this is my blog. in it, i bitch about things, make fun of people, exercise the awesome power of my noodle, rant, rave, critique architecture, art, politics, foreign policy, and express my constant need to urinate. like a bitch. i live on diet coke, and i like wearing hats. stop fighting it and just fall in line and love me; i swear, you people and rebelling against the inevitable...

Friday, April 21, 2006

IN!

so for some odd reason, i'm in the middle of warring feelings right now. perhaps its the over-consumption of both martinis and gin and juice. i stole the juice too... i owe my housemates juice. a little bit. but still, i owe them. granted, i cook for them. i make masses of food that i invite them to eat. i am the strange house mom in some ways. but lets examine things in more depth...

first and foremost, after months of waiting for any word at all, and after weeks of hanging by my teeth to the waitlist, *something grandiose should go here; like a flourish of trumpets, or a swelling of music, or a crash of thunder...* I HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE UT AUSTIN GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ARCHITECTURE!!! i found out wednesday via e-mail. i hesitated, opened it up (the title was a lovely, ambiguous "final waitlist decision" or something equally frightening...) and read the quiet little words saying i had been ACCEPTED!!! and i screamed. i screamed in my room. i screamed loud and long, the way you scream for the band on the stage who has just played your song. the way you scream after singing along with the radio for months, after buying the tickets, after watching them thrash and dance on the stage and offer up the prayer in real life. the way you scream after tears have been brought to your eyes and then coursed down your cheeks, and you sing along again, because it is how you worship, and it all suddenly feels right, and for those three minutes and change, you feel whole. you feel connected. you feel complete. you are where you need to be, and nothing else even matters.

i screamed, and screamed. i whooped. i laughed. i felt like crying. my chest felt like it was full of sky. and i texted everyone i knew who has a cell phone that accepts text messages. and i told my housemate. and i keep just laughing, and smiling, and feeling randomly happy... and now after two days of food, and congratulatory phone calls from friends, and family, and family friends who must have been told by my parents; after more love than i could imagine, and too many martinis, and marijuana that made me sick, and three rented movies in a night... i thought i would go to bed. but no. now i must come to the blog, and write it all down, lest i ever forget.

now i feel strange. the last two days, i have felt so lucky, so blessed (terrifying i should use such a word, i know... i'm not usually all godly and shit.) i feel terrified. i feel terrified like i owe some gargantuan debt. like someone suddenly has a tab for a pound of my flesh. its all piling up. the jewish guilt. the anything guilt... how is it that i have come to be a reasonably functional adult, that i have made it through childhood, and the pain of middle school and high school... that i have passed through the amazing and ridiculous tunnel of college, and survived two years at home with my parents again. that i have gotten accepted to a school that is too competitive to think about without feeling sick, and that promises to teach me all i want to know, in so many ways...

beyond that... how have i come to have a family that loves me so much, that loves the fact that i will be an hour and a half from home, and can visit at will. how did that happen? that they so desperately want me close by, and simply enjoy my company... that they just want me to be there... that somehow, i seem to make them happy, in some ineffable way that i feel unable to describe or understand? how do i have friends that get my simple text message, "i'm in!" and call me from work, that very same day, to say how happy they are for me? how did i come to deserve this?

and now i'm sniffling... because i feel like such a fuck up... i'm a procrastinator... i'm cold and aloof... i say horrible things, even if i don't quite mean them, and i don't show love like i should... i waste money. i drink too much. i smoke too much. (cigarettes, not ganja... and cigarettes are worse...) i have an expensive disease that i don't keep good enough tabs on... i'm lazy and shiftless... i'm gay, and self-righteous. i feel like i must be such a burden, on all the people in my life... i'm unstable, and all kinds of fucked up... i'm overly dramatic. and for some reason, despite all this, my life is so good... my family loves me. really loves me. they love me more than i love myself. and i have friends. friends who love me as well...

i feel completely different now. wednesday, i drove north on the MoPac freeway, on the west side of austin. you would never think you were within a major metropolitan district... it is this lovely stretch of road that curves through gentle green hills, the best of the texas hill country, which despite how much i bitch, is beautiful... all of austin is nestled among these ridges of hills... the city is hidden from itself, with neighborhoods unfolding beyond that next green crest that seems to hold the whole of the world behind it... MoPac curves through these hills, gently rolling up and down... at times, it skirts the summits; at other times, it is carved into the rock itself, layers and layers of sediment, limestone, revealed to you as you pass it by... there is a small steel bridge that arcs over a piece of river, happy in its canyon course. and i thought, how lucky am i, how fucking blessed am i, to spend another four years in this beautiful place,

and now i must live up to this ridiculous gift i've been given. i can't drink away an evening, surfing the internet, just because i don't have anything else pressing to do... i can't smoke cigarettes and erode my lungs. i have to take care of myself. i suddenly want to pack myself away in soft cotton, like a crystal figurine; like one of the carvings in tennessee williams' glass menagerie... i've been given this ridiculous succession of gifts, for no reason that i can figure out... there's no way i can be a "good" enough person to deserve these things... and i logically know that that's not how it works... but its still there; this crushing desire to become something more than i am right now, to live up to all that i have. i barely want to leave the house... driving a car seems too dangerous, and that vespa i was thinking of getting... now it just seems like a good way to get myself killed, and that risk is simply too great. i can't play games with my life that way.

i know this can't last... granted, i should smoke less, drink less, and go to the gym and yoga again. i should try to be a healthier person generally speaking. but i need to live my life, and all this fear, this uncertainty, this GUILT, for lack of a better word, will leave me at some point. i'll be back to my unholy air of entitlement soon enough, i'm sure. there will be new challenges to hold my attention, and new journeys to take. but right now, i feel like i've been given this strange happy ending, bought at some terrible price to my soul... and god knows i joke about being a bad person, about being in league with the devil, about not trusting people who are nice and good. but i want to be a good person. i want to feel worthy of all that i have been given, on a seeming silver platter. and all those jokes are only shoddy curtains to hide my own fear that i'm not a good person, that i don't deserve it, that i can never be enough...

granted, with the standards i set for myself (perfection...) i can never be enough. and i suppose that's something that i'll have to work on. that or be unhappy forever... but that is the fuck of it... i don't trust happiness. i assume that if i'm happy, i've done something wrong, or am forgetting something, and it will all come and bite me in the ass later. but perhaps that's all the more reason to enjoy it now. and, dare i say it, perhaps, beneath it all, beneath the crudeness and the addictions, and the unhealthy appetites and uncharitable thoughts... maybe i am a good person. not that that means i'm only getting my just desserts... oh no. i'm lucky as all hell. but either i must be okay, or i am the greatest actor on the face of the planet. because i have gotten such an outpouring of love and support and true happiness and kindness and oh god... and all those people can't be wrong, can they? because i'll tell you this... i couldn't tell a lie to save my life... and i can't act. i know that for sure. and i don't suffer fools (perhaps an actual "needs improvement" area of my life...)

well, god, yahweh, adonai, life-force, the strange benevolent force that seems to radiate from all life, from people and trees and dogs and mustelids... the strange and often hidden net of love that binds all people to each other... my blessed and beautiful family... my parents and siblings... my beautiful sister who hides, and my mother who always believes in me... my frriends, my friends who believe in me and love me even when i don't... who just love me... for no good reason... this whole stupid world, that i don't understand... all of it. all of you. i don't know exactly what i've done to deserve you, to have you, to know you, to have everything that i have, and that you've given me. i don't know. and i'm crying now, and my eyes burn. thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you... i love you all so much... i don't know how to express it. but i cry for you. i don't have the words, but i will cry, and say thank you thank you thank you so much... my heart breaks in me to feel such love... may god bless you and keep you all, and hold you close, and watch over you all the days of your lives. i love you all so much...

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