OF A GOLDEN AGE

one of my favorite quotes is from an episode of m*a*s*h. hawkeye tells someone, “you’re not self-destructive. take it from the guy who keeps sticking his finger in the pencil sharpener.” in so many ways i live my life trying to avoid self-destruction, but this is exactly when i walked into it: when i least expected and was focusing on other things. blindsided. i put it out of my mind for long periods of time only to get hit over the head with it again. if only there were a way to erase feelings written in permanent ink.

* * *

i can’t figure out why it’s the hardest thing in the world to get rid of some mediocre friends. maybe because it feels more like on a basic level we are speaking different languages, just completely missing the other person’s point and getting frustrated. maybe because i am always afraid that for some reason friends do not stick to me and my standards are too high. but being ignored, being fed excuses, these aren’t friendly things. it’s their context that makes them ambiguous. i don’t know what to do. life without risk isn’t as exciting; the pencil sharpener has purpose.

* * *

caroline: i decided officially that i don’t care if she hates me because she is a non-hand-washer who has bad taste.
caroline: the not hand washing is really the dealbreaker.
caroline: i mean, come on.
rich: It’s really that big a deal? I mean, yeah, it’s gross to not wash your hands. But dealbreaker?
caroline: um, YES.
rich: haha wow
caroline: how could it not be?
caroline: you can never touch her hands.
caroline: or touch anything she’s touched!
caroline: AND it is just a principle thing. I MEAN WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOESN’T WASH HER HANDS.
rich: A dirty person who doesn’t look good in yoga pants.
caroline: it’d be like someone who never showers.
caroline: (ALSO a dealbreaker.)
rich: Yeah, never showering is way worse.
caroline: NO!
caroline: they are equally awful!
caroline: you seem to be thinking not washing hands isn’t a very big deal. which is weird!
rich: Not at all! People who don’t shower smell bad.
rich: No, it’s a big deal. But it’s not on par with never showering.
caroline: people who don’t wash their hands have bathroom remnants on their hands!
rich: People who never shower have everything remnants everywhere!

touché!

* * *

yesterday i peeled off the outside bandage on my incision. underneath, there is still surgical tape over the stitches, but it is clear and i can see the future of the scar, which looks to be as minimal as can be expected. i worry that a body that already makes me so self-conscious can only do so more potently now. this is the way of the modern world, i guess, in which our media role models occupy the poverty zone of body weight, their bodies maintaining no character or individualism. but i would still rather not have this scar.

the phone makes me very uncertain; it taps into my insecurity and fear of liking people more than they like me. this is manifested in my near-crippling fear of calling people instead of waiting for them to call me, which is what i almost always choose to do. it’s nothing personal and i am only just realizing how prevalent it is in my friendships, how unfair to my friends that i so rarely pick up the fucking phone and call them first. such a passive way to live, such a contrast to the rest of my way of life.

seeing an old friend after two and a half years is a more positive, but no less impacting, way of getting hit by a bus. i was knocked flat by sense memories and the small things that were different. there was also a surreality to everything, a disbelief that showed up in facial expressions and the tone of conversation. it is always good, though, to realize that things can be put on hold for so long and become just as comfortable and great again with very little lost, especially during the transient college period of our lives, when everything changes.

sitting at carl and mel’s wedding today, between one of my best high school friends and one of my ex-boyfriends, i was steeped in thoughts and memories and feelings of growing up. when you sit at a wedding reception for one of the first people you met in college, worrying about your future career and thinking about which friends will be the next to marry, it’s as if the clouds open up and god smiles on you and says, welcome to being a grown-up. welcome to the next fifty years or more of sweating everything all the time.

i bought my favorite tshirt brand new from the goodwill on east state street in rockford when i was a junior in high school. some of you have seen it — it’s blue and it says INGERSOLL on the back in big letters. it’s been washed at least a hundred times, accidentally sprayed with bleach, spotted with hair dye, and resculpted with scissors, at least around the neck. yesterday i bought some thread and needles and i mended the shoulder seams where they’ve been coming apart for a year. my worn-in thin, three dollar, well loved, ever faithful goodwill shirt.

most married couples who have gone to college MET in college and that thought terrifies me deep in my soul. saturday my friend carl, carl who plays frisbee and prides himself on mixing gross things together in the cafeteria, who lived next door to my best friend from high school when we first got to beloit — one of the FIRST PEOPLE i ever met at beloit — is getting married. in what universe is my most immature friend the first one to get married? carl’s favorite drink used to be a bottle of 99 bananas mixed into a gallon plastic jug of fruit punch!

this week, my highly lactose-intolerant father learned that his sleeping medication — which he’s been taking for at least ten years — contains LACTOSE. the world of medicine is strange and elusive and the way i try to fight certain afflictions is more like ritual than chemistry. faced with a blinding migraine earlier this week, i laid face-down with my forehead on a heating pad and then took a long hot shower. my father’s migraine medicine gives him digestive problems; excedrin migraine’s caffeine gives me bounceback headaches; i am happy to take simple aspirin or ibuprofen and apply occasional heat.

wanted: potentially messy (VERY messy), somewhat emotionally distant, pleated pants wearing, generally sartorially stunted, chronic mediocre performing or underachieving, logorrheic, mumbling, noncreative, immature, histrionic, melodramatic, arrogant, slightly deceitful, poor mannered, frequent drinking, reckless driving, a little bit overly critical, wishy washy, self righteous, pop culturally narrowminded, involved in minor drug use, snobby, aloof, gruff, somewhat pushy and demanding, ignores what i say, awkward, inexperienced, unmotivated, scruffy, noncommittal, overly involved in strange hobbies, with a bad haircut.

must be clingy or particularly jealous; must have poor hygiene; must be uninteresting or dispassionate.

stifling self delusion a must; strong ambient odor a plus.

this day i spent being touched by strangers, strangers with medical pedigrees but strangers no less. after a weekend of teary explanations to friends of what my body was doing, telling the doctors about it was comfortingly calm. maybe this is because in the face of people who have seen far, far worse conditions than mine, i had some perspective leaned against me. something the diameter of a nickel can seem like the biggest scariest incumberance or the most manageable twinge. i would rather stay in the frame of mind where i believe the latter, at least for right now.

indecision.

it’s easier to surround oneself with choices, perpetually, until they form a nest that any newsworthy hoarder would heap praise upon. almost mathematically, the more choices i have, the more likely i am to make an arbitrary decision: a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein i create the choices and then begrudge them their abundance.

when it counts, though, i can hammer it down to the important options and choose. it is small things — what i want to eat, how i want my hair cut, which of twelve colors of a certain shirt i want to purchase. they knock me over.