miike snow - silvia

every few months i'll hear a song that i'll listen to on repeat for hours.
i get this from my mother.

every song she got into, she would ruin. they may have been a good song at some point, but they've been driven into the ground by the constant blaring through the stereo at all hours.

once, the song was the tracie chapman's "give me one reason". at some point, i couldn't handle it anymore, and early one morning before she woke up, i took her cd out of the player and ran to my bedroom.

for my birthday i got a stereo with a cd player. it was a top loading one, one where you could just hit the mechanical eject button and the lid would pop open, exposing a spinning cd that wasn't quite ready to be ejected. you could take the cd out and the laser would be sitting awkwardly at the very point where it was last reading whatever cd was in it. i often touched it and pushed it back and forth along its track. it made an uncomfortable buzzing/grinding noise that was ridiculously satisfying to me.

while certainly not the highest quality, the shoddy lid was perfect for what i was going to do. i put in the cd and feverishly set it to track 9, the song i had been listening to for the past several days from the time my mom dragged herself out of bed and sort of got us ready for school, to the time i got home from school, and up until 3 or 4 in the morning when my mom would give up on drinking boxed wine and crying over the speakers and put herself to bed.

i set it to track 9 and then i quickly pressed eject, yanked the cd out and set it aside and looked at the laser reader that i shouldn't have been touching and touched it. i touched it in a way where i marked with my fingers the distance between the spindle and the laser and i, taking care not to alter the distance between my forefinger and thumb, brought it up to the tracie chapman cd and measured where track 9 was on the cd. holding my finger at the same spot, i reached for anything. i grabbed a ballpoint pen, slid my finger out of the way and stabbed at that very point. i didn't break the cd, i didn't make a huge hole, i just fucked it up. not a lot, just a little bit.

i coyly went back downstairs and quietly put the cd back in the player, just in time for us to wake up for school.

i don't know where i learned to do sneaky, evil things like that.

i do know that i never had to hear that song against my will anymore though.

i'm going to feel terrible for my children when i bimonthly listen to only one song for hours. and i'll understand why my mp3 file will suddenly be corrupted corrupted... or whatever my little sneaky shit head kids have to do to shut me up.

we'll always have 2*sweet

sometimes i forget, but as you leave for good, i remember why i have my father's name tattooed on my left wrist.

i almost burned my house down. i almost left a candle burning.

i ate some pizza. i thought i hated it but i actually loved it.

i almost died because i almost choked on it.

getting silly.

a few weeks ago, i stayed up till i had to go to work because i couldn't stop crying about nothing in particular.

i blamed it on dragging a dead deer up a hill. an album by one girl with one guitar singing (kind of) 12 songs that are so dreamy and creepy and you can't fall asleep because it can't be better or worse than what you're feeling while awake and listening to it.

so i didn't fall asleep. i listened to heavy water/i'd rather be sleeping on repeat for hours and stared blankly ahead. i imagined i was in a giant body of water, and my hair way way longer and blonder. actually it might not have been me. but i was imagining it anyway. the body was backlit and the water was greenish. not like offensive nature algae green, not really blue at all. i feel like i've seen it before in a music video that i can't place. a music video i saw in my house in westchester as a kid when i would watch tv into the late hours and pretend to be asleep when my mother would come in.
so this girl is floating, there are bubbles all around. sometimes the girl is me, sometimes i'm looking at her.

sometimes, the vision would become to big and break me. and then i would cry. not sob. but tear up and sniffle and try to place the blame. i would think about my mistakes and pick one and hold it accountable for the pain i felt. i changed my mind for what seemed like hours. i tried to think of what i could tell my friends when i told them how i had not slept the night prior. i tried to pick the most believable, most appropriate reason for staying up...

i wasn't trying to deceive. i was trying to not be embarrassed about the way i felt. i was embarrassed because i couldn't place it. i still can't place it. there is no one moment in my life that affected me so deeply that i feel this way tonight. i don't know if its in my nature, or personality type, or whatever, but i feel the need to explain every detail if why i feel the way i do.

or wait. no i don't. i think i just want to tell somebody i stayed up all night and it hurt. and i want them to know it and pay attention to it. i want someone [my friends] to picture the way i way i was sitting and to hurt at least a fraction of the amount i was hurting.

i wasn't trying to hurt. i was just trying to make myself believe that i can fix this. i don't actually know what i was trying to do.

i feel like i never come completely to terms with how i actually feel. when i try to share with my friends or other people of interest, i never capture in words all the ways i really feel. maybe 64% if that. so all my friends are only getting 64% of me and there is 36% of my that never makes it from my head to your (i use 'your' loosely) head. 36% is a gross generalization, maybe an expert has a more accurate percentage, but as far as i'm concerned, i've just come up with this theory just right now earlier in this paragraph. i don't believe that, though, because there are people who dedicate their entire live to figuring out why one feels the way they do. so basically i could come up with anything and chances are someone else has already thought about it and either executed it or.... or didn't.

in any case, i don't know how much of me is stuck in me and so i don't actually know how i feel.

i feel like i'm in a giant body of water, greenish in color, surrounded by bubbles. i'm completely weightless, i can't feel a thing.

i made it through the night. i made it through the workday. i made a cry for help.
and now i'm staring at this email from a friend, dreading facing a problem. because.

because either
my problem can't be fixed by someone who isn't me.
or i don't actually have a problem. it all seems so relative and i'm conditioned to think that someone is worse off than me.

wait
i just feel guilty. like i'm wasting your time with this. your, their, my, our, his, her, all the time in the world is wasted on my non-problem.

so i'm embarrassed again.
but still floating in greenish water.

tonight i did something different while listening to this album.
tonight i let it go. i made myself let it go. i can feel the tears hiding just beyond their exit point and i am holding them back effortlessly.. this isn't a struggle, this is an awareness.

tonight i', floating in a greenish body of water. i'm surrounded by bubbles. my hair is long, its lighter. i feel nothing.

get real.

as it gets colder, it becomes easier to blame my problems on the weather.

i'm sick, achy, tired. its cold and wet outside and i don't want to do anything because of it.


the fact is, that i've felt this way for months. i thought i would write about it all the time, but i feel like i've become more self aware in the past few months. with this new self awareness, i've become increasingly annoyed and embarrassed of myself. i don't know why i do anything i do. i'm constantly losing sight of what i'm working towards and i just want to throw in the towel and get married and focus on building babies.

that's so fucking terrible, i don't even have health insurance.


its not cool to be depressed. its not cool to acknowledge it. or is it? i don't know. really though, the past few months have been a steady stream of miserable with a few moments of happiness that are quickly over as soon as i lay in my bed by myself and have a second to catch up with myself. its embarrassing to talk about. i feel like i should be above it, i feel like i should have this shit on lock by now, its only been 24 years.

i feel stupid about it, i feel like i burden those around me when i let it slip that i'm in a bad mood or not feeling great. it might be because i've done the same to those around me for years, looking at them like they were spoiled pieces of shit as they whine about their first world problems.

i dont have any real problem right now. admittedly i'm disgustingly broke, but its not really bothersome, i can always ignore it. but there's a looming feeling of defeat and sadness around me all the time.

when oliver left, i filled it with weird relationships with probably too many guys that obviously went no where. obviously so as here i am, im the fireside house; updating my bullshit blog about my bullshit life by myself. i don't know what i was trying to prove... that i could be single? that i could exercise my right as a woman in 2009 and fuck whoever i wanted, no strings attached, no feelings hurt, nothing gained, nothing lost?

every idea i've adapted in the past year and a half is a pile of shit and i am a fucking liar. i'm not good at being single, everyone i have slept with has sort of broken my heart, and i think about people i shouldn't nearly constantly and fall asleep every night shaking my head in sort of regret and embarrassment.

so maybe this is about dudes. or maybe it isn't. maybe this is deeper than dudes and i just choose to focus on that because its easy and a temporary fix for a a general disdain for myself. that makes sense, but i bet i'm just making excuses for something i haven't quite figured out yet.

i thought a year and a half ago, when oliver left, and i was on my own- that i needed to prove how on my own i was. who am i kidding? i call my dad if i can't sleep at night, or if i need groceries. i'm a fucking pussy and i'm spoiled and i'm a sensitive baby.

i'm the exact opposite of the picture i've painted of myself in the past 16 months. i thought i would be forward, upfront, and honest... but i don't commit to actually being any of those. i just have molded myself into some awful combination of premature over-sharing, over-bearing, shitbag. cool.

i don't know what i'm doing. i don't know what or who i care about. i don't know nearly as much as i thought i did and i hate every embarrassing second of every terrible day.