A Step Up
A desk in the living room (or nearby it, a carpeted area off the entrance and a step down from the kitchen, my mother’s desk and half the living room furniture) is a step up, but Alone really is the best place. I spent too much time distracting myself from myself, bitching and moaning anxiously about other people and other things when called upon to write or explain myself.
Realizing my own incapacity and failure when I am in places that affect me so has always been my undoing. I have never understood the ability to “take it” and too often sink into it, becoming acutely conscious of it but distracting myself to pretend that I am not affected or becoming increasingly unable to keep up whatever appearances.
On the other hand, it is this inability that has driven me to strive towards creating my own experiences, or opening to things which are at the core liberating and pleasurable. I have known myself in ways, Ways that, upon their discovery, I know. I know regardless of what I present and describe and defend. And I want to defend them, and keep them forever, but primarily Need them selfishly to continue to live happily. Defending myself is altogether draining, explaining and showing constantly. I would rather be alone, and happy, and feeling, but how could I possibly be alone?
What I am lacking is a place that is open. The open atrocities of Pittsburgh were a change, the death and mortal peril, an enlightenment of sorts and another scene for sure, but those fears and feelings were perhaps less trying than the closed doors and quiet castes of the suburbs are. People were wary and mean and resistant there, but here they maintain such a close guard on themselves that I find it impossible to penetrate or extremely undesirable. And become more violent, in ways! I am angry if I am watched and not accosted, judged and only secretly punished. I fulfill all of the failures of myself, and act as I am judged, belligerently. In Pittsburgh this was somewhat advantageous; this sort of self-expression was far less uncommon and occurred in frequent and sometimes in violent and alarming ways. Here, though, people strive to be normal and appear as they should so furiously that they lose all meaning and never know themselves. And, in their interactions with others, project their ideas of normal onto them.
Bitching and moaning. Should I envy the people who can resist it by ignoring? They are not called to stare into the abyss, are they more successful? I don’t, generally I scorn them. Called to run away to it, agonizing over the present standstill – spell of boredom, anxiety, unhappiness – and planning my escape. I have been stuck in a place, lately, and need better plans! Immediate future plans have been waylaid by a spell of short-term bad luck, and I am being urged to make long-term plans based upon this inability to escape to a better place. Long-term success, by what means? If I am so cold and grossly unhappy and stuck in one place? I’m not dead yet, I have to keep moving.
