03.18.04
self-discovery - k-discovery
earson: ben lee - aftertaste
eyeson: everything i should have admitted ages ago.
thoughton: you know, i really was ruled by my own personal satan.
the Belle of New Orleans tried to show me once how to tango - 'round n'round your feet. 'round n'round like good little roses .. you gave him your blood and your warm little diamond. he likes killing you after you're dead .. you think i'm a queer. *i think you're a queer.*
so i outed myself to a high school friend yesterday in an email.
i remembered her long blonde hair and the shape of her body from those days .. i remember the way she talked, as though she knew mostly everything and i was just hanging around, watching her breathe. we wrote together like crazy people – submitted drafts to be edited, humbly, to one another .. even co-wrote a stupid little prose piece. i remember thinking she might go to hell for those wiccan spell books in her closet. and for her altar. i didn’t say anything to her, though, because i didn’t want to think she would go to hell .. because i thought she was beautiful, and i admired her on an even more secret level. i wanted to be free like her, to believe anything. to explore everything. to love what she wanted. surprised to find, now that i’ve been peeking a bit at her livejournal diary, that she was considering committing suicide at that point in her life .. ‘gracious, what for?’ was my first thought when i read that, loud and clear.
i remember high school as something distinctly uncomfortable. i was a flat cardboard cut-out of a girl wandering through classes, doodling on notebook paper, listening weakly .. when i wasn’t at school i slept. i was sleeping within a half an hour of getting home, and i didn’t get out of bed again until just before school the next day. – i take that back. a lot of the time i wasn’t sleeping. i was just lying there thinking about the homework i wasn’t doing, about how awful school was, about how i wanted to be a totally different person and couldn’t understand why i felt like a grunge grub on the fringe of everything. my first fumbling attempts at dating, i feel like dying when i think about them .. asking trent thibault to go out with me and thusly, love me. do you know what he said? i remember two things distinctly.
‘not now.’
what a torturous response, what a horrible thing! not now. as though i were to wait, as though if i could wait he would say ‘yes’ later .. and i did wait, and wait, and watch, and wait ..
‘you’re like a moth to my flame.’
...
i don’t have to explain to you how ridiculous *that* is. but i was fifteen. and he was an asshole.
in any case, the people i asked out did everything from break up with me third person, weep outright when i broke up with *them,* or laugh and share the whole intimate experience with their friends after they’d said ‘i’m flattered, but no.’ and i wore that grunge stuff all the time .. shapeless corduroys that were the butt of a thousand private jokes behind my back because of the ‘zzip’ sound they made when i walked .. layers of shirts, always with my hair down, horrible thick-red rimmed glasses with thick lenses, non-existent dental hygiene .. god, and no idea. no idea, with those Christian ideals wheeling around in my head .. no idea what it would be like to be free of the idea of hell, no idea what it would be like to be absolutely free sexually, no idea what it would be like to come out from behind those glasses and be me. just me. honest me. kinky, intense, indiefolk, unafraid me. i mean, to think. if i hadn’t been living in fear of hell in high school? what kinds of things i could have done! what things i could have explored without prejudice, without lies, without unfair bias .. it was only after i’d had the baby and moved out of my parent’s house that i really felt rescued. plunged into this statistical ‘single-mother’ poverty hell, yes, but rescued mentally. i could question my religion. really question what i believed in, what i wanted, who i wanted, and where i wanted to go. i mean, it all started before that on the busride to texas. eating breakfast in new Orleans will do wonders for your soul and its saving.
and now that k knows .. i mean, she’s done some beautiful things. she’s found a partner, she’s graduated from college, she’s still writing .. and she was afraid that i wouldn’t write to her because she’s a lesbian. because she’s a lesbian. i think my heart broke for a little while .. i still feel mortified .. was i that judgmental? was i that lost, was i that brown and small and unarticulated? i mean, i’m ready to admit now that i was probably attracted to her that entire time.
i am now articulated. i now consider myself beautiful, fruitful, intelligent, sexy, distinct. i am an artist, a professional, and a bisexual. i no longer feel in crisis – i feel deliciously awake, i have my eyes open, i have searched for direction and i’ve found it in blessings *still gotten* though i believe our afterlife is so much sweeter .. incredible, now that i work it out in text, how much the fear of hell really intimidated me. held me. made me afraid.
my mother’s been married to my father for over thirty years. she’s had a jewish boyfriend for half of those.
i was forced to go to church every Sunday (unless i was ill) until i was eighteen years old.
i was whittled down to a fine porcelain point by my mother’s constant belittling. judging. her demands, her insecurities.
i was confused as a woman by my father’s complete and utter chill. his stony face.
k: i’m not afraid any more. i’m sorry about that cardboard cut-out confused Methodist blob i was when you knew me best. but forgive her .. forgive that girl, because she was lonely and afraid of everything. she didn’t have any idea what freedom was.
-emily.
written at 6:49 p.m.
