OLD GHOSTS
a dialogo for nowhere people.
Hi
If I’m being honest, I thought the previous post would be my last post here. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I told Tumblr that I’m doing my shadow work, and that’s why I’m here. Going back to the source of water that kept me alive during my trek through the desert (this is a metaphor for teen-hood if you were wondering.)
Where have I been? What have I been doing? Everything and nothing.
It’s senior year, which I can’t believe– a relief and another thing that makes it hard for me to breathe. School is good, but also grueling, which is my own fault because I want all of the glory. For people (colleges) to see my 4.2 GPA and grovel at my feet. Burying myself in school and work has made my habit of confession more difficult. I’m a barista now at the coffee shop downtown that I always used to write about. Isn’t that so funny?– like life’s way of kissing me on the cheek. The work is so rewarding (the people-watching I get to do!), but also humiliating. The old men who come in say when I ask, do you want sugar in your coffee?-- “Just dip your finger in it, it’ll make it sweet enough.” I still occasionally write for the paper. My triumphs include becoming captain of the tennis team and getting the part I wanted in the spring musical.
I love my classes this year– AP Lit and European History, Astronomy, which makes me feel studious– a taste of the liberal arts education I’ll receive next year. I read and obsess over Mary Shelley, feeling kindred. In Astronomy, I made a presentation about the constellation I was born under, and found myself entranced by the story of Ganymede, a story of rape or Zeus’s blind admiration. I think of how I’ve fallen into the cupbearer role, chosen by some man that feels all knowing, who I can’t tell wants to kiss or kill me. All alone in the room with my AP Euro teacher (I’m the only student in the class lol), we talk about how the medieval period calls to us. He goes on about romanticism, spirituality, and drugs, and I try not to laugh because girls like me write about men like you!
I have HIM for study hall. Something that feels like a joke because it’s so funny. With him, I don’t even know where to begin– We’ve been fused together, attached to the hip. The fusing started last year, when the seniors left, it was just us. What turned into me running errands for him turned into us spilling our guts to each other for two weeks. We’d tell each other everything. He’d ask about my dad, and I’d try not to cry, telling me how sorry he was. He even told me about the divorce— I didn’t even have to beg or plead, it just came out. The way he eased me into it, as if knowing his separation would be a letdown for me. Especially after all the things I told him about my father. When he told me, I went silent, because to me, it was so glaringly obvious. The timing of everything, the birth of his second child— how, going into my freshman year, all the sophomores warned me about him, mentioning a messy divorce. He asked if, when my parents separated, I blamed myself for it. I said yes— telling me he’s afraid that his daughter will feel that way too. I’ve worked my way into his family, telling his daughter that we’re sisters. Makes me think of this Tori Amos lyric – as if he’s loaning his family to me.
In the empty classroom, he’d joke that I was his therapist– but to me it wasn’t a joke. I loved psychoanalyzing him and how he psychoanalyzed me. In the margin of my chemistry notes, I wrote “My very own Jung.” He talked about me making him want to cry with my kindness, my open ears, and it feels so odd, so heavy, that it makes me want to lay my head on my desk and just cry. I don’t understand why it tugs on me the way it does– I’ve been messaged by pedophiles, this is all so tame.
It’s his solace in me that makes me wonder, Isn’t that what your friends are supposed to do– your wife? I don’t know my place, I don’t know what I am, and I don’t know how I’ve gotten him this close— this man that’s so avoidant. Before, he was a man who made me feel special, seen– but now he’s like my friend, a man who’s seen and made me cry– a man I wrote a letter to, telling him things I wouldn’t dare to say out loud. But this– this doesn’t unnerve him. He throws blankets over my barbed wire. I can’t tell if he lacks boundaries, but it’s something that’s too risky for me– a girl who holds herself wide open.
It was hard for me on the last day. I left his room all moody and said, “Guess I’ll never see you again.”-- he laughed and told me I can always email him. We ended up emailing each other all summer. On the way back from the amusement park, my friend asked about the emails. She said, “I can’t imagine how awkward it’ll be when you see him in person after emailing each other the entire summer.”— I thought it would have been awkward, but it just made everything more open, and messy– like the opening of a can or a 2-liter that’s been shaken.
After my study hall is his lunch period, and sometimes I’ll sit with him– talking about nothing or everything. A few months ago, we ripped ourselves open. Me and him in the classroom– protein bar on his desk. Croaked out, “I’ve never been vulnerable with a person like you before.” He was all tucked into himself, “What do you mean?” I gave him the lousy answer— blamed it on the man who raised me, the man who would discuss my developing body at dinner like it was the weather. My whole life, men come expecting, and I give, reluctantly or out of habit. I’m waiting for the moment, waiting for when the hand bites down. I’m on guard, a scared rabbit. Convinced that maybe I’m the pervert. But it’s so hard, all the monsters have the same face, same words, same hands. He’s the shadow of them. I don’t know the difference between love and pain— between leering and gazing, between him and THEM.
I’m so terribly attached. Like when a few weeks ago I was in the hallway crying, and he spotted me, took the textbook out of my hand, and told me to sit with him along the window seal. He asked me what was wrong. I told him the truth that lies on the surface like fat. It was really because I wasn’t able to see him that morning– but I feel so ashamed to admit that. So ashamed that our relationship shadows those I’ve had with men, but because I’m damaged goods, I can’t tell if he wants to be parental or wants to fuck me. In the midst of all this, I seek comfort in old ghosts. Men that are perfectly far away. It’s like I collect them like charms.
I slipped up and told a few friends about him planning to visit me in college— wanting to brag and see them squirm, but it was too unsettling for them. St*ane’s name was thrown around, and I wish I had never mentioned it. It’s just such an odd spot— if it was wrong, he wouldn’t have said it, right? I’ve decided to put a lock on it all, won’t even mention it to mom.
All I do is read into things. Read into him and the movements he makes. At a point, everything was a move— a scribble in my journal, but now I just try to be less cynical. To think that he just wants to be a figure in my life (“Ever since freshman year, I’ve felt this need to take care of you.“ What do I say to this?) To smile when a man hugs, leans against, or touches me. It’s like they’re kittens that bite and scratch too hard, and to ignore the discomfort, I say, “They don’t know what they’re doing.” People think I’m too cautious, but I think, how can I not? Assault in the family, Lolita at 14, the ep*tein files— my life has been marked by pedophilic panic and mass hysteria. I understand why he fills my gaps, but how do I fill his? I think he tries to live through me. Whenever we talk about college, his eyes get all wide, all smiles, tell me how much I’ll love it, how much fun I’ll have.
It’s so easy for me to say or write that I’m nervous for college, but the truth is, it’s the peace I’ve been needing my whole life, to finally be away. Family is a problematic word, a problematic thing in my life, that’s why I cling to him, but college has emphasized this. There are so many holds, so many fingers in my hair that tell me what to do, where to go– who make me feel bad for choosing higher education. All this time in between the sobs, in between the feelings of hurt, and being misunderstood by my family, I thought that all this pulling from them was in my best interest– but the truth is that it’s not. Mom was worried for a while, and sometimes she’d get mean– saying why she didn’t understand, or that I shouldn’t go and just stay home. She knows that I know that this place isn’t home, which is a relief– a relief to hear her say “Don’t let people control you, even me.” I hate it here, but there’s still this thread– it’s not home, but it’s familiar. Again, HE has been so involved in the college stuff, more than my own mother. Maybe it should annoy me, but it makes me feel so giddy– him telling me “You’ve been over high school since the day I met you.”
But the emotion of thinking about college is so big that I just want to sob– I’m changing so much– finally growing up. I’m so happy and so afraid. That here, what is “home” to me will no longer be. It’s so foreign to think I’ll be living there, in that city, where I left school earlier to get that American Girl Doll for my birthday. That there I’ll cry and laugh, feel heartbroken and full of love, what a new thing, new concept. It’s emptiness– vacant memories that I haven’t lived through yet, but there’s hopefulness. It’s like what he once wrote in an email the night I was crying about my senior friends leaving– “you’re leaving childhood behind.” I listen to Sufjan Stevens and sob, and I imagine that the woman I admire did the same at my age.
I feel so grown up and so young. Being a senior in high school feels like psychological warfare– you’re old enough to swear with your teachers, but you still have to put your phone away, or you’ll get sent down to the office. You notice people take unnecessary swipes at you because of high school hierarchy, and the calls of juvenile tradition that leaves kids brainwashed.
My friends and I all have jobs, bank accounts, and colleges to apply to, all the while knowing nothing, and haven’t been scorned yet by life. Maybe it’s ignorant, but I think that this time is so beautiful and that it’s okay to know absolutely nothing– it doesn’t make me stupid, it means that I’m learning, in the earlier stages of my metamorphosis.
I feel like Lena Dunham’s work encapsulates this arrested development perfectly. And while I know everyone hates her, her work means so much to me. I watched Girls my sophomore year, feeling transfixed (Girls is my Sex and the City, I said it). I watched Too Much earlier this year and felt weepy at the Meg Stalter casting, how our childhoods were so similar, and she’s a midwestern plant like me. Gasped at the cover of her new book– Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Or how the other night I watched Tiny Furniture (plz watch it omg) and realized I needed to take the pilgrimage back here– to be self-indulgent like I once was because trying to be a serious writer who writes about other people, about fiction, makes the words stiff and dead. I will always crave the personal essay– the piece where the awkward girl talks about sex and her relationships with men and the world (*I Hate Myself by Joanna Arnow, xoxo). It gives me inspiration, an ember that I can blow on until it becomes a flame.
This leads to another new triumph– my first publication. Since I’ve turned eighteen, it’s been a personal goal to publish, but you know this because I couldn’t stop writing about it here!
I wrote the story after getting high with some guy-friends of mine. I did my best impersonation of so-and-so writer I’d been following on instagram. I showed it to some friends, and they liked it– (remembering showing it to one friend who said “I feel like you’re scared or holding yourself back in this piece,” which was so so insightful), they would tell me who they imagined as the teacher character, which was funny and scary. I sent it to Danielle Chelosky, which felt like shooting an arrow, mainly because I thought she would never get to it, thinking the arrowhead would never land. I can’t even explain the high I felt to get an email from her– to send her revised drafts during my breaks at work. The story might be sloppy– might be a collection of the art that floats around in my subconscious, but I am proud, which feels terrible to say, due to my insecurity and belief that everything I write is mediocre– teenage babble disguised as prose. I was in correspondence with a poet from the city where I was born. He called it a “strong debut,” which felt like shaking hands with crossed fingers.
A few months ago, I went to a poetry reading. It was fun but alienating. To be surrounded by these authors who all knew each other, making jokes that I didn’t understand. It made me feel like I was back in middle school— there for the moment, for the joke, but never a part of it. I just moped around the room, clutching my glass of lemonade. I talked to one poet whose poem I really liked. She asked me if I was a student at the college, and I just laughed, said, “I’m still in high school.” She gave me a smile and thanked me for coming. The thing I don’t understand is how comfortable those writers were with reading their work out loud. To me, it’s like wearing wet clothes.
Since August, I’ve been working on a poetry project that I want to say I half care about, but I want it to breathe, to live, to reverberate around minds. It’s hard to gauge whether any of the writing is actually good, but because I enjoy most of it, I consider it good. It was born with stupid and naive intentions that I’m too embarrassed to say– to be born, shipped off, and picked apart by someone with a fancy degree from the college my father went to. I had a deadline, trying to write a poem twice a week, but a month in, I realized that this wasn’t the way it should be, added too much unnecessary pressure, so I let the deadline pass– let it glide down my back like water because Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day, and there’s always time to harvest later.
In the midst of wanting to feel new, I started compiling all my entries here to see what it would look like– how many pages it would add up to. I wanted to print them, that way I could physically feel them, take out the red pen– annotate like an editor or a reader. But when I think about it, I feel so angry at myself. You’re not trying to reevaluate your words from the past; you’re trying to exploit them. I don’t know why I feel this way, why I feel the need to chase the way other writers do. I talk with other writers who are published almost every other week, and they ask me Oh, what are you writing now, and I just want to scream Nothing!!! Because I’m not crazy like you– because the words were always sacred, and meant for my eyes only.
This whole “I published my first book– insert whatever age you want” feels so high school. So see how accomplished I am? And for a while I wanted that, but now I don’t. I know that this career, this industry, is something I’ll eventually come in contact with. Next year I’ll be shipped off to have a go— a guess at what I want to do for the rest of my life. All I do is write, so why not? Why should I be afraid? (I am I am I am)
But the one thing that feels good and true is the middle school-shaped story in my heart. My dearest, dearest Opal. I love whatever form she comes in, a poem, or a chapter or two. A book that’s the story’s doppelgänger comes out in July– a writer instead of a modern artist. While I could be sad over it, make me go “Oh, I’ve never had an original thought,” or worry that if I nurse the story enough, I’ll be accused of the P word (not even going to say it). It makes me happy because it feels like a confirmation. Makes me want to shake that author’s hand, but it’s metaphorical because I don’t want to be weird.
I’ve been clinging to all the authors I adore. I dream about my words being put into an iridescent bag– meeting Jamie Hood on the L train, while the splash of a big puddle cleans New York City. Or my constant dreams about k.e.r’s Book 2. I listen to Rasputina and read Margaret Atwood, Joyce Maynard, and Anne Carson– floating around the school feeling invincible, but then a freshman will cut me in the lunch line. I’m miserably happy– like a piece of gum stuck under a table. Like a lazy cat lying by a sunlit window, yawning and stretching her body out, batting you with her paws.
I love you all so much that I want to make all of you coffee and tea.
P.S. New comfort playlist, featuring Apollo, my baby, on the cover.