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rinueGod, God, God. I promised myself I'd get offline an hour and a half ago and that was after granting myself a dozen extensions, because really I was supposed to be off four hours ago. Well, not quite that long, but a while. And now here I am writing another journal entry, fumbling and incohate and only stumblingly poetic in an accident of rhythm.
Shirley Jackson writes like Valancy. Or the other way around, age before beauty.
I've been telling a lot of people that I love them. That's not particularly unusual -- I've always said the words more easily than most. They slip naturally from my mouth, filling any silences, ending phone conversations, replacing "good night." In high school, this worried me, because I was afraid the repitition would make it pedestrian. Meaningless. But I always mean them, always. And when I hug someone, I really do want stay in that place forever, holding on with arms around a waist and a head on a collarbone.
Americans are wrong. It is more intimate than kissing. Much more.
I don't understand what I'm feeling now. I'm happy as far as I can tell, but I'm crying. Shaking, blinking too much, staring out the window. It's like in those made-for-TV moments where the guy drops to one knee in front of a fountain with a ring, and the girl starts sobbing. Or maybe it's a movie instead, and she's in her car and the guy is over the telephone telling her she just missed her kid's first word. Or it's cable, HBO, Lifetime, a cross between the two, and the divorce papers just came through. The husband was beating her.
Recently, I've felt desperately embarrassed about the whole thing. "I love you." A shuddering sense of guilt, because I'm too earnest. I mean it entirely too much, and I'm putting people on the spot, strangers, aquaintances, and I can see it. I can see it even if I can't see them. It's too much self-disclosure, letting them see how greatful I am that they exist. Social boundaries exist for a reason; if they didn't make people more comfortable, we wouldn't have them. Like houses.
But really, it doesn't matter whether I say it or not, it matters that I feel it -- that ingratiating, simpering gratitude. I feel like some fawning sycophant. I have the same lump in my throat as when I have to explain to professors that I'm not well, have to say "I'm depressed and I can't finish this paper now," and they always believe me. Always. Don't need to ask, don't need a psychologist's opinion, because it's obvious just by how ashamed I am to ask them for help. It's the same lump that was there years ago, in the library, apologizing to my best friend for falling in love with him and knowing that this ended things, ended them no matter what either of us did because he had a girlfriend he couldn't leave, and we don't talk anymore. I didn't realize until later that it was April Fool's.
I don't know how other people can deal with my emotions when I clearly can't. And I'm happy now, happy but sobbing.
This is drivel, all of it.
It's the same sense of shame that stops people from accepting money. (I get that, I do, although I've always been able to give and receive money like it doesn't mean anything. Some economist.) They don't want to exploit friends, or owe aquaintances. A loan of money puts you in relationship the way sex does, or a child. I know people who won't even loan books.
And I feel so greatful, so greatful to people just for being good, just for getting it. For noticing I exist, or for not noticing and still being incredible, for. . . for falling asleep everywhere and wearing dangle earrings and calling quarters D2s and knowing what all the months mean and raising kids and cutting their hair short and buying ugly green necklaces and debating biology over dinner and pouting over road trips and pasting bees on the covers of CDs. . .
Val, I will always get cookies for you. Even in the middle of the night, you can wake me up, and I will go to the grocery store to get cookies without peanuts in them.
And Johnny, Johnny -- the CD finally arrived, the mythic, wonderful CD and I love it and the first song makes me feel like I'm in a lemonade commercial, and I love the liner notes and the envelope it came in and all of it, and what are you doing in British Columbia when you ought to be next door?
And it's so hard to be in love with everybody, because how can you be in love with anybody? How would you know the difference -- how can you? How is it special to fall in love when all it takes is a smile and a cup of tea and the right time of day? What am I supposed to do when I'm so puppy-dog-in-love with all of my friends and I haven't even talked to some of them?
Because yeah, love everybody, love the world, that's beautiful, man. . . But the world doesn't love you and if it did you'd stop loving it, Your Reserv'ed Majesty. The world doesn't want to hear it any more than you want French poetry from Dale who doesn't get it, who doesn't write llama on manila envelopes and drink from Mucha cups and smoke clove cigarettes, and lust for tomato-basil soup and quote The Who and Charleston in the hallway and plot the history of a world that never existed.
It doesn't love you back. Get a clue.
Shirley Jackson writes like Valancy. Or the other way around, age before beauty.
I've been telling a lot of people that I love them. That's not particularly unusual -- I've always said the words more easily than most. They slip naturally from my mouth, filling any silences, ending phone conversations, replacing "good night." In high school, this worried me, because I was afraid the repitition would make it pedestrian. Meaningless. But I always mean them, always. And when I hug someone, I really do want stay in that place forever, holding on with arms around a waist and a head on a collarbone.
Americans are wrong. It is more intimate than kissing. Much more.
I don't understand what I'm feeling now. I'm happy as far as I can tell, but I'm crying. Shaking, blinking too much, staring out the window. It's like in those made-for-TV moments where the guy drops to one knee in front of a fountain with a ring, and the girl starts sobbing. Or maybe it's a movie instead, and she's in her car and the guy is over the telephone telling her she just missed her kid's first word. Or it's cable, HBO, Lifetime, a cross between the two, and the divorce papers just came through. The husband was beating her.
Recently, I've felt desperately embarrassed about the whole thing. "I love you." A shuddering sense of guilt, because I'm too earnest. I mean it entirely too much, and I'm putting people on the spot, strangers, aquaintances, and I can see it. I can see it even if I can't see them. It's too much self-disclosure, letting them see how greatful I am that they exist. Social boundaries exist for a reason; if they didn't make people more comfortable, we wouldn't have them. Like houses.
But really, it doesn't matter whether I say it or not, it matters that I feel it -- that ingratiating, simpering gratitude. I feel like some fawning sycophant. I have the same lump in my throat as when I have to explain to professors that I'm not well, have to say "I'm depressed and I can't finish this paper now," and they always believe me. Always. Don't need to ask, don't need a psychologist's opinion, because it's obvious just by how ashamed I am to ask them for help. It's the same lump that was there years ago, in the library, apologizing to my best friend for falling in love with him and knowing that this ended things, ended them no matter what either of us did because he had a girlfriend he couldn't leave, and we don't talk anymore. I didn't realize until later that it was April Fool's.
I don't know how other people can deal with my emotions when I clearly can't. And I'm happy now, happy but sobbing.
This is drivel, all of it.
It's the same sense of shame that stops people from accepting money. (I get that, I do, although I've always been able to give and receive money like it doesn't mean anything. Some economist.) They don't want to exploit friends, or owe aquaintances. A loan of money puts you in relationship the way sex does, or a child. I know people who won't even loan books.
And I feel so greatful, so greatful to people just for being good, just for getting it. For noticing I exist, or for not noticing and still being incredible, for. . . for falling asleep everywhere and wearing dangle earrings and calling quarters D2s and knowing what all the months mean and raising kids and cutting their hair short and buying ugly green necklaces and debating biology over dinner and pouting over road trips and pasting bees on the covers of CDs. . .
Val, I will always get cookies for you. Even in the middle of the night, you can wake me up, and I will go to the grocery store to get cookies without peanuts in them.
And Johnny, Johnny -- the CD finally arrived, the mythic, wonderful CD and I love it and the first song makes me feel like I'm in a lemonade commercial, and I love the liner notes and the envelope it came in and all of it, and what are you doing in British Columbia when you ought to be next door?
And it's so hard to be in love with everybody, because how can you be in love with anybody? How would you know the difference -- how can you? How is it special to fall in love when all it takes is a smile and a cup of tea and the right time of day? What am I supposed to do when I'm so puppy-dog-in-love with all of my friends and I haven't even talked to some of them?
Because yeah, love everybody, love the world, that's beautiful, man. . . But the world doesn't love you and if it did you'd stop loving it, Your Reserv'ed Majesty. The world doesn't want to hear it any more than you want French poetry from Dale who doesn't get it, who doesn't write llama on manila envelopes and drink from Mucha cups and smoke clove cigarettes, and lust for tomato-basil soup and quote The Who and Charleston in the hallway and plot the history of a world that never existed.
It doesn't love you back. Get a clue.
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 02:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 02:53 pm (UTC)I'm always so much closer to people when they're far away.
-Romie
Re:
Date: 2002-02-21 03:05 pm (UTC)And in school I was much closest to the friends I wrote to everyday but never spoke to. Then I burned all the letters in a fit of pique aged 16, thus compounding my belief that deep down I am a literary goddess.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 03:16 pm (UTC)I'm sitting here wanting so badly to reply with something intelligent and all I can honestly come up with to say is that you endlessly fascinate me because, at least in part, half the time I don't understand you at all and the other half I feel like I know exactly what you're talking about and then I read again and I'm not sure. I do so much better with voices than words. I hear tones and cadences and draw so much of my understanding from that, that even when I read, I'm not sure what is really being said because I can hear it being said in so many ways with so many inflections and usually all at once. I tend to think that others react the same way (mostly because I'm an egocentric maniac and it never occurs to me to think otherwise) and thus my IM's and emails are riddled with announcements of the gestures and tones of voice that accompany what I'm saying in the attempt to make it more like it sounds in my head.
What I'm moving towards, in my roundabout and mostly scatter-shot way, is that I think I understand about loving everyone. I tend to say it too. To everybody. Always have. But somehow, I don't think I've said it to you. I've become more cautious in the years since college started because let's face it, most other humans are vaguely weirded out by random announcements of affection. I know this makes little to no sense, but hey, I'm feeling like rambling. So anyway, I'm going to stop talking now so you can read this and tell me if I'm babbling.
Love you,
Delia
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 03:33 pm (UTC)London, for a month only. However, Turtle's been living in Bath for about 6 or 8 months, and I'm currently trying to get airplane tickets for mid-March. And there's the fabled Circomedia in Bristol. . . Where are you, anyway?
-Romie
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 03:35 pm (UTC)I have an exam tomorrow. But instead of studying, I think I'm going to stay up all night and drive around -- see what's open at three in the morning on a Thursday. Wanna come?
-Romie
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 04:25 pm (UTC)then there are those who are close to you in ways that cannot be constricted by the lack of apparent physical proximity. their spirit is so well in tune with yours that you begin to understand things without having to know them. you feel things without the need to touch. your spirit is enriched simply by knowing that they are in your world.
su drivel est mi drivel.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 07:35 pm (UTC)I love you too. That's why I pasted the bees on the front.
BEES ROMIE! BEEEEEES!
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 09:46 pm (UTC)Ben's coming over at 10 tomorrow and I don't have class until 1:30 so I can catch a nap if I need it. We're going to see Queen of the Damned tomorrow night, which should at least be interesting in the "how have they mangled one of my favorite books" way. Later honey.
Love you,
Delia
Re:
Date: 2002-02-22 02:34 am (UTC)