Worked tonight at the bar. Nothing much to do. Dished up a few clams. Dished up a few wings. Dished up some poppers. Listened to the radio and read "Immortality" by Milan Kundera.
This song came on the radio tonight. We were listening to a different station than usual. It was a semi-cheesy station, and a semi-cheesy song, and I promptly buried my face in a semi-greasy paper towel and burst into semi-cheesy tears.
It's just a stupid song. Just a bittersweet little pop song, made famous by a TV show I've never seen, shown on a station I don't get.
Only, I realized there's a significant portion of my life I've never been able to talk about in this journal, or with any of my friends. I realized that even if my closest friends in the world were in the kitchen with me when that song came on, and saw me sort of cringing a little, they'd have no idea what significance it had to me... So much that happened, and I can't even talk about it... Have to make like everything's casual and fine and I'm sort of sniffling over the semi-cheesy song because it's pretty...
Went to the grocery store after work. Bought Pantene and yogurt. Came home. Drank some of the wine from last night. Played that song again.
Someday, I'm going to die. (This is not a suicide threat; dude, we ALL die someday.) And people are going to think they knew me so well. My die-hard friends, and my family will leaf through my journals and think, "wow... I forgot about when she told me she got stoned and went to Taco Bell... Wow..." The people who cared most about me will look through my things, my old papers, my clothes... I can picture Peter, years from now, hugging my stupid prom dress. I can picture people trying to define my life through photos and journal entries and little collections of junk I have stored away, not having the foggiest idea of the significance of certain things, certain things that shouldn't HAVE any significance... The one rumpled package of raw sugar in the drawer by my bedside table. If lightning struck me right now, my mom would woefully clean my apartment out, and chuck all the stuff that wasn't valuable. Like the raw sugar packet. Not having any idea the miles that sugar packet has travelled, or how I smile at it secretly sometimes, because it knows things the rest of the world could never suspect. I picture people going through my photos, stuffing them into shoeboxes, wondering why the hell I saved a dim picture of a motorcycle in a badly-lit tunnel. Or why there's a crumply business card for a restaurant I've never eaten at, tucked inside my coffee jar. Or why I pressed flowers on the page of the phone book I chose. Or why there's a framed postcard of a moon and some mountains tacked to my wall -- where the hell is that, anyway?
...Or why a cheesy song from a WB show makes me sad...
("...And I don't want to move a thing... It might change my memory...")
I made Peter listen to that song.
I hung the moon-and-mountains postcard on my wall.
I used one of the dim photos as the opening image of this website.
And not a soul in the world gives a shit, or wonders where that photo was taken, where I got the postcard, why I like that song so much...
(I had a very brief affair... Wasn't really an affair; that's too much of a soap-opera word... But Whatever it was, it was brief and I was madly in love, and it ended because it had to end, I returned to my regularly-scheduled life, and that's all there was to it... For a short while, I held out this stupid hope, or wish, or something, that it wasn't over. And maybe it isn't, but I can't think about that right now. For now, it is over, and I have to absolutely let go, completely, of what happened. Since then, there have been so many turning points for me: "should I stay or should I go" tormenting me silently, and a new decision every ten minutes.)
(And since then, I've had a few flings, which is sort of uncharacteristic of me... One of those flings turned into a fantastic relationship, which I wouldn't give up for the world...)
(Since then, I've held out hope, and I've given up hope, and I've tried to forget the whole thing with too much work, and too much coffee, and too much alcohol, and the knowledge that I have a relationship now that -- without any intention of doing so -- eclipses a large percentage of the bad things that have been bothering me...)
(But I haven't really forgotten, and so there's an incredibly important part of my life -- something that made me feel SO much -- that goes completely unnoticed, even though it changed me, it defined a part of me, it will always BE a part of me... And no one notices, and no one cares, and no one has any idea why I served a kid mango tea with an orange the other day, solely for the purpose of remembering something beautiful that happened to me once... NO ONE NOTICED WHEN IT HAPPENED, and NO ONE CARED THAT I CAME BACK TO LIFE BECAUSE OF SOME SMALL THING NO ONE EVEN REALLY KNEW ABOUT...)
(Nobody saw the change in me.)
(Not even Peter.)
(I fell back in love. And then I was forced to fall back out of it and move on, with nothing to prove it had ever happened at all, except a semi-cheesy song and a raw sugar packet and a business card and a postcard, and a couple of photographs, one of which is the opening image of this website...)
(But I felt something, goddammit, and even though I'm supposed to deny anything ever happened -- and there are plenty of reasons for that, all of which I understand -- I can't let go of the few tangible things that validate what happened, what it did for me, what it gave to me... I can't talk about it, and that's okay, because nobody would understand anyway. I can't live as though it's still going on, because it isn't, and that's okay, because I enjoy the life I have now, and I'm fairly happy with everything, especially my current relationship with Norman and my job at Java Joe's. But I refuse to pretend nothing ever happened and forget it all, because something did happen, and it changed my entire life, completely for the better... Not just the "affair," or Whatever you'd call it, but all of the circumstances surrounding it, and the person who played me that song and bought me mango tea with an orange in it...)
(I would not be typing this if I wasn't drunk. I'm going to regret linking this in the morning. Now people are going to ask me what'n the fuck I'm talking about, and everybody's going to have some weird theory -- "everyone's got a theory 'bout the beautiful one..." -Savage Garden -- and I'm going to have to be graceful about answering with some semblance of discretion; going to have to say, "look, I gotta plead the fifth and not talk about it." Everybody's going to ask "what happened?" And "who'd you sleep with?" And there's absolutely no way I can answer that without inciting drama, when all I want to convey is that, a cup of mango tea with an orange in it, and everything that followed it, had a profound effect on me, and I'm tired of pretending nothing happened, I felt nothing, and that I'm unaffected by the events of that brief little Whatever-it-was...)
(...But I'm not going to unlink this. I'm not going to stuff it into a drawer someplace and let people find it someday. I'm proud to be who I am, and I'm proud to have felt what I felt, and I am not ashamed or embarrassed... There are things I can let go of, things I can smile secretly about with utmost affection and nothing more. And there are things that I will not let go of. Things I will not hide or lie about. Like having felt an incredible passionate love for someone. Like knowing I can feel amazing things, and having recognized in the midst of a troubled life that stupid things like semi-cheesy songs and mango tea and motorcycles are insanely beautiful.)
(Forgive me, I'm drunk...)
(And forgive me if sometimes I am nostalgic and you don't understand why. I still miss this person, who is often closer to me than anyone else, despite the barriers of silence and distance and other things that don't really prevent closeness... Forgive me if sometimes I'm weepy over a dorky song. It's not the song. It's someone I have loved very deeply, the person to whom this journal is dedicated. It's me realizing that nobody really has any idea of what the hell's up with me sometimes, or what the hell I've been through...)
(And now, once again, on with my regularly-scheduled, and ridiculously wonderful life.)
No angel,
~Helena Thomas*
"...Oh I am what I am, I'll do what I want, but I can't hide..." --Dido, "Here With Me" (from the TV-show "Roswell.")