Friday, August 19, 2005
Grrr...
Sorry guys for not writing.
I feel a bit like it would be appropriate to quote Garbage here, something about how I'm only happy when it rains. But that would be silly.
Suffice it to say that I've been somewhat depressed lately. Actually, cancel that. I have been alarmingly depressed lately. I have started getting into that dark mood that means I have to leave town for my days off and go somewhere peaceful to regain my sanity, but these days the moods are getting darker and the relative quiet of the island is just not doing it for me. I started having panic atttacks last week. You know, those fun 3-5 minutes where the world starts to spin and you feel vaguely nauseous and out of breath and your heart pounds and black spots swim before your eyes? This is followed, or rather accompanied, by a sense of total loss of control. A scary thing to experience (and have to conceal!) while attempting to be a pleasant Cashier Robot Barbie at a bookstore for children.
Why do I feel this way all of a sudden? A combination of things.
For one, I have discovered that the world can be a disturbingly heteronormative place for a girl who has decided she is finally okay with being attracted to other girls. Pride Week was total paradise, as are Sophie's shows and the increasingly limited time I get to spend with Kylie. But the rest of the time the world seems to be a rather dark place that asks all kinds of unreasonable things of me, like that I be attracted to loud, immature, 20-something men who never cry because their fathers told them to grow up and be men when they were about four years old. Grr...I have major problems with gender stereotyping, and the way we impose it on our children. We mean well, but for once I want to see a little boy reading the insipid Rainbow Magic Fairies and a girl reading books about dragons and knights. I find it disheartening at best, downright disturbing at worst.
I don't expect any of you to share these thoughts. They are mine, and perhaps mine alone. But I am reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and sweet, sensitive Charlie speaks to me like no narrator has in a while. That book sums up a lot of my thoughts on life.
My mother made some comment the other day about how she wondered if I'm turning out gay because she wouldn't let me be too girly as a kid. I was never allowed to dress up as a fairy princess for Halloween simply because my friends were doing it. I got to play baseball and run around and get dirty, and I am damn glad I got to do it. I cannot even conceive of how messed-up I would be right now if I had been forced into being prissy. I just want to be me, but I don't seem to be a person very many people are impressed by. I really understand why so many gay kids commit suicide. I am not suicidal, but I get it.
The house I am housesitting is very lonely. VERY lonely. It is a cold place of leather couches and caged pets. Who the hell ever thought of owning a furry little rodent and confining it to a cage, anyway? I am baffled by the very thought.
I. Am. Lonely.
I have to admit it. I want someone, anyone, to put me at the top of their priority list. I want to be wanted, and held, and loved, and not by people related and obligated to me by bloodlines. I need to know that I am important to someone. Valuable. And not just because I ring in their purchases and put their books back on the shelf.
I went home sick from work today. I do feel sick. My dad appears to have given me his cold, and I'd like to crawl into a little hole and die. I am back to feeling like the only person in this whole lonely world that I can rely on is myself. I felt that way three months ago, and I thought I'd come a long way since then. I had, but this mountain seems to be made of loose gravel, and I am sliding fast.
Of course, this too shall pass. I need a community, a place I can go where people are like me and don't look at me like I'm from the moon and perhaps I could give them a bit of space dust for an afternoon and that will be all, please and thank you. Emma recommended the ominously-titled THE CENTER downtown. One of those places for people who fall into acronyms. GLBTQQ, G&L, GBTL, fucking rainbow magic fairies. How ironic. I am actually quite cheered by the thought that such a place exists. I feel enormously better on the street or the bus when I see someone wearing rainbows or a Pride bracelet. Thank hamsters I am not alone.
I am lonely. Just not quite alone.
Don't worry about me. I am going home, and then I will feel better.
This hamster running on its Sysiphysian (sp?) wheel makes me even more depressed. She chews on the bars of her cage, and so do I. She hasn't given up, no matter how pointless the struggle.
And I won't either. Because I foolishly think I am clever enough to unlatch the door.
-N
