Run, Run Away
Light my candles in a daze cos I found God – Nirvana, Lithium
Everything was running around and around in my head.
I fucked up my whole life. A year ago I was at school, responsible, not really missing class, getting good grades and basically just getting through it all. Now I am a high school drop-out, I don’t have a job and I spend my days hanging out with my friends, listening to music, getting high and writing poetry. I am not even looking for a job, all I want to do is stop existing in my own body and in my own head. I look in the mirror and I see the same face every single day. Boring big brown eyes, boring long brown hair, boring skinny body, boring, boring, boring. On really bad days I just want to cover myself up and hide behind my hair. Ripped jeans, old t-shirts, large sweaters and flannel shirts, scuffed Docs. On better days I will wear an old dress and make-up, with the trust-worthy scuffed Docs. Maybe the green ones if I am feeling extra happy. Black eyeliner and red nail polish. I know I’m not normal, but I just can’t force myself to try anymore. Maybe if I hide for long enough I’ll just disappear. Maybe if I get high enough I’ll fly off into a different world full of rainbows and butterflies. I doubt anyone will notice much anyway, I have just become a burden on others.
It nearly happened last week in the park. The usual crowd was there, hanging out, talking about everything and nothing. Some guy came up to us and asked us if we wanted to share a joint. He looked normal enough, so I said yes. He passed it around, some declined as they had to go back to class, but a few of us finished it off. Next thing I know I am lying down in the grass in a haze of bliss. The sun was shining on my face and I could hear voices in the background, but I felt soft and fuzzy, and on another plane. All feeling in my body left me, except for a perfect feeling of numbness, just perfect. That state that I always want to be in but can never find. Well that was it. I suppose people tried to move me, but I was in another world, a world I had no intention of leaving. Then my mum turned up and literally carried me home with someone else and put me on my bed – I barely remember that, except I think that I was laughing because my legs wouldn’t hold me upright. I could hear everything Mum and Grandma were talking about in the kitchen, but I couldn’t move from my blissful haze. Then I got up and had a cup of coffee and acted like the normal human being I am not. And I didn’t even get in trouble for it. I suppose Mum isn’t going to yell at me for something that she knows I am going to do again anyway. I’ll just make sure to never smoke with that guy again, because as much as I want to be away from reality, I can’t do that to my mum. If that was heroin I want it again and I never want it again.
I get so angry at myself and the world around me. A few weeks ago I had a bad day and I just wanted everyone to leave me alone in peace, to sit on my windowsill and listen to Nirvana, smoke cigarette after cigarette and dream of another life. But instead I had to sit down to dinner and listen to my sister talk about her new boyfriend and go on about school and have to answer my mum when she asked me what I had been up to all day. I wasn’t really going to say that I spent hours dreaming about moving to Seattle and marrying Kurt Cobain who had miraculously reappeared from the dead, divorced Courtney Love and fallen madly in love with a much more beautiful version of myself. So I just mumbled something unintelligible and pretended to eat my pasta. My sister started asking Mum for some money and then went on to make some sarcastic comments how I wasn’t even doing anything to earn any money and I still got everything I wanted. I couldn’t help it… Up went my fork and slammed straight down onto her hand, and up went my glass and smashed against the tile floor. I screamed something along the lines of “Fuck you all I hate you!”, grabbed my jacket, cigarettes and keys and legged it out of the house. I had no idea where I was going, but I wasn’t going back. Ever. I wandered around for a while, crying silently, then called a friend from a telephone booth by the park. She couldn’t really help, seeing as her parents were listening in, and to be honest I don’t think she really understands the depth of everything I have gone through over the past few months, few years even. It’s not her fault, I haven’t explained much of my life story to her. The less people know the less they feel sorry for me. Things are better kept bottled up inside rather than out there in the wild unknown. People use this type of information against you, or they treat you differently. I don’t want to stand out and I don’t want to fit in either. I don’t know what I want anymore. In any case it isn’t here and no one can help me. I stayed at another friend’s house and went home in the morning. She called my mum to let her know I was allright, even though I told her that she should just keep them guessing… But Mum was already worried enough, so I suppose that’s how it should be. I scream and cry and mess up and then apologise and am forgiven. I feel allright for a few days, even happy sometimes, and then it happens again. I’m a mess, and really a waste of space.
I picked up a knife yesterday and spent 30 minutes contemplating it from all angles. It was a big knife, and sharp enough to draw enough blood in order to die. I thought about how my father must have contemplated ending his life and wondered how long he had thought about it. Did he think it over for days or weeks beforehand? Did he make a conscious decision on how he was going to perform his final act on earth, or did he act on a whim? Did he just wake up and do it? Did he even think of his kids when he decided he had had enough? Did he shoot up on enough heroin to not feel the pain, or was he sober and completely aware of his actions? I turned the knife around in my hands and felt more and more agitated when the phone rang. It was Alicia, telling me she had a feeling I wasn’t doing too well and had left school and was on her way to get me out of the house. Such good friends are special. I just want to feel numbness. Not death, not pain, just numbness. Drugs and alcohol are a safer and easier bet. Nothing like the gentle numbness of good hash, the floaty feeling, and the heavy eyelids closing, surrounded by music and soft voices.
Poor thing, poor thing
Do you have a sister?
Would you lay your body
Down on the tracks for her? – Belly, Someone To Die For
Hash brings happiness and sleep, alcohol brings silliness and joy. I can never mix the two as the point is to disappear into a different dimension of life, not spend my time puking in the toilet bowl. I learnt that lesson well, if you don’t mix then you outlast everyone. Weak stomachs don’t enjoy too much of a variety of good things, but if you only do one kind of good thing you can do as much of it as you want. Yes, I will drink you under the table, and yes I will continue to drink long after you have finished. I don’t need to stop, it’s not like anyone really cares anyway. When I drink I feel free. When I drink I feel like I can be part of the world, talk to people, dance for hours on end, and write lyrics to songs that I may compose one day. Most days I feel like I can be myself without having to worry about people talking about me behind my back. I can actually talk to people I have just met without thinking I sound like an idiot. I feel so much stronger and ready to face this world I am part of without wanting to be part of it. I wish I could feel like this all of the time, just naturally. Sometimes I do, but I can never count on those sunny days, and at the moment they are so rare that I feel they will never come back. So give me all of the substances I can find because I need them to exist right now.
I feel ugly and stupid. Technically I know that I am neither, but I just can’t get myself to actually believe it. Why would anyone be interested in me anyway? Who really cares to hear me talk about Russian literature and how beautiful it is, or how Bikini Kill have affected my life? Who wants to hear me talk about my obsession with the French Resistance during WW2 and how I feel like I was part of it in a former life? I like to think I was like Jacqueline, my favourite character in Marge Piercy’s Gone To Soldiers. Strong, beautiful and so loyal she would fight through all dangers to protect those she loved. I want to strive to be like that, but I am too scared. I rebel against everything and then hide when I feel like my inner self is becoming too strong. I constantly battle between my shyness and my outgoing real self. Can one not live with the other? Why can’t I just let what is inside stomp the shy part out? I’m just too scared to let go of these walls. They have protected me from everything since, well, since forever.
I’m only 17 for fuck’s sake! Some days I feel like I have seen and lived through so much that I don’t know what else I can be put through. Death and violence and hatred and love and joy and pain and fear. Religions and prayer and different countries and different languages and different countries. I’ve read so many books and have so many more to read. I write and write and destroy most of what I write. Who cares about poems full of questions and dark images and death? I’ll never be as good as Baudelaire or Rimbaud so why even try? What are normal 17 years olds supposed to be doing? School and boyfriends and music and hanging out with friends? I just left school but I have boyfriends, listen to music constantly, go and see bands, get thrown around the mosh pit, drink, smoke a lot of hash and Marlboro Lights and hang out with my friends wherever we feel like meeting. Church steps, music store, café, park… Anywhere where we can sit and talk for hours. I sometimes like my boyfriend, I sometimes think I could love him, but he tends to annoy me after a while, especially when he tells me how much he loves me. How on earth can he think he loves me when I am such a mess inside and out? Does he not see what he is getting himself in to? How could I even love anyone else when I don’t even love myself. Most days I literally hate myself! Most days I wake up crying and wish I didn’t exist anymore. How can I make this better? I feel so old and angry and hurt and just want it all to go away. I’m just tired of being inside my brain all of the time.
