Senior year. Some weird english class we were in together. We weren't close yet but it was already clear to me that you were overly perceptive and it was super irritating. Regarding myself as acutely unfanciable added a rawness to moments like these. The obsession that would lead to a lengthy passionless relationship was already well under way and the sentiment torqued me. In the first days after you dropped the quote I was dented but reflective and the idea continued to unroll in my life in the most startling way. Right after you said it you saw my face and looked shocked. It was clear you never thought I'd take your statement as a gut punch. You corrected your coordinates immediately. "I meant I can't see you tolerating all of the crap. I just figured you'd be like 'fuck this I'm out of here.'"
Later when I reviewed it more closely I realized it was all true in the strangest way. It was a compliment because I did in fact represent myself as someone who wasn't very interested in anything conventional and that certainly is my true nature. Yet I tolerated convention and the basis of an ordinary relationship more than I thought I ever could. Meanwhile I was doing other things in my head. Needing to fit in was the basis of so many errors on my path. The one shot I had in that time period to have something outside of it and I parsed it like a curious cat with a mouse until I killed it. I guess I didn't know how to find the exit from the fire engulfed warehouse filled with so much sameness. But I never wanted to be anybody's girlfriend or anybody's wife. Most of the the partnerships I was exposed to that carried these labels needed the label to exist and how the hell is that worth having at all? I never saw real possession or passion working out very well in that frame. At the heart of it I wanted things that were never what they looked like. But it is disheartening to see how I still embraced so much substance-free bullshit.
As a girl when my Barbies played out my innermost fantasies it seemed like playing house should have more freedom to it. The only time I put myself in a typical situation in my life I felt like I needed a lot of pointless accoutrement. The accessories of false happiness can even outweigh the pile of crap Barbie had. Stupid gifts. A gold ring. Materialism that masquerades as sentimentalism. The position of some women and men: Find yourself in a scenario that is deeply sexually and personally unsatisfying and fill it up with a lot of stuff.
The expectations and their dangling associations just swell like that fish you never thought could get that big. Suddenly it's looking into you and fuck. Careers that account for nothing but the amount of money they return so that we can push around babies in prams and send them to discussion colleges. Soulless decorative accents like leather framed mirrors and resin fruit from Bed Bath & Beyond (replacing the presence of our own creative accomplishments with the dingy emotional energy of things mass produced on the other side of the world). Margaritas with annoying friends whose only commonality is that they are in the same situation. Weight gain and depression. The constant need to never admit reluctance about the house of cards you've built because "I love my family more than anything else." As if neglecting the lessons of the larger mandala that is "anything else" doesn't favor a type of starvation for any sort of family. Blind acceptance of societal mores is hardly a substitute for being conscious of who you are and what you are doing.
I never mean to offend but I can't help seeing the world this way. Those who opt out of it are judged just as harshly. I'm not sure a bunch of strangely evolved primates were supposed to strike out this way. Our brains and their mysterious abilities seem a little lost with all this self-induced numbness. We live in a culture where we incessantly need things we don't need at all. It poisons our sex in every possible way. When I can't walk the plausible road or make who I am look more like what is around me I have to remember that I didn't come here to placate just to socialize. I need to have an aspect. I need to be considerate. I need to be kind. But I came to fuck, fight, and write. I came in search of specific things and I kept letting all that other shit distract me along the way. I don't need to explain myself to anybody. Fuck this, I'm out of here.
