December 29, 2003
Listen to the Rhythm of my Heart
All of this downtime makes me not feel as much like myself. At least not the self I have been for the past year or so. I am so used to always moving, working, and generally being kind of stressed. Using a little logic I realized that all of this was not good for me; I was exhausted. So this break I resolved to do as little as possible; worry as little as possible.
Mostly I am successful and that is what is so odd. Pushing aside one incident where I lectured and nagged one of my dear friends into submission, I have mostly kept to myself and tried to keep any contact with others in a positive way, except with my parents. Family does not count, right?
In some ways I have picked the most convenient time to kind of check out of analysis. If I were my usual too sensitive self I think my grandmother's cancer would break me down. It is not that I do not care or that I have become apathetic, I am just pushing aside most of my emotion to the occasional times when I sit in a chair and cry and feel sorry for myself. So far it works.
I am procrastinating much more than I usually do. Even though his service was over a month ago, I have yet to watch the memorial DVD of my dear friend Jay. In some ways I desperately want to watch the memorial and deal with my grief appropriately, healthfully. My parents assured me that it will not be draining, but I am afraid the whole thing will reduce me to a sniffling mess. Then there is all kinds of guilt associated with that; am I grieving for him or I am I grieving for my own loss? Is the second grief appropriate?
Looking through my archives I can see other ways that I am not quite myself. I do not know if it is maturing or the evolution of inversion, but I am writing fewer and fewer public entries here. Somedays it is because I am writing less in general, but mostly it is because I am writing a lot of private entries or simply writing things down by hand. It would be ridiculous to deny that I am conscious of some kind of audience here and I feel a need to entertain. Lately I am more reflective as more life-altering times tend to make me and I suspect that most people do not care to read my musings that are most likely cliche and too familiar for the few readers I have who already crashed through their adolescence.
Today I finished reading Lucky. In some ways I really connected to Alice Sebold, specifically in her dark sense of humor and of course the whole love of writing. I also thought it was cool to see that she applied to two schools I applied to, Emerson and Syracuse. God forbid I ever go through anything as horrible as being raped or anything like it and I cannot be sure if this is wishful thinking or a probable prediction, but I imagine that if I went through a similar situation I would title my book about it something similarly ironic like Lucky.
It was not until my class at Northwestern that I realized I have a kind of dark sense of humor. Driving around tonight one of my friends hit a bunny and I told him I hoped he did not kill it, otherwise I would have to write a poem about it. I went on to say that I would publish it in the paper and write something like "Remember the bunny" in rocks outside school. The understand the truly horrible aspect of this is to know that a student at my school died recently and a similar display was made for him. I have a conscience and I know that it would be 95% not funny for me to do all of this, probably closer to 99%, and it would be extremely disrespectful of the people still grieving, etc.
Part of me finds it unsettling that there are things that cannot be joked about, things that must always be taken seriously. I understand that there are a lot of them, but when laughing seems to be so healing and one of my chief defense mechanisms I resent being disarmed.
At the same time I realize anyone making a joke of Jay's death would make me extremely hurt and angry. The trick to my humor is aiming it at large, general horrible things, not anything specific. And still there are many things that must be left off. I do not aim to make a living of comedy but in some ways it is my way of life. In my family my father always insisted laughter to be the best medicine and it is only now that I am realizing how I took that advice to heart.
Probably the best thing for me to do would be to play "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by the Darkness whenever I feel low. How can anyone feel truly dark when the band called the Darkness sounds and looks like they do?
I believe in a thing called love
Just listen to the rhythm of my heart
There's a chance we could make it now
We'll be rocking 'til the sun goes down
There is no real deep insight that I see in the lyrics, I am just musing. Rocking 'til the sun goes down.
Love,
Mandy