Look, I know that I've posted three times in the past three days, and you probably think I shouldn't be doing that, but I really don't care about what I'm supposed to be doing because I lost my debit card and Becca said she was glad that I couldn't find it and I'm the kind of angry that does nothing to help the situation that's making me angry and so I keep getting angrier and I'm seriously considering breaking something. Look at that fucking run-on. I don't give a shit. fuck you.
***
First of all, I love my job.
Daphne
Bitty
Hobey and Sammi: Employees of the month
Second of all, Hobey Weston needs to be kept in a museum because he is a national treasure.
Things I have gotten Hobey to agree to:
-The American Dream is a government conspiracy.
-I'd read a book if you wrote it, Sammi.
-Girls' nipples aren't more offensive than boys'.
Things he just said of his own accord:
-Society is just so much harsher on girls.
-You're a good talker; you'd be a good writer.
-You're the only GMVS person I like.
-Those GMVS boys are total assholes.
-I can't tell if you're kidding. We say some sarcastic shit around here, so you gotta tell me if you're being serious.
Things we argued about:
-Bitches be cray.
Hobey: I just said, "Well I'm sorry."
Me: You have no idea what you're doing, do you?
Hobey: Not a clue.
Hobey: You know my real name's not Hobey, right?
Me: Yeah, I was gonna ask. What is it?
Hobey: Tyler.
Me: Ew. Why do we call you Hobey then? Is it because you really like sandwiches?
Hobey: *Laughs* No. My middle name is Holbrook.
See what I mean? National treasure.
Hobey is chronically late, always calling me to tell me he slept through his alarm or lost his keys. He wears that ridiculous hat and I would have voted him most likely to leave art class with Sharpie on his nose, if you know what I mean. But he got all shy and bashful when I asked him what kind of music he listened to, hitting the "skip" button with fidgety fingers before I could get bored of the song that I wasn't outwardly showing enough excitement for, but which I was really enjoying. All in all, Hobey is a good guy with a crush on my car and an understanding that just because something is feminine doesn't make it bad.
Anyway, story time. There were these four or five kids in the pool. I had to be a camp counselor earlier in the week and so I recognized one of the girls; her name was Parker. The kids were breaking rules, being unruly, etc. The mother with them asked them to calm down and threatened to remove them from the pool if they refused to listen. A few minutes later, the kids had tired of the diving board and moved into the shallow end to play a game. Parker was sort of floating and treading water in the middle of the shallow end before turning to Hobey, sitting in the lifeguard chair by the side of the pool, and shouting, "I can see your boobs." The mother freaked and pulled Parker out of the water. I was in stitches on the ground and Hobey was sitting in the chair pretending to be offended and violated. Soon afterward the kids all left.
Sorry if the video quality sucks.
Bitty likes to take pictures of herself underwater
It was my last day of work and I was trying to tell Hobey that I'd had a lot of fun this Summer and that he is a worthwhile person who I enjoy being around and all that came out was, "I think you're really cool, Hobey." He said thanks and then, "I think you're really cool too."
***
This whole post didn't really turn out the way that I wanted it to. Ignore it. And if you know me in real life and have this idea that I have romantic intentions for this boy then your perception is wrong as fuck and I will cut you. Not again friends, not again.
***
Other than that, I have this song on a record. It's off the album SUCK IT AND SEE and I listened to the acoustic version of it because I couldn't understand what he was saying and then I was like half-crying because Alex Turner seems like he needs a hug, which makes Alex Turner and I the same because I am also an owner of dark sunglasses and in need of a hug.
Today was Becca's first day of school. I was supposed to go to lunch with Liezl and Natalie and take Liezl to Williston for school supplies. Yesterday was Lexi's birthday and tomorrow night my mother is coming up to help me move in to school on Friday. All of these things are making me groan internally. You can't make me. I don't want to go to orientation. With all these people that I already don't like and meet my roommate who very much likes accent rugs and is interested in us having a color coordinated room. I don't care about our room aesthetic. I care about sleep and books and clothes that have just come out of the dryer. That is all I care about.
But Liezl took me bra shopping and we decided that we should own a farm together when we're older and went to dinner and got frozen yogurt and walked around Burlington and I got records and all in all it wasn't terrible. Then I called my mother to tell her that I was home and, other than being unastounded (is this a word? It's too late to tell.) that I was home and not dead, she made me feel like I'm really disorganized and not ready or packed at all and that is why I'm not asleep right now. Because sleep is for people who aren't me apparently.
Other than that, I still wake up everyday and am not Beyonce. I alternate between sad and mad quickly enough to make me dizzy. I like rap music (????). I'm simultaneously exhausted and feeling an extreme urge to throw something, namely a brick, namely at someone's face. I don't care who. Does anyone have a face they need a brick thrown at? I know that sentence ended with a preposition but between 12:15am and 12:30am, questions are not sentences. so there. good night.
Becca loves The Flash. He runs faster than time itself and is strong and good. We were at Six Flags so that Becca could cross that off her list of things she's never done and they had a time slot where DC characters would be around to meet, take pictures with, and give autographs to fans. Okay, so picture a man in his early twenties in a somewhat authentic looking Green Lantern costume posing and smiling like a superhero while actually looking like a total dork in an ill-fitting skin suit and that's basically what it was. We were about thirty feet away from him and Becca, who holds the Green Lantern in the utmost contempt, turns to me and says, "What a fucking tool." (She actually said something more offensive, but just pretend she called him a tool.) I laughed because Becca's general purpose of existence is to offend and when the people in front of us were finished taking pictures with the man who was very "in character" for someone playing a fictional superhero in an amusement park, we approached him, Becca in her Flash shirt, me in my Superman one. Becca asked him for a picture and we talked to this very sweet man for a few moments before he said, pointing to Becca's shirt, "So, do you like The Flash?" Becca said, "Yeah," in a way that implied that of course she fucking liked flash you stupid fucking tool you don't even have superpowers asshole there are a million green lanterns out in the universe flash is one of a fucking kind do you understand that fuckface.
To this, Green Lantern only said, "Well he's right inside." By "inside," he had meant the mock Justice League HQ behind us. Becca's eyes got so wide and her jaw dropped and smiled at the same time and we both turned and sprinted. There was a little boy in front of us who was getting Flash's autograph. Becca waited impatiently and then we walked up to The Flash. He gave a smile that sort of implied he was exhausted and that there was a reason the man playing Green Lantern was outside and this Flash impersonator was kept away from the public eye. "Can I get a picture?" Becca asked. And so I took a picture. The Flash had noticed Becca's Flash t-shirt and said, "Okay, we've got to do this right." They both struck the classic Flash pose, which is basically someone's stance mid-stride of a sprint. Then I handed Becca her phone and they took a selfie together. We thanked the man and hung around the Justice League HQ, flicking switches that didn't do anything and pressing buttons on keyboards that weren't connected to computers.
I could tell she was disappointed. The Flash was just a man dressed as Flash and he wasn't even all that interested in being The Flash. It seemed like a wasted opportunity. But when we came home, Becca bragged about meeting The Flash, sliding through the pictures on her phone and gathering the attention of her entire family. They didn't have to know that while we explored the HQ, no real, more authentic Flash busted through the door and threw the impostor out of the way. They didn't have to know that The Flash we met didn't offer us to race and ask if we had seen Kid Flash, The Flash's sidekick. No one had to know that the real life versions of our heros weren't nearly as good as they were in our heads or the fictional universes they inhabit. The real problem with fictional characters is that no matter how much you love them, they'll never be real.
2/38 Selfies Becca took on my phone
In my grandmother's car. very important Italian dinner
Park in Waterbury by the train tracks
Our last tournament
Some lady was handing out fruit roll ups with tongue tattoos
They told us not to have phone out, we didn't care because we were 400 ft in the air.
After that, we saw my friend Will who had turned from a slightly more than pudgy 6th grader into a slightly less pudgy, going-to-be-senior who picked me up and spun me around. We helped my sister move into her dorm at GMVS, hung around the park in Waterbury, put coins on train tracks, and rode my longboard around the Waterbury park and ride. We were there until at least 9:30; Sheila, Becca's mother, texted us asking where we were. There weren't a lot of cars around and Becca and I took turns on the longboard. It was getting dark and we were happy to just bask in the incandescent glow from the buzzing street lamps. We were happy to be a cliche.
***
Other than that, I don't want to pack for school. Sunday was my last day of work. My mother has finally decided that she will help me move in. I don't want to deal with orientation and I need a nap.
Other than that, I promise that I'm trying to write, but also writing is hard and life is hard and sleeping is the most difficult thing of all. But I cleaned my room and I'm doing laundry and I feel like those are things normal people do (????).
I was in the car the other day and I remember how one time in 7th grade Eva said, "Why do you have so many love songs on your iPod?" At the time, I was very defensive; love songs weren't cool. But now, listening to a lot of my music, I can't help thinking that they're mostly just break-up songs, which, I mean, I guess qualify as love songs. But break-up songs are usually extremely sad or really empowering and try to convey a sense of extreme liberation, which are the two emotional states I spend a lot of time within; I either telling myself that I care too much or not enough and so I bounce back and forth between telling my mother that I want to die and waving at boys on the highway with Becca. (Also, boys are always confused when you honk or wave at them or yell to them. Like yeah, this is street harassment, you have been objectified, fucking deal with it. As much as I realize this isn't the "correct" way to deal with street harassment, people in Waterbury will slow down to yell "Nice ass" at Becca and I'm having none of that without retaliation.)
When you’re close to someone else and then have to move away, the discomfort you feel is not just the contact you lose with their skin. It’s also the strings that hold your hearts together being stretched uncomfortably.
So pull me close to your chest. Hug me close and tight. Grasp my hands; I’m sorry they’re sweaty. Let me bury my head in your neck. Put your cheek on my forehead. Tell me everything is alright, even when it’s not. Lie through your teeth and say that it’s okay. I’m counting on you. I have you and your arms now, but I’m not sure if you’ll be here tomorrow. Where do you go?
I am not adorable so don’t tell me that I am. I’m hurt and lost and confused. I’m sorry that I can’t stop crying. Just hold me here. I can’t take our heartstrings being stretched like rubber bands because at this point, they’ll either snap in half or snap us so close that I won’t be able to untangle the mess of human limbs and black holes and unrequited love that is us.
I’m not sure if we’re blue or yellow. But I feel like green is a good compromise.
***
I wrote that in January and it pisses me off that it's still relevant. I don't know. Maybe I'll feel like less of jackass in the morning.
My feet were getting wet as my cleats sunk farther into the silt. The waves, if you could call them that, were pushing and pulling tiny grains of sand and pebble. I was crouching down and had my hands resting on the ground, the waves pulling sand from under my fingers and tickling the backs of my hands as they rolled back in. This buzzing has recently been taking over my brain. It starts out sort of quiet but eventually the sounds of pins and needles fills my head, pounding on the walls of my skull and the world sort of spins and I can't focus on anything. Becca called my name twice but the buzzing was loud and overbearing and so I focused on my hands in the water instead.
***
I woke up on Katy's extra bed, which lies horizontally at the foot of her bed. The first thing I saw was the white feet of Katy's bed post. It was warm there, under an extra blanket with my face on one of Katy's pillows that always seem to be that kind of perfectly pilly. I remember being slightly confused. It was early and I wondered what year it was. I wonder this sometimes when I wake up from naps; I feel like too much time has gone by and my entire life has happened while I've been asleep. But at this particular moment I wondered what year it was because it could have been any. I could have been a ninth grader waking up on Katy's floor after having made a cake the night before. I could have been a junior who would sneakily drive Katy to school in my car that morning. I could have been four years old and woken up in my parents bed after having a nightmare. I could have been eleven and trapped between the wall with the vent that always blows cold air and my bed when my sister decided that the entire bed was hers to lay horizontally across.
I could have been anything, anywhere. Nine and crying on the swings at the park. Six and finally having the courage to try a pickle. (I wasn't missing anything; pickles are terrible.) Four and running in and out of my great aunt's house, sipping Moxie out of a dixie cup. Five and finding my first favorite song: Complicated by Avril Lavine. Eight and asking the priest "what the big deal is with the blessed bread?" But for some reason, I was lying there, completely lost in my borrowed, clean, pilly pillowcase, and it took me a while to realize that I was none of these things. I was not bringing Becca cupcakes because she had a tough day. I was not lying on the floor of Ellie and Eklutna's room postulating to Jacks Mannequin. I was not being told by my baseball coach to stop crying because we "don't need any of that girl stuff." I am seventeen and I'm regularly more sad than I feel like I have a right to be. I'm going to college because it's what I'm supposed to do, but you will not make me excited about it. I am seventeen, lying on my friend's extra bed that only gets pulled out of the closet for guests, and feeling more at home on this borrowed mattress than I have in my own for weeks.
I've been thinking about a lot of these things lately. Like the first time I spelled the word "king." I think I was three and eating macaroni and cheese for breakfast. Or how my sister still sucks her thumb. Or when Kerry told me that their perception is my reality, which I've given a lot of thought.
In the big picture, if their perception is my reality, does anything even belong to me? These memories: chasing baby frogs around the park wearing a green, cotton dress with a rosy floral print or making Hobey laugh with my "I'm on sabbatical" story. Are they all subject to other people's perception? Sure. Of course. My mother took me to the park that day and I know for a fact that she doesn't remember because I've asked her. (She wasn't the one chasing baby frogs, why would she remember?) Hobey's got a right to make assumptions about the kind of preschooler I was based on the stories I told him. But for some reason, I think the buck stops there.
But, hey, let's keep rolling with this train of thought. Their perception is my reality. My perception is their reality too then, isn't it? I, an individual, can also be a part of a group. "Me" can be part of a "they." My perception is their reality. My perception is that Christine is going to have a great senior year. Things will keep looking up for Katy. Becca will get good grades. Women will stop being objectified and subjected to the prude/whore dichotomy. My sister will make friends. I will make friends. Oreos will continue to be made for as long as I live. These are my perceptions, but I'm sure that everyone else has a million other perceptions, and they're all different. Mine's different than yours is different than Becca's is different than Chris Pratt's*.
If all of these people's different perceptions are affecting reality then even what is reality? When perception is left up to an insanely diverse group of people that control the reality of one person, do they even have control over anything? It's like if five different people are pulling on something, that thing will not move if all the people are pulling equally as hard. But when one person, a stronger person, pulls, the thing could move. So do some people have more sway over reality than others? That's not fair. For example, if a very strong person is pulling in one direction, and three weaker people are pulling in the opposite direction, will it move? This entire thing seems extremely subjective.
The other day, I rented the August: Osage County movie and Karen says to Barb, "It, like everything else, lives somewhere in the middle. It's not cut and dry or black and white; nothing lives there, except you."
***
At the waterfront of Lake Champlain, me with my hands in the water, Becca off being an adventurer, the tiny grains of sandy stone were swirling around my hands and I was so lost. The buzzing was encroaching on my ability to form a coherent thought and everything I was feeling was distant and blurry and painful, like I was numb but everything still felt sharp, like I was looking at my life through a telescope lens covered in scratches. Becca kept calling my name but all I could think about was the sand sliding out from under my palms and then coming back to make the backs of my hands itch. My team was congregating a hundred feet and a set of stairs away and all I could do was cry as my cleats sank farther and farther into the wet beach. When I finally stood up, I thought only about crawling back into Katy's extra bed. There it felt like possibility; here, at seventeen and sadder than I should be, it feels like doom.
*This is Chris Pratt. Someone stop this man before he takes over the world with his adorableness.
PEW. PEW. MY HEART.
(If you're a jelly donut and a modern jackass, you'll listen to this song.)
You know I could be anyone
God forgive what I should have done
My thoughts enough to guilty be
And yes, I guess I made this bed
But I’ll take the sidewalk instead
That’s how we deal with boys with me
But despite what you’ve been told
I once had a soul
Left somewhere behind
A former friend of mine
And I hate to sound so true
But I mean nothing to you
So with the streetlights they shine bright
I’ll be home tonight
"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."
-Welcome to Night Vale, Pilot
I know this post has a lot of words and also a lot of visual and audio content. On behalf of Starfleet, I'd like to apologize. This week has been a logistical nightmare. Other than that, here's my favorite song from Mama Mia.
They're supposed to be getting married, but the male chorus members are dancing in flippers and I'm crying.
