I wrote a long entry last night, and it got eaten. I wrote a long email, and it got sent back to me, "addressee unknown."
It's Saturday -- my first day off in awhile. I'm not sure what to do with myself. Take a long bath? Do my laundry? Take a bus to Johnson City and get my hair cut? Call my mom? Make that damned mix-tape after all?
I suspect that I'll go through the day without speaking to anyone. I suspect I'll just have nobody to speak to. Hell, even hairdressers don't really bother making small-talk with me... Besides, it's my damned day off; I get paid to make small-talk and be cute, and I don't feel like it today. Today I feel like sitting here in my pajamas and crying.
Likely, I'll spend the day alone, and I'll spend it silent. Maybe I'll take a book down to Lost Dog, just to hear other voices. Maybe I'll sit on the customer-side of the counter just because it's nice to make someone else act like they care whether you lived or died, even though they're barristas, and are probably more concerned with not letting the almighty hangover impede their ability to steam milk than with my well-being. We get paid to act like we give a shit. If we act like we REALLY give a shit, we might get tipped, too. Not that there aren't people we genuinely like -- maybe we like almost everybody. But we get paid to play it up. It's my day off, and I'm tired of caring about people. Everybody can just go sink into a hole -- a great gaping hole in the middle of Exchange Street.
Day in and day out, Helena's smiling at you, and then you walk away, take your coffee and walk out the door, and never think about her again... Or if you do, you probably think she's your best friend just because she told you to read "Still Life With Woodpecker" and gave you a bite of her scone. But do you call her? Do you make efforts to try to hang out with her? Of course not -- Helena doesn't exist unless she's behind a counter. Bartender Syndrome. Everybody thinks you're the best person in the world for a grand total of twenty minutes, and then they leave, and they either completely forget you or think they're in love with you. But they're not, of course, because they have NO idea who you are.
Really, almost nobody knows who I am anymore. Everybody's got their theories, of course, but nobody really has any idea. There's Nathan -- Nathan who took me out for wings last night and who knows damn well I have a personality outside of what I have to show everybody. There's Aaron -- Aaron who stood me up Tuesday and went back to college this morning without saying goodbye. And maybe Norman -- Norman whom I'm sort of avoiding, because I've been sort of a drag on him lately.
What I wouldn't give to be someplace warm, sitting next to somebody on a bench somewhere, not speaking, not even looking at each other, just being, and knowing that if one of us had an observation about the world, the other person would be having that same observation. Just knowing that somebody knew me. And still LIKED me after all of that.
[If you're family of mine, or if you're acquainted with my family, I'm going to respectfully skip what I'm about to write and skip down to the next set of asterisks... Thank you...]
I always wanted a brother. I know -- I have two of them. But I wanted a twin. Somebody who always knew when I was feeling bad -- or good. Somebody who could read my thoughts, sort of. Somebody who was, in a way, part of my body, and somebody who sort of lived with a part of my soul. A Soul Mate, sort of.
When I was twelve, my mother told me she thought she'd lost a baby before I was born. A son.
I remember the blood draining out of my face and directly into my stomach. I remember having to run to the bathroom because I thought I was going to be sick. I'd HAD a twin, sort of. An older brother -- THE brother who could have understood me and been half of me. As if it wasn't enough to know I don't have any such twin, did I HAVE to hear that I MIGHT HAVE? Did I have to be twelve years old and sobbing myself to sleep that night because I'm never going to meet that person who never really was a person?
It haunted me. It tortured me. It still bothers me sometimes. I wonder what he would have looked like. I wonder if we would have played together when we were kids. I wonder if he would have taken care of me when I was a kid and my mom was in and out of the hospital all the time. I wonder if he'd call me this week and say, "hey, what's up?" I wonder if he'd come over to my apartment today and laugh with me at the lesbians upstairs (who are currently screaming in orgasmic joy), and then take me out to breakfast someplace to get me away from it all. I wonder if I'd tease him about having bad taste in friends, and if he'd tease me about having bad taste in EVERYTHING, and I wonder if we could just grin at each other and never have to say a word, but KNOW the other was teasing us. I want all of that. I want my twin.
(Of course, he wouldn't REALLY be my twin. He'd be seven years older, I think, although I'm not sure.)
I used to pray to my brother. I don't really remember what I used to say. But I guessed that when babies aren't born, they turn into angels or something. I thought about him all the time. I never spoke a word about him aloud, nobody knew, really, about my secret dead twin. He wasn't an imaginary friend -- I didn't imagine him present. I imagined, though, that he was near, and that a part of him was left alive in me. I loved my brother more than I could ever love anybody, I supposed, which was tragic, because of course he was dead and there would be no other chance.
I gave my brother's beautiful, strong name (my mother told me what she'd have named him) to someone else in this journal. The one person I ever met who was almost exactly like I imagined my twin: a best friend and a part of me, and the only person worthy of that name. A tribute, sort of, although I never told anybody that, because I was afraid they'd think it was sick.
I would like to be someplace warm, sitting on a bench someplace with the one person who knows me so well, not speaking, just being. It's been a very long time.
"You're the only one who really knew me at all..." --Genesis.
My friend Jayden emailed me last night and told me she'd known all along when Peter got my online password. He's had it at least since June; he "hacked" it so he could find out just exactly what was going on between David and me when I went to visit him. I hope he was pleasantly surprised to find almost nothing -- three or four words every month or two keeps us in touch. Of ALL people, Peter should have known that. But no, he got it somehow, trying to spy on his little Carebear. And then he called Jayden and TOLD her he had my password.
...But Jayden, who has little to no faith in Peter's abilities as a technological genius, didn't believe him and "forgot" to tell me.
My first instinct is to choke her. My second instinct is just not to speak to her and THEN choke her. My third instinct is to give her the benefit of the doubt, as *I* didn't believe Peter could get my password either. Alas, nothing is really sacred, and neither lock and key nor password will keep the assholes from leaving turds in your apple pie and a bad taste in your mouth. Could I possibly despise Peter any more? Yes, I could, but I have a feeling it won't be very long until he pushes me all the way to the limits and I end up, like, taking a swing at him or something. Nah -- he'd probably tell people I was trying to rape him.
It's four in the afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas. I'm going to get up now, maybe go out and get some things done.
~Helena*