. That paradox would begin to run my life: to know that what you are doing is hurting you, maybe killing you, and to be afraid of that fact--but to cling to the idea that this will save you, it will, in the end, make things okay. The world won't stop for me and I have to catch it before it goes flying by and I MISS MY CHANCE to be INCREDIBLE. There is a deadline on incredibility and the clock is ticking away People who have Been to Hell and Back develop a certain sort of self-righteousness. There is a tendency to say: I have an addictive personality, I am terribly sensitive, I'm touched with fire, I have Scars. There is a self-perpetuating belief that one simply cannot help it, and this is very dangerous. It becomes an identity in and of itself. It becomes its own religion, and you wait for the salvation, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and do not save yourself. If you saved yourself and did not wait for salvation, you'd be self-sufficient. How dull. In retrospect, I can see that my manic run toward success may have been based on the belief? knowledge? that I had only a small window of opportunity in which to succeed. One night, earlier in the school year, Lora had asked me how long I thought I would live. I lay there in bed and considered the question for a minute. I said, "Maybe twenty."...I didn't particularly want to live much longer than that. Life seemed rather daunting. It seems so to me even now. Life seemed like too long a time ot have to stick around, a huge span of years though which one would be required to tap-dance and smile and be Great! and be Happy! and be Amazing! and be Precocious! I was tired of life by the time I was sixteen. I was tired of being too much, too intense, too manic. I was tired of people, and I was incredibly tired of myself.
the breeze was too much today. time was too much. the self was too much.
i could not allow my eyes to stay still, and the motion of the tree branches that were splayed across the sky, above the pavement, casting dull shadows--the swaying mimicked the coursing of thoughts in my head.
and a conspicuous sense of calm layered itself above it all so that the dynamic numbness was only a droning whisper.
that frightened me most.
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today was busy.
i went to borders& got dominique's gift
(happy b-day boom day birth day ballistic baby burn baby dominique) (!)
and i also got
A Vindication of the Rights of Women {Mary Wollstonecraft}
The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy {Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner}
One Teacher in Ten: Lesbian and Gary Educators Tell Their Stories {Kevin Jennings }
yay me and non-fiction books.
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and i am now annotating Wasted for the fifth time.
--Marya Hornbacher.
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