is there more than this? more than what? � � � Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 * 03:13

If I had these moments more than once a month or so, I think I would run screaming away from myself; or, possibly shave my eyebrows and turn Democrat, eat soy, and make friends with women named Joy and Sheila.

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It's like, WHAM. I'm twenty fucking two, and I don't have a college diploma in my pocket. I smoke, I eat meat, I get sick all the time, I'm MARRIED, I'm 22, I'm not who I was six years ago. And all of this feels like it's been put on me by alien hands sometimes. I feel like I've been carried away with the undercurrent without a fight, and when I wake up tomorrow I'm going to be 47 years old with grown children and a historectomy, living in middle America wearing Naturalizer shoes to work and eating toast with jelly in the morning.

I can't be this woman. I can't be this shell of a person who lives life constantly comparing notes with her teenage years and coming up with 2 sides of 14 different coins.

I had a rough draft, a thesis statement, an outline, a thesaurus, and a delightful naivete which allowed me to believe that every piece of the puzzle would march poetically into place while I drifted along a river of torturous ecstasy carrying me past romance, enlightenment, fame, respect, hedonism, and contentment. I thought all of this would come to me, because I deserved it, because as I read my way through so many books, I thought that I could do better, that I was destined to be another Dagny Taggart, that I was going to knock Baudelaire's cat's pajamas off, that I was going to bring all of Camus and Sartre and Maugham and Hugo and Sand and de Pizan together in a masterpiece of emotion, reason, loveliness, and suffering.

I am not that person, not today. I never will be. I am a semi-attractive woman (jesus. when did that happen?) wearing my husband's sweatpants and drinking a stale Mountain Dew, listening to a long-dead woman sing for old Paris. And my cat's litter box stinks in the corner while my life wilts away, and I don't know where my dream ended and the rest of my life began.

I just wanted to do something vivid, something beautiful, something with panache. Something in deep pastels and cream and blood, something with an accent grave and a bold yet fragile penmanship that would tell the world why I was put on this earth.

Why was I put on this earth? Was I put here to sit on my hands and cry and the thought of one day fertilizing the earth? Was I put here to lay in bed screaming at the top of my lungs for breath, for help, for a reason? Was I put here to cry? Was I? Is there beauty in tears when they flow as freely as water from the clouds? Is there anything admirable in clutching at the tapestry of one's mind while the wool blanket is unravelling around the body, exposing its scars and its deficiencies?

Was I put here to ask these questions and feel this pain and loss? Was I abandoned by a merciless god while the believers while away their time wringing out a real life, and rolling their eyes at those of us who shun the stability of yarn in favor of the possibility of cashmere and silk and gauze?

Why even go on, in that case? Why give myself the task of coming to terms with something I will never believe, when extinguishing my life would save me the trouble, the time, and the tasteless chore of coming down to earth?

Is it worth it to bother tapping these keys when I could be outside running down the road naked, calling out to anyone who would hear me that I am not okay, and leaving it up to them to save me or slay me? When is it better to sit in the safety of one's bed, slowly sobbing away another evening with a candle and a dying dream, and when is it time to go out into the grit and the glare and face everything else?

I can't be the woman I am today. The woman I am today isn't even really afraid of dying, but she is afraid of living it out to the end.

The things I want now are impossibly dull and fleeting. A car stereo, a new white shirt, a good night of sleep, a bowl of cereal, a day off of work, a hug, a piece of hematite jewelry, a book, a raise, a child, a better body, a better life.

I remember when I wanted something very simple and very real. I wanted to be happy, and I wanted knowledge, and I wanted to capture my emotions in words, and I wanted to feel good.

I wanted to feel the stirring in my heart that I felt one minute and 13 seconds into the third movement of Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto, and I wanted to feel it over and over again. I wanted to stare at Alma-Tadema's paintings and imagine what those women looked like under their tunics. I wanted to walk around and feel grass hitting my ankles and run away from moths. I wanted to wrap my lips around someone else's and get lost inside that liquidity until everything else was long gone. I wanted to hear my own laugh. I wanted to feel pleasure, and I wanted to overcome pain, and I wanted to do it all without noticing the time of day.

Or the day of the week.

Or what month it happened to be.

Or what face was staring back at me in the mirror.

Mon dieu, que la vie etait belle quelquefois d'autre.

I don't know who I am right now.

I don't know what I've just written. I don't care.

I just want to be, for as long as I can. Just be alive.

And I don't know why I'm here, or why you're reading this.

But I hope it's because it makes us happy.

I can live with that for now.