but I’m not in school anymore, right? the last few weeks, especially through the endless list of testing dates and AP and the SAT that I was stupid enough to wait until now to take, I ate slept and breathed personal improvement and one step at a time, and not too let my gaze wander too far into the future for fear of tripping on my own figurative feet. summer was supposed to be a time of well-earned freedom for whatever wandering your heart desired. and while school was a time of academic achievement and an competition to see who really had the mind and sleeping habits made of steel, summer was when you really had the time to fix all of the little things that you hated, and recover all of the little things that broke over the course of the year and you just never really had the time to repair them. in my high school education, I learned exactly what I could and couldn’t survive.
I have nightmares about getting off the plane in Paris in (five?!?!) days from now and not recognizing the face of the girl that I’ve known for six whole months, the person that was supposed to become my best friend. not only that, I would forget every trace of French that I knew, which was definitely not the point of being there. right now I can’t decide which one seems worse: failing and stumbling over the language that I was taught from day one to call beautiful, a culture so much more complex and deep and rich than I could ever comprehend in the time that I had, or to regain my footing just a few days before I would return and lose what grasp I did have on English; not just the tired and corset bound standard written that was so expected to have in school, but the flowing spoken twisted wordplay that went from the anorexic bare and gaunt that I wished to be, to the full figured yet athletic, wiry muscled arms and wild eyes from knowing what it felt like to really be alive and breathing. the spoken that I was just now beginning to master after keeping quiet for so long.
and I have nightmares about losing more than I already have, because right now, I was about to forget what my fingers wanted to trace out over a keyboard and that is what terrified me the most. as of right now, creeping into the early hours of Sunday may 19th, 2013, i have barely moved from this bed since Friday night, contemplating both how good a cold shower would feel, and the way that depression takes the life out of you by taking all forms of communication from you. your jaws lock up, fingers clumsy across the keyboards, but most of all, you lose the interest that you once had, the ability to connect with others over some common love, and to realize that love comes in more shapes than disgusting heart shaped pieces of sweetened cornstarch. right now, writing this is the best that I’ve felt in weeks because at least it temporarily quiets the nightmares that I won the sweepstakes and was awarded the opportunity to take a tour of my own mind and body (with four of my closest friends!?!?!?!!!!!!!) and to walk around inside, only to be totally mortified by just how empty I really was inside.
I thought that, come summer, and once the pressure lifted off of me, things would get better, but I was wrong. the nightmares that I had never prepared me for the thought that this was all coming from inside. that I couldn’t blame it on the ghosts I threw into a locker and forgot back around Christmastime, or them monsters that lived in the boiler room under the cafeteria, or something in the water of the drinking fountains.
really I just want to say the right words that will make me your friend. right now when I’m writing this, I will fall in love with every word, and every sharp edge, but after several read through(s), it seems tired. it will never be as good as it is now. but if this page makes it to the point where I’ll stand here reading this, it means that love still lives and has ink for blood. I had nightmares that I was not even worthy of myself. but if I, if you, could survive the anxiety that it takes to stand up here, and live to tell about it, then that is great.
and really, from watching you guys, is where I got a lot of my courage. and that was how I got better, but maybe it’s just that I kept knowing the crowd better. not just at performing and reading and writing. but living, through the words of the whispered in the corners that I frequent, and the writing on the walls of the bathroom. right now, the light from a Sunday sunrise seems to shine on the words that I write, but maybe that’s just an effect of the fog temporarily lifting. this is a snapshot, taken from the vintage polaroid that you bought at a swap meet because it made you feel cool. here’s a photograph. I’ll put it on my bedroom wall, and take it down and pass around for friends to see. and when I wake up in the middle of the night with my lights still on like usual, I’ll look back at it. right now, I have no idea if it will be a buoy of hope, or maybe just a reason to envy the past.
my name is anna, and I have a hard time distinguishing some of the things that I dream from reality. that fact, and the things that I see have become a part of my identity. I dreamed that it was better once. I have no choice but to believe that lie that the future will be better as well.
