I are you is she am I.

My stomach is in massive pain, and perhaps that’s why I am so damn lucid at the moment. I cannot express to you how much it hurts.

I am in this state of transition, I can feel it. I can sense a transformation, a metamorphosis of sorts, dawning upon me. A fog is about to be lifted; a path is about to be cleared; something, about to be cleansed. Money, love, all of the general fortune cookie categories—about to be realized, in an instant.

I am shedding a skin.

And yet, an ever-increasing anxiety has got me choked. I cannot shake it for the life of me, and whatever other clichés feel like falling off the tips of my fingers. I worry about every word said; I worry about each thought unspoken. And then the creativity of a mad mind evaporates upon the mother’s broken-back-pathways, and I cannot ever seem to recover it. A block; but a deep, dark opening.

I am drafting a reality.

Question your morality, if you ever do anything with this life. Question your insides, but follow them, as a general rule of practice. Question what I’ve written here, on this intangible, eddying web of inconsistencies and mock politics. Question yourself, question the void of the latest whirlpool, question the vapid eyes of the disturbed intellects. Fingers, fingers, clichés, fingers.

I am losing my grip.

Is this my reality, our reality, what goes on here, now? Is this what happens? Am I somewhere else, one thousand galaxies and epochs and simultaneous happenings over? I’ve decided that I am here. “X” marks the spot. I am here, and nothing can change that.

I am re-writing the now.

Let the higher-ups record whatever else could have, would have, should have, might have been. Let them press their ears to the living room wall and hear my sobs, hear the phone ring, hear the bangs upstairs. Let them, in their invisible cloaks, read my journal, watch me dress, see me smile. Let them. Let them laugh upon me and what I ate for breakfast, and how that changed the outcome of my entire month.

After all, what can I do but exist in a constant state of reflection, curiosity, hypothesis, amazement?

AnD tHe OsCaR gOeS tOoOoO....

The Academy Awards are on tonight, so some friends and I are going to do a low-key dinner (yeah right, low-key, everything has to be a freakin gourmet meal around here, I mean, can't we all just fend for ourselves with some mac and cheese for once??). Anywho, I thought I might compile an incredibly short list of Oscar nominees that I've actually seen in the films for which they are being nominated. I promise that it'll be short; it's been an emaciated year for film outings. I usually just grab a video at Blockbuster.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is being nominated for its musical score, constume design, and art direction. Boo yeah.

Both "Monster's, Inc." and "Shrek" are being nominated for the animated feature films category. Tough call because, contrary to my usual stance on animated films in general, I actually enjoyed both of these. But, since more people talked about "Shrek," let's just say that one will win. "Jimmy Neutron" better not get it cuz that's the only one I didn't see. "Monsters, Inc." is also up for sound editing--quite the accomplishment, my intellects. The only short animated film I saw was "For the Birds," which amused me to no end; it preceded my showing of "Monsters, Inc."

Not that I expected "American Pie 2" to be nominated for one of these prestigious awards, but it truly is the same 5-slice cycle of films that are receiving them. "Iris" and "In the Bedroom," being two of them, were films that seemed to have escaped me as far as even having heard of them.

It's going to be a looooonnnng evening.

Drinking is bad.

So here's a story. It's a sad one that I learned about at work yesterday afternoon.

Over in Ovid, NY, there are two brothers. Depending on who tells the story, the ages are slightly different each time, but let's just say, for the sake of argument, that they are 12 and 16 years old. The older boy, just having gotten his license, picks up his brother from school. The plan is to drop his brother off at home, and then return to school grounds for baseball practice. Neither of them is wearing a seatbelt. En route, they take a sharp turn, and the younger of the two crashes head-first into the windshield. But the suddenness of it all does not stop the boy's body from continuing on through the windshield and onto the road ahead. The car, meanwhile, has continued on with the older boy still in the driver's seat. He accidentally runs his brother over. The younger boy is still alive, albeit with massive head injuries.

The story gets worse.

Knowing that the local hospitals can do nothing for the boy, the medics call the boys' mother for consent to airlift the boy to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, for the proper care. The mother, rip-roaring drunk, does not take the situation seriously and promptly hangs up on them. Somehow, after a number of frantic phone calls, the authorities are finally able to reach the boy's school principal for consent. The principal has been sitting at the boy's bedside at the hospital ever since.

It's all just really sad.

And, no matter which angles I take--no matter how I look at it--I just cannot comprehend how someone could be that drunk. I mean, if you were a parent, wouldn't you be able to sober up for just a moment? And, supposing you couldn't sober up, couldn't you at least realize that it's serious?

Don't bother reading this.

I am so exhausted. I don't even know what to write. I thought about a poem or a piece of a short story but....

Hey, guess what? Remember that girl I was talking about yesterday? Word on the street has it that she'll be fired by the end of the week. And justice prevails.

My stomach is a tangled mass of glass. I'm so anxious; about what, exactly, is the question. I can think of twenty some odd things. Ouch. This really hurts.

I was watching "The Real World" last night. The show is terrible, but I keep watching it to get these glimpses of Chicago. As if I like to torture myself. I don't miss the city at all, so why do I continue to watch this trash television? Ah, but such is human nature. Everything looks familiar because I was a 15- or 20-minute walk from their house.

Alas, nothing to write today. I thought that if I kept on writing, something decent might come out sooner or later. But not today.

Witches and Faggots

Sometimes my job is annoying. Like those times when I want to be liberal and have to be so damn diplomatic about everything.

Take the word "gay," for instance. Gay gay gay. Queer faggot lesbo. About a week ago, some of my students were playing air hockey and I was right there with them, sort of referee'ing. Usually, whenever one of them calls another student one of these names, I'm fairly even-handed about it; I try not to force my opinion on them. They should be able to think for themselves. For example, I'll say something like, "Hey, can you keep the language down to a minimum? Not everyone appreciates it." Or something like that. Well, that particular day, I must have had a short fuse, because I was like, "What is the deal with you guys and gay? Gay this, gay that. There's nothing wrong with it."

Well. One of the student staff members overheard this, and spoke with my supervisor about how her religion doesn't accept it, and how dare Melissa force her opinion on these impressionable souls. Bear in mind, this is the same person who wears shirts to work sporting such slogans as "hot stuff" and "I'm naughty." She's also the one who shows up about 25% of the time that she's supposed to.

And the "Whatever Award" goes tooooo....

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, for those who care to celebrate it. I've never been into celebrating the holiday, regardless of how much Irish I've gotten from both sides of the family. In fact, some years, I've forgotten about it altogether. But this year, we're doing dinner. Eva and Jenna are big into the whole corned beef and cabbage deal. Renée and I are kind of like, yeah, uh huh, have fun eating that, ladies. I don't know what the two of us are going to eat--we're thinking pasta and pesto sauce, perhaps? Something green. Obligatory. Sort of a pointless entry--sorry to disappoint.

Last night, I saw "The Matthew Shepard Story." My stomach was in a ton of pain--probably from our nice lil taco dinner--so I missed a good portion of it. I don't think I missed much, though. It wasn't a terrible portrayal of events, but it did leave a lot to be desired. It wasn't perfectly accurate, either, and I suppose that no movie ever is. But still....it could've been better. A lot better.

Well, I'm out--hasta la pasta, chiquita banana.

Quick Thought

I'm wondering if I'm offending any of the four people who still read this thing. I write some things that people disagree with. But please know that a lot of what I feel, my opinions etc., I write it down only after multiplying by ten. Just to get attention.

Abortion: Killing Or Caring?

About a week ago, one of my students, Justin, came into program with a large envelope. Upon his entrance, he tossed it to me and said, "Take a look at these pictures--the ones in the front." Assuming that he was developing a hobby in photography, natural curiousity took over. I opened the envelope. Inside? Decapitated fetuses. Three weeks. Two months. Three months. And so on.

Eva asked him, "So do you have a particular stance on this, or is your purpose solely to educate?"

He responded, "It's for a class project--to educate." He'd gotten the pictures off of the Internet, and had printed the images on high quality paper.

And so the debate of the day is: [drum roll, puh-lease] Abortion.

Throughout most of my college years, I had this one unwavering opinion: That women have the rights to their own bodies, that the would-be fathers have no say, and that anti-abortion leaders should go to hell. In a word, pro-choice.

And then I spoke with a friend one day over lunch, who has a brother with cerebral palsy. He's adopted. So this friend of mine argues, what if this brother of hers were terminated, instead of being put up for adoption? Then her parents would have been denied the privilege of raising another child. And her brother would have never had the opportunity to life.

This caused me to think even further: What if I, through some ridiculous accidental fluke, got pregnant, myself? I honestly don't think I could get an abortion. If I had to give the child up for adoption, so be it. But I truly cannot picture myself ending someone's life like that. In fact, it makes me cringe. I'd have to carry it to term.

Please, don't get me wrong. I am still very much pro-choice when it comes to other women, so long as they're not using this method of operation as a means of birth control, yadda yadda yadda. It is my opinion that there's a certain level of responsibility there. But even on a purely selfish level, I just don't think I could subject myself to abortion.

A year and a half ago, my mother was supposedly pregnant, and induced a miscarriage at her doctor's office. (Shhh) It made sense to do that, ill as she was, because there was next to no chance of the would-be baby surviving, and the chance of my mother's own survival was even slimmer. I told her flat-out, as soon as I knew, that she needed to have some sort of convenient miscarriage. And, at the same time, I was thinking about how weird it would be to have a sibling twenty years younger than me. And, wouldn't you know, when she told me months later that the doctor had actually helped her along with her project, I felt cheated. A very weird feeling indeed.

Not that she was unfamiliar with the consequences of miscarrying; between having my brother and sister, there was yet another miscarriage some time in '85. That one was accidental.

Not that I'm planning on getting pregnant any time soon. Anyone who knows me well enough, knows that's not going to happen any time this millennium...err, any time soon, I mean. Yeah. I said that already, didn't I?

"C" is for cookie, that's good enough for me....

I feel like I should be writing something ground breaking, earth shattering, at the very least--prophetic. There's this energy inside of me that just wants to be turned loose, but there's nothing constructive that comes to mind. Well, I can think of a few things, but they're a little risque to be writing in a public journal....

You know what I need? A good night's sleep. Every night, I'm up late watching TV or writing a letter or something, and I get up a million times to go to the bathroom, and then something as quiet as a falling star outside will wake me up once I do finally fall asleep.

I'm hungry. Gotta get some food.

Can I just say....

I'm sort of out of control, and I'm sort of liking it.

Yo yo yo yo I'm Slutskaya!

I'm so stressed out. So much to do. Completely overwhelmed.

You know what bothers me? When I've just finished taking the time and effort out of my day to help someone with something, and all they do is complain afterwards about how hard it was.

Case in point: Upon my return from work at 7:30 last night, I helped a friend schlep her five sleeping bags over to the laundromat to be cleaned. Upon exiting the apartment, she complains about how the place might closed too early for us to finish it all. Upon arriving at the laundromat, she flips out because she's forgotten her detergent. Upon putting the sleeping bags in the washing machines, she has an aneurism because she has to go to an ATM for more money for the dryers. And, upon returning to our respective apartments, she gets all upset because I won't hang out with her at her place afterwards, right after we had finished discussing how tired we both were even though it was only 9:30. I am then declared a "mean person." I swear it that I now have a little baby ulcer.

I mean, did I really want to leave my apartment in the first place? Did I really want to help this friend when I knew she'd flip out about every last thing?

And don't ask me why she was washing FIVE SLEEPING BAGS to begin with. That's a whole other story in itself.

(((sigh)))

I am so...relieved...content...connected...

In this dream state....

Bible Thumpers and Bumpers

Let's talk about religion for a minute. With Saint Patrick's Day and Easter coming up, and Saint Valentine's Day just having passed, I need to reflect on a few things...

The first thing being: I have no religion.

Well, that can't entirely be accurate, can it, because I do celebrate my birthday, Christmas, and Easter, right? And my new year is on January 1st. So that should probably make me Christian. I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago, and how I told you I that my mother gave me the option of choosing my own religion when I was younger. But let's pause for a moment, and let's just say that I had chosen to be Jewish or Buddhist. You see, that would have caused chaos. My mother would have flipped out. She already has a hard time with me not wanting to eat her Christmas ham or Thanksgiving turkey. So, I am just now coming to the realization that she never really meant, "Melissa, you can choose your own religion and I will accept that." No, what she really meant was, "Melissa, I am giving you the 'option' of being either Catholic or Protestant. Or maybe even Episcopalian." I have a problem with this, and many will find my views on the controversial side. Allow me to tell you how I see it on this side of the fence.

1. Jesus was a hippie. Either that, or all of the apostles/missionaries were, in reality, hippies tripping on acid, and Jesus was just a figment of their collective imagination. That is to say, Jesus did not exist. Or, if he did in fact exist, he was no different from the modern day medicine woman. There are theories that Jesus was black, Jesus was a woman, Jesus was immortal. ::cue ghost music:: But if I don't know someone who saw The Bible's unfolding events, or at the very least someone's great granddaddy who saw it, why should I believe it? This is because...

2. The Bible is a myth. Yes, one big fat MYTH. Lots of myths, actually. Think logically for just a minute: Do people really turn into salt? Do snakes really talk? Is woman really to blame for everything? Oh, sorry--getting off track. I've looked at the maps and I do believe that panacea may have very well existed at one point, but to say that we once all had a common language is taking it a smidge too far, especially considering that there was very little means of transportation or communication tools with which to spread the common word. As people often do these days, purely due to geographical circumstances, we all broke into our own separate communities in different parts of the world. And this world was more rural then than it is now, so these communities were pretty well spread out. I hardly believe that a group of language teachers got on their mules to teach and spread the common word. Impossible, especially considering that there was no way of knowing where, exactly, each and every one of these communities was located. So to say that the Lord Almighty punished us by dividing us into language groups to make it more difficult for us to communicate, well--I don't buy it. We had these language barriers to begin with.

3. And that's another thing: God. In these final apocalyptic hours, it's God-this and God-that. MY God. I mean, give me a break. Yes, I do believe in "other beings"--however you wish to interpret that--but I think it's a little far-fetched to say that there is the mother or father end-all, be-all. There are things in this world that we can't explain, and it's just not in human nature to accept that. Instead, what do we do? We make up these bogus stories ::cough::The Bible::cough:: to make sense of it all, to put it all in order--to make ourselves feel better.

It is possible that I am getting some of my "facts" from this book confused at points; I haven't read it since I was eight years old. When I was eight, I read The Bible for the first time, thinking that it was a book of fiction. I saw my (half-step-) aunt, seven years my senior, pouring over it in her bedroom one night, and asked if I could read it when she was finished. I read it within the week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And, weeks later, when I found out that this Bible thing was written many moons ago, by these men, about something that *really happened*--I read it a second time. And I didn't believe a word of it.

Bible stories are comparable to mythology. Think of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite, Poseiden, Hercules, The Sirens, Medusa--whatever turns you on. Believing The Bible is like being addicted to soap operas, and thinking that these actors really lead those lives. That's all it is. Now go back to bed.

****

I think I'm about to choke on hypocrisy over here. My stomach is in knots. Lately, I've been feeling something that would, under other circumstances, be happiness. But this happiness is, indirectly, at the expense of someone else, or at least to their chagrin, and this person has undoubtedly made it known that they are unhappy with my situation.

And you know what? I don't give a flying **** if no one reading this understands anything.

For once, I'd like to do something that feels good for me, without everyone watching me like a freakin hawk. Just once, I'd love it if I could take things at my own damn pace and savor every moment, without people trying to speed it up for me to the point where they see it should be.

Just this one thing.

Just this once.

Subject: None

I don't know what to do. I'm just so upset right now. All I'm going to do this morning is cry. I have this friend. And I just want her to be happy. And she never is. She's always so depressed. And I always feel like every little thing is my fault. And I'm far too apologetic. And I'm far too anxious. And I just want people to be happy for once. Even if I can't do it for myself.

This is vague, and I'd apologize, but I'm trying really hard right now not to be sorry all the time.