment where I don't feel responsible for the emotional well-being of everyone around me. Now that I've grown accustomed to sweet independence (not just a lack of curfew, but the true, rich, blessed freedom that comes from a sure center), I have to hold on to that, cultivate it. Therein lies the way to restoration, to reparation.

I feel better.

I'm still an emotional wasteland who misses her mom, but I feel closer now to the person I want to be (someone loving and trusted and delightfully complex and confident and brimming with potential) than I have felt in years.

~~~

Recorded 8/21/10

Out of the Dark

If you're wondering what I've been doing with my summer, the answer is this:




You should come see it because it's wonderful and it just might change your mind about Shakespeare or about life.

Also, I've been discovering my path, probing my fate, searching for that something that will lead me to the fulfillment of all my dreams. But seriously, I've been growing up.

Apartment hunting. It makes me feel mature. It makes me feel scared. It makes me feel like I can't wait to leave this place, but how could I ever go?

I have to remind myself that moving out does not equal betrayal, and that everyone will be a bit better off with me not in the house.

I have to remember that I can always come back for Sunday dinner, and that I can still take the girls out for movie nights and such.

And I have to think about how much I will grow, and how that will better qualify me to raise my own family when it's my turn.

So.

With the remainder of my summer, I'll be tapping in to my core and illuminating my future.

Hobey ho, let's go...