February 28th 2004
I cant sleep through the night, because I'm scared of the dark. I think too much, and the darkness scares the hell out of me. I have a nightlite, and terrible sleeping habits. I wake up screaming. Or I don't wake up at all. I listen to music that my mother did when she was my age. I listen to it like it still has a purpose, like it's brand new, because for me, it is. I read books over and over. And I smile a lot on the outside. I try as hard as I can not to drown, but sometimes the waves are inevitable. I lived in Florida for ten years, so don't expect me to get excited over sunshine. No matter how together I get it, I will always stand to be corrected. Someone will always point out that I put the, comma in the wrong place, they wont even read the sentence. They will look into my eyes and right past me. They will tear apart my face. And I will make part of this up. I will sleep or stop or stop or sleep. I will be your personal Jesus. You can light me on fire, and I'll love it. I will find you in deserted rooms and crowded hallways, you will fill my brain. I will want more. But I will never be enough for you. This is all you need to remember, because I'm beginning to forget.
I meet a girl in college who never has nightmares. She becomes my best friend almost instantly, and I cant ever get past the fact that she has gone her whole life without ever having a nightmare. She is an amazing person, I adore her completely. And she has never had a nightmare. I end up relating back to it everytime we speak. It's like when you're talking to someone whose parents both died in a car accident when they were ten, you have conversations and you talk like everything is alright, but you always go back to that thought. You're talking to them about chocolate milk, and you're thinking about their parents dying in a car. You want to ask questions like "how is it like to feel like that?" or you want to treat them like they are extra fragile. Fragile in the same way that someone who is in a wheel chair gets looks from everyone that are trying to point out "I will treat you as an equal, although you're in a wheel chair". You try and be so politely correct, like it's not obvious that it's the only thing on your mind. It's how you sit there and think, "I don't know what is worse, that people like me arent good enough for people like you, or that people like me care, because it's the people like me that should know better, and instead I watch us run after you". Realizing something is always a step, in rehab and therapy they tell you all this stuff about how denial is awful and honesty is always the best policy. But the only thing worse than denial is realization; you can realize and address the problem-but that does not mean you will do anything about it.
I'm in love with a dream I had as a kid
I wait up the street until you show;
That dream it came true-
but you never do
No, you never did;
As far as I know
So I stay up in bed feeling jealous about a lack of some sort of nightmare. I've just done a bunch of coke, so I cant really feel my nose. I keep placing my fingers on it, and getting nowhere. It's Ohio, and its February, where did I plan on going anyway? I want to hug someone, or punch someone or preferably find the cure for cancer, at a truck stop. But the year is two-thousand &four, and that just sounds ridiculous. It sounds like saying "2056", it sounds like the future, it sounds like we should be metal suits and have no emotions. Maybe that is all we have, but I'm sure missing out on the present. So when the year sounds like the future, you end up taking what you can get. Besides, you're right handed and you always have nightmares. The boy sitting next to you, he probably just feels obligated. The people you want dont want you back, and the people you used to say you'd die for are now just better off dead. It's like when I realized that we went from years of boys trying to get down our pants, to years of boys that just didn't know how. You've been waking up screaming since you first made it out of the womb, like you came off the assembly line flat out fucked. You came off the assembly line flat out fucked and your parents should have probably taken you back and got their refund. If theyre lucky, there was probably some good deal going on, or something with a 100% guarantee. Your parents who are just made for each other, they wouldnt have bothered to keep the receipt, yet they will still spend eighty hours arguing over who threw it away. They still make the time to argue about whose fault it is that they cant return the baby, they come to the realization that this has somehow become their responsibility. Well, shit.
So you sit down over breakfast with your nightmareless best friend. We're sitting at Denny's and I'm staring at my hashed browns. We're eating, and we're laughing. We eat pancakes in a matter that says "simple really is simple" and orange juice ends up represneting salvation. I'm thinking about how eating strips of bacon will probably add a few years to my time spent in purgatory, and how the roman catholic church will probably not want anything to do with me, because me, well i've put things up my nose, and hands have gone down my shirt far too many times; I've done things that no one talks about on nights when everything is going really well. I've done things we'd like to ignore. We regret telling our mothers. These are the times when I'm wanting The Blessed Virgin Miss Mary to slap the baby Jesus, to shake his little body for spitting up on her pure blue gown. Maybe if she did, I'd feel so much better for being me. And I eat my pancakes and think "the only reason I'm thinking like this is because I've had so many nightmares" She's never had nightmares so how could she understand that the eggs on my plate are making the baby jesus cry. And Goddamnit! It's not fair. I wake up and I cant tell you where I am.Where the fuck is everyone? Where did everybody go? When my mind is racing like I'm fifteen and my hands are moving like i'm sixty five. When I'm laying on my stomach, like a beached whale who is ready to die. She lays on the beach covered in the blubber which is just her, and she is accepting that there is no air or water left, she went too close to shore. She comes to terms with dying, but even when the world darkens and fades and being coherent escapes her, she is ready to die if she must, but is still praying for one last wave.
And I just cant remember where anyone has gone. Cant remember what zip code existance is currently belonging to. It's a feeling of vertigo, a constant falling. Simply put, I feel like my equillibrium shot itself in the face. And I'm just left reading the suicide note. Like a mother who walks into her kitchen and doesnt know where she went wrong, it takes her a moment to realize that the red stuff all over the counter and the pink chunks all over the floor belong to her son, whose body is sitting in the chair, and whose shotgun has fallen across the kitchen table. She'll never be able to admit that the first thought that crossed her mind was "Oh my, what a mess", because instantly she starts screaming out "oh my baby, oh my baby'. And she falls like she's falling, has no idea where she went wrong. Unless you are this mother in that kitchen, you don't know what it's like to wake up in my bed. And I wake up not knowing where I am. Not remembering that you cant start paragraphs with "and" or even with "so". Glued to my sheets I can not tell you what state I'm in or whose bed I'm in. I cant tell because instead of opening my eyes, I just shove my face further into the pillow. Like it's love. I wake up gasping for air because when my eyes were closed and I was deep in some sort of NREM sleep, I had a nightmare that I was drowning while everyone watched. Or I wake up holding on to the sore spots in my stomach where lions just ripped my stomach to shreds. Maybe it was the dream where my mother stabs me over and over again, because I cant get out of bed. Because I was the greatest mistake she has made to date. And I wake-up, but cant open my eyes. I'm paralized. I'm even more tired than I was before I went to sleep, if that's even possible. I cant move, because I cant remember where the fuck I am. I toss from side to side and cant tell you if I'm in Florida or not. I try and feel if there is some warmth hitting my face from an open window, I try and feel if I'm spread across my California king size mattress, like I'm dying and it's the west coast. I feel like my hip bones should be sticking out more, and my hair should be sticking up less. But I'm probably not in Florida. It's the east coast, and everyone knows where you live; they know you at the mall &and the market-they know you on the beach and at the bars. You live in one of the most overpopulated counties in the country, you live in a place where people vacation or die, a place that is completely transient, where everyone leaves and comes and leaves again, and you are still not anonymous. You don't watch television, and maybe you should. Maybe you should take your iron, and stop taking sleeping pills. The state is full of strangers and it still ends up that everybody knows your na-me and they are always glad you ca-me. But, you're probably not occupying the sunshine state. The two of you have parted ways like someone who wears those horrid patches so they can quit smoking. I don't know who wears the patch and who is the person, you or Florida. I don't know where I am, and when I say "You" I always mean "Me".
The sunshine state just turned cloudy, and you arent even there for the execution. You were there to watch them steal the election, but I think you slept through the other parts. Winding up somewhere up north, like it could somehow save you. Maybe I'm at grandma's house, sleeping in the blue room, the walls lined with Virgin Mary's and me tossing and turning like it's too terrible. Everything smells like death and catholicism. Everything reminds you of that childhood is just a re-written memory, and you can change it as often as you like, or as often as you need to. And while everyone shut their eyes, so you could change your blouse, you accidently grew up. You said "oh, well, alright, sure" and everyone opens their eyes and wants you dead. In the way that puberty screws you up, and society screws you worse. Besides, you don't have it in you to explain anything, you're tired, goddamnit, why doesnt anyone ever understand when you're tired? Your grandmother holds a rosary in one hand and painkillers in the other, and all you can remember is how you've always wanted to be just like her.
I'm sitting at a table now, and girls are walking by drunk.They are giggling and laughing and having a great time, and it's really upsetting me. They do things like have movie night and braid each others hair &say things like "BEST FRIENDS FOR LIFE" constantly. Of course the only reason that this upsets me is that I'm completely jealous. I wonder if they have ever left anything. I bet they were proud of themselves for going to a school that was forty-five minutes away, I'm sure they pat themselves on the back for being so brave. I want to ask "have you ever ran out of a room just to see if anyone will run after you?". Remember, by "room" I mean "state" and by "you" I mean "me". So I always end up sitting alone waiting for someone. Developing some sort of neurosis in order to pass the time. I'm waiting for the good feeling to wear off, because it always does. I'm waiting until I can put more things up my nose, or maybe I'm waiting for more hands to be placed over my mouth. I think sometimes when I sit like this, I convince myself that someone eventually will fall in love with me, that someone will think I'm really swell and offer to hold my hand at night. But I know this is not so, no one ever really falls in love with me. No one really has that in them. I'm sure my hair isnt pretty enough, my cheekbones arent as high, I don't speak in a way you could love, the way I bite my lower lip, it probably makes you want to slap me. I try and pretend I don't believe in the love I read about in books, that it is just silly, just an illusion. I like to pretend that I dont envy the way he holds her head during an on screen kiss. I like to pretend a lot of things. And I always end up realizing that it's basically my fault. I have nightmares, and it's my fault. I wake up grabbing the sheets for someone to hold me, and it's my fault. I wake up grabbing for someone, like someone should be laying next to me patiently, just waiting to hold my hand and kiss my forehead and say "Daniela, everything is alright". It's funny, because I wake up feeling like everyone else left me. I wake up clawing at my sheets, you'd think I was searching for my long lost lover who fell asleep beside me, with his abdomen pressed deep into my spine, like we're the same person. But he didnt fall asleep next to me, it's really not like that at all. It's like you left your long lost lover at a bar, and you came home alone, just to throw up.
Maybe I'll win the Pulitzer prize for puking, or the congressional medal of honor for crying out my eyes. Maybe one day I'll be able to explain this accurately, to tell you the reason I'll give you my soul if you'll run after me. Maybe one day I'll be able to give you the reasons that I'm so in love with the underdog, maybe one day I'll be able to tell you why I'd serve the sentence for Johnny 99, or why I'd let the witch put me in her oven. But right now, all I can tell you is, I feel like everyone else has left me. I feel like Spot has every right to kill me in the backyard. Every right. In the end, I'm left waiting for the eulogy, I am the man who leaves a room of one hundred nice girls to go in search of a prostitute, for true love. So when I wake up I have to remind myself that it was me who left everyone, that it was me who ran from my life screaming, like it was on fire. Like it was the prettiest building I had ever seen, bursting into flames before my eyes. No one asks who lit the match until they make sure everyone made it out alive. It is those few minutes where some of us breathe easy, and some of us just hold our breath.
When I leave it's because I have to. I leave like it's love, or like it's sudden. Like it's a book or a mini-series playing on TV after everyone has stopped watching. I am your only option unless you want to watch the infomercials. I leave because I have to. I am a ten year old girl walking into her backyard to play with her best friend in the whole world, the family pet named "Spot". I have just had a rough day at school, a boy made fun of me on the bus, and I tried so hard not to cry. I bit my tongue and I lifted my eyes toward the ceiling, I kind of smiled and I wished everyone else would stop laughing. I'm the ten year old girl, just waiting to go home and play with Spot. I'm just so excited. I'm walking in the backyard to play with Spot, not even going to eat a snack, who needs a snack? I'm the ten year old girl realizing that Spot is barking all over the place, that he's foaming at the mouth, that Spot is ready to go for the kill. He's ready to jump toward the jugalar and call it a day. If she doesnt turn around and run, Spot is going to rip apart her little face. So she does, she backs away and runs with tears in her eyes, not fully understanding why; suddenly everything has changed. Then she watches Spot get shot in the head like it's all her fault. Unless you're that little girl, unless youre watching your dog with rabies change your life, unless you're running away because it's just too much-if you're not any of that, You have no idea how I feel.
Everyone has always told me "go, go, go" no one has ever said "stop". I have no concept of "no more". I always want more. More, more, more. They always handed me two hundred dollars for passing go, and gave me a slap on the wrist plus a get out of jail free card. They told me "dream if you want to dream" so I did. Everyone else developed a concept of stop, but for me it was always "go, go, go-more, more, more". I wil keep drinking after everyone else realizes they are drunk, I will keep driving after I run out of road, I will keep singing after the song is over, because I can never manage to get it out of my head. I will keep talking after everyone else is done listening, because I am so scared to shut up. I will take more sleeping pills, just incase. More tylenol just incase. I will read the page twice, because I feel like I am missing something. I will sit there waiting to feel more, because I always want more. My best friend eats her eggs and fucks her boyfriend. She smiles blissfully like a Stepford wife. I sit around thinking about the word "scrambled" and waiting for the fucking rapture. I used to sneak out of my window and meet up with my friends, we would listen to punk rock, or rock, or hardcore or anything, we'd listen to it because we wanted to feel like we had a purpose. Everyone else was asleep in their beds, but we stayed up getting stoned, waiting for more. And even when they were done, when they were laughing and realizing that we cant care about "Anarchy in the UK", because this is America, and it is not the 1970's, I'd keep inhaling, I'd keep thinking "what if the goverment puts a chip in my head"-and maybe that's just what they did. That's the whole reason I ever started doing drugs in the first place, the whole reason I ever started drinking, or talking or writing, it was because I always felt so much more. Everyone else had a concept of enough, and I always ended up waiting for more.
So maybe this is more than my obsession with nightmares, maybe this is more than even my disatrous obsession with the American dream. Maybe this is more than all those books I read, or all those boys who will never fall in love with me. Maybe, it's more than my obsession with numbers, my theory that if I can learn calculus, I will really save my soul. For me two plus two only works out in theory, never in practice. Some things are so much better in theory. I am so much better on paper than in real life. Even communism looks good on paper. So I go through life believing I could fix it all if I just learned some calculus. If I could just sit down and get past the fact that there are things called "imiganary numbers" and that if you multiply two negative numbers, you get a positive. If I could be good at long division and recite the first nine billion digits in pi, than I too would be saved. Everyone else could get communion, have the light crisp wafer of Christ absorb on their tongue, and be, I'd be content with integers. I tell this to math majors all the time, and they always shoot me down. They practically get offended. They say "I know Calculus, and everything in my life is not okay". They say it in this condscending tone that blows my mind completely. It's just how I think if I can get some random boy who is incapable of love, to love me, that I really will be worth saving. It's why Sylvia Plath puts her head in the oven, and no one ever questions that maybe she was just trying to bake. And I'm talking to math majors thinking "Goddamnit!" I want to scream "I HATE YOU" I want to tell them that they don't understand, that it doesnt matter if it doesnt work for them, that it will work for me. I want to slap their stupid faces and leave the room screaming. I want to have a breakdown infront of everyone. I just want to say "thanks for missing the point completely". And just like everything else in my life that starts off as just being good and simple, this too ends up being bad and complicated. I am being told that there is no quick fix to this burning desire in the pit of my stomach, that I am going to actually have to get it together, and work it all out.
And I'm so homesick, but I don't know where I live. I listen to songs over and over again, and I don't know if this is really about my bad dreams. I can tell you that I was relieved when the building burst into flames, I can tell you that not everything I tell you is true. Maybe I wanted Spot to tear apart my face. Infact, I probably walked back outside and got mawled on purpose, because I needed the conflict. I needed more. Maybe I am glad that they will never love me as much as I need them to, that they will never love this face, or this mind. Because if they did, what would my new goal be? If I found happiness, I'd probably drown myself. I'd probably let tigers tear me to shreds like they do in my worst dreams. Because I am perpetually fucked. My parents call me from one thousand miles away to tell me they finally found the receipt. They give out a big sigh of relieve over the telephone, my father tells me in a ridiculously bombastic tone "Your mother just put it inbetween two phone books, it was here all along". Finally, they can get their refund. Finally they can send the baby back. Maybe now they can love each other again, if they ever loved each other at all. I want to say "please love me, please don't go, please don't leave me, please make me stop-please I just want to stop", but instead I just turn off the phone. I collect my two hundred dollars and swallow more sleep, I pray to Gods that have stopped listening, and I wait for lovers who will never come. I can tell you the exact dates off when I went wrong, I can give you a list of witnesses. If my life were a court trial, it would be a lot easier. If it were a book, you'd read it all the time. If it were communism, you'd switch your political party. But in practice, it just all falls through the cracks. You will pound down my door, and you'll want me dead. You will be screaming and dying in the street, and strangers will ask you if you have tried the Atkins diet, because they think maybe that is all you need. Maybe it's the bread. You'll be like all my long lost lovers who suffocate me in public, who place their hands over my mouth until my face turns blue and I fall onto the floor. You will say "you were so much better on paper". And you will be so right. Because at funerals, everyone is made out to be a great person. When you write down accomplishments, they always sound like a lot more. When you have nightmares that are vivid and last for hours, they always seem so real. You wake up so relieved, so relieved that it was just a dream, it was so much worse when your eyes were shut. But it's not like you've ever even gone to sleep to dream. You're scared of the dark and your parents hate you. You leave everyone and everyone leaves you. No one is following you out of the room, and you wake up not knowing where you are. You never know where you are. and remember by "you" I just mean "me".
