July 17, 2003
The River's Just a River
If I were a flower my roots would be brown and my leaves would be crispy. I am a tad drained.
"Winter" by Tori Amos is just one of those songs that everyone should have available for their listening pleasure when it is necessary. Especially girls. The line that always kills me, the line that made me cry the first time I heard the song, is "When you gonna love you as much as I do?" It makes my heart ache (oh the cliches are running wild and free tonight). It is one of those lines that everyone I know needs to hear, myself included.
I received my AP scores today. I was disappointed with my government score only because I did so well in the class. The convenient thing to do is blame my teacher for not preparing us well enough for the test, but I should have taken the intiative and bought one of those prep books and studied my ass off. Or at the very least I should have flipped through the book and forced myself to run through a few practice tests.
I was quite satisifed with my Lang (calling it language feels improper, it is always AP Lang in my mind) score. At least that one is not an embarassment to send to Barnard. I qualify for one of the AP awards, which is not too shabby either.
I had an excellent lunch with Alison following work. We talked over chinese food then she went on a coffee run because I was under house arrest waiting for my mom's hospital bed to arrive and I used the time to try to iron out some negative feelings.
My time with Alison was wonderful.
But boy oh boy, do I have a knack for screwing things up. Sometimes I think good intentions can do more damage than bad ones only because both sides feel like shit when the good natured actions go to hell. At least when someone is acting to harm there is a temporary thrill to be felt, even if it is usually followed by guilt.
If anything, I learned to trust my instincts. It would have been nice if my instincts had been wrong but I am afraid they were dead on. Other people should trust my instincts, too, I think everyone knows that a woman's intuition is powerful stuff that should not be questioned. Kind of like Bush immediately following September 11th ;).
I have no idea how I am going to handle it when my parents have a serious health problem. My mom had a routine hip replacement and I already feel rather drained emotionally. Today I could only stay at the hospital with her for four hours before I started to twist around in my seat and feel like every inch of my body was itchy. I could not find a comfortable position, though many would argue that human beings are not meant to find comfortable positions in hospital chairs.
I feared that if I did not leave when I did I would turn into a tearful, if not blubbering, mess right then and there. A few tears slid down my cheek despite myself and my chin trembled not unlike Claire Danes whenever a director yells at her to cry. See Les Miserables to understand my point. I do not mind Claire Danes too much as an actress, often enough I like her, but I always hated Cosette.
In the musical she is especially annoying. She sang too high and she was just pathetic and BORING. Eponine all the way. The good ones always have to die. We all know that if Cosette died hardly anyone would shed a tear. Boo hoo, she does not have a reason to sing "On My Own".
It feels like most of my being is restless. While driving along the freeway I started fantasizing about writing a book. Oddly enough I love writing but my fantasy in that area is usually writing my own column, I have never considered my words worthy of the novel form, let alone worthy of being "The Great American Novel" like every other writer seems to be working towards. I would be more than happy to write a book that a few people could tell me they genuinely enjoyed.
I have a feeling that if I ever write a novel it will be a thinly veiled autobiography. I am positive that I will take my own experiences and include them in my story lines. I have already written short stories about two semi-romantic experiences that left an especially deep impression on me. One of them has never been seen but anyone's eyes but my own because it is too intensely personal. The other I wrote years ago and actually provoked one reader to shed tears.
I love that line (that I will probably misquote here, but you will get the idea) of Robert Frost's: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." When, if, I finally sit down to write about and explain some of my more painful episodes I think there will be plenty of tears and not enough kleenex to go around. The trick will be making my readers as overly emotional as myself.
Oh and I mucked up another important relationship by asking for more than was fair to ask. I became so enchanted with an idea that I had in my head that I did not allow myself the time to realize the repercussions of making such a request.
Today I also realized that something being "ok" is not the same thing as something being "good." And I want it to be good. Before I was able to carry away the debris of some of the walls built long before I ever came along a bunch of new walls are being constructed. Except I cannot get angry at anyone for trying to restore what kept them safe in the past, it is only natural to want security from outside invaders.
Human contact is more of a bitch than any of us would care to admit.
I cannot wait to at least temporarily escape this negative funk of mine.
Love,
Mandy