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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years ago

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Life Story Part 99

Unfortunately for me, on my first day of work, I was invited to see Okkervil River play down in Boise with Josh, Melissa and Whitney. I couldn't skip my first day of work however unlucky it was that it fell on the same day. So Allison ended up going instead. I ended up really liking Okkervil River later on when I was given more exposure to them and have always been sorry I didn't get to see the show. Allison got to meet Will Sheff the lead singer. She also got to know Whitney and Josh and Melissa better. Their connection to Zack ultimately was very limited. Whitney was his sister, but nobody was really involved with Zack since he had gotten into harder and harder drugs, and for the most part Josh, Whitney and Melissa had chosen to cut down. They all seemed to love Allison too, admiring the fact that she played music and wrote her own songs, was cheery and enjoyable overall. Allison felt idolized by people, potential friends who were older than her, who made her feel mature. This really became a huge deal for her. She felt she had found her new family I think. Whitney and Josh became somewhat of an obsession for her in particular. When she got back she could talk about little else but them. She now had friends, and it meant more to her than anything in her young life. It meant she was differentiated from me, and could get away from whatever she found awful about me. It meant that she had finally found acceptance after pining for friendship for so long.

Alex, Sarah's ex, finally moved to Georgia. He had stayed for the last few months to say goodbye to some of his work friends at Shopko. Sarah and I drove up to her family's ranch to say goodbye to him for the last time before he went on his way. I guess despite the mess of him and Sarah's relationship, they had spent six years with one another. It was an awful long time, and they still had a strange history with one another and connection that couldn't be erased. They didn't want to leave with mutual dislike for one another. It was weird because just as I had begun to make friend with Alex, him and Sarah had broken up and he was moving. In fact, Alex had reached out to me to see if I was okay after he found out about Sarah's decision to be with Zack. He knew Sarah and my friendship enough to know that I was probably mentally destroyed by the whole ordeal. I sent him a message telling him I gave them my blessing. It was weird as I the smoke from that spring cleared just a bit, that my attitude about Sarah and Zack had done a one-eighty. I no longer was all that supportive or sympathetic. I was still hurt, but the hurt was becoming something else. I was growing to accept certain parts of what happened, and no longer seeing every detail of what came next as being significant or having anything to do with me really. I had my own life to live. But back when Alex had asked me if I was okay on facebook, I hadn't been able to articulate that.

I remember we hung around in the hammocks and Sarah and Alex reminisced about the fun times they had had early on in their relationship, and how they had grown to bigger and better things. They avoided the topic of Zack. Alex might have said something about Zack being a drug addict, which made Sarah uncomfortable and change the conversation. For some of it, I went on my own and picked flowers. It was a pleasant and somewhat reserved goodbye. We all hugged one another and Alex left. He would be going to Georgia. Sarah gave him her truck that she had gotten from her mother, and he took their cat Gooboo with him and off he went to start his new life elsewhere.

I still having a terrible time, but the terrible time was changing into something euphoric. I could never manage to fully explain it to anyone. I felt like I was being driven and change into something that felt a little bit like hysteria. Reality was not grounded, but in a new way then the ungrounded reality of winter. In a way, this lack of clarity was more wild and vivid and involved action and feelings that needed to be expressed. I didn't feel the movements happening around me. I was the movements. I was the universe. I was connected to the vibrations of everything, and I became whatever I felt which could be anything at any given time. I felt invincible for weeks straight, and at random intervals I felt like death and I would cry. I couldn't show it much of the time at my new job – but I found ways to channel that energy when I worked, I couldn't act the crazy that I felt inside mostly, but I would go home some nights and I would still sob uncontrollably, or laugh uncontrollably. And internally, I began to wonder if there was something chemically off balance about me. I remembered getting diagnosed with chemical imbalance when I was in fifth grade. I remembered all the reactions I had had in my youth, all the strong ups and downs. I remember in the alternative school, Jenni telling me that Mike thought there was something psychologically off about me. It was hard to tell where circumstances made my behavior normal, and which parts of it were all me. Because life had been wildly unfair to me. I say this without self pity. I wasn't dealt the worst cards, but they were pretty shabby just the same. And no matter how crazy I was, had there ever been someone in my life who wasn't crazier than me? How could I gauge if I was well or not.

Looking at the diagnoses for bipolar disorder, I began identifying with a lot of it. I felt malleable and crazy and ready to take all manner of risks. I had started feeling anxious and euphoric at times when I was a teenager. And I had found ways to deaden this side to myself, but now there was no filter for those feelings. I felt euphoric and powerful, and fell into these dark irritable moods. I rarely took things out on people, but I had recently confused Allison by demanding that she start playing Ziggy Stardust the next time I started to cry, and when she did so I chastised her and told her she was being insensitive, and got in her face about it. Which was wrong on my part and I felt like an ass as I did it, but it annoyed me so much the idea that she could remedy my misery automatically. I had told her she could of course, but now I was finding myself insulted by her following the orders that I had put out. Of course I had no means of taking risks, at least not many – but if I had money I would have gambled. If there was some viable options for relationships of any kind, I could have found myself throwing myself out sexually as a means of self destruction. Fortunately, there were never many outlets for me to pour myself into.

Of course, I never got a real diagnosis for bipolar disorder, and my cycles didn't/don't always align with the cycles that are put forth by the psychiatric community. Over the years, I have monitored myself and I think what it comes down to is this. I probably have what some people consider, type 3 bipolar, Cyclothymia. My moods go up and down like bipolar, but the depression is generally not as low as it goes, and my ups aren't so destabilizing that I entirely lose it, but I still am on a very rocky boat, and my perception changes on me drastically. It's difficult to diagnose, and it's questionable if medication would be worth it in my particular situation because I have found ways to manage it almost – so long as everything is going somewhat smoothly in my life (no break-ups or deaths). However, if I am going through very troubling life circumstances, my symptoms start to look like type 2, and in these situations I really can fall. I begin to become delusional. Which is why I require a lot of self monitoring – more self monitoring than people probably recognize. It makes me seem self absorbed, but often times it's just there is a complex science to understanding myself and where I am at. It's hard because with a type 2 bipolar diagnosis, I would have something concrete to explain to myself and the world what it's like to be me, but since I don't generally and I feel mildly silly at times for self diagnosing (I fall as well in a low level autistic spectrum), I am hesitant to say anything about it to anyone. The summer of 2011, I could probably have used some therapy and medication. It would have done me a world of good I am sure. But of course, therapy and medication is for people who have insurance. Dishwashers generally don't get insurance.

Honestly too I guess, I am not always certain I really want to get rid of the ups and downs (mainly the ups). It's come to be a part of who I am – regardless of what I do or do not have. I worry mostly about the potential for spiraling out of control when stuff gets hard, and I have never really had any support with this aspect of my personality. I am completely on my own. I can never fully trust myself either – I have time periods when I need very little prompting to make terrible destructive decisions, and while I was doing it I didn't even know. I feel like I am addicted to life, and everything I do is intriguing and great, and then later on I have to deal with it. There is potential for disaster in me. I lack boundaries. Sarah has pointed out that I am very malleable. But I guess I could argue that if I am not to be trusted, then neither is anyone else. When you shift between perspectives often, you realize that people who flat line in one perspective sometimes lack the ability to realize that everything is perspective – and we are all doing the best we can from where we are at emotionally and psychologically.

One thing that is hard is that when your falling there is this unspeakable disappointment – like everything you believed in and are working on is a lie. I fill up with dread and shame and confusion. It feels like life is over. My whole body hurts and I lay in bed for days and just can't think. It lasts for about a month to six months straight, and everything I have to do like going to work is much harder and I feel ugly and ashamed and numb all the time. Writing helps me through because it reminds me that my thoughts are real and that I am a person of some kind. I have to take steps to get back on my feet – force myself to eat properly, do things for myself I don't want to do – shower, dress up, and when I finally do get on my feet I am fine for a few months, and then something sparks in my mind and I am ambitious and euphorically excited to be alive and everything gets crazy and magical again. This can be mild or really intense, depending on what's happening in my life, but the fall from grace is just horrible feeling. It comes on like when you know you are becoming nauseated due to the flu. You just have to brace yourself and accept that the gig of feeling really good is over for awhile.

I worry too that I will be seen as weak and this is ultimately the grand scheme of my personality. I feel defensive because otherwise, when I get comfortable in any given situation I know that my gauge and reaction to how I fit into the picture is skewed. Whether I am up or down, I don't have the kind of pragmatic middle ground that keeps me safe or levelheaded. I am not really exactly crazy in the sense that I am dangerous to other people directly, but there is a lack of level ground to go home to and if someone were to take me seriously I feel like I would burn them out pretty bad. I am to a degree, whatever state I happen to be in – and it causes me to seem chaotic, counterproductive, easily distracted and inconsistent so relying on me could potentially disappoint and confuse people who think they understood who I was before. I am always vulnerable at all times to whoever wants to take advantage of me for this reason as well. I am embarrassed and insecure when I am down, and when I am up I become easily flattered and obsessive and both manipulative and manipulated. I make decisions based on curiosity and don't think of the outcomes. I see myself as a chaotic and potentially damaging person who at times must be quarantined. So for this reason, I go between intense feelings of not trusting myself to be around others and not trusting other people to being around me, and then deeply wanting comfort and support and to be extremely intimate with other people and smothered – but then I resent that too because I want to feel independent and free, so there is no winning. I have to invent walls to make people not want to be around me, because I fear they will think I am crazy if they knew me. And what I need one day I do not need the next. I honestly feel guilty whenever I want to be closer to people.

The benefit is that I feel like I can reexperience childlike delight in living to some extent the way a lot of people around me cannot. I will always eventually be rewarded with a certain wave of euphoria and a heightened sense of being that always seems worth the sadness I previously experienced. I become very creative. I have a vision of what it is that I want and who I am. The fog clears. It's intense and real. I can take charge of things that were difficult before. It ends too soon, but in those times I feel very alive. I guess I wouldn't want to stabilize because this is the only way I know how to get things done. And in my middle points, I know what it feels like to be both up and down. With this perspective, I can grasp a lot of concepts. I can understand say, something entirely unrelated to myself, World War 1 for instance. I can look at it from multiple vantage points, and I can do so through the guise of knowing and seeing through the lenses and memories of my own angled vision. Which sounds really strange, but it has helped me write good papers so I think I am onto something.

Call it a mood disorder, or the change of the seasons, but I was beginning to emerge from the spell I was under, damaged permanently, but I walked out alive just the same. I had accepted that there was no going back to the old life. Whatever fate had dished out, it hadn't been what I had expected it to be. But through those difficult months (which I wasn't entirely over yet), I had found a sort of strength and knowledge of myself, and the longer I went on surviving, the more I came to trust my own instincts, to follow my intuition, and to be my own person. I didn't want to wait for things to happen to me. My entire life had been one long ugly wait for one thing and then the next. I wanted to make things happen for myself.

It was probably rather strange, likely influenced by The Dresden Dolls or Klaus Nomi, but I sometimes would go into the bathroom and paint my face up like a clown – not the typical clown one hires to do gimmicky stuff and laugh creepily at birthday parties, that isn't the type of clown I was. I was a perriot clown, something artistic and strangely pretty and ornamental and frightening. I felt internally like a shattered doll, something broken and upsetting and perfect in it's brokenness. Maybe to others I was just a minimum wage slave, maybe Sarah and Zack were too dull to fully recognize who I was internally in the ballroom theater of my inner life. And I was more than that. I could do whatever I wanted. I could be a painter, a musician, a performer, a writer. No doubt David thought of me as somehow a foul terrible person – and perhaps he had a point. Maybe I had just broken to the point where I didn't care anymore. In any case, I was happier and had more of a vision seeing myself through the lenses of my own imagination. I was more productive in how lived. I felt the preciousness of life in each breath I took. And really, I didn't perform most of the time or behave in any way that might seem as wild and as vivid as the self image I had of myself laid away in my mind, but it was there, and the outer world and my place in it was somewhat of a mask.

I let go of some assumed expectation, and instead I chose to be myself. Whatever was meant to be would be – my natural identity was my destiny and I was going to live so strongly as me that there could be no mistake or imperfection or forlorn sense of loss. I would attack my goals, not with a sense of duty, but with a passion for my visions and my feelings. I wasn't going to worry anymore about offending others. I think this was my way of breaking free from the identity that I had thought was me for so long, the corner I had been painted into socially by friends and family who either meant me well or didn't but had never fully understood me. I was becoming the girl my father had tried to terrorize me into hiding – and now she was coming out and taking power over the game. She was now me - I didn't have to lock her up in a box anymore or check with Sarah to see if it was okay to be myself anymore. I wasn't ashamed to feel feminine or excitable or pretty anymore.

I threw away most of my jeans and t shirts that weren't for work, and I instead decided from there on then that I would always look my best – I would paint my eyes and my lips, and chose to wear dresses always. Wearing dresses had always been taboo for me. I had never felt confident with my own femininity or pretty enough to wear them. I wasn't allowed to wear them in school – mostly due to the kind of pressure that I would have come up against and the fact that I was afraid to feel helpless and gross somehow. At home my father had this unspoken assessment that wearing dresses was a sexual act. He hadn't shamed me, but given how he always sited studies that said that men were more attracted to women who wore dresses over jeans I had this feeling he would have been threatened by the idea that I was going to bring men home if I wore dresses. There was stigma to dresses – being dolled up was a weapon. It implied I was both a weak girly fool, and a lecherous whore – but somehow it meant that I was brave in a way that I hadn't been raised to be. And I hadn't had any female influence in my life to make the transition easier. I didn't know what to wear, or how to wear it. So wearing dresses was part of my truer self. It was empowering, and it was the way I was going to live my life from here on out.

I ended up getting an ear infection the first week that I worked in the dish pit. I had to wear a plain black baseball style cap and it covered my ears and between the sweat of working hard and the steam that rolled out of the dish machine, my ears became moist inside and I ended up with swimmer's ear. In a way, this ear infection was my new becoming – just like the one I had had at seventeen had been a becoming of sorts. I came out of the intense mind numbing feverish pain transformed and humbled. I managed this ear infection however, somehow I miraculously didn't have to take any days off of work. I went to the hospital, and they billed me three-hundred dollars to see a doctor for five minutes and get a very tiny bottle of ear infection medicine that did very little. I still have not paid the bill. When I ran out the infection came back. I didn't want to have to pay thousands of dollars because of the ear infection and I didn't want to go back to the doctors, so I instead looked up natural remedies to swimmer's ear online, and I discovered that the bacteria responsible could not live in certain pH conditions. Vinegar would kill anything growing in my ear, so I began to pour vinegar in my ear and almost immediately the ear infection cleared up. For a few weeks though, I smelled like apple cider vinegar. And my inner ear stung a bit from the acidity of the vinegar.

My mother was laying in her strange place one day as I was preparing to go to work, and she began asking me what was wrong with Sarah. Why was Sarah wasting her youth on some ugly mugged idiot who was clearly using her for her money. It was hard to picture Sarah as the fool she was clearly being. It was painful to watch Sarah so transparently give up so much of her individuality and things about her that made her so great to this horrible person who didn't even recognize or appreciate her. I shrugged and told my mother to ask Sarah about it – because honestly, I had lost the plot and I questioned my own ability to see through the reeds.

So then Sarah came out of her bedroom, and my mom told her to come to the bed and sit down to have a chat. My mom, quite confusingly, and much to her credit was the only adult that actually sat down and tried to talk to Sarah about where she was going with her life throughout this entire ordeal. My father had for some reason wanted to bring her down in some fashion, and Sarah's own mom was more or less left in the dark. I feel like Carol understood more than she let on, but the idea of her precious daughter running around with the likes of Zack wasn't something she personally felt she could face. Carol could be strong in some circumstances, a very industrious and straight forward person. But she could also be incredibly avoidant about personal issues that mattered, particularly where Sarah was concerned. She was afraid to admit to herself that Sarah was messing up, and she was afraid to tell Sarah what to do. She was secretly worried I am sure.

My mother explained it well. She didn't come from a position of loathing Sarah for hurting me, she didn't react defensively or rudely or come at it from an angle of trying to put Sarah down. She asked Sarah what on earth was going on with her. Was she okay? Could she not see that Zack was a terrible boyfriend? She asked her details about Zack. Sarah did her best to answer, and did her best to make excuses – but it sounded weak to her as soon as she made those excuses. Her voice faltered. My mom tried to explain to Sarah that she had also had boyfriends who were bad for her in her own life, men she had wasted absurd amounts of time on, who used her for her money (remember James), and wouldn't work. And in my mother's experience as a bartender for low end bars in town, she had seen men like Zack and they were always terrible and the women who ran after them thinking they would be the one to change them always came out of the situation short handed and oftentimes bitter about it. And my mom wanted to see Sarah with someone who would at least do his part financially. She wanted Sarah to thrive. She was too beautiful to be wasting herself on this gross selfish creep who didn't even change his clothes. Sarah didn't need to be with a junkie or a methhead. She deserved better,

In a way, it was sort of therapeutic for me to be in the room witnessing this conversation. I just sat at the computer desk and listened. It was stuff that I should have had the clarity to say, but it wouldn't have worked if I talked to Sarah at this point. For one, the whole thing was way to personal to me, as it had been a huge part of my recently discarded life. I couldn't be the friend that Sarah needed because it would seem selfish – either due to the fact that I desperately wanted Sarah's friendship again and Zack was hindering that, or I wanted revenge or some kind of personal sense that I had to break the two of them up – and in any case the situation of me talking about my feelings at all was touchy. I was just a touchy person these days and my emotions were wild and sometimes seemed disproportionate to the problems at hand – at least they seemed that way to everyone on the outside. I was not a reliable witness. Secondly, by following Sarah and Zack around and trying to love them both – I had been endorsing their relationship – my stamp of approval had already been put on it and the ink had dried. I didn't support them anymore, didn't find them interesting either, but it was too late for me to be taking back my endorsement. It was sad to say this, but regardless of either one of us had done to whom, in the end I couldn't' be the friend that Sarah needed and she couldn't be the friend I needed. So for my mom to step in and tell Sarah that she wasn't being evil, that she wasn't so special that she could cure addiction, that her relationship wasn't magical, and that Sarah was allowed to acknowledge she made a mistake – it was helpful.

In the end, Sarah deflected most of what my mother told her, and just repeated that she believed in Zack and loved him. My mom told Sarah it wasn't love at some point, and Sarah didn't agree. To an extent it was easy to pull apart my mother's life and see that despite how right she was in Sarah's given situation, my mom probably didn't know what love was either. She was spending her days talking to Asian men and pretending she was going to fly out there to live as a sexy mother Theresa once she dropped some pounds and started saving her money, paid off her debt and got a passport to whatever current country she was planning on going to which had not yet happened and didn't seem like it really would. All the same, the conversation aged well, and it is remembered as a noble effort on my mother's part to do the right thing in this given circumstance.

On the 4th of July Zany's closed for the holiday, but it was a day where some of the kitchen workers were paid to come in early anyway to pull out kitchen equipment and clean behind things that rarely ever got cleaned. I was scheduled to come in that day – thought truth be told there wasn't a lot I could do to help the guys. I didn't mind working. Anymore, while I was at work I had a purpose and I didn't feel sad or uncertain. It was always kind of a pain to my self esteem to be around people who were uncomfortable with me or tired of hearing me talk. I liked getting out of the house. One of the few things Nicholas told me to do was something involving a vent and a pipe and I had absolutely no idea what he meant. He didn't want to teach me, and seemed annoyed that I didn't know what to do. If I had asked him to instruct me he would have gotten proud and annoyed at me for it, so I just went into the dish pit and looked at the area I was supposed to do something with and waited for a nice person to come in and help me. I think it was a matter of fixing something. It involved tools I had never been shown.

Nicholas was the kitchen manager, but the real leader of the group was this guy named Levi. He generally worked in the deli area of the kitchen. He was in his mid to late twenties. He could he commanding and cold when it was necessary, but he was also very moralizing and fun. Everyone liked him. I liked him. He brought the best out of everyone around him. He knew when people were struggling and unlike the other fools, he often times tried to help people rather than put them down. He was the best worker in the whole restaurant for this reason. He was married to one of the waitress supervisors named Dani who worked at Zany's as well. She was very genuine and nice. They had a daughter together, and had been married for two years. Standing in the dish pit I felt vulnerable and fearful that Nicholas would catch me not completing this mysterious task that he had ordered me to do and insisted that I should already know how to fix. Levi came in and smiled at me. I asked him timidly and quite awkwardly if he would help me. He looked at what I was talking about, and he laughed. He said he would come back and help me. He couldn't believe Nicholas expected me to fix this thing myself.

So in a few minutes he came in and him and a few of the other guys set about laughing and joking around and showing me what I needed to do. I stood there helplessly watching as carefully as I could so that I never found myself in the uncomfortable predicament again. Nicholas came in the room as they were finishing the job, and he looked at me fiercely and demanded that I be the one who fixed the pipe. He demanded that I couldn't be getting the other people in the restaurant to do my job. Levi seemed to have this weird natural way about him. He amiably told Nick that I didn't know how to do what he had asked, and in any case it would have been an even worse disaster had I tried to do it myself. He basically shielded me from Nick, who carried on to order someone else to do something in an attempt to maintain an ere of control.

Levi smiled down at me, and in that moment I got this strange lump in my throat and butterflies in my chest and I looked down and blushed. I realized that I was having an idiot girl moment like in a bad movie. I couldn't believe this! I thought Levi was cute in like, the most basic primitive stupid way that I pretty much had counted myself as too good for years ago, and it was embarrassing for me. He had done the basic man thing and helped me do something I didn't know how to do myself, and now he had just 'protected me from danger'. He wasn't poetic – he hadn't displayed any of the refinements of a sophisticated and complex. This isn't to say that Levi was dumb – he wasn't dumb at all. But he wasn't structured like that. In no way shape or form did he seem like a match for me, nor did I truly think I was in love with him in that moment or have any ideas of this going anywhere. Which made me feel even more foolish. How confusing!

He hadn't done anything particularly special other than be the generally benevolent leader that he always was – but I had just melted like butter on account of it. He had this caring kindness in his eyes, and an attractive face. I really liked his round face and his dark complexion (he was of Native American decent). And he was always very humorous and in control and brave and self sacrificing. He was so well balanced. And when someone pissed him off, he confronted with them about it fairly. And he got stuff done. He was essentially all the things that Zack wasn't.

But dear lord did I feel silly. Because I was crushing on this guy I had nothing in common with. And I was attracted to him in this corny conventional way and I couldn't control myself– the way of the way basic as hell teen movies presented girly crushes, and I was supposed to be above this! It had always seemed foolish and dumb, taking into account all the romantic characteristics I had gotten from books, and all my high expectations. And here I was admiring this guy's shoulders and feeling weak in the knees because he was 'manly' and soft at the same time. Furthermore and most importantly, he was married! Very Married. I knew his wife. She was a really sweet lady. There was absolutely no place for me in this scenario that seemed wholesome in any way, or realistic. There was absolutely nothing to pursue. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. Pursuit was the only thing I really knew how to do in these situations. Quietly perhaps, but I wasn't able to just let it be. But I couldn't do anything, so instead I just internally combusted whenever Levi said hi to me or smiled at me.

From then on, I was always excited to go to work if Levi was there. I would eventually get comfortable enough to joke around with the rest of the kitchen but when Levi said anything to me I sort of stiffened up. If I let myself be comfortable around him, then it would all come tumbling out somehow and my awkward secret would be spilled out for all to see all over the dish pit floor. Because I didn't have those boundaries like other people did. If I got comfortable then my body language and my eyes would betray me and I would be revealed as the true creep that I was. So my only recourse was to create physical boundaries by not letting myself get too comfortable. It wasn't hard because whenever he was in my presence I stopped thinking clearly. And it confused Levi because he really liked me in this totally innocent way and he interpreted my reaction to him as fear – which in a sense he was right, but for the wrong reasons. He told me himself several times that he thought I was one of the best workers in the kitchen, and that I seemed like I really bright, sensitive and intelligent girl. He didn't mean it as a form of hitting on me or some ulterior motive flattery. But I melted a little bit when he talked to me.

I felt really bad about it, but there was something kind of addictive about the guilt so when I attempted to shame myself into not thinking about it, I thought about it even more. I felt like some kind of Golemlike creature that was staring into Levi and Dani's living room window jealously on a dark serene Christmas night, wishing that I could be included in the family somehow with some kind of absurd Phantom of the Opera like madness of swooping in and stealing Levi and making him weird like me so he could live in the sewers and be my husband instead of Dani's. Perhaps I am exaggerating a little when I say it like this. But I often wondered what it was that attracted me to Levi, and when I thought about it long and hard I started to feel enormously sad. I think it was because Levi seemed very stable and kind. He was very assertive in a way that I didn't know how how to be, and very warm and huggable in a way I didn't feel like I was. And I had never had anything that was very stable or kind in my life. Most men I knew were mean and unpredictable and likely violent. In the end, I had to watch my back, and be careful not to bruise their tender egos else they would make me pay for it. I had grown up second nature with a mistrust that men had honest intentions and when I was around men I felt a little bit gun shy. And Levi was so fucking nice.

I had started to go through the process of befriending my own brokenness. I don't think my self esteem was the greatest, but I didn't process self hatred when I looked at myself in the mirror anymore. It was counterproductive to feel self pity or spend too much time thinking about what I didn't have. I looked at myself as a project of sorts – and in that sense I wasn't afraid to snip and break any part of me that could not fulfill my own goals, but I wasn't in the game to beat myself up anymore – at least not in the societal sense. I had come to terms with myself and my body and how life would be – so long as I kept moving forward and matching my own expectations. But I would never have what Levi had. Whatever it was that Levi embodied, it reminded me of a time in my early childhood where I had been acquainted with a simple sense of goodness, like the way a batch of cookies smell good in the oven. There wasn't much to think about or sort out. It was just delightful and good. I wanted life to be simple and good again. It wasn't the worst life. I had built this palace of ideas and exhilaration and sorrow. I wouldn't have given it up for anyone. But I was also tired and weary and Levi's limited presence in my life offered something that appealed to my childlike need to find something that felt like home.

There was a wall between me and the Levi's world though – and it wasn't something that was going to be broken down. I knew my place and even liked my place. I was made for more. I wasn't in the game to play house with someone. And in that sense I was kind of a Golem staring into the window as Levi and Dani watched their daughter open Christmas presence, unbeknownst to them that I was spying into their lives like a loathsome curious worm. I felt sort of like a creep being so attracted to Levi. I felt badly whenever Dani was nice to me. I felt like I was disrespecting her in some fundamental fashion by coveting her husband. She also liked me and thought I was bright and honest. I think she was mostly going by what Levi said about me, but it was enough to make me feel guilty.

And of course there was this disturbing part of me that entertained how I could edge in to Levi's life. I remember having this dream where I went into work, and everyone was gone in the whole building. I went into the back of the restaurant and looked down the line and there was Levi – he was the only one there, and the walls and the floor seemed to shake and yet everything was painfully and grossly clear. He didn't know I was there somehow, but the intensity of it being just him and I in the restaurant gave me this weird sense that my mind was boring into his life in ways I knew better than to do. Upon waking, I had this notion about how I could probably make myself seem cooler and more fun and personable to Levi than Dani. It would take years of rehearsing and focusing. It wouldn't break them up, but if I spent six insane years trying to break them up I could probably manage to make Levi very unhappy and confused. And I would have made some kind of weird mark on him and there was something satisfying in knowing that I could alter or change him – separate him from his family and his old life – give him some abstract thing to chase after rather than the comfort of family and the next meal.

And waking up with that feeling, I was covered in sweat and I felt guilty and sick and my skin hurt. This is sort of what I mean when I talked about having a bad side to me now. Because before Zack and Sarah, I never would have considered this. I would have calmly accepted Levi was with Dani and it never would have crossed my mind to manipulate that situation in my favor. Of course, I didn't manipulate anyone, and I never would. I would never ever make another woman feel terrible about herself or insecure in her relationship if I could ever possibly help it, even if some sick part of me felt compelled to do so. But having thought about it, and having had the kinds of dreams that lead me down this psychological journey, I felt like I had already done it, or at least laid down the psychological groundwork, and in that sense I had already done a very bad thing regardless of Levi or Dani could recognize it.

Later that 4th of July night, I begrudgingly went with Sarah and Zack to sit on the Lewiston hillside and watch the fireworks go across the town and decorate the sky and the reflect in the Snake and Clearwater River. I could see all the little lights of the town, I could see the light that was where my mother lived, I could see many of the places where my mom had moved us all, I could see the businesses I had known since I was very little. I could see Zany's and the area where Levi lived, the factory, the places I had attempted to apply to work at. It all seemed so small, and when I looked at the town from below, it made me want to choke. I felt this sick crazy feeling that it wasn't enough and I needed to get far away. And beyond the town, I could see the endless miles of empty eastern Washington desert that stretched out for hundreds of miles before finally turning into the Cascade Mountains – so far from the cities and places where things happened and I could find people who might understand me. This was the world I had always known. And it wasn't enough. It looked small. It gave me this perspective of how small I was in this ugly little town. Someone like Levi could flourish and do well here. But for me, I needed something more. I longed for something I would never find in this little crevasse of the world.

PART 98 - https://tinyurl.com/y7pjvn95

PART 97 - https://tinyurl.com/ybvlfusf

PART 96 - https://tinyurl.com/y8cm6pdy

PART 95 - https://tinyurl.com/ybxq2o5j

PART 94 - https://tinyurl.com/y8k7mwq4

PART 93 - https://tinyurl.com/yc8mae7e

PART 92 - https://tinyurl.com/yb7bwsuw

PART 91 - https://tinyurl.com/yar8e8rp

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-90 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-90

#text #writing #life story #long text

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