Taliesin
I worked 12 of the last fourteen days and I'm in a state of recovery. Which isn't good because I have to be up and on top of my life right now...given the sudden thousands of decisions that have to be made, pre-move. I just want to veg out and watch old Star Trek and lament Scotty's problems and pretend none of this is here to worry about.
Really, I NEED with double asterixes to clean up. I need to check that credit card statement. I need to find that check. I need to pack. I need to get that job. I need to buy a cell phone. I need to finish my curtains. I need to not fuck up today. I need to set up the utilities with my friends. I need to work on my BPAL t-shirt. I need to figure out what to wear to the concert. I need to write Stephanie. I need to get a haircut. I need to write more on my story and with my poetry. I need.
Bruce Springsteen is really neat. More than neat. He evokes a better image of myself which I need since I am going to try like hell to be a good girl today and not have the running commentary of anathema toward my sister. I try to believe that hating her is a way to deal with how much of a white elephant this is and I'm trying not to give up on myself just because everyone else really has.
I hate being the butt of jokes when I have asked to be helped but they will not help me.
And okay, imagine this. You buy a car from the dealership, you pick it out and sit in it and love the sound of its blinker and put the keys on your keyring, make the down payment and start paying on it. It's yours. And you love it and try and think of it as your freedom, your sanctuary in high school, a time of bullshit and sorrow and annoying people with cell phones who think they're so much fucking better than you because their mommy and daddy never made them crack a book and yet put them on the payroll just for being their dumbfuck selves. You just try and feel okay about yourself and not overwhelmed. And you cry in your car, spill coffee, sing songs, go to school, drive your little sister and her boyfriend to school while they makeout in your back-seat. And then, there are close calls. Near misses. A ticket for a boulevard stop. And suddenly, your older sister needs your car to go to your old job. You're at college, you don't need one. Besides you haven't been driving anyway. And you haven't, because it's scaring you silly that you're going to kill someone because you don't know how many carlengths or that some little car will be in your blind spot and you'll kill them or be killed by the same mistake. And while that becomes untreated and bigger and more phobic, your older sister doesn't take over the payments but takes over the car. Your parents take over the payments, which they have to because you have to leave your job to be in college. So, your older sister gets a free car. Fine, because your older sister at least uses it in a rational manner...a manner in keeping with the feelings it was supposed to embody. And she at least will have a conversation with you without bringing up body image or fucking or the two other things she thinks about just like your little sister.
But then your little sister, while you're an hour and a half away takes your car and uses it to drive around and see her boyfriend and show off because its a nice car. She takes your parents' gas card to pay for gas...she has no intentions of ever making a payment on it. She drives her stupid friends around, playing the wrong music, and breaking the soul you wanted in your first car. She takes it to Elitch's, wants to get it egged and painted on. She gets it in an accident. She drives around her drunk and retarded boyfriend. Your older sister has her own car. Your younger starts calling the car hers simply by the virtue of the fact she took it and started driving it. The way she's corroded it makes you sick to your stomach. The mardi gras beads on the windshield. The cd sunshield rack that that was reappropriated for Britney Spears and Linkin Park.
And you think about riding the bus again after riding it all through high school. And her insistence that she never would. That it was beneath her to wait at a bus stop. You think about casual lies to friends about why you can't do things or why you need them to drive you. You think about how different your life would be if you didn't have this fear. How much you wish it would go away. Then, you think about being twenty years old and having this problem. You think about killing your sister but realize nobody'd much tell the difference. You think about having asked everyone to help you start over and their only advice is, not my car, not me, pay a professional.
You realize that this is all your fault, for letting it go in the first place. For not knowing what it would do in your life. For not being pro-active...for letting it get away from you. And now you just have this explosive anger at everything. You want to pull the sheet off the white elephant, to not let you fall into a nook or cranny and rot and die.
You don't know what to do. You don't know what to do at all.
