05/03/01: Regression
You know what it is? I couldn’t quite elucidate on this yesterday, I couldn’t pull the words out of my fingers. It’s that longing back again. I used to get it all the time back in high school, when I was about 16. Every movie I saw, every book I read, every song I heard, used to paint some picture for me of the world as it did not exist for me. I remember being absurdly, self-consciously jealous of Belle from Beauty and the Beast, yes, knowing that she was a cartoon character, because she got OUT. She had an adventure. She longed for it just like I did (“I want adventure in the great wide somewhere, I want it more than I can tell”) and then she got it. Didn’t seem fair, somehow.
I also remember very clearly every time I went to the city, how looking at all the buildings and the people seemed to underline the thinness of my life. Here was something big, something exciting, something real, and it wasn’t for me. I could see the graceful on and off-ramps, I could pass by the buildings, I could see a show and pretend not to be part of the school group, but at the end of the day I was heading back to Westchester and there was nothing I could do about it. And there it was, that weird feeling in my solar plexus like a balloon blowing up in there, slowly, pushing at my diaphragm. It would almost hurt to breathe. I just wanted everything. And New York City was everything.
I am not saying that these feelings were unique to me. I think this is something about being a teenager, even if that in itself is a trite thought. But what’s freaking me out is that it’s back, that nameless yen. For a while, just living here in NYC seemed to answer any question I had before I asked it. “Where’s my –” “You’re in NYC!” “I think I –” “You’re in NYC!” “Isn’t there a –” “You’re in NYC!” But that isn’t working anymore. It’s like getting used to an alarm clock so that it doesn’t wake you up anymore. Or needing more Advil to get rid of that same headache.
So I’m back where I started, back needing music just to get me through the day. I'm back to every nerve tuned into that same station, listening, listening to everything, where is that thing that will make everything okay now?