|
|
8-28-01 - 11:27 p.m. Summer is winding down. I�ve always judged my summers by end and starting dates of school. Kellie registered for her senior year in high school on Monday. That means she�s going back (even if I�m not with her this time), she�s going to get all her new supplies (which she will either lose or destroy within a week), and she�ll have to give up her insanely semi-nocturnal summer sleep schedule. At least, that�s how it always was with me. I remember in school, especially in junior high, how much fun it was to catch up with classmates after having not seen them for three months. I remember also the �summer activities and accomplishments� essay that somehow sneaked its way into every teacher�s curriculum, regardless of subject, and the more eventful the summer, the higher the grade. Needless to say, everybody lied, including myself. There�s only so much one can do in three months, short of hang-gliding across the Andes in a paisley muumuu. I think that, for me, the events of the summer of 2001 would surely have provided me with enough material for, at least, a B+ on that essay. Let�s review, shall we? In June, I played �Mimi Marquez� in my school�s amazingly ghetto-fied production of RENT. Somehow, we pulled off a stupendous show�the guys who played �Mark� and �Roger� were immensely talented�and broke my shin the first night of the play when a faulty step in the cheap staircase on the set gave way, forcing my foot suddenly through the gap and snapping my tibia in two. I ended up finishing the show after popping several Vicodin pills I �just so happened to have on me at the time.� Five days later I left for Cambridge and what was supposed to be the greatest single adventure of my life. It turned out to be a disaster, something that was not Harvard�s fault. It was my own. I hooked up with a guy who was older (and wiser when it came to dealing with the manipulation of the opposite sex) than me. Noah preyed on me naivet� and I foolishly had sex with him long before we ever should have. Our third and last time sleeping together, the condom broke, and when my period didn�t come on schedule, I freaked and went to see a doctor for a pregnancy test, having wasted money buying a number of home tests, all of which turned up inconclusive. I was told I was pregnant, and a few days later began bleeding. Again I panicked and headed back to the clinic. A different doctor told me that there had quite obviously been a mistake, that I had been shown another woman�s results, and that I was perfectly safe and un-pregnant. After having had several arguments with Noah, after each one discovering more and more clearly just how little he cared about my well being, I decided to go home, back to San Diego. So I ditched Harvard and Lexi and Cambridge and our three adorable hamsters and came back to where I once belonged. Like Loretta and Jojo. Before my false pregnancy scare, my biological father died. An aneurysm in his brain ruptured and he could not be saved. This at first made me angry, for I felt he had cheated me out of rubbing my inevitable success in his face. Now I like to think that I�ve come to terms with it, or at least that I�m beginning to, and I certainly do not feel the need to dwell on his death, or his life, for any reason. He just wasn�t worth the effort. He still isn�t. He left me, in his will, a substantial amount of money, which I will receive come my 18th birthday and donate to charities immediately. I don�t want it and I don�t need it. But I know that there are people who do. When I came home, I fell into a rage-filled depression. I took to self-injuring once more. George gave me an ultimatum-clean up my act or get out-and I chose to ignore the former, and was forced to do the latter. I ended up encountering a stroke of luck in finding shelter, and moved into my current residence, the tiny hole-in-the-wall that is my apartment. I rekindled my relationship with my former best friend-turned-boyfriend, Rob, who now somewhat lives with me (he�s a diehard surfer and I live by the beach) and returned to my old therapist, Janet, for weekly (now twice-weekly) meetings. When my friend Bryan came out gay to his parents, he felt as though the time had come to move out, and shyly asked me if he could stay in my apartment. I told him he could, and welcomed a second roommate to my home. Things were finally looking up�nobody had died and few people were getting hurt, including myself�and then I got sick. What I had originally thought to be food poisoning turned out to be appendicitis. This became more evident as the pain in my stomach/abdomen became so unbearable that I could not walk, and when I realized that vomiting several times per hour is not normal. I was taken to the hospital and my appendix was taken out. Emergency appendectomy. I was hospitalized for several days afterward. During my brief stint as appendectomy patient at a local hospital, someone chose my car as the lucky break-in mobile, and my CD player, stereo, and every single last one of my CDs were all taken from me. The CDs are not a problem�I had been careful to make copies of all of them (a process which took weeks), but the principle of it is still disturbing. The thief broke the driver�s side window to jimmy the door open and grab the loot. I�m just glad he (or she) didn�t take my car. I�m lucky in that respect. All that she (or he) took were just things. And things can be replaced. This whole Summer of the Damned thing is beginning to get old. Don�t get me wrong; I�m not feeling sorry for myself (there�s a change). Quite the contrary�it�s getting to the point where all I can think to do is just laugh. I�ve been through enough these past three months to waste more energy by being depressed about it all. So I�m laughing. Burns calories. I tripped climbing the stairs this morning and nearly fell down them and cracked open my skull. It�s just slapstick. It�s all a cruel joke and I finally understand the humor. Or, more accurately, it�s a playground bully playing pranks on me, and the more credit I give it; the more I�m made to suffer. So I�m going to attempt a new theory: ignoring it. I�ll just smile and nod from now on. That�s not to say I won�t pay my feelings any attention. I�m still going to be seeing Janet, still going to be feeling, as though I had any choice in the latter, and will most assuredly still cry on occasion. But I�m going to laugh more. Because if this were a sitcom, I�d watch it on reruns to get the jokes the second and third time around. Rob called Kurt (manager guy at the coffee shop) to tell him why I couldn�t show up Sunday, and it seems Kurt really wants me to work for him, because otherwise, I can�t imagine him letting me call him �at my leisure� to set up a date for training. I called him today, said I�d be there Friday. Now, as the Summer of the Damned comes to a close, I�m looking forward to the Autumn of the Condemned. Bring it on.
|