Do you ever get overwhelmingly stressed out?
That's how I'm feeling today, and I have no reason to be. I had a great weekend, enjoyed my family, drank my life away, saw my friends, partied with my cousin, and a certain someone even told me that I was missed these last few weeks.
So, why do I feel like I want to jump out of my body and squeeze all the adrenaline and guilt out of my stomach? Why is my stomach even knotted?
I've been paralyzed by this feeling for the last couple of hours-- I tried sleeping, I tried deep breathing, I tried reading, I tried EVERYTHING. And ironically, the only thing that seems to be working is this Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and all the caffeine that comes with it.
Ya think that's a problem when you can only relax with caffeine? Maybe that's proof that I'm ADD...maybe that's just proof that I'm crazy.
My 17 year old brother goes out more than I do. He goes out during the week, he goes out when he has a free 1st period in the morning and can wake up at 8:45 instead of 6:30. He goes out for lunch, he goes out on a Sunday afternoon...he's always out.
I can drink legally, and I'm just not interested. It's funny, whenever I come home, I feel like I climb into a cocoon and die: I drink wine with my mom and fall asleep at 11:30, I sleep in until 1:00 in the afternoon, I wear my brother's sweatshirt the entire time. I've said this before and I'll say it again: coming home, leaving New York City, always makes me feel like my real life doesn't exist. Because my real life is in New York City, and coming home is merely for family engagements and a small hand-full of friends who I can meet up with. But seriously, let's be honest: most of my high school friends, I'd be happier and more able to meet up with them in New York than in Lower Merion.
It's weird for me now then to look at my brother and see what he is. He's like me, what I used to be in high school. He drives around aimlessly trying to figure out what other people are doing, trying to get some beer, trying to juggle a million friends and their plans so that he doesn't have to stay home and do nothing. I was just like that, and it was so much fun. And it was here, in this house, in that car, in this community. And I just don't care for it anymore: I love the past, but I've moved so far beyond it. I've grown up, turned 21, built a new home in New York and actually miss my bed there when I'm here. I miss my apartment and my roommate and my noisy neighborhood there when I'm here.
Each time I come back it gets easier to be here, and more enjoyable to see my mom and to hang out with David. And yet each time I come, it also looses its significance. My Philadelphia home has become more of the place I go to visit people I love than the homebase I return to. And that's hard to grapple with, but I guess that's life.
The person who lived here before me subscribed to Victoria's Secret catalogue. For some reason, I've always loved that catalogue even though I've never bought anything from it and I rarely buy from Victoria's Secret. It's still really fun to look at--probably because you can fantasize as you look at the beautiful girls in clothing that fits perfectly, in bras and panties that are just the epitome of sexy. I think think that girls probably fantasize looking at that catologue even more than guy: from the material want of the clothes, but more from the longing to be like those girls.
I was flipping through the magazine this morning, and I was doing my fantasizing. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I turned all feminist on the magazine. I thought to myself: Wow, look how far we've come in 100 years. This magazine would have been completely unacceptable, offensive and un-ladylike in the early 1900s. Women practically naked, radiating sexuality? No, that would never have passed.
It's funny though: that feminism is so fake. No, I dont' mean fake in the way that "The models are so skinny, real girls don't look like that," I mean fake in terms of sexuality.
I mean, seriously, let's look at them. They exude sexiness, but do they exude sex? As a girl, can you really picture a guy slamming one of those girls against a wall and really banging the shit out of her? Can you imagine their perfect hair getting all matted down by sweat? Their underwear on the floor and not perfectly arranged around their hips?
I can't. And I can't because those magazines create this look-don't-touch screen of femininity. They frame women in the way we've always been framed: as sexual objects who, regardless of what we're wearing or not wearing, are supposed to preserve our chastity and our dignity by NOT having sex. We're supposed to be sexy but not act on it and not let men act on it either. Beauty and sex-appeal are a necessity, but sex is taboo and disgusting.
And that's how it's always been. Or rather, that's the new sense of how it's supposed to be. Girls are supposed to be sexy like that, and make guys want them, but they're not supposed to have sex. Girls need to make guys want them, but they're also supposed to stop the advances of the men who persue them. What a twisted concept of sexuality. What an underhanded way of controlling women.
Well, the best part of my story is my goofy reaction it all. I was leafing through the back pages of the magazine, where all the clothes are. I was still oogling over these hot girls and their clothes and how much I wanted it all. And then I got to the last two pages and as I was finishing up the magazine, I literally said outloud: "Eh, I'd rather travel."
I left the magazine out in the kitchen in case a roommate wanted to look at it. But I'm not going to pick it up again.
As I neared the picket lines today, from Broadway walking down Washington Place toward the Silver Center, I got a little jumpy. Let's be honest: a bunch of grad students-- teachers, really, who you might have received your grades from--are waving signs, screaming opinions, marching like pro-life supporters outside of Planned Parenthood and chanting in sing-song melodies that I used to hear at camp during naked raids or during middle school softball games. I was a little intimidated, and so when I walked by I slyly looked away...I actually I looked down at my NYU ID in my hand...ya know, just to make sure that it was oriented correctly as I flashed it to the guards.
I was ashamed, in a way, that I was crossing the picket lines, that I was giving in to the apparent injustice. I felt attacked, stared at, mocked...until I realized it was all in my own head. No one said anything to me, no one looked at me. My shame was only within me as my passion for civil liberties were trumped my drive for good grades.
When I got to the stairwell, I overheard two kids talking about the strike. Mocking the grad students until we got to the 3rd floor. And as I walked out onto the Fine Arts floor, the kid that was mocking the most says genuninely, "Wait, so the grad students don't have a union? Wow, that really sucks."
Well, yeah, it does. And the more I think about it, the more confusing it gets.
I don't know where I come out on this issue: if I think this is worth their battling right now or not. And so at first it was confusing why I felt so ashamed walking by them, yet felt so empowered all afternoon as I looked out my boss's window at those very same protesters still chanting a song that reminds me of camp. (P.S. The funny thing about that song is that the camp words which keep popping into my head are: Hey Hey, Ho Ho, this penis party's got to go!-- I still don't know what the grad students are saying, and yes, my camp experience was delightfully insane)
But I figured it out finally as I was walking past Silver again today, on my way home. The cheers, the chants, the drumming and honking echoed through the streets, bounced off of buildings, got swallowed up by the cold. And I looked around and I pictured March of 1911 when the noises that resonated through those same streets, around that same building, were the noises of bodies hitting the ground and getting swallowed up by death.
I imagined the 146 workers who gave their lives to that striking sidewalk and didnt' even have the right to strike on it. The way that things only started to change after they were dead and gone. How they got the labor movement running through their tragedy.
And today, 100 years later, the fruit of their suffering culminates in a strike against the very building from which they jumped and protesters march over their graves. And that's beautiful, and that's honorable. And that's democracy. And I hope they keep fighting.
Those who are in NYU, please read this article from today's WSN. It probably effects you if you have grad student teachers and definitely just by being at NYU are you involved.
http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/11/10/4372f5ee4a129
So, Joe wrote a really interesting entry in his blog this weekend (bearbeatsrock.blogspot.com) and I kinda wanted to write off of what he's saying.
He wrote all about how we stalk eachother online-- through facebook, through instant messenger-- and how we ALL do it. And it's true, as college students, we soak up any opportunity to avoid doing work, to pass away the Sunday afternoons or to avoid finishing the paper that's due in 2 hours. It's undeniable that we do it, and yet as Joe pointed out, a lot of us are alittle ashamed of it.
But why? Why is it embarrassing and hard to admit that we find out stuff about eachother online? That we communicate our feelings and ideas and actions even better through an away message or the "About Me" part of our facebook profile than when we actually sit down and talk? Well, my feeling is that we're embarrassed because of just that: the internet allows us to be passive participants in each other's lives, and we're humiliated to a certain extent that we often can learn more about eachother by reading what we write in these public forums than by actually asking eachother, than by any of us willingly volunteering that information or establishing any sort of active dialogue.
Granted, I'm just as big a victim of this as anyone. I write more of my feelings in this little blog thing than I tell anyone to their face...which is awkward, because strangers read this more than people I actually know. It doesn't seem make sense, but it does. Because, as I'm writing this, I'm pouring out my ideas and feelings in an empty room to an inadament computer, and I'm posting it because I know that these thoughts are something that I
should be sharing with others: with my friends, with someone. It's just easier when I don't have to see or hear the reaction that everyone has. I throw the information out into the open and ask for no response.
It's kind of like text messaging. I told Jonna last night: I love text messaging because it makes it so much easier to communicate. I text message someone when I want to talk to them or tell them something but I'm too afraid to hear their answer or I don't want to have to respond to them on the spot. Texting for me is all too often a passive aggressive way of getting what I want or hearing what I want but without the pressure of the voice on the other line. It's so pathetic, but it's so true...and I feel it with everyone. I think we all do it, or at least a lot of us.
The point is that all this technology has allowed us to stray away and avoid what used to be absolute necessity. We don't need to face eachother anymore to communicate. We don't even need to communicate directly in order to glean a lot of insight and information about others-- even strangers. And perhaps most frightening is the fact that we never have to talk to eachother in order to understand one another-- we don't even have to look at the other person to know what's going on in their life. And that's terrifying, because we can be abstractly connected to eachother by just sitting in an empty room on a Sunday afternoon writing to an inadament computer and still have "friends."
Here's my hunch:
She'll be beautiful in that older, wiser woman way. Sitting straight in a chair, her legs crossed at the knee, a soft pink sear-sucker skirt suit that stops where her knees touch. She's perched on a plush white couch in mid-town Manhattan, and as the evening falls, the lights from central park below play shadows on the sheer curtains that blow casually around the french windows. Everything is white: she's white and vanilla and her carpet is thick and snowy and her couch is white and her walls are white. But they're filled with antique paintings and artifacts that line the tables and the counters and flat surfaces.
Everything is white except for the plants: the rich green, tall, leafy plants that accent the corners and that add a bit of splash. And she's perched, smiling sugar sweet, with her hands resting on her knees that touch together where her legs are crossed under a pink sear sucker suit.
And she's painfully beautiful and serene and composed. And she's talking about sex.
