2003-01-21 - 12:02 a.m.
One of the things I remember most about adolescence was my best friends mom. She was a nurse’s aid, a home care attendant, a temporary fill in at a psych center. This guy, she told us, this patient, was fascinated by shiny objects. At first it was just coins and paper clips. His wife used to take him to the hospital all the time to get these things removed from his stomach. After a while, he would eat her jewelry. Pieces of glass. Metal barrettes. If he could see light in it’s surface, it had to be swallowed. Eventually his wife had him put away. He ate his buttons on the state issued institution uniform.
They took them away.
He got desperate. He ate his gold fillings.
Then he ate his nails.
I used to tell this story with eager abandon. My voice would get high pitched and excited, there was this guy you see, and he was crazy. The captivated listener would be bursting with disgust, feverish to jump in with their own psych story.
When I was younger, I would think, how could this guy do this? What would possess him to mute the gleam of these objects?
I was an existential youngster, I fancied myself a thinker.
Now all I can wonder is, how did his wife love him?
It’s a big step, a large ravine to cross, this idea of logic and love. I contrast them because they are opposites. Ask anyone who has ever thought themselves in love. You stop thinking and start dreaming. You discard all that you know in order to create a new series of what you’d call logic, if only to satisfy another.
I never wanted to write a manifesto. My life has never been filled with grandiose experience, with travel or world-weariness. I’ve never been in a doomed relationship or come close to death. But my mother keeps insisting in her trite and overdramatic way that everyone has a story.
I guess I wanted to tell mine.
Let’s start with now and maybe work backwards.
I’m a cynic. The thing is, maybe you can even understand this, but I’ve never had a reason to be. I’m jaded and heartless. Afraid of the idea of love. Violently protesting this emotion for which no significant definition exists. We are a group, a generation of these people. These youth that rail against commercialism they same way they are enveloped in it. The same ones that shun the lemmings of the world as they walk to IKEA. We somehow became a society of fear without even realizing it. I was never around in the time before this, I don’t know if my parents had ever walked down the open streets scared of a terrorist or the idea that one day they might get their heart broken. They both hold the same weight of horror for me. Actually, the stranger who might crush my heart might even be scarier than the one who might shoot me. We are hopeful and hopeless. Pessimistic and optimistic. We talk the talk but deep down, we’re still waiting for perfection. The ideal that we know will never come. It’s a hard line to walk.
For a while, I was sure it was a character defect. I dreamt of my knight but hated the idea of marriage. It was personal, I assured myself. This wasn’t a disease. But wait. I have friends, I have peers, and occasionally I do leave the solitude of my room, and interact. Perhaps I don’t do this as much because I’m scared of what we end up discussing. We will never find anyone. On our backs, we have generations of heartache.
What is the point in adding to this degenerative cycle of disillusionment and unhappiness?
Don’t shake your head at me.
My mother, the generations she comes form, they are bruised because of their romantic delusions. They live in a bubble of fantasy.
My deal is this. My parents married young. My greatest shock was to learn that my mother was not pregnant when she got married. Why on earth would you marry that young by choice, I wondered aloud and internally. The shock on her face made me feel like a bad kid. That’s all I was them, a child. No more than 10 or 12 when I discovered this, I already knew that love was a dirty word.
They divorced the first time when I was no more than 2. My dad left for a year, a year I was too young to remember. Later I found cards from him, full of multi syllabic words and apologies. My mom told me she used to read them to me. To this day, I don’t know if hearing his words come from her mouth made a difference. He came back. The way they loved each other, it was impossible for him not to. They had a passion that should never have lasted as long as it did. The deal with a burn like that, with a fire: somehow the 2 involved aren’t the only casualties. They were happy for a while, I guess. I had told them I didn’t remember much from before I was 10. When I said the words, they weren’t yet lies. Now they are.
Another couple of years as things fell apart. Screams and tears as I sat on my windowsill, a pillow curving against my spine. I would immerse myself in a book to escape from a house I wasn’t allowed to leave. Pressing myself so hard against the screen that I would have bruises from the wire patterned on to my thighs. There was another separation, a final second divorce.
They were each other’s drug, addicted and slowly killing one another. My cogniscence developed quickly as I saw them tear each other apart. Like I said, there were innocent bystanders.
In a funny way, I consider myself a better person because of that. I learned early not to depend on anyone for emotional support. Thanks, mom and dad.
I don’t blame them. My facetiousness carries with it the weight of some sincerity.
I’ve been trying to figure out this existence that we have fallen into. Everyday I look around and try not to see the big picture. Been there. Done that. It’s fucking scary. If you ever want to experience true terror, ask what your purpose is in this life. Not just you as an individual, but you as a human? No answer? Maybe just a wave of homeless panic?
Now try and forget it. Focus on petty successes and menial tasks. Go watch that movie or see that play. Criticize other people. That always makes me feel better. Hell, it’s what I want to do for a living. For a while my friends and I discussed the hopeful cheer brought on by the idea of the apocalypse. How wonderful would this world be if we didn’t have to worry about waking up tomorrow to do all those trivial things that create stress? We want to die but don’t have the courage nor the stupidity for suicide. We want to bitch but don’t want the blame. Car accidents, comas, innocent bystanders in a drive-by. Then you find out who really cares. Then you get a reprieve from the real world. Then you can appreciate something more than the idea of nothing.
As far as I can tell, the only salvage people seem to find in this hell of a world is love.
And when it comes down to it, that’s not much. Don’t let my pessimism interfere.
I fall victim to the same rush that everyone else does. The infatuation and the adrenaline. The smiles and the understanding. The weight of thinking that there is actually someone out there who gets you, and you don’t even have to say a word to explain otherwise.
It’s a beautiful thing.
So why is the divorce rate higher than it’s ever been? Why do people retreat form the slightest instigation?
What the fuck is wrong with us, a group of shell-shocked victims who’ve never given themselves a chance to really get hurt?
unfinished. j.
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