My favourite story I never wrote is the one about Sally. Sally the old woman who wants to own everything. Who can’t feel the reality of something unless its hers, and even that’s not potent enough. Sally is a frustrated old lady who is quite unhappy, living in a house lined with full-to-the-brim shoeboxes.  Pictures and notes are peaking out everywhere and it’s just a mess because Sally needs to own her whole life in order to know it’s hers and that it really happened.

The time of my life when I didn’t write this story was May or June 2009. This story was not written about my experiences in the Czech and Europe in general, which is to say that it was, but I just didn’t write it. I couldn’t figure out a perspective or an ending, but I had everything else, all the important stuff. But without a perspective, well, what are you looking at anyway?

First I thought third person, and Sally kills her caregiver, but that was so easily figured out that it had to be scrapped immediately, although maybe this is still my favourite.

Then I thought, first person, in the head of the caregiver, who still gets killed at the end. Because, you see, I really want that caregiver dead.

But maybe there’s a lamp or a cat or something that’s been a witness all along. The problem with that is, what do lamps know about childhoods?  Sally’s childhood is very important, just like everyone’s, so the pertinent question is, do I expose hers or do I keep it a secret? Maybe talking about childhoods is too cliche and boring. The lamp probably knows that. Lamps know too much and you can never trust a narrator anyway, let alone a lamp narrator. And then a let me shed some light on this situation joke is just a little too tempting, and stuff like that ruins everything anyway. So no lamps. And cats are worse; don’t get me started on cats.

So anyway, for almost two years now I’ve kept Sally in my head and allowed her to get dusty in the rows of shoeboxes and files and lamps and cats in my head. Kept her there where she can’t get out and where she stays mine. And I kill off that damn caregiver at least once a month because she’s so pretty and nice to Sally, and well, Sally would like to put her in a shoebox too.

17 year old me
knew so much more than
23 year old me:
she knew “pain”
and she knew “love”
and she knew “feeling”
and she knew “knowing”
she was so good at knowing
that I am sometimes jealous,
for most of my I knows
are punctuated by don’ts
and I feel envy even though
everything she knew was nothing
(I now know)

Do you know, I don’t know one person who feels fulfilled? We all know this, but I don’t think we really know it. Nobody’s hiding out there with any secrets. There’s no fountain of youth or eternal happiness.

So, what can I do to feel fulfilled tomorrow? My plan is thus: go work out, tutor a lost little boy, start reading that book that will challenge my head, and say something nice.

Maybe the day after that I will write a little.

These days were long days and I
drilled the holes wrong once or twice
but always they were the right depth
to fasten me securely
and comfortably
not sticking anywhere or
creaking either
I creak my own creaks and I
don’t need any hinges to do it for me

I was more creative when I had lower lows, you know. I stayed up late for a reason. Because I was sad and crazy and forgetting my name and crying because I can’t make the folded clothes look right. Stayed up late because I was writing on my wall. Stayed up late because I was writing on myself. Stayed up late because I was painting. Fuck this balance. Fuck this even shit. I hate my excuses and I hate my loss of creativity.

Being happy is boring.

I hate this xanga now. I should delete it like I did the others. I’m such a teenager with nothing to say.

Do you know I’ll never be a writer? Do you know I’ll never do anything? I like feeling sorry for myself too much to make any real changes.

I keep saying I’ll see someone, but I won’t because then everyone will find out my secret that I’m fine, absolutely fine. Absolutely strong and intelligent and sorta cute and quirky and fine except for that attention whore thing.

When I come in from a walk alone, I mean the real kind, I get angry when people speak to me.  I try not to let them know, because it’s not their fault they didn’t hear me leave, not their fault they locked the door and made me knock out there in the snow with my ridiculous hat, so I try to answer their questions with as little annoyance as possible (and even fewer words). But when they talk to me I lose the silence that had calmed me and the thoughts that had warmed or chilled me, depending on the need. And I want to yell, be quiet! Can’t you see I’m thinking?! 

I can’t, though, so I don’t.

Before my thoughts were (understandably, unfortunately) interrupted, I was going to start my post like this:

I woke from a dream the other night. A few weeks ago, maybe. I woke and a story or a poem or some great thought entered my head.  I remember it was profound and beautiful, maybe a little sad. Something about an oak tree or the colour blue.  I didn’t want to get up and write it–my bed was much too warm–so I concentrated all of my efforts on remembering that thought until morning.  Come on big brain, you can do it, this one little thing!

Of course I knew I would never remember it.  We never do. Without jars, fireflies disappear into the sky.  And because I knew I wouldn’t remember it, I stopped trying to commit it to a sleepy memory.  Instead I realized that I should savour this thought without trying to capture it. Enjoy its company while I could. Why would I need to write it down except to prove I thought it?  Why would I need to prove I thought it unless I needed to prove that I think? I know I think. Do I really need you to know? (yes. Why else would I write THIS post?)

Anyway, I enjoyed the thought and didn’t try to catch it, and of course it was gone by morning.  The other wasn’t though.  The one about enjoying my thoughts and not always stress about getting them down (see above). That one stayed with me.

My winter walk was beautiful and I thought about stories and memories and philosophies. The stories were comfortably intertwined with the memories and the philosophies needed little company.  I was going to rush home to write them, but then I thought, no, let’s keep these free. I am in no mood to trap anything tonight. 

That’s why the words in this post are so tame. Domesticated. They were already mine.

Fucking birth control. Miss six of the little guys in any order and in three weeks you’re back to your normal non-controlled hormonal crazy. Maybe they’re placebos, maybe they’re sugar, but my crazy feels a lot less when they’re around, when I actually have a routine of taking them, 6:15 every morning with an alarm buzzing to the side bzzz bzzz bzzz control your body, woman.

THIS IS THE BLOG WHERE I AM SAD.

Been so sick of myself lately. Talk too much, as usual. Talk too big, too often, too loud. I will go be silent in the snow.

What I can’t figure out is why I would keep waking up full of dread when there’s nothing to be dreading. I can understand in the height of a semester surrounded by responsibilities, but why now? When everything is pretty much finished?

So I lie in bed wracking my brain to figure out what I could possibly be stressed about, and everything I can come up with is so little. Maybe deserving of a little stress, just enough to get things done, but not crippling stay-in-bed stress.

And this time I can’t even think of an overarching reason that I’d be unhappy. I’m not unhappy, quite the opposite, really. I’m the happiest I ever remember being. Consistently comfortable and safe.

So why the anxiety this morning?  Why the nightmares last week? 
Basically what this is telling me is that my stress has been something internal all along.  Not that I really needed to be told that.

The only thing to be done at this point is to get out of bed and ignore it until it goes away.

Because I am young and inexperienced, I believe that war is impossible.  It will not happen.  Things will work out. No one I know will go over; no one I know will die.  My life will not have to change because of war. I won’t be poor or hungry or even simply (deeply) worried about what is going on thousands of miles away from me.  War is something that happens to other people.  People in faraway countries.  Our grandparents and the soldiers and military wives on TV.  War happens to them, not me.

(I am young and inexperienced.)

Rebecca is one of the best writers I know.  We met freshman year, in Advanced Writing class (we’d both been able to skip the freshman class based on our SATs).  She was always late, almost always smiling and absolutely always beautiful.  She’s one of those girls who’s always stylish, and who is so naturally.  I’m sure she does put work into her hair and make up and wardrobe, but it seems to the rest of us to come effortlessly.

We never really became close friends or anything.  We sat next to each other in Advanced Writing, and then had a literature class senior year.  We both worked in the writing centre.  She was a busy girl senior year–being an art major and a writing major and the editor of the school’s literary magazine will do that to you.  We smiled when we saw each other in the halls, said hello, had a couple of conversations, and that was that.

When we had a literature class together the fall of 2009, she initially got on my nerves.  She’s a cute girl who loves little animals and flowers.  She likes being happy.  I immediately put her in the “shallow” category in my brain.  Her world was too fuzzy and cute and happy for such a deep thinker as I! I liked the dark truths, I liked talking about our universal lackings, our communal hopelessness.  We are broken, is my usual philosophy, we are broken and there will always be pieces missing from our hearts, our souls. 

As the semester went on, I started listening to Rebecca’s opinions about the literature we were reading.  Really listening.  And what I discovered was that her constant search for beauty and happiness was not a weakness.  It was not a fear of the dark.  She recognized the dark and chose instead to focus on the light parts.  The hopeful parts.  My focus on the dark didn’t make me any deeper than she was, but her focus on the beauty made her happier.  Happiness came easily to her, bubbling out of her and filling the room.

Her writing is phenomenal.  She is able to capture the nuances of childhood, the little fears, the little smiles, all of it.  I read one of her short stories and I realized that being 21 isn’t that much different from being 5. We are still children who get afraid sometimes, who cry sometimes, who realize the world is too big to care sometimes.  But we also like to giggle and smile and hug and cuddle.  And she somehow blends the two flawlessly. 

Depth in perspective is not a single pinhole in the ground.  There are several, all leading to different places, different outcomes, different people.  I am thankful for the people who think differently than me and who challenge me, sometimes without knowing it.  I am thankful for perspective.  I am thankful for hope.