10.03.2006

Theme Week 5: A Good Story

Sometimes it seems like everything in my life has been a dream. I can't quite remember everything that happened as vividly as I would like, but damn do I remember how I felt at the exact moment it happened. I'm like a tidal wave, I start out reacting in a small way, and I roll and tumble and fumble until I'm this huge stomping, roaring, emotional machine, destroying everything small enough to be destroyed.

Being 14 is really hard. I don't care who you are, if you're the preppy kid, or the goth, or whatever role you play in school, it's always tough in some way. I think I've always had it rough, but the worst was really when I finally got it good. I moved around a lot. I changed schools quite frequently, so I never really got the chance to make or keep too many friends. The longest I've lived anywhere was when I lived in Walpole MA, for about 6 years. Thankfully, those were most of my growing years, where I went from child, to teenager, to child again, and to where I am now.

I used to walk into school fearing everyone, not knowing whether or not it was ok to say something, or if I was reacting to a joke in the right level of laughter. I walked on eggshells through most of middle school. I finally found a little niche with a few people, people I'm still friends with now, and we had a lot of fun. We weren't quite the nerdy group, or popular, we were just good friends. I used to walk into my friend Libby's house and open the fridge to pour a glass of cherry coke, like Kramer. Her mother would just ask me how my day was, and if I had a lot of homework to do, much like my own mom. I spent nearly 80% of 7th-9th grade doing just that, sitting at the dinner table in a family setting, because I didn't really have one.

I went into my first year of highschool feeling pretty good. I had friends. I hadn't had friends since the third grade. I'm actually still in contact with my best friend from the 2nd grade. Isn't that odd?

Well, everything seemed to be going pretty good. I even had a boyfriend once in a while (yeah, you gotta love freshmen romances). I dated my friend Anthony on and off since the 7th grade. We were really just great friends who fell in love with one another and then fell out a few times. He's a good guy. Just not for me.

In my life things would get perfect, I would have everything I wanted, and right as I felt like everything was OK, the bottom would just drop right out and the pieces would crumble all to the floor... My mom wanted to move again.

I got into many an argument with her over this, did the teenage thing, blaming her for everything, sometimes I still do it. I will never really know what could have happened if we didn't leave, I'm curious to know, but not curious enough to repeat it.

When I got here, to my house, my new room, (my own room for once), I hated everything. I hated life. I hated the world. I hated my mom. The only thing I loved at the moment was my boyfriend (who was back in MA) and my cat Fret, who is still here, might I add.

To make matters worse, I got dumped (which was utterly horrible, much more so than it should have been), and no one in my new school liked me. My mother deemed me arrogant, and I deemed me doomed for death.

At one point it was so bad, that I came close to suicide, once or twice. The harsh reality of life didn't satisfy my tastes. Like a lot of troubled teens, the plastered walls in my room were punctured, I gained a much more vulgar vocabulary, I got stoned, played music really loud to piss everyone off, and I was pretty lonely. I stuck to the internet and music, it became my life.

I got over that phase eventually, but that was only after I had fallen in love with someone else. I saw in him myself, which I loved and hated at the same time. I feel that love itself, is seeing what you hate most about yourself in someone else's eyes, and loving that person because they help you to realize what you can become; A mirror you want to caress and smash at the same time with your reflection, because it hurts so much to see the beauty and the horror all at once.

I grew to love this place, Maine, with all of the trees and all of the animals and all of the potholes. Well, not so much the potholes, but everything else has more a place in my heart than I ever thought it would. I remember the last time I visited home (before the concert trip, and yes, Walpole will always be my home), and I was kind of disgusted. I felt choked by the smell of the air and the construction all around the highway (the big dig), and the dirty water and boats and seagulls covering every nook and cranny. I was horrified at the stupid drivers, and the arrogance of city-dwellers. Yet, through all of the disgust, I remembered that I did call this place home, and I love the combination of love and hate I have when I go back.

When I took Joshua to that concert, we stopped in Walpole on the way home, so I could finally show him where I grew up. Needless to say, he was horrified at some of the shitty places I had to live in, but fascinated that I had lived in so many places. I finally got the chance to show him a place I knew, instead of his constant tour guides of Maine. I smiled at the highways I used to hate, and at the school I used to dread walking in, and the apartments I wished had burned to the ground. I smiled because I felt like I was home, even though I had it pretty rough.

I have my own little piece of history, and it was great to finally show it to someone else.

1 Comments:

At 6:44 AM, Blogger johngoldfine said...

Interesting piece, all you, all filtered through your way of seeing things, which is not necessarily a given in writing, even personal writing.

I wouldn't say it's a story though. One of the things which is not a story is a sequence of events, one after the other, without the shape of a story--this kind of problem is known in the trade as "one damn thing after another."

Stories have their rules: often they set up in three acts, often have protagonists and antagonists, often have limited time frames, and so on.

So, does it make sense when I say this isn't a story ? I'm not asking for a rewrite, because, whatever it is (mini-memoir maybe), it's something good.

 

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