This week is Pottery Boot Camp in my ceramics class. This means that the instructor is giving us all a crash course on how to use the wheel. For the past two months, I have been staring in quiet awe and fear of the wheel. Honestly, it looked like it could take my fingers off if it wanted to. I didn't want to give it the chance.
But tomorrow afternoon, I will be throwing clay. I will be staring, bewildered, at the lump of Earth that is spinning out of control and wonder what it would be like to take an accounting class. Then I'll realize I hate numbers, and losing a finger to the wheel will inhibit my ability to count to ten, so I better figure it out.
Anyway, Tuesday the instructor walked us through the steps of throwing on the wheel. Then he said; "AND NOW WE'RE GOING TO MAKE POSTERS TO HANG UP SO YOU'LL KNOW WHAT TO DO!"
Well, how about no? In the first place, you're the instructor. I don't want to read a poster if I get stuck, I want to ask you. If I don't understand I'm not going to magically know from looking at a poster made by a gaggle of other people who spent your demo looking at you like you were a wizard because we had no idea how to throw. They can't teach me!
In the second place, I don't want to color posters. I'm in college, not kindergarten. That is a very expensive poster. Rant over.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Where Do You Go?
I'm here, but I'm not always present.
This is most obvious when I'm plugged in and turned up and tuned out to the real world in ceramics class or during National Novel Writing Month. For me, I've found that I can't be creative when I'm so distracted by all the people and things around me.
This probably means that I'm not as creative as I should be.
I'm here, but I'm not always present.
Like when I'm sitting in class, staring at the wall. Or when I'm sitting on the bus, looking out the window. Or when I'm writing something disturbing, dredging up words and phrases and images that are better left buried in the basement of my psyche and not shared with the rest of the world.
Just because I can't sleep doesn't mean that no one should.
So these places that I go, and the things I hear...
I don't always keep them to myself.
They're just not as obvious as they could be.
This is most obvious when I'm plugged in and turned up and tuned out to the real world in ceramics class or during National Novel Writing Month. For me, I've found that I can't be creative when I'm so distracted by all the people and things around me.
This probably means that I'm not as creative as I should be.
I'm here, but I'm not always present.
Like when I'm sitting in class, staring at the wall. Or when I'm sitting on the bus, looking out the window. Or when I'm writing something disturbing, dredging up words and phrases and images that are better left buried in the basement of my psyche and not shared with the rest of the world.
Just because I can't sleep doesn't mean that no one should.
So these places that I go, and the things I hear...
I don't always keep them to myself.
They're just not as obvious as they could be.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
If I Could Burn This All to the Ground
I wish I could burn my mother's house to the ground.
She Who Must Be Kept has a problem with hoarding. It isn't like that show on TLC or whatever. She just cannot for the life of her throw away a single piece of paper. In our bathroom, in the cupboard under the towels, there are boxes and boxes of papers. Old light bills from 1989 when we were living in the trailer. Papers of my father's from when he was on unemployment in 1988.
These are things that do not matter. And yet she cannot throw them away. I do not have this problem, and I will throw away old papers by the handful. I like to do what I call purges, where I go through the house and just--throw stuff away, arrange for things that are good (like books or clothes) to be given to the used bookstore or Goodwill or Saint Vinny's.
She Who Must Be Kept can't do this. I don't know why.
On television there's some crime drama starring a hoarder. We're nowhere near that bad. You can see our floor. You can walk through the house. We're healthy. The house itself is falling apart, but that's unrelated.
SWMBK whines and cries and talks about how she wants to change. She wants to be better. She wants to be different. Sometimes I wish I could slap her and tell her to put up or shut up. That she's the only one who can help herself.
But she never does.
I wish I could burn all this to the ground so we could all start from square one. So I could be aware this time around and not let her get that bad.
I guess though, she isn't my responsibility.
She Who Must Be Kept has a problem with hoarding. It isn't like that show on TLC or whatever. She just cannot for the life of her throw away a single piece of paper. In our bathroom, in the cupboard under the towels, there are boxes and boxes of papers. Old light bills from 1989 when we were living in the trailer. Papers of my father's from when he was on unemployment in 1988.
These are things that do not matter. And yet she cannot throw them away. I do not have this problem, and I will throw away old papers by the handful. I like to do what I call purges, where I go through the house and just--throw stuff away, arrange for things that are good (like books or clothes) to be given to the used bookstore or Goodwill or Saint Vinny's.
She Who Must Be Kept can't do this. I don't know why.
On television there's some crime drama starring a hoarder. We're nowhere near that bad. You can see our floor. You can walk through the house. We're healthy. The house itself is falling apart, but that's unrelated.
SWMBK whines and cries and talks about how she wants to change. She wants to be better. She wants to be different. Sometimes I wish I could slap her and tell her to put up or shut up. That she's the only one who can help herself.
But she never does.
I wish I could burn all this to the ground so we could all start from square one. So I could be aware this time around and not let her get that bad.
I guess though, she isn't my responsibility.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Sober
It's two in the morning.
I don't feel like sleeping.
I can't sleep, more to the point.
I've realized how fragile sobriety is. I am the adult child of an alcoholic. I am the baby sister of another addict. While I have imbibed myself more than a time or two, I can safely say I am not an addict. I can never drink again and I won't miss it.
I won't pretend that quitting the codeine I was prescribed for my pain wasn't hard, especially after months of being pumped full of other pain killers... Especially when, to a point, I needed it. I needed help to manage my pain.
But I was never an addict.
Statistically, I am incredibly likely to become addicted at some point in my life. I've been warned by professionals. It was never a warning I needed.
I remember screaming fights. I remember my father hitting my mother. I remember breaking glass. I remember most--being afraid.
I'm twenty one years old. I haven't spoken to my father in eight years. I'm really afraid of him. He could and would lift his hand to me. He did when I was a child. I remember him being drunk and slapping me for laughing at the table.
The booze makes him a very unpleasant person.
OlderBrother is the same way. Booze makes him a not so nice person. He and I have had screaming fights. I have reduced him to tears. He has reduced me to tears. He has, more importantly, reduced She Who Must Be Kept to tears.
He's an addict. He has admitted that alcohol and marijuana are the only ways that he can feel okay. He has bought/begged/and I suspect stolen prescription drugs from my mother and myself. He is headed to a very bad place very quickly.
I get frightened when I drink, sometimes. I snap. I yell. I get angry.
It's not a place I like being.
And yet....
I still drink sometimes.
I don't feel like sleeping.
I can't sleep, more to the point.
I've realized how fragile sobriety is. I am the adult child of an alcoholic. I am the baby sister of another addict. While I have imbibed myself more than a time or two, I can safely say I am not an addict. I can never drink again and I won't miss it.
I won't pretend that quitting the codeine I was prescribed for my pain wasn't hard, especially after months of being pumped full of other pain killers... Especially when, to a point, I needed it. I needed help to manage my pain.
But I was never an addict.
Statistically, I am incredibly likely to become addicted at some point in my life. I've been warned by professionals. It was never a warning I needed.
I remember screaming fights. I remember my father hitting my mother. I remember breaking glass. I remember most--being afraid.
I'm twenty one years old. I haven't spoken to my father in eight years. I'm really afraid of him. He could and would lift his hand to me. He did when I was a child. I remember him being drunk and slapping me for laughing at the table.
The booze makes him a very unpleasant person.
OlderBrother is the same way. Booze makes him a not so nice person. He and I have had screaming fights. I have reduced him to tears. He has reduced me to tears. He has, more importantly, reduced She Who Must Be Kept to tears.
He's an addict. He has admitted that alcohol and marijuana are the only ways that he can feel okay. He has bought/begged/and I suspect stolen prescription drugs from my mother and myself. He is headed to a very bad place very quickly.
I get frightened when I drink, sometimes. I snap. I yell. I get angry.
It's not a place I like being.
And yet....
I still drink sometimes.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Cracking Joints
This Spring Break has already shaped up to be more productive than my past ones in college. Today I started clearing my brother's crap out of my bedroom. Tomorrow I'm getting the huge Box O' Soda Bottles (seriously, this box is as tall as my thighs and like, two feet wide and three feet long) out. Then I'm sweeping the floor.
I still have to buy;
-My futon. I decided to get just a futon and not bother with the frame because I'm trying to move in a year and I don't want to deal with storing the frame. My future roommate, Aero, said he didn't want to put it in the living room because it wouldn't match the furniture he and his girl want to buy.
-Black out curtains. I will not have the sun pouring in on me anytime it feels like. And it feels like doing this often! So I'm going to hang some black out curtains so I won't have that issue.
-A Bigass Extension cord and power strip.
-Bedding.
Argh, sometimes I hate making lists and seeing how much I still have to do. I have to get someone to drive me to even GET the futon. I hate that I have to ask someone to do that for me but... I don't see what choice I really have.
I've also got to get Mistah Jay's quilt done to give to him. He's going to hate it. I don't care though. I'll at least have that done.
I still have to buy;
-My futon. I decided to get just a futon and not bother with the frame because I'm trying to move in a year and I don't want to deal with storing the frame. My future roommate, Aero, said he didn't want to put it in the living room because it wouldn't match the furniture he and his girl want to buy.
-Black out curtains. I will not have the sun pouring in on me anytime it feels like. And it feels like doing this often! So I'm going to hang some black out curtains so I won't have that issue.
-A Bigass Extension cord and power strip.
-Bedding.
Argh, sometimes I hate making lists and seeing how much I still have to do. I have to get someone to drive me to even GET the futon. I hate that I have to ask someone to do that for me but... I don't see what choice I really have.
I've also got to get Mistah Jay's quilt done to give to him. He's going to hate it. I don't care though. I'll at least have that done.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Unsung Lullabies
Dearest Vivian,
You're haunting me again. It's a thought that makes me laugh and cry. Perhaps if I had kept you inside of me, perhaps if I had been strong enough, you would doing the same thing. You'd be about two months old now, I think. You would just be getting the hang of living, and I--I would still be so amazed at the fact that you existed.
Do you haunt your father? He haunts me top, although perhaps in a more tangible way than you. He has a hard time admitting out loud that you were ever here at all. You mustn't blame him, my darling one. I've ceased doing so. I think the thought of what we almost had and almost were hurts him so deeply he can't face it. He can't be strong enough, so you and I must do that for him.
Or perhaps I will do that for the both of you. I'm just fine doing that.
I would have been such a wonderful mother. I would never have let you see the things that we went without. I would never have put anyone or anything else before you. You would have been the most brilliant thing that had ever been mine.
Although, of course, that ownership would have been so bittersweetly temporary. Before I was ready, I would have had to surrender you to the universe. I would have only been caretaker and guardian to the most wonderful girl in the whole world.
It happened before you were born anyway, the surrendering. Although there was less surrendering and more of you being ripped away from me.
It's three thirty in the morning. It's nights like these, weeks like these, that I miss you the most. I'm listening to Ray LaMontagne, one of those gravelly voices with the guitar that I listen to when I hurt so badly. These are the lullabies I would have loved to sing to you. These are the things I would have whispered to you in the stillness of the night.
I think everyone thinks I need to let you go. But letting you go, turning my back on you... That's just something I cannot bring myself to do. I am not so naive as to think there wouldn't have been moments I would have resented you. There would have been minutes, hours, days, weeks perhaps, that I would have looked at you and felt something akin to misery.
But darling, I loved you. I love you. I fell in love with you the moment I knew that you were there. And then you were gone, but my love didn't seep away during all those hours when I was hurting. My love for you didn't melt away as I took the painkillers and laid my head, wincing in your father's lap. Your father's love for me, your father's gentle fingers in my hair, his tender words of reassurance--even these things which usually could calm me, did not quell the ache inside of me.
Nothing can.
Will you ever come back to me, I wonder? Will you come back and let me hold you, will you look up at me with wide eyes full of wonderment and trust? Mother is the word for God on the lips of all children. You are still my child, even if you are not here.
Your father left me too. Don't be angry with him, dear one. He does the best he can. We're both tormented. It's such a sweet hell, and perhaps the most gloriously tragic thing to watch. You would be the one to know.
I have such a hard time sleeping. I would if you were alive too. You'd be awake right now, I think, wanting to be fed. You would be in my arms, latched onto me, taking from me the most that I could give you, metaphorically and literally. I see you in my dreams, I reach out to you, but you--much like your father--are just out of my reach.
This can't last forever. I suspect that in time, I will learn to lift myself and carry on. I will always feel that missing part of me, that sense that I've lost something I just cannot find or replace... But I will carry on.
I do love you so.
-Mommy
You're haunting me again. It's a thought that makes me laugh and cry. Perhaps if I had kept you inside of me, perhaps if I had been strong enough, you would doing the same thing. You'd be about two months old now, I think. You would just be getting the hang of living, and I--I would still be so amazed at the fact that you existed.
Do you haunt your father? He haunts me top, although perhaps in a more tangible way than you. He has a hard time admitting out loud that you were ever here at all. You mustn't blame him, my darling one. I've ceased doing so. I think the thought of what we almost had and almost were hurts him so deeply he can't face it. He can't be strong enough, so you and I must do that for him.
Or perhaps I will do that for the both of you. I'm just fine doing that.
I would have been such a wonderful mother. I would never have let you see the things that we went without. I would never have put anyone or anything else before you. You would have been the most brilliant thing that had ever been mine.
Although, of course, that ownership would have been so bittersweetly temporary. Before I was ready, I would have had to surrender you to the universe. I would have only been caretaker and guardian to the most wonderful girl in the whole world.
It happened before you were born anyway, the surrendering. Although there was less surrendering and more of you being ripped away from me.
It's three thirty in the morning. It's nights like these, weeks like these, that I miss you the most. I'm listening to Ray LaMontagne, one of those gravelly voices with the guitar that I listen to when I hurt so badly. These are the lullabies I would have loved to sing to you. These are the things I would have whispered to you in the stillness of the night.
I think everyone thinks I need to let you go. But letting you go, turning my back on you... That's just something I cannot bring myself to do. I am not so naive as to think there wouldn't have been moments I would have resented you. There would have been minutes, hours, days, weeks perhaps, that I would have looked at you and felt something akin to misery.
But darling, I loved you. I love you. I fell in love with you the moment I knew that you were there. And then you were gone, but my love didn't seep away during all those hours when I was hurting. My love for you didn't melt away as I took the painkillers and laid my head, wincing in your father's lap. Your father's love for me, your father's gentle fingers in my hair, his tender words of reassurance--even these things which usually could calm me, did not quell the ache inside of me.
Nothing can.
Will you ever come back to me, I wonder? Will you come back and let me hold you, will you look up at me with wide eyes full of wonderment and trust? Mother is the word for God on the lips of all children. You are still my child, even if you are not here.
Your father left me too. Don't be angry with him, dear one. He does the best he can. We're both tormented. It's such a sweet hell, and perhaps the most gloriously tragic thing to watch. You would be the one to know.
I have such a hard time sleeping. I would if you were alive too. You'd be awake right now, I think, wanting to be fed. You would be in my arms, latched onto me, taking from me the most that I could give you, metaphorically and literally. I see you in my dreams, I reach out to you, but you--much like your father--are just out of my reach.
This can't last forever. I suspect that in time, I will learn to lift myself and carry on. I will always feel that missing part of me, that sense that I've lost something I just cannot find or replace... But I will carry on.
I do love you so.
-Mommy
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
If You Can't Act Like An Adult.
She Who Must Be Kept's friend Croc keeps coming over. I don't really care that he comes over. I'm sitting over on my couch by myself doing my own thing. Croc seems to forget I'm not made of stone and I *can* hear their conversations (as they are a grand total of four feet away from me).
Also, I am super protective of SWMBK. I might be twenty one, but I have no issues giving a grown ass man a tongue lashing if it calls for it, and what calls for it is when I see someone being mean to my mother.
Croc has a nasty habit of several things. 1. He's a martyr. 2. He rides a VERY high horse named Self Righteous. 3. HE NEVER LETS ANYONE FINISH A MOTHER FUCKING SENTENCE!!!
So tonight, he was riding S.R. and saying that my mother was being "abusive" to him, because she asked several times very nicely; "Hey, if you don't hear me, please don't look at me and say "Hunh?!?". I really hate it. If you misunderstood me or I didn't speak clearly, can you ask me to repeat myself?"
It's one of her pet peeves. I've been trained from a very early age to not do that. She also hates the word 'whatever' out of context.
So SWMBK finally told Croc in a joking way if he went 'hunh' again, she was gonna pop him one. He was on S.R and said he'd leeeeave. He didn't want to be abuuuuused. My Mom is abuuuuusive. God, grow the fuck up, dude.
I gently corrected him as to her issue. He said he was FORTY TWO and he couldn't be retrained, and if SWMBK didn't like it, he'd LEAVE.
Okey dokey... Moving on with our evening. He went back to calling SWMBK abusive. I had had enough. I jumped in his shit. I couldn't even finish a thought because he steam rolled over my sentences. Finally, frustrated and joking I said; "Mom, I think it's time for your friend to go home."
Sure enough, he gathered his ice tea and crucified himself. "Oooh, I'm causing conflict. Ooooh, I never bother ANYONE. FIIIIINE TAI WANTS ME TO GO!"
God. Whatever.
Also, I am super protective of SWMBK. I might be twenty one, but I have no issues giving a grown ass man a tongue lashing if it calls for it, and what calls for it is when I see someone being mean to my mother.
Croc has a nasty habit of several things. 1. He's a martyr. 2. He rides a VERY high horse named Self Righteous. 3. HE NEVER LETS ANYONE FINISH A MOTHER FUCKING SENTENCE!!!
So tonight, he was riding S.R. and saying that my mother was being "abusive" to him, because she asked several times very nicely; "Hey, if you don't hear me, please don't look at me and say "Hunh?!?". I really hate it. If you misunderstood me or I didn't speak clearly, can you ask me to repeat myself?"
It's one of her pet peeves. I've been trained from a very early age to not do that. She also hates the word 'whatever' out of context.
So SWMBK finally told Croc in a joking way if he went 'hunh' again, she was gonna pop him one. He was on S.R and said he'd leeeeave. He didn't want to be abuuuuused. My Mom is abuuuuusive. God, grow the fuck up, dude.
I gently corrected him as to her issue. He said he was FORTY TWO and he couldn't be retrained, and if SWMBK didn't like it, he'd LEAVE.
Okey dokey... Moving on with our evening. He went back to calling SWMBK abusive. I had had enough. I jumped in his shit. I couldn't even finish a thought because he steam rolled over my sentences. Finally, frustrated and joking I said; "Mom, I think it's time for your friend to go home."
Sure enough, he gathered his ice tea and crucified himself. "Oooh, I'm causing conflict. Ooooh, I never bother ANYONE. FIIIIINE TAI WANTS ME TO GO!"
God. Whatever.
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