06/19/00 (cont'd)
Okay, I officially quit. They didn't beg me to stay, but they didn't tell me "why not just leave NOW," which is good because I need to finish out the month...gotta earn that 3.33 hours of vacation time they have to pay me for.
So many changes going on in my life...but that's a good thing, I think. I'm no longer running from everything, it's more like I'm running TO everything. To everything that has always, up until this point, seemed totally out of my grasp.
And as difficult as it all is, I feel a strange sense of relief. And exhilaration. And sadness, for what I may be leaving behind. (A job that, yes, I hate, but I've grown comfortable with hating; a relationship that has lasted 4 years and, I thought, was going to last for the rest of my life, etc.) But I feel so good about no longer living as the scapegoat--the girl you can cut because she'll just sit there silently in the corner, bleeding and stewing about it while she pretends to be thankful you cut her.
Fuck that shit.
I need to start planning my week (almost) off upon our return from Florida. I have shitloads of crap to do that comprises all the shit I could do if I didn't have a day job. Like scheduling an appointment with my "advisor" (again, another loosely-used term), maybe scheduling an aptitude test (not an attitude test, which I would certainly fail) so I can figure out what the hell to be when I grow up (if ever), registering my fucking car (my tags expire this month--oh, well) and working on my story. I'm not an organized writer by any means. Half the time I just write scenes as they come to me and then try to figure out a way to tie them all together. Which seems kind of back-asswards, and certainly isn't what they taught me in my first "writing" class in high school, but fuck 'em--creative genius cannot be stifled by assinine rules and that sort of bullshit.
And I need to examine this obsession I have with my dog-walking buddy. He has expressed absolutely no interest in pursuing any kind of relationship with me beyond "casual acquaintance," I know only bits and pieces about him, our conversations are typically anything but flowing...and I think about him constantly. It's so ridiculous. I play out these scenes in my head, conversations we might have, things we each might think or say or do or whatever... I've done this my whole life. It was an excellent escape from my less-than-happy childhood. Create some lovely scene in your head and just let it roll. No wonder I ended up a worthless writer/actress. But it always got me over the biggest hurdles...except that time in the 5th grade when I got caught "talking out" one of my scenes, as I would often do when I was alone or thought I was being sufficiently ignored. That day, I thought I was. I was so, so wrong. Ugh. The good news is that the little fuckers who taunted me mercilessly over that incident are now mostly fat, ugly, minimum-wage earning Cess Pool trash to this day and I'm thin and cute and have the potential to be moderately successful because, unlike them, I don't have six kids and a trailer. Yes, I do hold a grudge.
I actually heard "Mickey" on the radio today on my way home for lunch. It's funny how much we loved that song when we were kids, and how long it took us to figure out that she was talking about a "pretty" guy named Mickey who would hold her hand but wouldn't put out. I wonder how long it took Toni Basil to figure out that Mickey was a raging fag...
I wish my geek buddy would hurry the fuck up with my computer. I'm really starting to miss it. I've been working on my story by hand (using a journal I bought for just such purpose) but it's really so much easier for me to write on a word processor. I wrote my first real stories on an ancient Smith Corona typewriter my grandpa bought me at a garage sale that had more business in an antique store than in a 10-year-old kid's bedroom. I can type more easily than I can write. And I can't write as quickly as I think.
"...when it rains it pours...when there's no one at the door...yes he did send me flowers...that was a long time ago..."
I feel like I'm embarking on yet another episode of life. My life seems to be a big series of lives all run together. Then I end one and start another one. Kind of like the movie "Orlando" and the way she would just like, blink, and be someone else, somewhere else, doing something totally different. But this time it's on my terms.
I just really hope I'm not fucking up collossally. I still have trouble trusting my own judgment a lot of the time. I'm told that's not uncommon for someone with a background similar to my own. It still sucks.
I just had this awful thought...Zak and I end up somehow screwing and he falls madly, stupidly in love with me. No, no, no...that's not how it's supposed to work at all. That would be sick and wrong. Almost as bad as the time I had a one-nighter with a friend of my friend E, and I was so proud of myself, and so giddy, and then the dumbass called me the next day. Jesus, buddy, that's why they call them "one-night stands," you're not SUPPOSED TO CALL. That's the whole point--keeping things clean and tidy and uncomplicated. I think that's the problem with the world. We'd all be much happier if we fucked more and fell in love less.
In a perfect world...I could live alone and unfettered for a good long time and finally realize true independence--emotional and financial--and have a string of affairs and encounters and friendships and the like. Megan and I remain good friends--best friends, perhaps--and end up reuniting later in life (like, after 50) because we never really met anyone else who could fill the other's void, and we would live happily ever after.
I wish Stevie and Lindsey would get back together already so I could have some kind of reassurance that such fairy tales really do occur. Because I think that whole paragraph may be the best bit of fiction I've ever written.
Oh, what a wonderful world it would be were dreams to come true.
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