if I gave you my number would it still be the same

Remember last Sunday? I do, but only generally. Like; I'm aware it was a day. I'm aware it was different than today. A whole week ago! I believe, in the bestest brightest way possible, that Part Two of the Sunday Top Ten: "Back in the 90s" will be coming later this week. Clarissa will explain it all, it'll smell like teen spirit, and all ye younguns will sport your hot outfits in a photographic retrospective envying the Amy Grant soundtracked Graduation Video that played at my middle school graduation.

Do people still give slide shows? Is there any chance ... like ... any chance at all ... of going back? To slideshows, black and white teevee, the milkman, 'zines, etc?

Wait. NEVER MIND ... I couldn't ever go back to 1995 for real because ... if it was 1991/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 ... there'd be no Uh Huh Her. Who would be Tinkerbell's new number one band? Would you still believe in something?

I don't have a brand new inventive post in me right now so I'm gonna ramble instead. Honestly, it's so fucking weird to think about how from now on I'll never be posting from that little cave I lived in until yesterday! The cave where I lost my mind and lost ahold of like -- ME! I mean ... wtf? That space ... that room ... that emo-cave ... has been so central to a certain phase of evolution and similarly to a certain phase of solitary self-destruction.

You get into a routine. You're up up up up up up up and more up up up up up up and then down. There's the computer, radiating possibility of connection without having to face anything, really, face to face, and what if I don't like your face? and if you dare to go outside I was proven right right away -- yes, you're right, people are annoying, and they talk too loud, and want all the wrong things.

Speaking of the nineties ...

So I felt anchored in that emo cave like I've never felt anchored before. As in; not at the port. But drowning. Anchored by the weight of books, hundreds of books and the shelves that held them. By running to the hospital with photocopies while my limbs wondered if I'd ever eat or feel again. Anchored by an empty bank account, that silly meaningless determined vessel.

Anchored by the weight of moving in at a low point and never really recovering and this week has been a blur of wishing just once I could move without mourning and then remembering how often I used to. How many times I moved not only without mourning but WITH determination.

How I used to move with pride, violently alone.

When in doubt: go. Did you hurt me? Time to go. A fight? Let's fight for the door except that wait just kidding, I'm already there, and that do you hear that sound that it is the sound of it shutting.

I knew, after all, the danger of depending.

Because, speaking of the nineties, one day I dared to write in my diary that my Dad was the only good thing in my life and the next day I woke up and went to school at Pioneer and then during 9th hour because I didn't have a 9th hour I went to McDonald's with my theater friends and I ate two cheeseburgers and french fries and a Coke. We came back to school and there were messages for me.

I read the messages & waited outside alone for the woman who'd left the messages to come pick me up. She drove me away from school 'cause what had just happened while I'd been eating cheeseburgers is that my Dad died. I'd told my diary he was the only good thing in my life and so then he died.

So. At 14 I became fierce, cold, and mean. Violent without touching. Violent 'cause when I said "fuck off" I meant it and I stayed that way for years and years.

This thing where I depend? That thing? That's new to me. I mean, I'm so new at it. There's not many things I'm new at anymore but I'm new at: being broke, not going to a physical workplace every day and also I'm new at depending.

Because back then? You'd never catch me caring. Like in public. Alone: alone I could do anything! I could cry, cut, starve, fuck, try try try to feel something -- ANYTHING -- anything else.

And this brings us to the part where I'm trying to roll up my own carpet to leave the dorms that semester and I have to ask an RA to help me 'cause I realize suddenly it's a physically impossible task and per ush I'm the last one in the dormitory, determined to do it alone, because that's what I DO, that's what I DO! I do it alone. I don't want help. Help is for people who can't hack it on their own, help is for losers and I, I, I iiiiiiii am a winner. mememememe.

I had my own money from my Dad and on top of that I always worked as often as I could so I had more than enough so I can pay for you and you and you and then ultimately memememe. And the RA says "Sure," surprised of course that that girl (the only first year student to actually request a single, the girl who didn't wanna meet new people and at 19 had already lived away from home for four years, like in a CITY ) (that girl who liked to dissappear on walks to places the other kids didn't know about and for a few weeks had to disappear to her home and stay with her Mom even though she hadn't done that in years. That girl who'd locked everything in SO TIGHT that it made her too sick to move) was talking to him at all, let alone asking for something.

"Why are you doing this alone?" he asks, squinting his eyes like I'm crazy.

I say, "My Mom's at work," even though she's not. My Mom asked if I wanted help and i said No, No, No, NO! I will do this alone.

I'll be Little Orphan Annie despite the facts. I'll beat you to the door, I'm telling you, don't fucking test me, when I run out it'll be like a slammed the door in your face but FYI my face is so over your face it needs a whole new word for Over, and Face.

Those who've gotten away from me:
read this, and call.
Those whom I've hurt:
I wanted everything, or not enough.
It was all my fault.
-Stephen Dunn, "Loves"

And I kept doing that. Packing up car after car alone. Doing everything for all the wrong/right reasons. But all around me I saw people depend and I though that was maybe a good back-up plan if this plan ever failed.

So this lead me, ultimately, to 2004, moving out here (alone) and busting a tire at 3 A.M. in New Jersey. My whole life was in my car and I was fucking determined to make it out alive and alone. I was saved, ultimately, by a good samaritan in a serial killer van. But before he came I don't know if I was ready to disappar or determined to keep going.

Natalie says; "You know, you always do things I'd never do 'cause I'd be too afraid it'd kill me and maybe that's just 'cause you're not like --" and then [the pause].

Chelsea says; "Marie, aren't you? Afraid?" when the topic of death comes up one afternoon in the dorms (the one I couldn't move the carpet out of). No, of course not, I say, paying only half attention. How silly. Here, is here, and here is okay. And there is with my Dad, and so that's okay too, and so what's the big deal? Death is not THIS but that doesn't mean it's not okay.

When did this change? When did I change? When did I start caring so hard that I had to stop caring even harder?

And where's the middle ground, between me and not me, between anchors and flying, between leaving and refusing to leave? The line between love and hate isn't all that thin, but the line between love and love? It's a gulf. It's a terrifying gulf and as you try to leap across it, hate will grab you by the horns and it will hurt and if you make it to the other side ... that's love. And now you've earned it after all.

I don't know. I don't know the answers to these questions. Right now, thanks to Team Crisis (A;ex, Stef, and -- for the very very heavy stuff -- A;ex's friend Eric, with his man-muscles), all my shit is now in a storage unit. Or in the trash or at the salvation army or sold or donated.

With me: I've got a suitcase and my heart and a desire to move into a middle ground where I can be on a Team without needing a Team Crisis.

Right now I'm in A;ex's basement in Long Island. I have abso-fucking-lutely no idea where I'm gonna live or really what I'm gonna do, like with my life, and that fucking pisses me off, and will probs gaurantee at least ten more panic attacks this week, but my Mom always told me that thing about lemons and lemonade. Like how you should make lemonades out of lemons if that's what you get. And another thing my Mom taught me is that people can fuck you up but people can change. People will change, no matter what the stakes. People CAN change.

And who doesn't like lemonade? Assholes, that's who. People who can't spare a nickel. Look. If I can spare a nickel, you can spare a nickel.

I hope I win the calendar contest, I'd love to know what day it is, how time passes, you know. how we go on.

So anyway here I am in the middle of wherevs in the basement 'cause there's no wireless upstairs and a;ex made me dinner. We sat outside on the back porch and I thought oh my god it is so quiet. And I thought, if I'm gonna do this, I mean really do this, I mean get back to the mememememe I was before I somehow lost it ....

I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but sometimes when I trust someone else with gravity it's like my heart looks at me and is like, "really?" and then before I can answer it goes, it flutters away like the happiest bird of all time. It goes before I answer, like it has wings I'd never noticed before, I'd just thought "what nice shoulder blades you have."

I mean that first my heart drops to my gut, and then directly to the sky. And then it disappears. And I watch it go and I nod because I'm okay with that.

And I guess what I'm saying is; everyone I love, I need you now.

I need you because I don't. I need you because I want you, because I want to choose who I want close to me. Because ... actually, ultimately ... like you've shown me a million trillion times ... I can't really count on anyone but me.

And so I know that. And so after that, I mean after learning that again ... I've chosen to count on you. And you, and you, and you. I want to love you all and I can't let anyone else tell me what to do or who to love if I'm going to just be true to myself. And so I've chosen to count on you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and trust me, you know, I've got my back, and I'm sorry, for what I said, but I've got it, I've got my own back, here's the trust fall, and here's my trust, and let me, because, it was my turn to decide and all I know is that I should.

"Listen, my truest love.
I've tried to clear a late century place for us
in among the shards.
Lie down, tell me what you need.
Here is where loneliness can live with failure,
and nothing's complete.
I love how we go on."
-Stephen Dunn, "Loves"
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