I get asked a lot of questions about what I do. What I do for a living, for fun, in my spare time, what I plan to do, what I want to do, what my dreams are, if I have any. Simple question, one might think is it not? I feel so deficient for not being able to answer these questions. I feel embarrassed; not because I think I am going to disappoint the other person, but because it is an utter disappointment to myself. "What do you do" was not always the vexing question it is today. I used to have ambition for myself, and it used to not feel so out of reach.
What changed? It feels sometimes that the change was sudden. Sharp. Violent. One day I walk into a house party and see faces I have not seen in months because I have become a recluse. I scramble to remember their names, because names yield little importance when you are so used to being alone. I sit down. I get a drink. A face that is familiar, or should be, leans in apprehensively. "So what have you been up to?" The silence is deafening. It is hungry and it seems to consume the room like a black hole focused on the space between us. I can't mutter a response because I don't know. What have I been up to? Is it appropriate to tell the truth? Is it appropriate to be honest about why I have not been around? Or do I shrug, take a casual swig from a drink, and say "Stuff".
The truth is, I have been slipping slowly. The descent has been like a glacier's glide, hardly perceptible. I have been slowly disappearing over the years and becoming a ghost. Forgotten. Trapped between the layers of one dimension and the next. I can still watch the world change and I can still see people scurry about productively with their lives, but that is all I do. I see. I watch. I idle. I am aging with little of the wisdom or experience to bout. I am almost 20, but that is only what the calendar says. The calendar lies. My sheepish demeanor and my many fears confess a much younger age. Maybe five, maybe fifteen.
In high school the quintessential book that every disenfranchised teenager grovels over, is Catcher in the Rye. That is the book that was supposedly written for them, the book that reaches across the chasm of the decades and speaks to something that is just as unalienable and familiar in us. That was not, however, my book. That was not the book that 'spoke to me'. My book was The Metamorphosis. I could not relate to Holden, but I could relate to poor Gregor. So passive in his own life, that his absence became not only unimportant, but a service. The relinquishment of a great burden, of an existence that was barely there. A creature, not human, but an insect, some nameless beetle unworthy of being identified by a species. Perhaps he is the only one. I still feel like Gregor Samsa and I am just now being roused from my dream. I realize that everything has changed. I scurry in the shadows and I feed off of decay, occupying a flesh that is foreign and that I resent. Was this transformation really so sudden? Was I ever even human? Was I ever even living?
I think I used to be human. I think I used to be alive as well. I used to want to go to Germany and study to become a neuropsychologist. I wanted to have my own apartment and studio space and to devote my spare time to my art--drawings, writings, and photography. I used to read in my spare time and have a passion for discovering new music and movies. I used to let off pent up frustration by going to local shows and dancing. Writhing. Moshing. Being passionate. I cannot define passion anymore. I used to walk a lot. I used to take busses around town and explore alleys and seedy sections of town and take pictures. I used to hate staying still because it made me restless. I was a theatre nerd. I loved acting even though I was never very good at it; I dabbled with stage tech, but acting presented more of a challenge and I loved a challenge. I was a member of my high school's theatre department for three and a half years. I used to love school, and was a rare breed of teenager who
requested extra credit. My favorite subjects were world religion, history, and english. Oddly enough I hated art. I hated a lot of things, and although at the time it seemed like one of my biggest flaws, I don't think so. I would love if my body contained the energy for hate. Hate is misguided passion, it is a reservoir of energy waiting to be properly channeled. I lack that now.
I used to do odd jobs for money. I always had a summer job because I knew that extra-curriculars would be important for college. That's right, I had ambitions of college and felt worthy of an education. I waited tables one summer, but discovered I was pitiful at it. I abandoned that profession for more solitary ones. I wanted to work in an animal hospital because I figured animals were easier than people. I never had enough experience, so I settled with secretarial work instead. I was planning to work my way up. That never happened.
I became homeless at 17. By my 19th birthday I was sitting in a residential psychiatric facility. I would spend six months there. I retreated like a roach into my apartment. That small space that hugged me like a womb. How does one climb out of a grave they have dug themselves for so many years? I can't see the exit. I know it is there, but what is the use when I cannot see it. Can I climb out, or is the only escape to lie in it?
Am I a beetle yet? Or am I still dreaming?
That was my daily dose of melancholy.
What can I say? The holidays bring it out in me.
I am still searching for that human piece of me, still determined that I am not
yet transformed. I am determined to find the softness beneath my exoskeleton and the
person who has ambitions and self-respect and the passion to pursue it.
I feel like this venting of negativity is sometimes necessary. It is the shedding of old skin.
Old shells. Calluses. I believe, perhaps foolishly, that I can move on.
