It took a lot of work to avoid crying when the mail came today. A package for the girl across the hall. A package for the guy downstairs. Nothing for Helena.
I'm sitting here at my desk listening to Garbage and trying to think up a worthwhile reason for living.
Pardon the melodrama. Really.
I'm not feeling melodramatic. I'm TRYING to feel melodramatic. Trying to feel hysterical and desperate and frantic. ANYTHING. Right now, there's just this awful melancholy.
Garbage is Santa Fe music. Mike was obsessed with them. After awhile, I was too. A hundred million times I listened to this tape in my room. Just staring out the window. Trying to block out the noise from across the hall. Trying to block out the sound of the nasty hippie girl downstairs who played "House of the Rising Sun" on her guitar constantly. Trying to be elsewhere, anywhere else.
"Do you have anything by Garbage?" he asks, and I have to smile at the irony. As if he'd handed me a photograph of the Albuquerque mall and said, "I think this would look nice on your wall." I can almost see Mike grinning at me.
"Indeed." I sift through my box of audio tapes. I find Garbage: both albums on one cassette. I put it on the stereo. I smile at him. I can't even hear the music.
Back to work tomorrow. A five and a half hour shift. I'm tempted to call and say, "I'd rather die than go to work today." But I can't do that. Gotta pay the bills. Gotta make sure the electricity doesn't get shut off. I'm broke and I'm scared and I had to borrow money from Norman just to eat for the past week, and to get to class today.
If I was Norman, I'd kick me out. Really, I would. The awful girlfriend turned awful housemate. A few more days and I would have successfully let our lights go out. He's so patient with me, and I don't know why...
Can't quit my stupid job. Can't go through trying to get another one. Can't abandon Norman with the rent and the bills, most of which are mine anyway.
I just don't know how the hell I can get through another day at Burger King. Wake up early, throw on a sloppy flannel over my stupid uniform, step into my Chucks, and hit the damned road. Put something in my CD-player, and it's two-and-a-half miles to work. Fifteen minutes to let the sweat dry before clocking in and handing burgers out to assholes. Before being berated by supervisor, customer, and coworker alike for not being fast enough, not being smart enough, not being "easy" enough.
Would I rather die? Just about.
I'm lonely. I'm really lonely.
It's not that I don't have friends. It's just that I have so few friends who honestly give a crap. I have friends who are my friends because they want to sleep with me, and I have friends who are my friends because they don't have anyone else, and I have friends who love me who are far away and preoccupied. And Norman, who is in a different world than me completely.
I think I've fucked up royally.
I went to the post office yesterday. I sent out a payment on the electric bill, some letters to penpals, and two letters to two dear friends: Brian and Jane.
In those two letters was contained a project I've been working on. A sort of thank-you letter for their generosity when I was in Seattle. A sort of diary. Quite a personal diary, at that.
WHY would I send this to them? WHY would I jot down a bunch of fears and desires and super-personal stuff, and send it off to these people? They care about me, I know, but what reason on earth do they have for wanting to hear all of this crap? Two of the few people on earth who would be truly saddened if I died instead of showing up to Burger King tomorrow, and I feel like I've completely alienated them. They don't need this sort of intimate details. I feel like I've forced something on them...
Think of it... You're living a nice normal life with some nice normal friends... You're going to school, you're going to work, everything is okay... And out of the blue, this girl sends you an eighty-page dissertation about YOU, about every thought and feeling she's ever had about you... Imagine knowing this weird chick on the other side of the country has spend who KNOWS how many hours thinking about YOU, writing about YOU... Wouldn't that sort of freak you out? Jesus Christ, normal people send a card to say "thank you for your hospitality." Normal people send a card, or a little letter, or maybe a little present, like a mix-tape or a book or something. Normal people do not spend a month writing an 80-page diary, gluing pictures into it, and making the fonts pretty. That's not normal, that's just freaky. That's stalker-behavior. It's just WEIRD.
I stood in the post office for a good twenty minutes, balancing those letters on the mailbox lid, trying to get up the guts to either grab them and destroy them, or let them drop.
I let them drop. I wish I hadn't. What the hell are my friends going to think of me now? I'll be honest; if I received something like this, I would not be touched. I'd be scared. I'd feel really awkward. I'd think, "man, what is this chick's DEAL with me, anyway?"
I have faith that Brian and Jane aren't going to freak out, call me up and ask me what the hell my problem is. More likely, they'll say, "wow, how nice," and sort of avoid my emails... They're sweet people, really. Wonderful people. But I shouldn't have just dropped this on them. This is just too much of ME. Nobody really needs a look at me that's THIS close-up... I feel like I've walked into somebody's living room and said, "hey, wanna play sex games!? I have petroleum jelly!" Like I've said WAY too much.
But isn't that ALWAYS how I manage to fuck things up?
I have to go to class in a few minutes.
Whatever.
~Helena*
"oh no I said too much..." --R.E.M.