Today, class we will discuss something i have noticed that is getting a lot of attention lately. We all need it, even when we don't want it. It controlls us sometimes. It can make us STOOOO-PID! It is, yes, love. i pondered capitalizing the 'l' in 'love', but decided not to give it any more respect and attention than i already will today and well, i am frankly a bit upset with it right now, anyways, so phoey on love!
What is love? Another way for people to use and control you? The greatest think in life? A fairytail for idiots and chumps? Does it REALLY make the world go 'round? i don't know. i don't pretend to. i'm not sure i ever even want to know. i just know what it feels like and that it hurts though mostly just when it's leaving.
i have felt the feirce devotion of motherhood. No one is a 'born mom', you learn it through pain and pride, hard work and sacrifice. i was 5 before i had a friend my age. Let's face it, i was a freak. All of a sudden, i was forced to try to cope (like an adult) in a non-adult society. i couldn't. i could get high, drink, tell dirty jokes, and converse with the best adults, but i had no idea how to play with dolls. And why would i want to? By the time i was 7 i had the REAL deal at home. i stood on the outside and watched and studied and hated all those kids who were 'normal' because i saw them as monsters. i also saw what my parents had done wrong and knew that i felt horrible and that i would never want anyone else to feel like this, especially not children of MINE. Can you remember being a kid and just assuming that one day you'd have kids and be married? i have yet to meet someone who didn't have that assumption at one point or another, but i think it's normal ~ it's all we know. The marriage & family is the standard we are all told to measure ourselves and each other with. It also promotes the hetero lifestyle and paints the Scarlet Letters on those who do not climb right into the mould with play-doh minds and shit-eating grins.
i have also felt an obsessive love. i didn't like him much anymore but i felt like i'd die with out him. The thought of leaving hurt me, i couldn't breathe, but the thought of staying, spending the rest of my life with this man made me want to puke. He admitted to fucking anything that didn't run from him, but i was so scared of starting over, of being ALONE, i refused to let him go. i had worked so hard to make him love me. i had changed everything about me. i gave up all my friends, all my interests, i stopped writing, i stopped living. Whatever he demanded, no matter how absurd of difficult, i did it. And i tried to call that love.
i have had friendships that came, faded, went with the interests we'd shared and lost. i have had friends leave and come back. i have Liv and O.Penguin and most of all i have ME. for years i existed between breaths, in insomnia and panic attacks, pain ripping through my head at any moment that would bring me to my knees. i lived with the constant litany of how i could kill myself running through my head. i survived the deliberate attempts to hurt myself. i always smile now when someone talks about "beating their head against a brick wall". i DID. Daily. When i was really young i would beat my head on the wall when my parents argued. i don't know why. When the daily headaches got to be too much and i was so frustrated i just couldn't handle it anymore, i would beat my head on the wall. Liv & O.Penguin stayed right there and took care of me, protected me from my worst enemy, me. After i left school for 3 months in a locked ward, i misplaced my Original Penguin, and shortly after that, when i got involved with Chip and Liv started college, we drifted apart, too. i kept up with Penguin as he lived right down the street from my parents, but Liv had a load of shit and i was lost for a few years so she was in NY City before i got a Christmas card out of the blue that said, "i miss you, please call or write even just to say, 'Fuck off, Olivia.'" It felt so RIGHT i just picked up the phone that moment, dialed and as that voice i still heard in my heart answered the phone i just said, "Fuck off, Olivia!" It was like those two and a half years had never passed! i had my soul back! i felt whole again. It all turned around on that pivot point. i realized i still had friends and it would all be OK somehow. i got me back.
It hasn't been all happy or great since, but when i needed to cry on someone, or had great news, or just wanted to sit in silence paying long distance charges for silent understanding, it was there. When i realized what all i had given up i got in touch with a few other people i had really never stopped thinking of and put forth efforts to actually aquire some new friends. i started writing again. i got a life. i learned how to spend time alone with no thought but my own and not feel the crushing need to get out of my head. i am still neurotic and prone to turning on ya and biting to the bone, but it happens so much less and i am not as antisocial. i do still say the strangest things off the top of my head and shock people, but many seem to think it cute or charming even as it confuses; i am just me and most people i keep around me accept that. that is love to me. Acceptance and genuine pleasure in sharing somone's company. Thinking of their needs before your wants when it really matters. Knowing when to let them alone and telling them to fuck off when they need to hear it. Love . . . is . . . friendship.
Is simplicity best
Or simply the easiest
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
So walk on barefoot for me
Suffer some misery
If you want my love
If you want my love
Man will survive
The harshest conditions
And stay alive
Through difficult decisions
So make up your mind for me
Walk the line for me
If you want my love
If you want my love
Idle talk
And hollow promises
Cheating Judases
Doubting Thomases
Don't just stand there and shout it
Do something about it
You can fulfil
Your wildest ambitions
And I'm sure you will
Lose your inhibitions
So open yourself for me
Risk your health for me
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
"Judas" ~ Depeche Mode
Live took me to this concert for my birthday . . . the best one yet, babe! and though i love this song best, it is not love.
confessed on 2000-12-12