By Beauty Damned

All over the place

People at work have been telling me I look tired lately. That can never be a good sign. I have been tired. More tired than I ever remember being in the past, though there is a small possibility that I was even more tired than this when I was a teenager and I never slept and life was one big party. But when you're young and springy you don't feel tired, even if you've been running yourself into the ground with bad eating habits and excessive drinking and escapades that sometimes lead to physical repurcussions, such as making the error of consuming a bottle of Carlo Rossi and rolling incoherently down a dark, muddy hill somewhere in Southern Oregon or getting caught in blackberry brambles or falling down while running from cops who have nothing better to do than chase drunk kids.

Man, life used to be crazy. I was like an energizer bunny. I guess it's a good thing I "got all that out of my system" when I was in high school, because now that I'm an old college student I just don't have the energy or the wearwithal to cheerfully abuse myself anymore. It sounds so pathetic to say that everything hurts, but it's true. Everything fucking hurts.

I wish I could be a happy helga and just say that life is great, but life has never been weirder than it is right now. It's been an insane year, to say the least. I feel like I've gone through some kind of cosmic garbage disposal. I've been shredded. I've never felt worse and somehow - if this can possibly be said without sounding like a complete psycho - I've never felt better. I have never felt that my actions were as consequential as they seem to be now. At least, that gives a person good reason to live and make a stab at happiness. This hasn't been a trivial year. It hasn't been the kind of year where you just say "well, there went another year." It's been the kind of year where you look back and go, "What the fuck??? How did I get here?"

My body hurts. Every minute of every day I am trying to disconnect from my physical pain. I, like most people, have vices that help me get through every day. I am having a very hard time - for reasons that I myself do not understand - confronting the issues that I'm having about balancing work and school. For some stupid reason, I would rather suffer physically and mentally than have the dreaded talk with my employers about working fewer hours. There's no explanation for my timid behavior except for the fact that I am actually afraid of the change. I have always worked full time, and even though now I've taken on school, I feel like I should still be able to just buckle down and work my badass to the bone. I'm having a hard time admitting to myself that I'm not as badass as I wish I was and there is a point where you have to face the fact that you can't handle everything at once. You have to lessen your own load.

On Wednesdays, I almost always go from work to my favorite bar on University where I normally do some reading and have a beer and something to eat before my late class. Then I go to class and get home around 11 p.m. Exhausted because I've been out of the house for 14 hours. Tonight I decided to come home first, even though it meant I could only be home for 45 minutes before having to commute back to Manhattan. I did it anyway. Laying down on my couch for half an hour was worth it. I drove Rob's car to school and parked in an overpriced lot near 6th Avenue, where I was charged $10 more than necessary because I forgot my student ID. On the way down 12th Street, coming from the West Side Hwy, I saw a man in the West Village digging in a trashcan. He was depositing his acquisitions into a big shopping bag that had the words "CONTAIN YOURSELF!" printed in big block letters on the outside. That seemed a weird omen to me. Maybe one shouldn't read too much into messages printed on the baggage of homeless people, but then again, maybe there's no better place from which to glean wisdom.

Contain yourself!

Okay. I'll try.

Even when people say annoyingly zennish things to me such as "stop trying," I can't stop trying to contain myself. I'm afraid that I will turn out to be uncontainable and I'll tear right through the bottom of a paper bag and find myself scattered all over a sidewalk in the west village next to a homeless man who is digging in a nearby trashcan for something of value. How does one contain their self?

Anyway, enough with that vague fucking bit of contemplation. Class was good. Creative non-fiction. Good times. Nothing exceptional happened except that we critiqued a classmate's piece and she cried because she felt like it wasn't good enough. I felt terrible because I know what it is like to pour your heart into a story and then have people tell you their honest opinion. It's worse when writing non-fiction because we are often so attached to those true stories that we finally find a way to tell. It's hard to have people examine your writing critically and speak their minds about it in front of a class. After it's over you feel like your story has just been dissected and left on the table in pieces and all you can do is just gather up all the little fragments and put them in your "Contain Yourself!" shopping bag and go home to lick your wounds.

I also know what it feels like to spontaneously break down in tears in front of near-strangers, though I've thankfully never done so in class. She is a middle-aged blond woman who wears bright colors and brings a fan to class everytime. Tonight she wore a hot teal blazer. (Everyone always tries to look extra nice when their story is on the hot-seat because you feel like everyone is going to be looking at you. I do it too. It's sort of silly though, because the truth is that people look at you less when they're talking about your story.) Anyway, she wrote a beautiful story about an eye-opening trip to Lima, Peru. There were some things...a few things about it that weren't working or could have been better, but that's every story that is submitted in class. I remember feeling dejected for at least a week after my story was critiqued. This woman fanned herself while the tears made their way down her cheeks. She never stopped fanning herself, not for one second. We all told her that we really loved her story and that she shouldn't cry. It was true. We did love her story, so I didn't feel bad about putting on the kid gloves. Usually I manage to stay far away from kid gloves. It just seems patronizing to me to tell a person you like their crappy story so that they feel better, but in her case she really had no reason to cry. At least sentence structure is something that can be improved upon, while a lack of talent seems relatively hopeless.

The class went by quickly. Before I knew it, I was headed back to the lot to retrieve the car. I drove all the way down Broadway to the Brooklyn Bridge. It felt good to drive. I had the music cranked up and I felt a burst of energy for about two minutes before my eyelids started to become painfully heavy. Once on the bridge, traffic was bad. There was this asshole in a van in front of me who wouldn't allow this little sedan to merge. Never underestimate the rudeness of a New Yorker. As soon as you think to yourself, "no one could be that crazy, rude or stupid!" You will see a person exhibit all three of those traits at one time. So it was tonight when the big van wouldn't let the little sedan in front of him, despite the heavy traffic and the fact that none of us were getting anywhere any faster by being hostile. Long story short, they hit eachother. They fucking hit eachother! I couldn't believe it. There was already a traffic jam and then these two idiots caused another traffic jam by getting into a fender-bender in the middle of a traffic jam! It was one jam on top of another. I finally made it home and now here I am, should have been in bed an hour and a half ago, but I'm still up because I don't feel like surrendering to sleep yet. As tired as I am, I still don't want to go to sleep. Even if it is the only time that I can be truly contained.

Posted by Maria at November 16, 2006 12:02 AM | TrackBack