During the course of a small conversation this afternoon, I realized a thing or two...
We were cheerily chatting about the "Six Degrees" Game (that is, attempting to prove that everybody in the world has slept with everybody else within six degrees... Kinda like the Kevin Bacon game, only stickier...), and, upon looking around the room, I verifiably knew of two people closely connected to myself.
"All I'm sayin', man..." I addressed the Java Kid, "Is that I've GOT to get out of this town."
It's not the phyical intimacy that grosses me out anymore, but the intimacy in general. Makes me realize that I don't WANT to be such a big part of such a weird web of people who KNOW each other, who are intimate with each other, physically or otherwise... Makes me realize that I might be talking to somebody I think is a stranger, when in reality, they're very close to someone I'm very close to... The "mutual-acquaintances" thing... Such that, I could be talking to somebody I think is a stranger, but it's almost certain that they're nowhere near being a stranger... Not necessarily so dramatic as talking to a stranger who happens to have once slept with my boyfriend, but something along those lines, metaphorically speaking. Fucking, everybody knows me, even if they don't know me, and even if they're completely unacquainted with me, it might only take a telephone call to a friend to find out anything at all about me...
I have no privacy anymore. Not that I'm always being WATCHED, exactly; that's not my fear. It's more like, I'm always being KNOWN... Or speculated about... I would very much like to have a secret place I can disappear into for a little while when I don't feel like being a part of the world, but alas, I don't have that anymore, especially not with a former lover and a former co-worker living practically next door. Not that I actively dislike being a part of a small societal system, but I would LIKE the option of taking a break from it...
Binghamton has grown so small... Census counts prove it; the Southern Tier of New York has dwindled significantly in population in the past few years. It's become small-town again. I wasn't raised like this; I don't understand it and I don't fucking like it. When I was growing up, in a neighborhood of old Polish people with a quarter of a mile between each house, everybody kept to themselves, minded their own... And if you happened to see in somebody's window, you pretended you didn't and you went on your merry way.
I would like to have a secret again. But I don't have any secrets anymore; I managed to blurt out one of the last ones in an email last night to David. For gahd's sake, my mother now knows I smoke! Is NOTHING sacred?
I would like to have a secret clubhouse... A safe space... A place no one knows about, so they couldn't knock on the door... At fifteen, living in the middle of nowhere, there were MANY such places... Meditating by the stream in the woods was the best... Sitting by the pond at night with a book, a cigarette, and a flashlight was a close second...
All I'm sayin', man, is that I've GOT to get out of this town.
I would very much like to lose myself in a crowded city... I would very much like to lose myself in a sparsely populated hillside... I would very much like not to be noticed for awhile... Not to be thought about... Just to be... See what I can come up with while nobody's expecting anything...
There are problems, obviously, more significant than having noticed I was "within six degrees" of two people who happened to be in the same room at the same time... My life is sort of floating right now on what everybody else wants. I kind of drift along, from one friend to the next, sorting out what they expect of me, and living up to it... Not exactly difficult, but not always pleasant when I'd like to be alone with myself and spent a few hours getting to know me again.
In the past week, I think maybe I've been trying to find an "alone" space via an all-too-eager friend named MaryJane... It works for a little while; I can be surrounded by a thousand people all asking questions of me, but if I'm stoned, I'm alone.
...But that's NOT what I want... Being stoned is a lot like not being at all... Barely able to function, unable to choose my own thoughts or recognize my own needs -- this is not how I want to live my life.
I want to live a quieter life, I think. But not a deadened life. I don't want to be HERE, where so many people recognize me, where the same things are always happening and the same people see me every day, where the same people call me and knock on my door... But I DO want to BE... Just not here.
"I am alive... I am alive... I am alive..." --Jane's song, which I can't remember the title of...
~Helena*