Thursday, June 24, 2010

Last night Lauren came to visit, and of course the usual lovely friends were hanging around Beyonce, and today Mr. Mulvey picked me up and we went on a bike ride, and I feel at home now. I call mom, in a panic, a few times a day 'mom, you've made me scared to leave the house.' 'mom, i'm being so awkward' 'mom, i can't stop falling asleep' and she is the only one that has ever been able to calm my nerves. It is days like this, when I sort of love everything that I most wish my cousins were with me, because I know they know this lovely sort of over-whelmed or perhaps just-the-right-amount-whelmedness that we sometimes get on the most ordinary of days. A few months ago my aunt calls my mom, but I answer and she says "Sorry I missed your Birthday... I mean, I didn't really miss it, I just didn't call you." and I said "It's ok, I think at this point we are old enough to know that we know" and she says "That's the great thing about this family, we just know, we don't really have to say it." and perhaps not saying things sometimes makes our feelings about each other unclear, but there is some undeniable love spread out among all of us.

What if everywhere felt like home? I think it could. I guess the real question is: what if everyONE felt like home? Somedays I am not good at making friends, somedays I feel unimpressive, and it makes me scared, so I fold myself up neatly, and don't talk or make eye contact, I do my best to be invisible. How can you ever trust that what you have to say is important? I like getting to know people, I just never know how. Usually people unfold themselves in good time. I want to always feel like home, for other people.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Summer Snack

I have this bad habit of accidentally developing a 3:30AM snack ritual in the summer. I wake up and feel ravenous, I think partly because I eat to closely before going to bed. Does that even make sense? My fingers are sticky with chocolate cake, my hunger is subsided, and sleep is setting back in.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Letters

My thumb is sore from letter writing, so I am giving it a break before I go onto my next letter. Apparently I am full of words or thoughts, and I can't seem to compact them enough for a poem, or control them enough for a story, so I am just writing to people, hoping my thoughts are mildly well-recieved or at least entertaining. I've been riding a wave of full confidence lately, but the start of summer seemed to be a re-start to insecurities (though I like them, as long as they don't frighten me to the point of hermitude.) I try to keep myself in check. I still lack a trust, a trust that people like me, and that if they didn't I would have enough sense to know that. I think of myself as pretty OK at reading people, but I don't trust that this applies to reading how people feel in regards to me. This is a most people thing, not any one person in particular. Some days I am confident that I am likeable, but most days I am second guessing. People think it is selfish and passive-aggressive and needy to want people to tell you they like you. I am not desperate for it, and I wouldn't ask anyone point blank, and I wouldn't even hint at trying to make them say something along those lines. But in my head, it only makes sense to tell people you like them, or really how you feel about them in general. People do tend to think it is strange though, so sometimes I have trouble doing so myself. Though a few glasses of wine usually helps, and leads me to lots of arms drooping over shoulders and me saying "I love you guys, you guys are great" which is really true. Oh jeez, I keep worrying about making a fool of myself, but if any of it really is me making a fool of myself then I suppose that is just what I am, a genuine silly sort of gal. I'll take it for what its worth. So worrying be damned, I have to get rid of it before my real summer starts or I will trapped inside my hot attic room all summer quivering in a pool of my own sweat. I think my thumb has had its rest, if you're "lucky" you might be getting a sloppy savannah letter in your mailbox in the near future.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The sky is always falling in this family. In truth, it really is falling, and we do our best to create a forcefield of tension to hold it up. I am made half of love and half of neurosis (and they intertwine themselves so strangely, no?). Tonight my cousins and I laid on the pier and star-grazed, talking about things of importance, talking about non-sense (just as important) and sitting in silence. "I like my silences like I like my uterus, un-pregnant". There are rifts between us, rifts of love, misunderstanding, and just the space of only seeing each other in this one place, this one way, this one element. But there is a closeness that we will never have with anyone else, the knowledge of growing up here, with the people that we know so well. I've been thinking about people lately, and how I can't really describe them to other people, because to describe a person you have to describe the people around them, the group dynamic, the way the function in the group, and I haven't figured out a way to do that. This is why I struggle to write about el cafe because it's magic is not held in any individual, but created by the whole. I want to spend my summer working on this.
I went from one family event to another, my two families so different, in one I move so fluidly know my place, in the other I feel clumsy, quiet, hover around the few people I know best. I love them both though. I wonder if this feeling of being young will ever go away when I am out of my element. My heart is full, but not breaking, it is confused, but not scared, I am trying hard not to be scared or sad, trying to release my tension in my own quiet way.
Sarah and I sat around talking about our feelings, which is all we ever really do, and it was nice, nice to be able to talk about important things without tip-toeing or getting awkward or uncomfortable, and sometimes we just sat in silence thinking about things, about Grandma (one of us trying to quell our fear, one of us trying to muster it up). The down-side of being slightly calmer and happier at all times is that my emotions are dimmed, but when we were laying on the pier shivering I got scared under that big sky, the idea that the circumstances are always changing, that I can love this family fiercely as I want and we could still fall apart for some lack of effort. I am trying hard to stay in touch with everyone, trying to see if I can be the glue. Trying to learn to love everyone in their element, trying hard not to want people to change (and failing and failing where certain people are concerned). But I do love all of you, my darling lions and miss you when you are not around.
Now off to a 3 hour bat mitzvah ceremony, hopefully I have developed a sudden talent for singing in hebrew that I did not have yesterday, and hopefully I can keep myself from giggling, though it will be hard, not because I think the ceremony itself is funny but because the awkward, out of placeness I feel in church makes it hilarious, the people mumbling hymns out of key, and me clumsily following along, feeling like I am 5 when I used to pick up books and sing them instead of reading them. Church is something I did not grow up with, and even though I went for a short time as I child I always felt strange, it makes no sense to me, but I don't and won't knock it.

to remind myself for later:
(last night I dreamt that I got dirt on my grandmother's couch, oh the horror, oh the horror)