I wake up sprawled on the floor, lying on my travel pillow which I purchased for twenty-five dollars by advice of chiropractor. "I don't think you're really in the position not to take my advice, Daniela" this is what Dr.Calluci tells me, and because I've been waiting for an hour and a half among the elderly I say, "Dr.Calluci, just wondering, are you like-- an actual medical doctor?"
I buy the pillow anyway.
On the floor of the airport I sit up and I am immediately handed a pamphlet about Jesus Christ. This seems appropriate enough: the sun is shining brightly in my face, the wind is not blowing in my hair.
My arm is really banged up and because this is not New York City everyone asks over and over again "what happened to your arm?"
A boy who could be my age, but is probably younger asks me "Are you afraid of flying?"
Of course. I tell him. Not scared at all. I want to say that I love airports that I am in my element, that I could be anyone but instead I do not say what happened to my arm I say "I cannot handle the take offs and landings"
I wake up sprawled on the floor and suddenly I am taking a shit ton of Percocet with missionaries who are on their way to Peru.I let them tell me about God and I mainly not my head, I stop to say "I really only believe in the Blessed Virgin" and they note that I am not speaking of myself and keep going.
"Why are you going to Peru? Can't you just leave those people alone?" I don't know if they give me a real answer but their backpacks are filled as if they were going to go film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas not Jesus Camp: The Sequel
Once I let my friend Jesse borrow the book White Noise and she read it on a flight with her mother on their way to Costa Rica, a missionary vomitted on her and all over the book something like fifteen minutes after take off.
We are not sure if this actually means anything, but we write it down anyway. Just in case. Just in case the police come storming in and ask for an account so I can "well here it happened like this officers, I have it on this sheet of paper"
but even the police man, the private would ask me from the door frame
"what happened to your arm?"
There are times in life where you start settling and truly, I have no idea why. I either want to say "hurry up and get it over with" or "chill the fuck out man and let your guard down" I believe in purgatory, naturally, of course, but I've never been a fan of limbo and the authorities, the missionaries, the men with missing jaws-- none of them can tell me that there is any difference.
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The other day we drove in a car Nick, Ashley, Autumn, Aaron and myself and tried to find a place called "Amelia Island" we ended up at Fort DeSoto and it was completely deserted, all you could see was sand and water and some grass and an occasional bicycle going by. At first we just stood there. Then Nick waded in. That ashley said it wasnt so cold. Then I collapsed like the the earth was begging me to and then I wanted to take off all of my clothes. I have never swam naked in the ocean, i have gone bras and panties in the night, but I have never been truly naked during the day in the water. So I stripped off. Autumn, who goes to an all girls school in Roanoke, which I believe is called Roanoke, held my bra in my hand for me while I touched my own breasts in the water. I kept saying to everyone "we have to do this now because this is beautiful" there was a sense of urgency but still a sense of panic. There is always a sense of panic like "what if I can never do this again?" It's not a question of whether I'll ever come back to the ocean, but whether the ocean will ever come back.
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In the car Autumn, who has her masters or is working on her Masters or something about Psychology diagnosis everyone. Ashley takes a drag off of her Newports even though she is enraged that I handed her the wrong pack "Newport Lights" we didn't even know they existed.
"THESE PROBABLY DONT EVEN HAVE FIBERGLASS IN THEM"
I apologize, smoke one myself, cant inhale but figure that she's wrong and they probably do.
Then Ashley says "well Daniela, we diagnosed you already last night."
Oh do tell
"We diagnosed you with HPD"
like HPV?
"No HPD"
What's HPD? Why did you diagnose me? What the fuck?
Autumn has either printed this out or is maybe reading it from her phone but then she explains to me that if she was my doctor she would diagnose me with "Histrionic Personality Disorder"
I say from the backseat, half glaring at Nick because he was born, "I don't think I have any kind of disorder.
Autumn begins reading:
Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriate seductiveness, usually beginning in early adulthood.
The essential feature of histrionic personality disorder is an excessive pattern of emotionality and attention-seeking behavior. These individuals are lively, dramatic, enthusiastic, and flirtatious. They may be inappropriately sexually provocative, express strong emotions with an impressionistic style, and be easily influenced by others.
People with this disorder are usually able to function at a high level and can be successful socially and professionally. People with histrionic personality disorder usually have good social skills, but they tend to use these skills to manipulate other people and become the center of attention. [1] Furthermore, histrionic personality disorder may affect a person's social or romantic relationships or their ability to cope with losses or failures. People with this disorder may seek treatment for depression when romantic relationships end, although this is by no means a feature exclusive to this disorder. They often fail to see their own personal situation realistically, instead tending to dramatize and exaggerate their difficulties. They may go through frequent job changes, as they become easily bored and have trouble dealing with frustration. Because they tend to crave novelty and excitement, they may place themselves in risky situations.
She finishes reading and everyone in the car just nods their heads. "I have never even heard of this! Everything cannot just be a disorder. Having a personality is a disorder"
I put on lipstick. I stare out at the ocean. I wake up days later and the missionaries from Peru diagnose me with hell and slip a white pill in my mouth.
I pack when I get home. I unpack even though it's been dark for hours.
Before bed, or during bed, I fall asleep with my glasses on. All this time I thought I only suffered from terminal uniqueness. I am back in New York. No one asks what happened to my arm, and if I told the truth would they even believe me?
"someone cut me with a butter knife"
I'm not sure. The pamphlet about Christ is at the bedside table. I cannot keep my eyes open. I didn't get a sunburn.
SYMPTOMS:
The symptoms include:
* Constant seeking of reassurance or approval.
* Excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotions.
* Excessive sensitivity to criticism or disapproval.
* Inappropriately seductive appearance or behavior.
* Excessive concern with physical appearance.
* A need to be the center of attention (self-centeredness).
* Low tolerance for frustration or delayed gratification.
* Rapidly shifting emotional states that may appear shallow to others.
* Opinions are easily influenced by other people, but difficult to back up with details.
* Tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are.
* Making rash decisions.
and the clothes go
Life Advice:
Arnold
Amy
Mnemonic
A mnemonic that can be used to remember the criteria for histrionic personality disorder is PRAISE ME:[8][9]
* P - provocative (or seductive) behavior
* R - relationships, considered more intimate than they are
* A - attention, must be at center of
* I - influenced easily
* S - speech (style) - wants to impress, lacks detail
* E - emotional lability, shallowness
* M - make-up - physical appearance used to draw attention to self
* E - exaggerated emotions - theatrical
I put my bra on, the cat vomits in the corner.
I take the train back but just to read. New York feels like the biggest place in the world; the smallest planet on the block. The four girls across from me are best friends. They just got boobs. They say to me "hey mami, your white boots is ugly" and I nod my head in agreement. They laugh about other things, rowdy with their hair slicked back to one side. They are louder than everyone else and I wonder why they wear their jeans like that. For a moment I cannot remember what it is like to be fourteen, I cannot remember what it is like to write a name in hearts or to cry because of a pair of shoes I needed and could not have.
The moment passes and I remember again exactly what it is like. I watch them, feeling I am allowed to stare now that they made fun of me. They won't look back again, maybe there is something about my face that says I'd make fun of their shoe laces. Perhaps I would if the mood struck me, but really the truth is, I am just jealous of it. I want to sit next to them. I want to ask if i can be the fifth member. I will tell them what it's like to have tits, I will throw insults at the other passengers. I will lie to them, like no one lied to me and I will say "it will get worse before it gets better." They would not believe me, just like I did not believe anyone.
When I come home it's a saturday but it feels like a Sunday. I want to kill my roommate because there are always dishes in the sink and I cannot stand to look at them. I don't understand why she cannot mop the floors. I say it loud in different ways: to her face, right here, through text messages, screaming from the bathroom. I sound like one of my relatives who has gone mad because they see dust, because there is hair in the sink.
Midterms will come and I'l make decisions. I know how to drive the car still. I know still that it is up to me. I will not walk around that block with a phone in my hand and the tears clogging up all of the parts that make it work. I don't understand how phones work especially without wires. I guess it makes no difference. If Alexander Graham Belle was here, he'd break up with me. He'd tell me he wanted me long distance or that I was the wrong kind of text message. I'd tell him he's gone mad, phones could never work without me.
I think about the library in this romantic way. I have a stack of paper clips, a stack of magazines, e-mails to return and I must put on heels because I've promised to dance with you in that manner.
The reason I cant be good at this --- well part of this-- is because I want to take naps but don't have the ability to take them.
I have been woken up different ways in my life. It tells you a lot about a person-- the way they reach for your body. Sometimes I am nudged awake like I am a dog, but not a dog you love that much, kind of with a little kick like this is a bother. And then other times I am cradled back into consciencse like a baby or an angell or a girl who is too tired to type anymore but it is ready to open her eyes.
The cat throws up &my boots is ugly.
"Have your coffee and stop your crying," my alarm goes off and I say this to myself like I am a strict mother giving a proper scolding. I've made the bed before I am barely even out of it. "I believe it was just the dreams, I believe it is just the weather."
Yesterday my roommate cried in the kitchen so I gave her a hug and used my fingers to wipe away her tears. I don't like to get like that in front of anyone and it's funny, because I can usually only cry late at night or early in the morning. I feel like it's daylight savings time. It's like I let myself relax enough in my sleep that something goes through the surface.
So this morning, upon rising, I burst into tears. I put my head in my hands and I take my hair down. There is water next to the bed. I drink it slowly as if something has actually happened, as if this is a reaction.
"Make your bed. Get dressed. Get a hold of yourself."
If anyone who loved me, or did not love me, was here they would say "enough with the theatrics, Daniela," they would say "is there a reason to be this dramatic right now?" I do it in front of no one. Wash my own face. I think the last thing I said to him was that I wish I needed nothing just like the story in the book.
I put "Sodom, South Georgia" on the record player because I've learned how to move my finger to the line. all dead white boys say God is good. White tongues hang out. God is good. I want to talk to Jackson but I can't feel where he is these days. You know how sometimes you can tell with a person? You can feel it with them and you can tell? I can't tell. I can't tell and I should have given him (and many other things) up for Lent.
I don't know how this happens to me constantly in New York City, but I don't own an umbrella again. I have the proper boots now. The proper stride. I can look straight ahead, but I don't know what I've done with the umbrellas. The subject line refers to chickens. Once I met a man and he loved penguins. I believe it is evident in a woman's face if she rode horses when she was a girl.
And here we go again we are back to my thoughts that don't come as thinks it is only "I feel" or "I believe" suddenly it is not "I think" or "I know" Suddenly I am telling strangers what I feel about their fingers. I put "Coxcomb Red" on the record player because once, a boy who kissed me in a dorm got me high and then got me into the band Songs: Ohia. I could see the May 4th Memorial from out the bedroom window and at any moment where I could see a massacre, I felt like things were meant to be. He told me the song reminded him me, and because I was eighteen, I did not believe him. Now that is the only compliment. You'd think it be different, that I would have trusted more than. But later on in cars with men and boys listening to the radio or complaining about a tape deck, I learned the reason all music had ever been written.
Just tell me this song is about me. Make it up.
I was talking to my 'intern', who allows me to call her that or puffin or butter cup, and I was telling her that I wish I would have moved to New York when I was 21. It seemed like it would have been this exciting, outrageous thing to arrive here at that age. A sat for a minute with the months and then I remembered that I did. I did move to New York when I was 21.
I did move to New York when I was 21. I did learn how to cry without an audience. In the beginning it was all fancy dinners and social climbers, but then I couldn't keep up. I thought we were really doing it for the arts or we were really doing it for the cause or we were doing it for the charities and then a woman who I admired very much told me to apply fake eyelashes and lose fifteen pounds. And I would have loved to, and maybe I did, maybe that did happen. But I still think if I did it, it was for the right reasons. It was to build the well, not to wear the dress.
People talk to me about regrets, about the news, about the economy. Friends act as if they are phoning to let me in on the real world, as if I have cut myself off from some thing that is actually going on. They begin with "have you heard?" and they ask "so what do you think?" and I watch the old ladies cross the street and I am happy that I can record Democracy Now on DVR because lying on the couch and seeing boring faces is the closest I can get to sitting in a car and waiting for the light to turn green.
The voices on the phones, seldom, rarely, I answer-- I don't listen to what they say. I've learned to tune into the AM radio now. If I am lucky I get a preacher all the way from Tennessee and he promises me salvation. "Get out of bed and drink a cup of coffee." And because no one wants to hear about it, because no one wants to pretend the lines on my face are the lines on records, I wipe them off myself. I feel and I believe and perhaps after I've dressed and washed my hair I too will become enraged about all of these scandals. Oh these scandals! Going on right before my eyes. I too will phone to tell the news; I too will think.
http://www.danielascrima.com
Yesterday we had to talk about "Seymour: An Introduction" for two hours &I thought everyone was wrong. Sometimes I have no idea how I can be a lit major because I don't really like to talk about it, I like what it is to me.
Jay's flight got canceled so I poured an extra bowl of dog food, and John's flight got delayed so I talked to him on the phone and you could hear the flight attendants saying to make room under seats and overhead. I am not on an airplane.
I feel like all I do is wash the floor and I am still upset about the dishes in the sink. Maybe I will never stop being upset about the dishes in the sink. I want to live alone so I can have high ceilings and decorate how I like and have things that are mine. My psychiatrist says this is because I am an only child; my psychic says it's because the moon is in my favor this year.
Last night Laura came over and I filled my hair with aqua net. This morning I washed it twice to try and get rid of the smell of smoke. I had water and read more Wally Lamb which I cannot stop reading. Except the book is kind of about the Columbine shootings and it is also kind of very violent and sad. I tried to start it before I went to Florida the last time in December, but I stopped. Now I am almost done and I don't want to be because I like it when books go on forever.
Remember how I told you I bought Cosmopolitan Magazine? Well, it was not good for me to read. Really it says a million terrible things and it asks you to look at your boyfriends dick and see if it's different colors and then on the next page it tells you if you are single this is how you hang a picture on the wall. And I wonder maybe some lady reads this and finds out that their boyfriend's dick is different colors and then just hangs herself instead.
I have to think about packing because it will be warm in Florida. Not warm it will be hot. I bet it will be 90 degrees but with a breeze. If my skin wants to burn I will let it. I say every year that I do not get sunburns because I am half Sicilian. If you've been with me for more than a year then you know the truth, if not then maybe you will see.
I am waiting for Jayme to come back because she is gone. I am waiting for Tuesday because I need to have my hair washed and blown out and then my tarot cards read. Then people from China will stay at my parent's house and I will clean the room that is my room there but not my childhood bedroom and hopefully we will drive.
On Wednesday, we are going to Space Camp. I wonder how long it takes to get there. I remember going for field trips to Cape Canaveral and I was so happy because you could eat astronaut ice cream. It is like Styrofoam kind of, you know?
I am happy about the ocean. I act like I live no where near the Atlantic Ocean. I act like I act like I act like I act like I act like.
Sorry, I am in a fitful mood today. It is Blair's birthday, happy Birthday Blair.
I need to sit back down and finish writing my lists. I will have to wait for Jayme to come back until I can pack. Packing is a puffin party. I watched the last episode of The Girls Next Door and it ruined my life. But hey, I feel fine because another season of The Hills is starting. During the commercial Heidi cries and Spencer punches someone in the face. A lot of times.
I really am this stupid.
My doctor says it's all about iron "you're not getting enough iron, Daniela." I want to ask him if he believes in blood lines but I don't know what kind of question that would be.
I will probably act out for the next ten days, I can feel it strongly in my bones.
things I wanted as a child: a puppy, a swimming pool, siblings
things I've wanted as an adult: a typewriter, a record player, a Mason Pearson hair brush, a room of one's own
My childhood goals did not succeed but now I also have BUDDY who is a puppy/baby/angel and all the things on my adult list. Well. Except I am starting to feel very "A House on Mango Street" about wanting to have a house and it's my house. That and multiples. Twins please. I will say then to some stranger or doctor or women in line at the grocery store "I never got the siblings, but look now i have twins."
Just because it's not a joke, doesn't mean it's not a lie.
the same picture you see every day
respect your breasts
"accidents"
from when the snow storm came
from when I married my iphone
puffins
make my ____ strong _____
where secrets go to die
team who knows
I am creepy
danny &john
the not importance of bras
this was some kind of band somehow somewhere
and something
my BFF
I've gone mad
this was written on the wall when we walked into class last night
