The night before last, I was carrying my little bottom to the gas station for some chips, beef jerky, orange juice, and chocolate, when an irritating song suddenly became lodged in my head and wouldn't come out. This is nothing unusual, ordinarily, but the song was Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," which I haven't heard or thoght of in months. Weird. To get the song out of my head, I thought of Seattle; of what it must look like, of what I'll do there this summer, etc...
I ask you: weird coincidence that I happened to be humming a song entitled "Ring of Fire" (as in, earthquakes, volcanos, whatever?) and thinking about Seattle, the night before a 7.0 earthquake hit Seattle? Weird coincidence, or proof once and for all that I truly am jinxed?
I chain-smoked the night away until Aaron showed up at my work. He has a mini-vay from college for a few days, and brought me chicken wings and a t'shirt, as well as a brief excursion into the hills of Vestal Center, in search of more material for the ever-expanding Gospel of Helena and Aaron.
I explained about the earthquake. I retold the story of how I accidentally killed Dale Earnhardt.
"It's sad that he died, dude."
"It's not sad. He drove like a jackass! It's sad that *I* killed him..."
"I liked the way he drove! Like me!"
With that, Aaron jerked his wheel around. (Aaron can often be found jerking his wheel around... Heh heh heh...) The car hit what might have been a patch of ice, and skidded across the road, briefly balanced on two wheels, plunged into a ditch, and was hurriedly righted by Aaron, master of tragedy-aversion.
"Dude, we almost died!"
"Dude, YEAH we did!"
"That was COOL!"
"Yeah it was!"
"Dude, you know how I know we almost just died? Because I had a vision right before we almost died of your mom being REALLY pissed off that you totalled the car."
"Dude!"
"I'm horny."
I hadn't ducked, hadn't screamed, hadn't freaked out in any typical Helena way. I guess I'm sort of used to the idea of being in Aaron's car and almost dying. Funny, the things that ran through my head for that all-too-brief, but all-too-slow moment. I had pictured Aaron's mother being incredibly pissed off. Hadn't considered possibly dying, possibly being injured, or possibly walking a million miles to the nearest residence to call for help if the car had been totalled. A moment later, an adrenaline rush went through me; it was as though I'd just had the world's fastest-acting cup of coffee.
"Dude, if we died, it would have been while Phillip Glass was playing!" Aaron, oh dear, sweet, semi-retarded Aaron, who brings out all the dearness, sweetness, and semi-retardation in me... Yes, Aaron; had we died right then, it would have been during the "explosions" part of Phillip Glass's "Koyaanisqatsi," which didn't even skip in his CD player during the turmoil.
"Yeah, that'd be cool!" I concurred.
"We should have sex."
"Would that be wrong?"
"No."
"It would be weird though."
"Yeah, nevermind."
"Anyway... Hey, dude---"
And so on and so forth...
It's been a LONG two days. Seven hour shift at Java's, eight hour shift at Sharkey's, hour and a half ride with Aaron, two and a half hours playing The Naked Game and talking with Norman, six hour shift at Java's... I'm utterly exhausted.
Just as a handy self-help guide, I shall now present Helena's methods of remaining awake and alive:
*Get in an almost car-accident. The adrenaline's incredible.
*Chain-smoke.
*Buy a USA Today, cut out the weather map on the back page, and play connect-the-dots with the cities. Also, it helps me to count things; I discovered this as a child when my mother used to tell me to count sheep in order to get to sleep, which only succeeded in working my mind harder and turning me into a workaholic insomniac at the age of twenty. Instead of sheep (I'm not fond of sheep), I count imaginary road signs. It helps to use the USA Today map as a guide, especially once you get to Ohio in your imagination, because everything in Ohio looks basically the same, and I never remember if the "Columbus, 83 miles" sign is before or after the "Welcome to Cleveland" sign.
Perhaps these methods don't actually do much for one's will to live when one is over-exhausted, but they DO keep me awake, and I'm working on some "will-to-live" techniques.
Received the intriguing bit of gossip that Peter's moving sometime this month to someplace in Pennsylvania. Of course, I've not managed to validate this information beyond the shadow of a doubt, but it hardly matters. My source was fairly reliable, despite his (my source's) preoccupation with my "rack" and whether or not his hair looks good.
How do I feel about this? Well, I guess I have mixed emotions...
I'm upset, a little. Because *I* should be the one moving out of this town. I'm the crazy little free spirit that lives within a five-mile-radius most of the time and craves new places and new air to breathe. Peter's merely the one who keeps getting driven out of wherever he's living because people catch onto his little games. I should be the one to leave.
I'm also ecstatic. I want nothing to do with Peter. I want no reminders of the years I spent with him. I do not want to remember being fifteen and sobbing because he'd faked an AIDS-scare. I do not want to remember his stupid blonde dye-job when I was 17. I do not want to remember the fights and the weeks of silence, the arguing over my sanity, the way he collapsed in my arms in a complete mental breakdown. I do not want to remember his nasty jokes about David, coming home to find him gone out for a weekend with some new guyfriend, finding porn on my computer and "messes" on my t'shirts. I do not want to remember believing I loved him, do not want to realize that I'm capable of such incontrollable insecurity and codependence. His presence in my life has done so many things to make me an ugly person. I don't like what happened to me around him.
I don't even want to remember the good things: the coffee in Ithaca, the crazy bursts of delirious love-making anywhere we happened to be, the night I walked to his house in a torrential downpour and stripped naked in his kitchen before watching "Dogma" and eating snacks in bed with him... Because for every good time, there were fourteen bad times: Helena walking down the middle of a four-lane highway because she'd just found out Peter'd told his friends Helena had raped him; Helena staring over the side of a bridge at a miniature ice-floe in the Chenango River because she'd just found out that Peter'd been snooping through her notebooks; Helena sitting on her front porch waiting for Peter to come home, smoking a clove cigarette and trying not to cry. The fucking fights: the insults, the threats, the bribes... Peter wasn't all to blame. I was an ugly person, a negative person, a very small person who was quite near emotional shutdown. It wasn't all his fault. I let him do it to me; I went along with it.
The wounds have healed. The anger has subsided. The self-hatred; the self-doubt; the last-ditch efforts at self-preservation have all subsided. But I do not like who I was; I did not like who we were... Even the good times were fraudulent sometimes. I don't want to remember; I want to be someone new and never look back.
"It's May 5th, 1997... I'm at Java Joe's, sipping some Ginger Peach tea out of a little white carafe, which I'm planning on stealing. Peter's plane leaves today for Texas, and I'll probably never see him again... I miss him; god I miss him already... I know I just saw him last night, but I don't know how I'm going to live without him. Here I am, sitting here with Jayden and Erich and David, and I just dont even want to be alive. ... I wonder if Peter ever loved me at all..." --Helena's journal, excerpt.
Somewhere along the line (I know EXACTLY where along the line, but that doesn't mean I have to share it with you...) I came to the realization that love DOESN'T MEAN "I would die for you." (It also doesn't mean never saying you're sorry.) It means something a little more to the effect of, "I want to live because of you." Love means seeing things more clearly; seeing more things; being a part of the world in a more distinct and ecstatic way. Love does not mean being willing to GIVE UP those things, does not mean submitting yourself to someone else's will; love is a willingness to thrive in those things without fear, and with a trust that you really are alive and secure and believed in and appreciated. I did not learn this from Peter. From Peter, I learned, "I would die for you." I wouldn't die for him. I wouldn't fucking die for anyone! That's not love, that's pathetic! Love uplifts; doesn't murder.
I've unlearned a lot of bad habits about caring for people. I've unlearned the obsessive need. I've unlearned the idea that in order to be worthy of a person's affection, you must have certain qualities and arouse certain behaviors in people. But it's taken a long time. I don't want to remember any of the way I was, or any of the way Peter was. I want him gone, I want him gone forever.
Alas, of course, it won't be forever. Peter's moved out of town half a dozen times, and always returned, somehow making things ten times worse upon his return. In the meantime, I have no inclination to have any contact with him anyway, so it's not like it matters much anyway.
(I must admit... Don't think too badly of me for this... I was secretly a little pleased when Peter asked about me, asked about my reaction to news of his imminent relocation, and seemed a little hurt to know I honestly am not unhappy... In a way, I don't care what he thinks. In another way, a smaller way, I hope it fucking tears him apart. What did he expect from me, anyway? Tears? Desire for reconciliation? Did he want me back at that table in Java Joe's, pining for him, dying for him, sipping a cup of Ginger Peach tea and hoping the earth would swallow me whole? I can live without Peter. I am much happier living without Peter. In a small and bitter way, I hope he knows it, and I hope it REALLY hurts.)
I have to send out a few emails now, check on a few friends in Seattle...
~Helena*
"I feel the earth move under my feet..."