Adventures
That’s all I really want this summer, all I want in general.
It hasn’t hit me yet, that mom and I are headed to Italy, fucking ITALY, on Monday. I’m still recovering from my amazing summer kick-off with Troy, driving all over SoCal. I finally got my dream, or, at least half of it, driving up PCH and watching the coast zoom past. It was all so amazingly beautiful and both Troy and I met some pretty awesome people along the way. Even staying in a hostel wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and hopefully Troy and I get to meet up with Jamie and hostel it up in NorCal before school starts again.
Catching up with J has been weird. I forgot how much I missed him and how much he gets me. I think sometimes we all just forget that we already have what we need to be happy, and I still have my hesitations, but that isn’t because he doesnt make me happy. It isn’t because he isn’t good for me. It’s just me being me, scared of making the wrong choice. But when all you wanna do is lay next to someone and talk about everything and nothing all at once…I think that’s a good sign.
I really want to visit my father. Mom is against it of course, and I know she has my best interest at heart but honestly she needs to let me make my own mistakes. I know the dangers, and I know the risks, and she can warn me of things I already know but nothing can change the fact that deep down a small part of me really does want to go, and the more she says no the more I want to do it just to prove I can. Late teenage rebellion I suppose.
Fuck, I’m turning 20.
It isn’t such a big deal…mom is turning 60. And I suppose I should be excited but all it really means is more responsibility. Finally got approved my first credit card (for Victoria’s Secret, of course) and mom gasped when she heard the credit limit was $750. Apparently when she got her first credit card it was $400. Times have changed indeed. I know I can pay my first purchase off, I just really need people to start paying me back. Waiting on money from the house…oh the house.
Dealing with the house is stressful but stressful in a way I know is worth it. I’m looking forward to living with Kim and Abi, and I know next year is going to be interesting with so many of my bros and friends living close by. We’ll be juniors…a thought which sunk in while sitting with Troy and some of my AKP bros during graduation. I thought I only knew about 10 people graduating…surprise! I knew at least 30 and I swear I was going to have a heart attack when they kept calling names I knew and I started to realize I wouldn’t see them again.
So I guess what I’ve learned is to make this time count, while it lasts. This school year has been a roller coaster of challenges and I’ve seen so many people’s true colors, some good, some bad. But, you win some you lose some, and I have so much more to gain from opening myself up to new people than I have from keeping myself closed off.
I’m savoring this moment of possibility, and perhaps in the end it will all work out :)
The Unfortunate Circumstance of Being Alive
Birdie dug through her bag, frantically searching for What Had Been Lost while next to her Thai inhaled the smoke through a piece he swiped from the flea market two days ago. She always seemed to lose something in that bag, and Thai always laughed as she tried to find it. It was coincidental, their meeting, though very fortuitous. Birdie needed to meet Thai, needed to meet him in a way that was conducive to her now growing health and self-image. Thai was gay, and his self confidence rivaled any diva Birdie had ever met at her mother’s hair salon. Those ladies had attitude, walked as if they owned the world, talked as if each word they annunciated was worth its weight in gold. Birdie would watch them quietly from a corner, just as she had when she first saw Thai.
Birdie was obese. It’s hard to make friends when you’re obese. People look at you while you eat, think if you eat anything but a salad that you’re digging your own grave, glare at you unknowingly so that each bite burns going down. Birdie figured they were probably right, but she ate anyway, wishing that the more she ate the more she might disappear into herself and never have to stare back at those disapproving eyes.
Thai snapped his fingers, nodding his head to a beat Birdie did not recognize and thus she dismissed his random outburst of song. A shabby sports car, if you could even call it that, zoomed by, the bass blasting though its speakers shaking even Birdie to the core. A girl sauntered past, a skinny frail thing, her limbs very much like the skinny twigs Birdie used to collect when she and her father went to the park together. On her head was a cupcake beanie, white knit for the frosting with a small ball of red on top for the cherry. Birdie was hungry. It had been a long day full of classes, useless classes like speech and algebra, at the local community college. Birdie loved learning, but she hated school. She did not consider herself very smart and try as she might she could never seem to fully concentrate on the task at hand, always staring out the window or doodling all over her notes. Birdie was more interested in the way things worked, the way the world operated, the functions of life, and would much rather spend her time outdoors examining nature than inside reading a textbook. Her momma warned her she Wouldn’t Get Anywhere with That Sort of Attitude but what, Birdie wondered, was the point? It seemed no matter how hard anyone worked all they seemed to encounter were more struggles, more downfall. If anything, more money caused more problems. Birdie’s mom admired the wealthy, strived to be like the lavish ladies they would see at the mall, fluttering from one store to the next, bags in hand. She did not see their isolation, their cheating husbands, their bleary existence, not the way Birdie did. If anything, Thai reinforced her belief that the wealthy might even be worse off than herself.
Thai was an interesting character. He cleaned houses on the side in order to make extra money, money he split between weed and a savings account. Thai cleaned houses on the nice side of town, the side where mansions lined the ocean and the view from their balcony was the world for miles. There were spiral staircases and eerie marble statues, pools a deep unnatural due of blue, and rooms that looked as if nobody had set foot in them for ages. He took her up there once, snuck her in with him for one of his cleaning duties. She stood there on the balcony while he scrubbed the toilet, stared at an ocean which stretched miles and miles, fading into the horizon. From there, Birdie could not decide where the ocean ended and the sky began, and she wondered what this land looked like back when buildings and cities did not exist.
The meaning of life…what an interesting question. Birdie thought of it then, as the bus wheezed to a stop in front of them, its steel heaving mass exhaling as the doors opened and people poured out onto the street. Pulling out her bus pass in triumph, she and Thai climbed aboard. Sometimes Birdie asked Thai what he was saving up for. Why did he work so hard when all he did was put the money away? Thai would always shake his head lovingly, coo an “Oh Birdie,” and sigh, explaining that one day he hoped to see the world. He did not want to stay here forever, he couldn’t. His soul yearned for lands far away and languages he did not know. His feet ached to walk upon lands rich with history, not bleached with capitalism and the set stains of an imagined freedom.
Birdie would ask him what he meant, would always interrupt his ramblings on the chains of a capitalistic economy run by humans with no emotion other than greed. Thai explained to her then that they were not truly a free people, they were a people tied down by their need for Things, Stuff, Material, and, ultimately, waste.
