Friday, May 26, 2000

Where is everyone? I feel I could scream for hours before someone noticed. It looks so empty that even my thoughts seem to echo.

I knew it was coming, but that doesn't mean that I was ready for it. I suppose I was hoping for something else. And even though it shouldn't be devastating, all I want is to curl up and cry it off. And of course, wanting that makes for a wonderful excuse to beat myself up for being so weak.

Thursday, May 18, 2000

Maybe tomorrow it'll rain...

I want stormy weather. I want the air to be warm and thick, and I want a whisper of a breeze to build up just enough that it lifts the hair off my neck and shoulders when I stand in the yard. I want the sky covered, I want dark, low clouds to hover above me; I want them to burst with rain. I want to be drenched, and then I want to go to bed with the window open, listening to the tapping of the water and to hear thunder in the distance as I fall asleep.

Tuesday, May 16, 2000

I met someone with a foot fetish.

I want someone who likes my feet, dammit.



I went with someone to the mall (*shudder*) this weekend--she wanted to try on a couple of dresses, and I ended up trying some on myself. would you forgive me if I told you that I fell in love with a girly black dress? And would you think less of me if I told you that I almost got it, even though I'd probably never wear it, just cause it looked so nice?

The reason I'm so intent on shunning 'girly' things is that they're so often associated with being dumb, or simply because they're things I don't want for myself. And I worry that, if I admit to one thing, I'll be assumed to be perfectly happy with all the rest of them. I don't cook, not because I can't*, but simply because I don't want it to be expected of me. I don't clean other people's messes because I know guys who've gotten along God knows how many years without cleaning their own apartment because all it takes is bringing some wide-eyed girl over who finds their lack of interest in cleaning endearing and feels she just has to do it for them. I avoided Home Ec classes like the plague; I went to math instead, much to the chagrin of certain school counselors. It's a rare thing that I'll admit that I can knit, sew, crochet, cook, or produce all kinds of Martha-Stewartesque crafts. I would rather people think I'm clueless or clumsy than that they expect me to do these things.

Much of this is directly related to having grown up in the Mormon Church. My parents raised my sisters and I to be independent women--I don't know how they reconciled this with the Church, but I am thankful. I was taught that whether I was female or male made no difference; I remember my aunt (who then lived across the street from us) speaking to my mom, concerned that I wouldn't play with dolls. I was playing with her sons' trucks instead. Deliberately--it had earlier struck me as stupid that I shouldn't just because I was a girl, so I set out to make a point. And well, their toys were more fun.

My aunt was a beautiful woman with light brown hair. She married a tall, wiry man with piercing blue eyes and dark brown hair. He liked blondes. She bleached and dyed her hair. One day, she showed up at our gate, crying, with his bicycle. They'd had a bad fight, and she wanted to hide it at our place to get back at him.

Some time later, they moved. He lost job after job, many times due to his irascible temperament. His eyes became sunken and his skin tan and leathery; he found farm jobs around the southern side of the country. They continued fighting, and ended up having four children. I don't know when he started hitting her. Maybe he already was that day she showed up at our house with his bike. I don't know when he started beating his children. I don't know when it was the first time he left her, nor how many times he came back.

Last time I heard of him, he had been thrown in jail for bouncing checks. Last time I saw my aunt, she had aged so much; her hands were bony, callused and peeling; she was still bleaching and dyeing her hair, now hacked and broken like straw. Last time I heard of her was last summer, while I visited my parents. She called my grandmother in tears--he had been hitting her again and taken off afterwards.

"Give me money for a train ticket and to bring her and the kids back here," I told my mom when she got home from work. "I'll go get her and drag her here if that's what it takes. And the bastard better not raise a finger at me."

My mom sighed. She had tried to get her sister to leave before.

"She'll just go back to him," she told me, shaking her head sadly. "I've tried. But what would she do? She has nothing to fall back on, and no one here will give work to a woman her age and with no experience."

My grandmother had poured a great deal of money into courses for her. She never finished any of them, or never tried to find work related to them. There was no need to, after all. She was a young, beautiful woman, and had just found a Prince Charming with piercing blue eyes.

My parents raised me to, first and foremost, be able to take care of myself. This was what I wanted to do--go to school, then go on a mission (women may serve on a mission for a year and a half at the age of 21 in the LDS Church, while men are required to go for two years at the age of 19), and then, if it happened, get married. If not, no big deal. And I fully intended to continue working after getting married. Having children was never appealing to me. After moving to utah, I was told by people in the Church that, because I was female, my priorities should be, first and foremost, be married and have a family, then, if I wasn't married by the ripe ol' age of 21, go on a mission, and only after that, school and a career. And I was to drop that, of course, after getting married. A career was something you had to fall back on in case some catastrophe fell upon your husband.

To this day, my father thinks I'm anti-marriage, and pretty much anti-relationship. He also thinks I can't cook. He's wrong about both. But I've tried very hard to distance myself from the things relationships, family, and marriage may mean to him--changing your name, having children, not working. He thinks I can't stand kids; he is wrong--I have a lot of fun with children. I simply don't want to have any of my own. Never have, and don't expect to ever change my mind.

"Maybe," he lovingly told me once, "maybe it's time you start taking better care of yourself. You know, get a boyfriend, maybe you need to, I don't know, talk differently, not be intimidating, maybe you need to change the way you walk, you know..."

Yes, I know.And that's why I get so worked up over liking a dress.



* Though as of late, when I do cook it ends up turning into an experiment ('I wonder if something edible would come out if I threw some in') and I don't really want to bother worrying about poisoning other people.

Saturday, May 13, 2000

"I remember, from childhood comic strips and books, a top-hatted, mustachioed magician who brandished an ebony walking stick. His name was Zatara. He could make anything happen, anything at all. How did he do it? Easy. He uttered his commands backwards. So if he wanted a million dollars, he would say 'srallod noillim a em evig.' That's all there was to it. It was something like prayer, but much surer of results.

"I spent a lot of time at age eight experimenting in this vein, commanding stones to levitate: 'esir, enots.' It never worked. I blamed my pronounciation."*

I have asked people from the LDS Church countless times how someone may know whether the Church is true or not. Time and time again, I have been told to pray and ask God. Fine, but what happens if you don't get an answer? Or what if the answer is no? Then, I've been told, then you must not be asking right; maybe you don't really mean it, maybe you don't really want to know.

Maybe it's your pronounciation.

What about the millions who belong to other religions? Surely at least some of them have honestly sought God. Surely not all of them belong to the religions they do just because their parents belonged to it, or because it's what their friends do. Surely at least some of these people find it just as important to try to figure out what the right religion is. Surely some of these people have asked, wanting to know, over and over again. Why aren't all of them in one place? Is God just being moody and not answering anyone who doesn't end up joining ? Is God deliberately misleading these people? Are all of them lying, being stubborn, risking their salvation, just to piss you off?


* Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Sunday, May 07, 2000

Over It.

I'm having one of those stick-one-song-on-repeat nights, though I don't feel sad or sick. The question that's been haunting me--what do I want?--remains unanswered and maddening. Do I want to leave? Do I want to go back to school? What needs to change?

I'm starting to feel restless again. I know that I need to decide what it is I want, to figure out what I need to do, but I don't want to. I am afraid to think about it; I might find out. I'm afraid that it might be unpleasant, and I'm afraid because planning and setting things down makes me terribly uneasy. I have no problem doing things spontaneously, jumping into something new, disregarding common sense. That is no problem at all. Not acting on impulse is a frightening thing.

Maybe nothing needs to change--maybe I just need to wait and let it all settle. Maybe all it takes is time. But time is so dangerous--time will make you numb, time erases, time makes you forget. Time heals, but at what cost? Time leaves but memories, cruel, faint glimpses of what used to be. Time leaves you empty.

I bled.

Friday, May 05, 2000

The trick is to keep breathing.

My mom, perhaps by coincidence, perhaps in a fit of clairvoyance, left a box of kleenex next to my bed.




I finally went to the Dr. about my rusty joints. They drew blood, I chatted up the lab guy (I'm trying to make myself talk to people; I spoke to a woman as we waited in line at the store the other day and my head almost exploded), and called me a few days later to tell me they think I have some sort of arthritis and give me a referral. Doh. This was one of the reasons I didn't want to go to the Dr. in the first place (the other being that I was hoping it'd kill me before finals), and now I'm having a hell of a time getting myself to make the appointment.

Meanwhile, I've started sleeping in my bed. I can't climb up the ladder, so I snuck one of the chairs from downstairs up into my room and put it against the wall by the ladder. So then, every night I stand on the chair and drag myself up into the bed, and every morning I slide myself back down onto the chair. The first morning after sleeping there I couldn't get out; it took about an hour of cursing and wiggling and bending limbs. It wasn't nearly as amusing then as it is now (as it is with most things, of course--Captain Obvious to the rescue). I haven't had major problems since, though, and I'm getting pretty good at getting in and out. Heh.




I've been trying to keep busy. I've seen two 'chick flicks' within the past week, God forgive me (how good or bad they actually were isn't important--it's the seeing part that's bad). It annoys me that I'm expected to like brainless, touchy-feely mush (which is not to say all 'chick flicks' are brainless mush, etc. etc., standards disclaimers apply) just because I'm female. In dumb 'girl' movies, people die, cry a lot, and bond to the oldies. In dumb 'guy' movies, at least stuff blows up.





I felt lonely last night, so I stayed up late. I'm staying up late tonight, because that way I can feel lousy longer, and then be annoyed at myself for staying up, and then also feel crappy tomorrow morning.

I've done things today that I didn't want to do because I thought they were what I needed to do to make things better for myself. It's four in the morning.

It's four in the morning and I doubt my judgement.

Thursday, May 04, 2000

I always did like Spock better than Kirk.

"You have incredibly high expectations of yourself," she told me, aghast.

It was nice to hear someone say it. "I just want to be reasonable," I told myself the same way I'd told myself that I mustn't let emotion get in the way of my judgement.

"You're so reasonable," I've been told. "You're not at all like a girl. You're so logical."

I just want to be reasonable, I told myself over and over. I still tell myself. And who knows, maybe my life is better for it. But sometimes I wonder if I'm not crippled for thinking this way.

Wednesday, May 03, 2000

My mom came and went in a flurry of shopping and visits to the hospital. If you've read this for some time, you've probably noticed that I've been pretty depressed for a while. While RF and I were in New York, I came to the conclusion that I needed to kill myself. I'd already looked into different methods and I decided that I'd do it when we got back. I was in a lot of pain in New York--physical and otherwise--and cried everywhere. He didn't notice.

After getting back though, I felt really guilty about the money and effort people had put into me going to school. Finals were just around the corner and I thought that if I passed, at least everyone wouldn't think that I was as big of a failure. So I did, and I felt better because I knew it was going to be done with soon. But then I didn't follow the plan and next thing I knew the quarter had started again. I thought maybe I was starting to feel better; I went into the quarter with a little hope that it wouldn't be so bad, but by the time the second week had rolled around I was feeling horrible again and missing school. When RF's mom flew in, I stopped going altogether. I guess I had also stopped eating; I didn't notice, but RF's mom mentioned something later on. When my mom got in, I could barely keep up the illusion of feeling semi-normal. RF suggested that I go see someone about my depression; I agreed to go the day after my mom left. I had a horrible night the night of the 10th; I didn't think I could make it to the end of the week, and asked RF to take me to the hospital the next day. He agreed. I kept changing my mind; he asked me to give him my car keys; I lied and told him they were in the room my mom was sleeping in and didn't want to wake her. They were in my bedroom. He asked me to promise him I wouldn't do anything before the morning; I was reluctant, but finally gave in, fully intending to break it. I thanked him for everything he'd done for me and said good night. I went to my room and wrote a note with instructions for some of my things; I knew this was the time to do it--do it then or go to the hosptial the next day. And my birthday was getting closer; when we were in New York, I set that as the deadline. I didn't want to make it to 21.

I don't know how I was able to not do it; I felt bad about lying to RF and I guess I hoped this might help. I stayed up until it was close to dawn, then fell asleep, exhausted, next to my laptop, my book about suicide, and the note. The next morning I woke up afraid and hid the note.