how laughable. this place is empty; this reply just my own voice echoing back at me through an empty cavern of text. throwing words into a hole in the hopes that the void will somehow be filled.
you don't deserve the company, anyway.
I wonder how others see me; if anything exists beyond the ascii smiles and asterix displays of affection.
my, aren't we feeling sorry for ourselves?
I don't even know why I care... I set myself apart from the people who surround me; the only ones I associate with now besides my boyfriend's friends (and then only superficially) are my coworkers. And if I had the chance I wouldn't associate with them, either. I used to have people I considered friends... I guess I'm just another one of those shallow women who dumped all their friends when they attached themselves to a man. The irony of it is that he didn't even ask me to, or want me to. It was my own decision. Sometimes phone numbers got lost in the chaos of moving from apartment to apartment. Other times, when I finally got the gumption to call, the number was disconnected, or changed. I know a couple of former friends who would be angry at my lack of contact, and just start a fight over the matter, so I haven't bothered. The longer I stay away, the greater the distance, until there's no point in trying to re-establish any sort of relationship.
It was my choice, so why do I feel empty? It's almost as if I've shut down. I don't feel real. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm so terrified of my own mortality when there's no point to my existence. It's not like my death would make an impact.
The ties to online friends are even more tenuous. I've easily ditched my former compadres on the fluff board; cast them aside like the receipts I've kept in my wallet for forgotten purchases. Jedah still occasionally calls, but there's nothing to say really. He's in his own little world, preoccupied with annoyances at his mother and brother, living his own lifestyle, which has no resemblance to mine.
I don't do anything anymore. I would go out less and less in the past until the only time I go to a club anymore is when Jake wants to go see a concert. Sunshine Blind came to town a few months ago, and I was going to go, but the night of came and I couldn't produce the momentum to go see one of my favorite bands.
I met another girl who lives in the same town as I do online, practically around the corner, but I've never gone to see her, never bothered to cement a new friendship.
I barely even complete my job at work. If I were my boss, I'd have me fired. I don't even know why I'm writing this. I don't know why I do anything.
Angsty, angsty me. Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. I don't care whether the everlasting hath turned his canon 'gainst self-slaughter, I just don't want to do it. I just want a fortune to fall into my lap, but I don't even bother to play the lottery.
And iwon.com's search engine sucks. besides, I don't want to give a bunch of strangers on the net my address and phone number...
worthless
I never do anything. When I come home, it's routine: kick off shoes, wash dishes, make bed, play video games until eleven, sleep. I haven't vacuumed in weeks. The laundry's piling up. My skin itches in unwashed clothing, so I twitch and make grotesque faces to keep from scratching. At least they're not damp with built-up sweat. They don't smell. After all, I don't really do enough of anything to get dirty.
At least I still wash daily. And hey, I've been brushing twice a day instead of just once. At least some part of my life is showing improvement.
The people who still talk to me now, my mother, Jedah, just get on my nerves. I wish they'd leave me alone. I don't know if my problem is being alone or not being alone enough. I bicker and fuss with Jake every day. We hardly get along.
I should just be alone.
I stay because the games aren't mine. I stay because I really have very few material possession, other than the books I haven't read. My japanese lesson texts, the manga in kanji I haven't learned to read yet.
Part of me dreams of going to Japan without speaking a word of Japanese, so that I might never make personal contact. So I could live in my longed-for void. The truth is, about as many Japanese speak English as Americans speak French. My only problem would be income. I guess I'll keep working at this crappy job. Until I get fired.
Sometimes Jake tells me that I need to get ahold of my old friends, but I think he's figured out that it's futile.
They thought I was stupid anyway. I was the goofball. I could be turned to when any question of grammar or history came up, but I am ultimately an overeducated airhead. A font of useless knowledge. I would lock my keys in the car while it was running. I could babble pure nonsense for hours -- most of them were potheads and speed freaks, so I was basically on their level without the drugs. But when they were straight I would feel foolish; I could see that I was wearing their patience thin.
People drift in and out of each other's lives. Nothing is permanent. You move from grammar school to middle school to high school to college to job to job to job. You move from apartment to apartment. After so many moves, how is anything permanent? What's the point of establishing ties doomed to break?
Why don't I leave Jacob? I've left everyone else. All I want is solitude, to float freely on the ether, to be sure that no one will miss me when I am gone. That no one will notice if I was dead.
I won't die. I'm too much of a coward to die. I won't die until one of my abscessed teeth spreads the infection to my jaw, then my skull, then my brain. Until my gall bladder becomes so distended with stones that it bursts. I'll die deep in debt at some hospital in a state of senility, unrecognizable from the vestigial beauty I still possess now. My ill-fated, eroding youth, disintegrating even as we speak.
I was beautiful once, for a few months. I was working at a job within walking distance; a brisk walk every seven o'clock in the morning. My weight went down to 155 lbs and my self-esteem soared. I lost my job, gained twenty-five pounds, and now I spend an hour at eight o'clock every morning driving the dreary commute to my new job; pays more, while I still have it. As you can see, instead of working I waste my life on the internet, waiting for a miracle to happen, waiting for nothing to happen. Taking silly IQ tests which score me "above average" but nowhere near the the "genius" mark, and then recommend study sources that I ignore for achieving the excellence they presume I'm capable of.
It's always been that way. I feel like I'm back in school. I'm being sent to this place where I don't identify with anybody, doing thankless dead-end paperwork under a high-pressure deadline, just like the homework I was assigned in the classes I didn't want to attend, my guidance counselors telling me that I've got so much potential if I'd only live up to it. Somehow my life has degenerated -- from cradle to grave, they say. You come into the world and leave the world in diapers. I was an adult once, around the same time I was pretty, and now I'm back in high school.
I should just be grateful that I had a good life once. Some people never get to a point where they're satisfied with their existence.
College was fun. My old job, the one I walked to, was fun. Playing musical roommates and having junkie neighbors and losing jobs tends to put a wrinkle in such things, though. Hikes in the rent. Hikes in the price of gas. Running a red queen's race -- as fast as you can to stay in the same place. Truer words never spoken.
What am I bitching about? There are people who would kill to live like I do. I've got a roof over my head, shoes on my feet, I make $30,000 dollars a year, I go home from work and play video games all night. I'm not starving -- far from it, I'm struggling to keep my weight down. Well fed, gainfully employed -- I've even got medical insurance if I'd use it. I need to go to a doctor. I haven't had a pap smear. I haven't had a physical. I've got gallstones. My birth control is doing weird things to my body. I want undergo gender reassignment...
Sometimes I wonder if my gender issues have more to do with my general depression and discontent than any actual dysphoria. When I was happy for that brief while I never thought about it. Now I obsess about it.
Trouble is, the symptoms for many cases of MTF transsexualism are more obvious and pronounced -- the testosterone wreaks havoc on the patient's body. The cases of FTM I've studied, all two of them, were far more subtle, much more difficult to discern. We're taught, those of us born with female bodies, to put up with discontentment. Both of the cases I researched did not pursue reassignment until middle age -- late thirties, early forties, after jobs and divorces and kids.
As long as it distracts me from my phantoms.
I guess I don't want to see a doctor because she or he might tell me that I'm really fine, that my brain is as female as the rest of me, that I just need to eat right and get exercise.
I dreamt that I smoked a cigarette the other night. I don't smoke. I tried when I was about twelve -- it made me cough, so I quit. I didn't quit because of the coughing, I quit because the other children teased me for not being able to inhale. Now I don't smoke because I'm too aware of my addictive compulsions, whether they're real or imagined. Now I don't smoke because of cancer. Now I don't smoke because legislation prohibits smoking indoors in just about every office, restaurant, bar, nightclub and theatre, and most landlords don't look upon it too kindly either. Now I don't smoke because I live in a liberal region where people will walk up to you and accuse you of trying to poison their air with your smoke.
I could use a cigarette right now, though.
Jesus, I've written a novel.
Posted on Dec 8, 2000, 5:58 PM from IP address 63.71.97.59