My penguin's not the only person who's depressed. I'm down. I'm lonely. I'm looking at my future and I don't see me in it. I'm there, but I'm just a background figure.
Who the heck am I kidding? My grades are nowhere near enough to get me into a university, and I severely doubt they'll overlook that and look at my community service record. I even failed morality three times, for goodness' sake! And even though I failed because I stuck to a belief for three hellish years with one professor who was firmly convinced I was going to Hell or jail or both for it, so I'm damn proud of failing that course, that's not on my transcript.
There's only one thing I've ever been really good at, and show me ONE person who makes a living out of writing poetry, without writing songs or books or articles or anything else, without being famous already. Show me ONE. And my poetry's not even the stuff that sells. It's angsty and adolescent, and doesn't say anything profound about the world. It's just me, and what I find ugly and beautiful, and who the hell would buy me? I'm a good person. I know that. But I'm dead boring. About the only thing I've done that millions of other people my age haven't is... never mind. There's whole YEARS of my life that I literally can't talk about.
People call me crazy and laugh. They mean I'm excitable, impulsive and all that. I wish they wouldn't. It's far too close to the truth to be comfortable. Call me odd. Call me eccentric. Just not crazy. Please? I spaced out yesterday. That hasn't happened in almost a year. It's bloody scary to be not inside your own body, to have someone speak to you and have to take a good five minutes to realise they've said something, figure out what it was, come up with an answer and force your mouth to mumble it. When you can't manage anything but a mumble, and it took your whole effort, it's terrifying. At least it is afterwards. When I'm spaced I don't feel ANYTHING. I put my fist through a wall once and didn't notice I was bleeding until my mother told me I was dripping on the kitchen floor. The only good thing about spacing out is that I usually wake up that way, so I know not to drive. If it ever happened while I was driving, I think it would kill me. Or worse, it would kill someone else.
The best thing I EVER wrote, ever, the one thing I think I could maybe sell so that I don't end up stuck behind a desk in a job I hate, I can't. Because it's me, it's far too much me, and I don't want anyone to find out. I changed the names, and that was it.
The weirdest coincidence crept up on me the other day. I was standing in the cafeteria line, and there's this girl next to me who looks really familiar. I get to talking - turns out she went to the same school as I did in Grade One. She doesn't remember me. At all. This wasn't just any girl. This is the one who managed to teach me that I wasn't worth loving, that I was nothing. She stopped me from TALKING (as opposed to moving my mouth and having coherent sounds come out) for ten years, she made it so I can't be surrounded by people completely without being able to see an easy escape route without panicking, and she doesn't even have the grace to remember me! I thought I'd forgiven her. She was seven. She's probably grown up into a very likeable person. This is so strange.
I'm glad I'm going to Oshawa. I need that. I need the companionship. Need the music, the music that never fails to give me joy (not just absence of sadness, joy), need the long drive by myself to get my head on straight again. I need to see that incredible smile the frontman wears and see for myself that you can make a living doing what you love, what makes you happy. But hey, they're talented.
Weird. I smiled today at work, smiled the whole time. I'm a good actress, too damn good for my own health sometimes, but good. It made me feel better to smile, but it's easier when you have someone to smile for. Here, alone, I'm trying, but it's so hard. I'm tired. I'm eighteen, and I feel old. Ancient, even. Look at this question on my scholarship application: Where do you see yourself in ten years? I DON'T! My psychology teacher came into our class and the first words out of his mouth were '10% of people are crazy. I know, I'm a shrink, I'm not supposed to use that word. But it's true. They're psychopaths, sociopaths, neurotics, they can't relate to people. Stay away from them.' What if I'm one of those ten percent? I'm not, I know it. But I could be, and it scares the hell out of me. Where do I see myself in ten years? 'Tears in the morning/seem to be all that I have when I wake/and my heart starts to break again'. I don't see myself in a relationship, at least not a romantic one. I'm not easy to love. I can see myself in a relationship where my partner hurts me, and I put up with it, because I can see myself getting that desperate and telling myself anything to believe I'm loved. And frankly, that scares me more.
I'm not as drunk as I sound. Not a drop of alcohol has passed my lips.
I'm just tired. And I don't want to go to bed, because I know exactly which nightmare I'll have. The one at the mall, where I'm in the aquarium pounding at the walls to get out, and all the shoppers just keep walking. I don't think I'll park near the pet shop when I go to work tomorrow.
I have a crush on someone I haven't seen since last March. How stupid is that?
There are days when the world is beautiful, and I'm in my skin and happy there. And then there's days when the world is bleached and remote, and I sit fat and tired and ancient in a chair and pour my heart out to people I don't know, because I don't have anyone else to tell and I delude myself that someone somewhere might read this.
Parents home. Time to smile and ask how the party was. They don't go out very often, so I need to be interested.
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