headspace

I. 

I need more life experience, I think.

II.

I put a finger through the new hole I found in my jeans. There's still blood spatter on it (the finger, not the hole) from when I picked at my lips until I drew red. 

III.

This morning the stitches loosened on my denim shirt and I don't remember where I put the button that came off. 

IV.

God. His voice? I can't remember. I haven't heard it in two years, three months, three weeks, and a day. Not in person, and not in my head, because I've forgotten what he even sounds like, and I deleted his stupid carousel song a long time ago.

I'm doomed to know what date it was the last time I saw him only because it was a funeral. The truth is I've stopped counting the days. 

V.

My favorite way to wallow is to lie very, very still in bed with the lights off and watch the colors change on the ceiling, mirroring the skies outside, their warm hues slowing turning cold. 

VI.

Is there anything more passive than waiting? I'd certainly like to know. 

VII.

Consciousness is hard.

VIII.

Last week I remembered being thirteen and reading the personal, rambling entries William Beckett would post on his blog while on the road promoting Fast Times at Barrington High. I remembered when he posted the lyrics to "The Test" and "After the Last Midtown Show," not knowing at the time how much they would shape the way I'd walk the earth. 

He was twenty-three and full of poetry. I was transfixed. 

I remembered it, seven years later, only realizing then how utterly young he was. At thirteen, twenty-three seems like forever. At twenty? Not so much. 

I blame him for changing less and less. 

I don't need roads

Let me start this post off with an indignant proclamation—nay—vow:

I will never, ever, ever teach.

God, that felt good. Okay.

"In need of enlightenment, break free."

Long ago I decided that teaching as a career is not for me. It's a noble profession, sure, and I have a lot of respect for it. But it's just not who I am—I don't like crowded rooms, I don't like public speaking, I don't like routine, I'm not even a scholarly type of person. I'm a bad student! Most of all, I just don't like it. Thinking of doing it makes me want to pull my hair out. 

"Okay, okay," you're saying. "We get it. What's your point?"

My point is, my parents won't stop forcing it upon me. When I was looking for jobs this summer my mom kept suggesting being an online English tutor to ESL students. They keep bringing up some friend-of-a-friend's kid who's in Korea doing the same thing, but in a classroom. And tonight, during dinner, my mom turned to me and said, "Your aunt is asking when you're gonna be graduating." I waited for her to continue, hopeful and intrigued. "Because apparently there's a high demand for English teachers..."

I tuned her out. Closed my eyes. I've had enough of this.

It's a stepping stone, they say. If I wanted to work overseas, I needed to compromise. I had to start somewhere.

Yeah, I know that. Trust me, I do. But taking some dead-end job is not it. My dream isn't even specifically to work in a foreign city. I just want to write. (And open that independent press! It took me years to come to this epiphany, and I've never been more determined and excited about anything. It's my be-all and end-all.) If I want a career in publishing, then I'll start at the bottom of that chain and work my way up.

I've told them time and time again that if I can't make it work doing what I love, then I'll find my own way around it and take other jobs I can actually see myself in. Fuck it, I'll even work in a bookstore making minimum wage if I have to. But first I have to believe that I'll make a spectacular landing where I'm supposed to be, because I'm good at it and because I have a chance. Because I didn't go through five years of UP education to wind up behind a desk with a mediocre monotonous non-career.

Hey, I'm a millennial. Being idealistic despite the heavy dose of good, old-fashioned hand-me-down Gen X realism ingrained in my veins is my birthright.

I understand that they had to sacrifice a lot in order to be where they are now, and sometimes life took a different route and made their choices for them, and I appreciate that. It just doesn't mean that I have to go through the same process. It's just frustrating and dispiriting, is all.

Support me, I want to tell them. Know me. Believe in me.    

It's scary how easy it is to fall into a dull, bleak existence that you never even asked for. To take that dead-end job to begin a journey you hope would go somewhere, only to have it lead nowhere and never get to leave. You'd make a living. But you wouldn't be living.

I remember being in third grade and telling Mrs. Gonzales that I wanted to be "an author." She scowled at me. "'Author' is not a job, it's a title," she said snippily. "You want to be a writer."

And, universe help me, I do. My whole life since I was eight has been leading up to this. I'd be a fool to take a detour now.