I need to keep the door closed from our “media” room (two computers, my tv & surround system) against the noise from across the hallway in my parents’ tv room. The TV invades my head and tears pieces out while jumbling the rest.
—
A boy – the barely-still-teenaged brother of a friend of a friend – apparently hopped a bus last week, went to the states, shot two pedophiles, got on another bus which got pulled over by the cops, and before they got to him he shot himself to death. Different pieces of this story have been in the paper every single day for a week. Front page, mostly, but sometimes hidden unexpectedly, destroying a random look through the middle sheaves with more horrors such as an interview with someone from that second bus ride.
My heart aches for this boy’s family.
—
I have access to cable tv, but I haven’t hooked it up, and therefore have watched approximately two or three hours of regular programming in the past six months – mostly episodes of Earl or Raymond that my mom was watching. I feel like I’ve read the entire Internet, so I swung my way back around to televisionwithoutpity.com and realized that there were half a dozen shows on their recap list that I hadn’t even heard of, much less any that I’d watched enough to care about a particular episode.
—
I didn’t think I had a theme when I started writing, I was under the impression that my thoughts were random. Yet they seem to connect to how fragile I am when it comes to broadcast media. I take my news in small bites – usually a cursory scan of the front page of the paper each morning, and maybe a hint of a headline at an online forum or two. I feel too helpless as it is, I can’t seem to pull myself together enough to take in all the negativity on the airwaves, assimilate it, and actually do anything about it – and so I’m back to sticking my head in the sand and ignoring it all. I just don’t have the strength. It’s so goddamn negative. What are we doing to ourselves?
—
Ah, here’s the random. I’m in a total funk today. I’m so lonely my tears are a razor’s edge away, yet I turned down an invite to hang out and be snuggled because I feel completely anti-social. To top all that off, I’ve been haunted by thoughts of Kevin. The bare few people I mentioned this to don’t seem to understand what’s going on. I’m not missing him; I’m not wanting him; I had enough of that while he was away for three months while I stayed in our unfinished apartment, missing him and depressed and lonely over him and still not done with grief about Ethan; and I missed him, not knowing that’s what it was at first, for ten months after he got back. When I think of the nights he was inches from me in the bed and I felt afraid to touch him for fear of him pulling away… and later, he was as far onto the edge of the bed as possible… and finally, for months he slept on the couch. Did you know that? It was ostensibly because the puppy was keeping me awake and I was working but he wasn’t, but I doubt that was really it. — when I think of all that, and how much I longed for him then, I realize all my missing and longing is over and done with.
No, it’s not that I miss him. I’m literally haunted, like an unwelcome ghost. An unexpected glimpse of a couple holding hands in a certain area of town just about tore my throat out. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, but a while before it ended, we went for a walk downtown. We went together; we held hands on the way down; we had real conversation. I was ecstatic; I thought, oh, it’s getting better, it is! On the way back, my knee started to hurt, to slow me down. He kept getting ahead of me. I have a total complex about people having their backs to me, and I kept making him slow down and wait for me. He was getting more and more frustrated with me, and I with him. Finally I just gave up and let him get further and further ahead. Then I crossed the street. He didn’t even turn around. I was so angry, and it was so surreal, walking down the same street with all this space between us. I was almost wild-eyed with anger, hurt, and the goddamn symbolism.
So today as I walked past that place where I had seen a physical manifestation of the growing space between us, this couple crossed my vision holding hands, and my heart choked me. And so now he’s in my head. I wonder how we managed to fuck up something that was so good for so long; then I wonder, maybe it wasn’t good to start with. Do I blind myself? I’m sure we were happy. I was happy, I was. I’m sure I wasn’t blind. So then I get back to: what the hell happened? Where’d it go?
I did this for a while before we broke up: tried to make people swear that I was happy in the beginning, that he and I had fun and were right together. I couldn’t find anyone to disagree with me. It’s six months later; why am I doing it again now?
This is what happens when you repress feelings, I suppose. Maybe I would have been better off getting an apartment alone and going to work with red eyes for a month, instead of living with a houseful of people and being ‘strong.’
I think I’m done with this topic for now. Exorcism, indeed. I wonder what else is in my head?
—
I just spent another week or so watching Firefly through from start to finish. It is the only TV show I’ve ever been so emotionally invested in that it actually pains me that there are no more than 13 episodes. It’s literally the best television I’ve ever seen. That includes watching k.d.lang give the performance of her life at the Junos recently (‘halleluja,’ look it up, 99 cents on iTunes); the last episode of M*A*S*H (and the episode where Henry goes into the sea); and you know what? I really can’t think of any other examples. Everything else is lifeless in comparison.
—
Speaking of k.d.lang and iTunes… I downloaded her Junos performance as well as her Live by Request album today. It’s mind-blowing. I saw it live and it gave me goosebumps then; this time I waited until I had it on the Nano and in the headphones so I’d be surrounded by the strength and emotion of her voice. I stood with my eyes closed, my back to the window so the light wouldn’t distract me, and just swayed.
I’m also on a P!nk kick – I bought her latest album on iTunes (LOVE ITUNES) and have been listening to it for a week, and today I ripped the two CDs I own, and then realized I was missing the fourth so I iTunesed that, too. And, ha, I just realized I was listening exclusively to Pink while on the walk whose main objective was to obtain a pink iPod sock for my Nano (which I got, and which goes smashingly with my green camera sock).
[there’s kevin in my thoughts again – i’m mentally telling him to bite me, i am allowed to listen to whatever the fuck crap pop junk music i like, and kiss my ass with that snobbery]
—
There were four birthdays in the office this week. We had four stealth cards to sign, four half-hearted, incredibly-slow renditions of “happy birthday” – and four goddamn cakes.
—
I’ve been getting an average of 12 hits a day on my jewellery site. Real hits, by real people, referred from sites I post to. They stay to look, too, with a 2-minute average visit length. I’ve sold a grand total of four pieces – one to Rae from getbent.ca, one to a former coworker, and two to my aunt.
Yip-de-fucking-doo.
In addition, I have had zero ambition to do a damn thing in my workspace, despite the gorgeous beads I have waiting for me. Possibly it’s the fact that I haven’t cleaned my freaking room in a few weeks and it’s hard to get at anything.
—
I think maybe my head is empty enough for me to stop typing now. I hope sleep comes tonight.