A wise man (I think it was either Milan Kundera or my friend Nathan...) once said that it is abominable to remain in a place where no one would notice if you were gone. One must never stay in a situation where one makes no impact. If one can be reasonably assured that one is entirely dispensible to his surroundings, one must leave.
Well, I'm leaving. If all goes well, I'll be leaving in two months.
It can't come quickly enough. It just cannot come quickly enough.
You know, I've been reminded a dozen times or so that I "love" Binghamton. But you know, Binghamton is a bad relationship. Binghamton is a codependent boyfriend. Binghamton plays mind games. When it thinks I'm unhappy, it cuddles me. And when I'm feeling better, it slams me up against a wall and says "find your way out NOW, bitch." It wants me small and weak and unable to speak. It wants me poor and unable to work. It wants to make me feel ugly. It wants to make me resent things. It wants to make me resent myself. In that, it will be powerful. Binghamton always seems to get what it wants, you know. I think it has something to do with the Rivers.
Once, I dropped a scrap of paper into the Rivers. It's a childhood habit I could never quite get rid of: talking to geographical features as if they could hear me, burying little rocks under trees as gifts for the tree, tossing little presents to lakes and rivers and things... It's a way of worship, in a way. A way of meditation. And this time, a way of defiance. I wrote on that scrap of paper: "you'll never have me." I tossed it in. I watched it for a little while. I flipped it off. Then I turned and walked away and didn't look back.
I HATE this place. I hate it SO much. It teases me, turns me on, then turns around and fucks my boyfriend. It offers me a home, then laughs in my face when I can't afford it. It offers me a job, then laughs at me when I can't keep it. It's a backstabber. A lovely, generous, horrid backstabber.
I sometimes think I can really hear the laughter. Some of you rational folks would say, "it's just the ducks on the water," but whatever it is, whatever the source of that sound, it is bitter and it hates me.
"Hm... yeah... the ducks... they do that..." --Neil
I told Peter I was moving. He wasn't so concerned. He said "cool!" Will I ever see him again? Who knows. Will he be terribly upset if he never sees me again? I sincerely doubt it.
It's not that I'm going to spend every waking hour missing Peter or anything... I mean, really, it's not that... It would just be nice to think that the past few years have MEANT something. To ANYBODY... It would be nice if Peter had said, "you'll come visit before you leave, right?" Or if he'd said, "Wow... I'm really going to miss you." Or if he said, "...but you'll come back for Labor Day, right?" Or if he'd had ANYTHING to say... After almost a year of living with me, after an eight-year stormy friendship, he probably wouldn't even notice if I'd moved without telling him.
My job is on very shaky ground; as a matter of fact, I expect I'll probably be fired within the week. Yes, that's right; I can't hold a damned job at BURGER KING. How's THAT for pathetic? Do you all know how I got that stupid job? This guy Joey, who once proclaimed he was in love with me, who has all sorts of compliments and flattery for me, told me he'd "hook me up." He promised me six dollars an hour. He promised me as many hours as I wanted. He promised me "we'll have fun!" And on my very first day? Joey didn't show up for work. And he didn't call. So they fired him, and I was stuck at a minimum-wage job working for a man who couldn't go ten minutes without telling me I was stupid and incompetent. I was stuck, alone, at a job where I got groped in the men's bathroom. A job that's absolutely anything but fun. And not only that, but Joey'd been sexually harassing half the staff there, so they all hate him, and because of THAT, half of them hated ME when I walked in. Fucking great. And of course, no word from Joey since he made all his nice little promises to me. Now, I'll likely be fired, and what have I acheived? I haven't made any friends. As a matter of fact, I've made myself a whole shitload of enemies. All I've done is spent a month of my life surviving. Surviving? How can you call it THAT, even? A hundred bucks a week isn't enough to fucking live on. And I can't work more hours because I have to walk two hours a day to get to and from work, and I simply don't have any more energy.
I hate this.
Norman asked me tonight how I feel about his musician-buddy moving in at the end of the month. The buddy's lease is up and he's got noplace to go. So he'll give Norman a hundred bucks a month or so to sleep on the couch or some such thing, until I leave, and then he'll take over my room, and he and Norman will live happily ever after. Norman's quite ready to ship me off to some faraway place. In the meantime, I feel as though he's asking me to start packing, ASAP.
Why don't I just fucking disappear so that Burger King won't be BURDENED by having to discipline me, and Norman won't have to put up with me anymore, and everybody else can just go on about their lives without worrying about my little intrusions...
You know what though? If I was to move tomorrow and never come back, I don't think anybody would really cheer. I don't really think my presence here is really all THAT negative. Of course, it's obviously not doing anybody any GOOD. And that's the thing: I'm just not important to Binghamton. I make NO impact. I leave no impressions. Nobody's going to miss me. Nobody's going to NOTICE that I'm gone.
"You'll never have me," I said to the River.
And it said, "So? I never wanted you anyway!"
It laughed bitterly. Or maybe it was the ducks. We'll never really know.
And I flipped it off and walked away. Without looking back.
~Helena*
"...but i tried to make this place my place. I asked for providence to smile upon me with his sweet face... But I'll tell you: my place is of the sun and this place is of the dark..."
--The Indigo Girls