My Life Fell Apart in November

It's been over a month since I was supposed to do what I do every year: say "fuck this blog," make a new one, and start again. I didn't do this for multiple reasons. I decided I had no reason to essentially delete the past year--despite my desire to. I also realized that I like the meaning in the title of this blog, and that I was and am too busy, exhausted, stressed, and upset to deal with outlining another space on the internet for my annually renewed voice. All of this means that this blog is still here. Hooray! In transition, I'll just say that the continuation of this blog is also reflective of the past that continues to punch me in the face.

What past? All the past, my friend, all the past. In short, I've realized that the only thing ever holding me to Saint Mike's has been my friends. Without the friends I used as anchors, this place has a habit of sucking. This new perspective has benefits and negative effects. If I hadn't made these friends, I wouldn't have been held here as long as I was, which would've deprived me of the amazing professors I've met and been taught by, and the shaping moments where I've endured, failed, triumphed, and learned. Losing these friends, I've also branched out... a lot. The number of people I know and hang out with has expanded tremendously and these new people have just as much to offer, if not more, than those with whom I used to circle. On the negative side, losing these friends on a campus that seems to get smaller by the day means awkward interactions at least four days a week. It also means I feel sometimes like I've wasted my time the past two years; though I know that's not true, it's easy to get sucked into these feelings. My confidence in myself has been called into question; I no longer trust in the same way and slightly botched social interactions expand to night- or even week-ending boulders of shame.

I've also had time to consider what made the friendships I had friendships. I ask myself, what did you like about this person? Why were you close? What was the point of keeping them in your life? These questions are risky because they tip quickly and wholeheartedly in one direction or another. In realizing that these people weren't worthy of being grafted to my life, I also think about how I wish I was closer to the people I've become closer to. These, in combination with each other, make me question whether or not there is the possibility of longevity in these friendships, in any friendship. Obviously plenty of people have close friends from college, but maybe I'm just not one of those people, which is terrifying to me; it makes me think there is no foundational connection to be had, no connective tissue between any of us. The positive view of this is that I just haven't met these people yet, that outside the confines of this campus, the people who I've been waiting for since starting college are also waiting. But we generally find something resembling friendship anywhere, so I don't know if a new geographic location will be particularly transformative. Generally, I land somewhere in the middle. I've put more emotional weight on Christine and Katy and Lexi than I ever have since coming to college; friends I've had, who've already been tested, still support me and I've cultivated a new appreciation for them because of how long they've put up with me; this terminology (i.e. "put up with me") is particularly important as it's something not a lot of people seem to be able to do.

My life fell apart in November and I'm still putting it back together. It's been almost an entire semester and I'm still processing the hurt. If this were a movie, I'd tell you that I feel better every day, but that's not true. Some days are conquerable through hard work, other days I fall down as soon as I get out of bed, and an increasing number of days let me know that it's probably (maybe) going to be moderately okay and fine eventually.

***

I've written so many poems! I don't have time to post them ever and right now I'm just procrastinating but here are poems yay!



“Dished”

Pasta pot water boils,
bubbles kiss the air.

As I lean to pour in

           (the whole box)
you tuck hair behind my ear,
protecting it from flame.

Turn it off, empty it in the drain.
Lament lost linguini, and
put wheaty tears through the colander.

Chicken Parmesan, served:
red, and white, and
cold, on the table.

"Panic”

Right, so, you know I’ve got a lot to do.

            Right, but I’ll let you know when I care.

No, no. Please don’t make this a big to-do.

            Oh no! Too late, seems like you’re out of air.

Okay, but everything’s shaking; you’ve gotta stop.

            Okay, but also, I could not.

Ha!Ha! Maybe we shouldn’t do a calmforanxious swap!

            Haha! But your stress, to me, is aught!

Yes, but, does everything have to spin?

            Yes! And it can go faster!

Please, my selfhood is thin.

            Pa-lease! On this brain’s walls, three brands of doubt I’ll plaster!

A writhing film settles over everything perceivable;

the me running circles in my head: incessantly unabatable.

“Confab”

Fear of (circle one) falling/failure/flop:

you sat and watched me pick at my soda label.

Tête-à-tête: a lover’s embrace in a coffee shop.

Wary of your compliments, I will not be the crow to your Aesop.

I’m quite aware of loving me: a task of which you may never be able.

Fear of (circle one) falling/failure/flop.

Attempting to determine if one and the other is a fop,

forces us to stare instead at the table.

Tête-à-tête: a lover’s embrace in a coffee shop.

Feel your eyes on me as I nervously hunt a cough drop

and the longer we sit here, the more we grow stabile.

Fear of (circle one) falling/failure/flop.

To purposefully touching your hand, I will never cop.

An unequal metaphor, which I reject, dictates you be the house to my gable.

Tête-à-tête: a lover’s embrace in a coffee shop.

Eventually taking part in a conversation worthy of eavesdrop;

falling as I stand, you grab my hand to steady, make stable.

Fear of (circle one) falling/failure/flop.

Tête-à-tête: a lover’s embrace in a coffee shop.

***

***

"We'll say that,

We'll say we're okay"

Poems

It moves like the small jolt

of a stall—a too-quick-clutch-and-not-enough-gas-why-can’t-I-do-this

stall.

The final lurch puffs a tease

of what the heater had to offer;

the fan’s laugh dies while

the engine halts—grumpy, haughty, finicky clunk.

Release the necessary

Expletivesighscream.
(Turn the key.)

***

A trick of the light—
sunlight pierces windowpane to ask

who's that, who’s there?

A trick of the light—
infinitely varied:
conceived, conceiving, receding;

stepping, stopped,

bounding, crashing, falling,

bloated, flat, skinned, skinless, bone, ash.

A trick of the light—

moments from darkness and silence,

decisions and truths hashed and rehashed

declare themselves unknowable.

A trick of the light—
composition: elusive, location: nonexistent/miscellaneous, center: uncentered;

written in stone is only their reality, their relation:

mother, daughter, sister, aunt, cousin, friend.

A trick of the light—
sunlight pierces windowpane to ask

who's that, who’s there?

A trick of the light—

In the fading sun, declare me

unknown, unknowable, unseeable, intangible, invisible:

translucent.

***

Strange Gospels by Cynthia Cruz from The Glimmering Room

Woke in a drool of ribbons and spit.

Lace lost someplace on the body.

Call Billy collect

Off the side of the highway.

And I will

Wait in girlhood

Panties and Billy's black

Leather lace ups

In this glass phone booth

Forever.

Aimless (adj.) Without purpose or direction

Around finals week, a month off from school sounds amazing; the higher education gods have finally taken pity on your mortal soul and decided to release it, if only for a while. But after Christmas and after (an admittedly non-celebrational) new year's, there isn't much to do or accomplish. I try to read but I get upset; my book choices are not light as I'm in the middle of A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland. He is thorough and the history he recounts is equal parts infuriating and saddening. Usually, the sadness overwhelms the anger, as Jack obviously agrees with me and being aggressive toward an unyielding, unchangeable past is nonsensical. I lament the lives of women (from now and yesterday) while having little actual means to aid them.

My house, in its moderately secluded state, leads me to believe that I could scream as loud as I can, and no one would hear me. (That's not an invitation to murder me; please do not--I repeat do not--murder me.) But my disconnect is not inspiring. I started writing another blogpost, which sits as a draft because I now hate its lack of inspiration or thesis. I could scream without being heard and if I did scream, know that I would be yelling "Can you hear me?" and "Please help! I'm useless and don't know what to do!" (Both pathetic and desperate--getting that phrase tattooed on me--but both very real.)

It is in this time frame, when my family is not here, when I have nowhere to go or be, when I have no friends to see, that I feel hollow. During the semester, I place my entire being into the clubs, activities, and classes I partake in, but after the semester ends, I have no project or book or email or idea to let devour me and, as a result, the self I would apply seems to disappear.

Woo! Look there I go!

While it is excellent to feel so wholeheartedly consumed that I my entire self is occupied, the abrupt end of this privilege is a system shock. So here I am, my brain slowly turning to mush as I continually ask myself to engage intellectually without the pressure of a deadline.

***

Am I loud and clear, or am I breaking up?

Am I still your charm, or am I just bad luck?

Are we getting closer, or are we just getting more lost?

***

What you write when you don't know what to write: shit. 

***

It is necessary

to curl tightly under

the covers,

create a small patch of warmth.

Tighten your muscles, keep

the cold at bay.

Wake up exhausted despite the 

blankets

hats

sweaters and

shivering

you have employed to keep you warm.

Fight

for warmth and breath and life,

enjoying the morning hours

as reward. Do not rise.

Your nocturnal fight has

granted you a 

small, self-sized space of snug.

Your only misstep will be to

move. To venture a pinky toe

into the chill; all is undone. 

You are undone; 

Burn it.

The Victim and The Survivor || The Sign and The Signified

I picked up my sister and drove her to GMVS. As I was walking her to a seat in the gym so she could see Les Mis, I was hugged, squeezed tightly and told, "Welcome home!" Naturally, I was offended beyond belief. It's natural to call where you live home and, in high school, I usually misspoke, saying I was going home when I really meant I would be returning to GMVS. Such a slip of the tongue would never occur now, nor would I really call Saint Mike's my home--simply my place of residence. I don't know if my home is in Vermont (where I get my mail). It certainly isn't my childhood home, which has been demolished and created in a new vision. My room--aka the storage room--does not house me or who I am. I feel small pieces of myself everywhere. We must ask ourselves how far we extend, what items, places, moments, clothes, and memorabilia are us; does their existence signify you or just you in that place? Arguably, none, some, and all are signifiers. I am signified... by what exactly, I don't know I am a sign with unfathomable signifiers; I do not know me, so how can you?

Almost a year ago, in February of 2014, I created a new blog, this blog, allowing me to start fresh. A lot happens in a year, and it's combined arbitrariness and social acceptance lends the year to new starts; constantstateofwonder.blogspot.com becomes blank, shaking free its old, embarrassing posts from the me of last year. My writing changes, if it does not improve, and I'm glad I thought to do a yearly cleanse; Junior year Sammi can dwell in the depths of Internet hell while the me with yet no perspective of her own embarrassment can write freely and without anxiety that a reader (or, more likely I) will be tempted to read and learn about me from before. Because me from before does not encapsulate me; she remains formative in development, but not central in current personhood. Slightly Insane Musings of An Idiosyncratic Nerd Girl (my original blog), need not be taken into account when trying to understand me as I am now. Believe me, I'll tell you what I'm about without you needing to root around in my old shitty writing. You can learn more from my current shitty writing. My signifiers cannot be traced to a place or a time, but what else would you expect in the age of the image? I look at pictures of myself sometimes and wonder who I'm seeing. What was I thinking and who was I being? Who is this girl? She is me and she cannot signify herself in a photo; I look for some explanation of who I am in photos of me, but, despite my attempts to declare my personhood to others through countenance and dress, I remain elusive, even to me. But despite my slippery definitions, I feel attached to And That's When I Said...

It may be because years seem much faster; having finished high school, four years in one place (college) feels much shorter; the year, though I've always recognized its arbitrariness, loses its power. But beyond that, And That's When I Said... still feels powerful. It implies seriality--beginning with And, ending with ellipses--and voice with the word Said itself, as well with the temporal words That's and When; the words are spoken in response, and what follows is simultaneously a punchline,  sarcastic comment, scathing remark, and outraged explosion; what follows is a post which has attempted to create a signified for myself, the most accurate one possible. Here, I am here; this is me; this is me right now, right this second; you cannot know me more than I know myself; I've granted you all I can collect from within myself, gathered and shaped it to show you this instantaneous, fleeting glimpse of me. And that's why And That's When I Said... feels right. Because it is temporal; because I am transient, at least the me of now. Tomorrow, I will be someone almost exactly the same as I am today; you won't even notice... and then you will. But I will still be saying; I will still be responding in a myriad of (mostly likely embarrassing) ways. And That's When I Said... I will use my voice and what I say will be signifier of myself.

***

"People who have been raped or sexually assaulted" takes up a lot of space, and it should, but when we're attempting to refer to this group, we search for a word that fits the needs of the group and quickly conveys their status. "Victim," it is argued, gives no agency to the person who has been sexually assaulted or raped ("Victims are passive. If it was really that bad, why didn't they do something to stop it? Why did they let it happen?"), which is why some prefer the term "survivor." The person who has been sexually assaulted or raped endures, survives, and recreates their life despite the harm done to them; they do this of their own volition; they are a powerful agent, a force with control and capability. "Victim," it is argued, removes the power and agency of the person who's been sexually assaulted or raped. They are, according to the synonyms of victim, a casualty, a fatality. Personally, I disagree with both words. Victim undercuts the value and depth of a person who has been sexually assaulted or raped, but survivor, for the reasons it is claimed to be valuable, can be harmful.

Survivor declares either a certain amount of luck or power. Concerning luck, they were lucky to make it out alive and unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luck and sexual assault/rape are two unrelated instances we need to not intersect. For luck to meet sexual assault/rape takes the blame from the assaulter/rapist; bad luck is blamed rather than the perpetrator. Luck also declares that it could've been worse; instead of just being raped (a horrid act and experience), you could've been raped and just realized you ate the last chocolate! You're a survivor, kiddo! We simply cannot associate sexual assault/rape with bad luck, let alone good luck. Concerning power, if this person who has been sexually assaulted/raped is declared a person of agency, their agency may be turned against them: "If their so capable and in control, why didn't they stop their attacker" or "Why weren't they prepared?" or "So... they wanted it to happen?" While people who have been sexually assaulted/raped should not be reduced to powerless, passive victims, granting them too much agency leaves them open to backlash in the ways I've discussed and, I'm sure, in a myriad of other ways I haven't thought of or am not aware of.

I've never been sexually assaulted or raped, so the decision does not belong to me, but both proposed words seem, in varying ways, fraught. I don't know if a word exists in the middle ground that simultaneously places blame on the perpetrator and empowers the person who has been sexually assaulted/raped after the fact. Each word signifies a different meaning and grants skeptics different avenues of critique. The transition from victim to survivor to thriver is also proposed, but this transition is not a single working word applicable to all and usable in conversation, discussion, court, and political discourse. I offer little solution to this issue other than the words "endurer" and "perseverer,"  the definitions of which are, according to Merriam Webster, one who endures and one who perseveres, respectively. A horrible act has been done/is happening, but the endurer endures, the perseverer persists. These words are certainly not panaceas, nor are they easy to say, but they seem to better fit the (perceived) requirements, definitions, and needs of those who have been sexually assaulted/raped.

***

I see my particles arranged in this way:
Crystalline and fractured
As I stare into the void I watch the other particles float 

free

Not trapped by the way they lay
And I think

You lucky, lucky bastards

"amazing division

how sweet the sound"

I am here.

Whenever I read, I don’t pay attention
to the writer’s architecture. To Kill
a Mockingbird, for instance, takes
place at my great aunt’s house.

Every Sunday, we brought doughnuts.
Her fridge always held a liter of Moxie,
and I guzzled its bittersweet for hours;
sugar high and free, nothing could stop me.

I haven’t entered the house in a decade,
I think, and I can’t remember if, three feet
from the end of the kitchen table, an opening
leads to a sitting room. I imagine Atticus, Aunt
Alexandra, and Scout entering and exiting this
room through a door-shaped hole in the wall and
I wonder if my own aunt ever did the same.
I believe I remember the doorway, but
I do not remember beyond it.

I was a seventh grader when my great aunt died
in a fire. My mother, always one to supply unneeded
information in relation to my age, hinted that the fire
had been started by my great aunt. I sat and wondered
if the combination of her brother’s death and the dearth
of doughnuts to pair with Moxie urged her to light
Atticus’s house on fire. Did matches find their way into
Auntie Mary’s hands because we chose other things
over Moxie and doughnuts and
her?

***

The mural springs out from the corner,
where the two walls meet. White and gray,
the pseudo-people depicted, are cartoonish
and beautiful. Their depictions, flat and simple,
their actions, daring and three-dimensional.

One jumps, his hands shaped like pointed mittens
and attached to the ends of thin arms that reach
high over his head. His head hold horns like a crown.
In my mind, I make his white tutu and ballet shoes
pink as he leaps, knees leading
the way for pointed toes and a wide smile.

Beneath him, a man, traditionally dressed, stretches
his arms. His face reveals a negative emotion, somewhere
between upset and worried.

I peer through the darkness and wonder if the man’s
arms reach to stop the ballet dancer from falling, or from
leaping.

***

Focusing
on the waves of reflected light
jumping from the disco ball
and landing lightly on the wall
gives me a headache.

It’s easier to focus instead on
swell of the crowd—how it moves.
Intricately swaying and knottily
shuffling, the crowd says,
“I am here.”

If this were literature,
the women putting her palm
over the top of her drink might
have received a phone call from
her mother, reminding her to be careful.

Literature gives way to life and
the woman doesn’t want her drunk—
drink—to spill.

Even this focus, this interpretation of the crowd’s
darkened, defining undulation,
is too much.

The music, at once pulsing and static,
lifts my fingers up, weightless, and away
from my body, like the first person to pair
I love you with
I’ll leave you.

***

This I wrote last year for my freshmen seminar, but I'd like to commend my 4-year-old self for attempting to describe the cycle of abuse. 

I sit on the bottom of the wooden staircase of my house. I pick at the Velcro on my light-up Power Ranger Sneakers and cry uncontrollably because of some insignificant injustice. Little kids’ tears are always messy and this was no exception; my nose makes disgusting noises as I suck back in the flowing boogers. My mother kneels in front of me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Why are you crying, Sammi-wham?”

Tripping over words and trying to explain emotions my vocabulary was too limited to convey, I say, “It’s just that Daddy. He is so mean. He’s so mean and I’m going to run away.”

“What do you mean he’s mean? We have this house, you have your clothes, your own room, and all of these things that you wouldn’t have without Dad. Dad loves you and me very much.”

“I know. I mean, I just… Sometimes he’s really, really nice. But it’s because he wants me to stay.”

“Wait, I thought he was mean?” At this point, my mother is laughing at me, which only makes me more insistent.

“No. He’s mean and he’s nice and he’s mean so he can torture me and he’s nice because he wants me to stay—”

“So he’s nice and mean?” My four-year-old fists ball and I cry harder; I know I'm being made fun of.

“Mom, listen. He’s nice because he wants me to stay so that he can torture me more and then he’s mean so that I hate him, but then he’s nice again so I won’t run away.”

My mother laughs a little more before the front door slammed. The subject of our conversation walks through the door and my disproportionate, four-year-old legs carry me quickly to my room. I slam the door and continue a paused conversation with my stuffed animals.

***

I wrote poetry, and it was shitty, but I did it. 

Seventeen

I wrote something here and then I deleted it.

***

I could be, should be, watching T.V. right now. I don't really know why or what I'm writing. All the writable things have to be censored; they must be written, but they cannot be read. 

***

The letter I wrote to myself during the spring of my senior year is sitting in the top drawer of my desk, surrounded by miscellany. I want to tell myself, to assure myself, that quote everything will be okay unquote. But really I will live with the guilt of existing for my entire existence. This summer, I crashed and totaled my car. With the insurance money, I bought the same make, model, and year vehicle, the effect of which has only granted me grief whenever I drive. Existing is like buying the same car every time you crash it and feeling the same debilitating waves of shame and humiliation whenever you find yourself with your foot on the clutch and your hand on the key. 

***

I read, analyze, memorize, and regurgitate. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily completing the same amount of each task. We're reading Feed by M.T. Anderson in my media class and my copy from high school contains all the annotations I wrote two years ago. Senior year me and the me of the present have similar ideas. Senior year me used to cry in the shower though, and that was kind of lame, so I'm glad that's done. She also had a lot more things to say, but I'm not glad that's done. I'm surrounded by like-minded people with no one to rail against. I used to write upwards of three posts a month. Now, if I'm committed, I write one a month. The world and everything I see is just nice. It's just pretty. It's just okay. There is no high; there is no low, only silence.

Shhh. There is nothing to hear.

***

I tried to write a poem, but it was shitty, so it's gone now. 

***

Everything's already been written, so what's the point of writing? Everything's been said, so why speak? People have already lived and died, so why do we keep existing? There's nothing left undone. We are the things we do and somehow, I'm always nothing.

***

Yesterday, I left my water bottle in a store in Burlington, which was stupid. But a friend retrieved it for me today. Then on the bus, I lost my water bottle again. My life is most likely a string of mistakes. I can recall a me with a more solidified identity. A me who was certain: yes, please, that's exactly what I want and here's why. But mistake after mistake and a shift in reality has created a me who could not tell you who she is. At 17, I was a writer and a student and a ski racer and a softball player and the best friend I could be. Now, a multitude of mistakes later, I am no longer an athlete, which was one of the only things that wasn't a mistake. Decisions have never been easy for me, and now it seems I've made too many to make myself a person again. Each error grows larger in my mind, taking over my consciousness.

Question: which one of my mistakes will make me I hate myself forever? 

Answer: all of them.

Question: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Why aren't I going anywhere?

Answer:

***

REDO REDO REDO

UNDO UNDO UNDO

DELETE ME

***

I'm so tired and I don't care about the rest of my life.

Go Away (x4), Leave Me Alone (x7)

"Listen," I want to say. "Just fucking listen."

In the middle of speaking. Wait. Speaking. The decision to speak. Why? Why did I make that decision? Wait. In the middle of speaking. The idea becomes a thing. An out of context quote. No. Wait. The idea. The thing. Say it. Say the fucking thing. Did I say it? Fuck. No. Fuck. She gives me a quick, confused look. She says yeah. Why don't I just fucking listen?

***

I'd like to say something about racism.

It's real.

Thank you for your time.

***

This Is Just To Say

I have died.

Please grieve silently.

***

This is the difference. The difference is this. We are different. This is we and we are different.

In the out-of-context context of existence, you and I and me and you and all of us, are different.

And, I would like to tell you, in the clearest way possible, that I don't fucking like it.

***

At the risk of sounding extremely ableist, I'd like to recognize the sincere struggle of very sad deaf people. I need noise. In silence. I crumble. Which is why my music is currently trying to permanently destroy my ear drums. But I'd like to issue an apology to both sad, deaf people and the me in an alternate universe who cannot hear. I'm listening twice as loud for you.

***

Your out of context existence means nothing. As well, I'd like to point out that while your in context existence means more, it still means nothing. Meaning. Tell me about meaning. So infinite. Too infinite. Lacking. Impertinent. Meaning doesn't matter. What does it do? How much work? It doesn't work without meaning. Work is tied in meaning and I am without meaning so I do nothing.

***

Jean-Louise Finch. (Who we all know as Scout.) Wears overalls and nothing else. Spoiler Alert. In Go Set a Watchmen, Jean-Louise Finch does not wear overalls. She wears dresses. Her rebellion is in her lack of makeup or some other pseudo-progressive bullshit.

I was at Nate's house the summer before my senior year of high school. Some uncle who perpetuated sexism with benevolent misogyny had the mother fucking audacity to tell me "I would learn to" like dresses, makeup, and all the other bullshit that comes with being a lady. (What's even better is that he said, "She'll learn" to Nate and not to me.) The effect, I would say, is opposite. All this bullshit about it being adorable for young girls to be tomboys but not for young ladies and women to show their masculinity is exactly that: bullshit.

Jean-Louise, who left behind the chance to be my absolute idol, to wear dresses grew up before second-wave feminism. I would respect her choices if they seemed like choices. But they don't. It seems like someone learned Jean-Louise real good.

I will tear down society and build it again. Based on one fucking principle: listen. Listen because Scout's voice was clearer and stronger than Jean-Louise's. Because I've always hated Aunt Alexandra the way I've hated the subtle cultural messages that I was wrong. Internalized misogyny and strict ideas of what a woman needs to be perpetuated by societal norms is gonna fucking stop.

In Athens, baby girls were referred to as "deformed boys" and when a mother gave birth to a baby girl, it was common to discard the child in the garbage. "Best case scenario," the child was taken out of the garbage raised to become a prostitute. If not, the children screamed and cried until they died in a dumpster. This happened so often that Athenians were unperturbed by the cries. No one listened and we need to start.