bend thing
It's 2:23pm on a Sunday afternoon and all kinds of things are all about today. I'm listening to a playlist I made for a woman at work who confessed her large crush on me a day after giving it to her.
I remember how short a time I took to make it, how little work I put into things nowadays, how futile and silly human connections seem to be.
Yet I keep making an impact, I keep getting under peoples skin. I feel like the cartoon character who is blind yet keeps miraculously avoiding aweful damage. A blessing.
Everybody...lets do a list of the things we love about ourselves. No self-deception, no coy fishing for compliments, no defensive self-critique. Just five things you love about you. I'll go first.
Things I love about myself lately.
1- My tat's look good still, even after these few months. For someone who wavers so much in opinions about so much, that's a fucking miracle.
2- I'm getting paid to watch some dogs that I love to be around anyway. I get to watch them because their owner is this wonderful man who loves me very much and who got me my current job. Michael is a great person, and he's trusted and supported me from the first day I met him. I have let him down in some ways, but he doesn't know about any of them. Which is what I'm claiming as my number 2 reason. Michael loves me.
3- I'm getting a super-cool roomate in a few days.
4- People seem to enjoy having me around.
5- Last Wednesday at the open-mic I was reading some old poetry of mine (along with a few new things) and a woman sitting at the cafe' bar started breaking down in tears as she listened. The man with her rubbed her shoulders and hugged her as I read a poem of missing all that you've left behind and trying to build a new life by forcing yourself into loneliness for the purposes of self-understanding.
I read a few poems about being new in Portland and strange to the world. She came up to the mic afterwards to thank me for reading them, as that she was from New Orleans.
She had been in LA during the storm, at a wedding of a friend of hers. She had nothing to go back to. Her home and belongings were washed away. Her family was safe, but mostly all relocated. She had been planning to move for awhile, so instead of heading back south from LA, her friend in Portland just bought her a train ticket to this city. She had only been in PDX for a day or two. She said that she found faith and peace with the words I read out. She said she felt less alone, as if the confused thoughts and feelings were no longer indepedent from the rest of the world, but a part of it.
---------
And to just be perfectly fair with myself,
Five things I am not so happy with about myself
1- I keep fucking up at work, but not getting caught for it because I am independently timing myself. I feel like a theif and a liar.
2- I only take the dogs to the park once a day, and I'm not sure how much to feed them so I think I'm overfeeding them. I don't want to ask the owners how much to feed them, because if I do they will know that I haven't known this whole time (watched the dogs many times now).
3- Drinking too much.
4- Smoking too much.
5- Last Friday night Marisa called me and begged to come over and fuck me. She was lonely and scared and doesn't know how else to reach out to a person. I helped teach her that fucking is how you express inner doubts and fears and pain. She taught herself that manipulation is how you go about this. I told her NO, she could not come over. I don't want to see her.
I need to get clear of her and think about my life and how I kept ending up with her. She had heard the no from me before, and had found a way into my life. I was at the end this time, but she didn't know it. I hadn't seen her in a few weeks, but she kept calling back. I was getting a little worried as I told her for the fifth call that I wanted to go to bed and that she couldn't come over.
She called about fifteen minutes later and she was downstairs in my outside lobby, asking me to come down and let her in. I groaned in a combination of sexual need and the solid foundational truth that we were terriblly unhealthy for one another. I told her to please, please, please go away. I told her that it was very disrespectful to me that she come over after being told no.
She told me she just wanted to come up for a mninute, just a few minutes. I told her that this was not how to find help for what she was going through. I told her to please go home. She called again. And again. Everything around me started taking on that dull black light of a situation going beyond mildly uncomfortable towards seriously upsetting, like being on acid and suddenly realizing (much later than you should have) that your best friend is on fire. She calls five more times.
Her need to be seen, to be noticed, to be placed in the order of the world through somebody elses eyes hurt a little. I want to scream at her, "GROW YOUR OWN IDENTITY, I'M BARELY FILLING UP MINE AT THE MOMENT!" Yet my anger quickly dissapeared in guilt. I felt a minor flutter in my shut-down heart. I wanted to wrap her up and carry her to safety, but I was a part of the anchor holding her to the deep.
I couldn't let her up to my room, or go out to help, because I can only make things worse for her. When did I start to believe that something shallow can serve until something deep came along? When can I learn to know that there is no shallow, but only wavering depths?
She calls again, and this time I pick up. I'm tired and upset and scared now that she'll do something to hurt herself or me, but I put on a gruff tone, as if I was simply angry, and I tell her to please stop calling me or I would have to call the police. She told me that she had taken a "bunch of pills" and wanted to die because she couldn't live her life or deal with anything. I told her to go home and call 911.
I know she was lying about the pills, because it seemed an odd time to mention it, yet I can't seem to shake the idea that I sent her home to die. She called when she got home once more. Out of a need to know, I answered. She asked me what to do. I told her to call 911, make herself throw up, and not call this number. I don't even know the address of her new place. If I did, I would have called 911 myself, even though I'm sure the pills were a lie. It would perhaps shake her towards acknowledging how seriously fucked up it is to have done what she did that night to have the cops show up.
In the end I can't bring myself to do anything at or about or towards her. Ever again. Like everything else confusing or strange in my life, I'll run fast away and bury it deep down, hiding it between pleasant memory's of everything else. I'll dig it a ditch and leave it for the cold, so that it will grow warm and then hot, to itch and dig and become yet another of the sordid physcic vampires that live in my mind.
etc.
It's 2:23pm on a Sunday afternoon and all kinds of things are all about today. I'm listening to a playlist I made for a woman at work who confessed her large crush on me a day after giving it to her.
I remember how short a time I took to make it, how little work I put into things nowadays, how futile and silly human connections seem to be.
Yet I keep making an impact, I keep getting under peoples skin. I feel like the cartoon character who is blind yet keeps miraculously avoiding aweful damage. A blessing.
Everybody...lets do a list of the things we love about ourselves. No self-deception, no coy fishing for compliments, no defensive self-critique. Just five things you love about you. I'll go first.
Things I love about myself lately.
1- My tat's look good still, even after these few months. For someone who wavers so much in opinions about so much, that's a fucking miracle.
2- I'm getting paid to watch some dogs that I love to be around anyway. I get to watch them because their owner is this wonderful man who loves me very much and who got me my current job. Michael is a great person, and he's trusted and supported me from the first day I met him. I have let him down in some ways, but he doesn't know about any of them. Which is what I'm claiming as my number 2 reason. Michael loves me.
3- I'm getting a super-cool roomate in a few days.
4- People seem to enjoy having me around.
5- Last Wednesday at the open-mic I was reading some old poetry of mine (along with a few new things) and a woman sitting at the cafe' bar started breaking down in tears as she listened. The man with her rubbed her shoulders and hugged her as I read a poem of missing all that you've left behind and trying to build a new life by forcing yourself into loneliness for the purposes of self-understanding.
I read a few poems about being new in Portland and strange to the world. She came up to the mic afterwards to thank me for reading them, as that she was from New Orleans.
She had been in LA during the storm, at a wedding of a friend of hers. She had nothing to go back to. Her home and belongings were washed away. Her family was safe, but mostly all relocated. She had been planning to move for awhile, so instead of heading back south from LA, her friend in Portland just bought her a train ticket to this city. She had only been in PDX for a day or two. She said that she found faith and peace with the words I read out. She said she felt less alone, as if the confused thoughts and feelings were no longer indepedent from the rest of the world, but a part of it.
---------
And to just be perfectly fair with myself,
Five things I am not so happy with about myself
1- I keep fucking up at work, but not getting caught for it because I am independently timing myself. I feel like a theif and a liar.
2- I only take the dogs to the park once a day, and I'm not sure how much to feed them so I think I'm overfeeding them. I don't want to ask the owners how much to feed them, because if I do they will know that I haven't known this whole time (watched the dogs many times now).
3- Drinking too much.
4- Smoking too much.
5- Last Friday night Marisa called me and begged to come over and fuck me. She was lonely and scared and doesn't know how else to reach out to a person. I helped teach her that fucking is how you express inner doubts and fears and pain. She taught herself that manipulation is how you go about this. I told her NO, she could not come over. I don't want to see her.
I need to get clear of her and think about my life and how I kept ending up with her. She had heard the no from me before, and had found a way into my life. I was at the end this time, but she didn't know it. I hadn't seen her in a few weeks, but she kept calling back. I was getting a little worried as I told her for the fifth call that I wanted to go to bed and that she couldn't come over.
She called about fifteen minutes later and she was downstairs in my outside lobby, asking me to come down and let her in. I groaned in a combination of sexual need and the solid foundational truth that we were terriblly unhealthy for one another. I told her to please, please, please go away. I told her that it was very disrespectful to me that she come over after being told no.
She told me she just wanted to come up for a mninute, just a few minutes. I told her that this was not how to find help for what she was going through. I told her to please go home. She called again. And again. Everything around me started taking on that dull black light of a situation going beyond mildly uncomfortable towards seriously upsetting, like being on acid and suddenly realizing (much later than you should have) that your best friend is on fire. She calls five more times.
Her need to be seen, to be noticed, to be placed in the order of the world through somebody elses eyes hurt a little. I want to scream at her, "GROW YOUR OWN IDENTITY, I'M BARELY FILLING UP MINE AT THE MOMENT!" Yet my anger quickly dissapeared in guilt. I felt a minor flutter in my shut-down heart. I wanted to wrap her up and carry her to safety, but I was a part of the anchor holding her to the deep.
I couldn't let her up to my room, or go out to help, because I can only make things worse for her. When did I start to believe that something shallow can serve until something deep came along? When can I learn to know that there is no shallow, but only wavering depths?
She calls again, and this time I pick up. I'm tired and upset and scared now that she'll do something to hurt herself or me, but I put on a gruff tone, as if I was simply angry, and I tell her to please stop calling me or I would have to call the police. She told me that she had taken a "bunch of pills" and wanted to die because she couldn't live her life or deal with anything. I told her to go home and call 911.
I know she was lying about the pills, because it seemed an odd time to mention it, yet I can't seem to shake the idea that I sent her home to die. She called when she got home once more. Out of a need to know, I answered. She asked me what to do. I told her to call 911, make herself throw up, and not call this number. I don't even know the address of her new place. If I did, I would have called 911 myself, even though I'm sure the pills were a lie. It would perhaps shake her towards acknowledging how seriously fucked up it is to have done what she did that night to have the cops show up.
In the end I can't bring myself to do anything at or about or towards her. Ever again. Like everything else confusing or strange in my life, I'll run fast away and bury it deep down, hiding it between pleasant memory's of everything else. I'll dig it a ditch and leave it for the cold, so that it will grow warm and then hot, to itch and dig and become yet another of the sordid physcic vampires that live in my mind.
etc.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
hellomrworld:
drink some wine but more beer
tehpeanut:
why you have to make them sooo damn long...lol...i like dogs