mei

*sigh*
not working... i'm such an irresponsible mei. got up at 3, and still haven't done anything. i'll work all night, though.

the only two consciously bad things i ever did as a child..:
when i was five, i got really angry at my sister for not sharing the crayons. we kept the crayons in a big shoebox - there must've been hundreds of them. i hid in the closet, and i broke every single one of them in half. and even some of the halves in half.
when i was seven, i was angry at my parents for forcing me to go somewhere with them. when we got home, i took the dishwashing soap and squirted it all over the front patio in big loops and swirls and splotches. i didn't know that it would bleach the concrete - the next day, my parents came out to a bunch of bleachy spots all over the place. they were very annoyed.

that's all, though. i was a good kid. scarily good. i didn't do anything that would get me in trouble EVER until after i moved out of the house. it really was surreal.. i lived in a nice big house in a development in the suburbs. i had several brothers and sisters. we all ate dinner together every night. i was on student council for a year, the captain of the debate team, and got almost a 4.0 gpa-wise. i had a sweet boyfriend, but we never had sex. i didn't get any piercings, nor did i dye my hair any crazy colors. no drugs, no alcohol. ever. i wasn't popular, so i never got invited to any parties. but people knew of me, and they didn't tease me or anything.

i hated it, too. i felt so trapped all the time. i didn't want to be perfect anymore. it was so mundane. my parents had built a very nice little cage for me in my own head, teaching me that people who took drugs or disobeyed their parents or didn't try at school were BAD people. as in they were morally corrupt somehow. but they also taught me to be creative and individualistic. lots of clashes in my head over that one.

strangely, though, i miss it sometimes. things were easy. i never had to worry that i was one of the "bad" people. my direction in life was clear. uninteresting, but clear.

i don't know what brought all of that up.. i guess i think about it a lot.

kneeling on a bed in my dorm room. lights are off. i have a companion. we are facing each other, and he is stroking my back. lightly. i've been dating him for a few weeks; i just finished a bad breakup. he has wonderful hands; long slender fingers. brain surgeon hands, but he's using them to stroke my shoulders now. my eyes are shut, and he grasps my hand, pulling it between us, until we are palm to palm, fingers all touching. and i am perfectly contented. the world all spins slightly, as though i'm a little drunk. i'm not thinking about anything but the tactile sensation.. the very slight dampness between our hands, the places that hollow out because of the contours of our palms. and my eyes snap open, suddenly, wide. i begin to sob crazily, gasping loudly, a flood of tears falling. because i lost my touch on reality for just a moment, and i couldn't tell their hands apart. the current boy and the ex boy were indistinguishable for just a second. temporality wasn't an issue; everything, all of the pain of the breakup, all of the insane happiness of the early stages of new love, it was all there in those fingertips. those fingertips, whose owner i couldn't clearly see. it was terrifying.

as a habit, now, when kissing anybody, i open my eyes at some point. just for a second. just to make sure they are who i think they are. that i'm not mistaken, that i'm not actually reliving a memory. it's amazing what boundaries touch can obliterate.