i never go to new york city these days (i dream i'm in new york city some nights)

[erika]

This is one of those entries that I know I'm going to write and I feel like everyone is going to read it and think "god, she really is crazy."

Skip all the parathetical statements if it pleases you; it's mostly me rambling about unrelated things. I can't edit my thoughts like I normally do, so I apologize in advance.

Sometimes I feel like the music I listen to is speaking to me. It's not, I do know that! It's unintentional, and any reaction I have to it is just... what's the word, I don't know, it's just finding meaning in unrelated events, there's a word for it but I don't remember it right now.

(It's not coincidence, or synchronicity* serendipity, or any of those. I hate it when I can't remember—but I know I will, or someone will remind me, I hope. I just don't remember it right now.)

So I wrote an email to the guy I went on that not-a-date-really dinner with. panda provided a real service, in the true meaning of a friend, of verbally pinning me down until I agreed to do what I knew I should be doing anyway.

(She's planning on moving away; in a way it'll break my heart to see her leave, but I'm more glad than I can say that she's doing what she needs to do for her.)

Anyway, so the email I wrote was ... as nice as I could make it, while being terribly clear that it was a "fuck off without further notice" notice.

I have lots of reasons, but they make me sad, so I won't expound on them further; I have these ever-so-valid reasons and that's enough to be getting on with.

I've been avoiding his reply for the better part of the day; I was awake when the email came in at roughly 10:30AM and it's now exactly 4pm. (And I should really switch to military time, except that I never will, I know I won't.)

So I finally stop avoiding my email and this song is playing. Counting Crows, "Chelsea" is playing, and as I open it, the vocalist sings

Maybe in a month or two,
Maybe when things are different for me,
Maybe when things are different for you

And this song is so sad to me, primarily because I think the singer knows that it's most likely never going to be different, just like I know that.

it's good for everybody to hurt somebody once in a while
the things I do to people I love shouldn't be allowed

Double standards that I know so well.

In his email, he writes: "I understand. You don't want to hurt, and you don't want to hurt another."

I'd love to tell him that that's not entirely true, I love to tell people they're wrong, but I can't write back, so I'll say it here. It's not true because I always hurt, most of the time, close enough to always that always isn't a lie——and partially he's right.

It's true that I don't want to hurt someone else (again, over and over again)——I'm just so very tired of being that person who hurts other people, pretending I don't know it's going to happen and just letting everything go wrong.

I don't want to do it anymore. I have to give up some things, things I want, but not things I need, and maybe I can get them some other way, I don't know. I don't know anything right now except I don't want to do this dance anymore. I know what I do, and it feels as out of my control as if I were a siren, to watch as they crash helplessly on the rocks and all I can do is keep singing.

Save yourself, I told this one, and I shoved him back in his ship, and I hid, and now I sing to myself, and I tell myself it's better this way, for now.

I don't know what I'm singing, what glow, what allure they see in me that I never once saw in myself, but maybe—someday it would be nice if I knew it.

---

* Edited to add, 8/25/2012@approx1AM: In my original sentence above, I wrote the right word while thinking of one of the wrong ones (serendipity). The word I was looking for was actually synchronicity, one of the words I said wasn't right, which panda was able to point out.

Yeah, this entry was written when my head wasn't working quite right; fucking migraines & attendant aphasia.

Comments

[enemyofperfect]

Serendipity?

I'm not sure how to say that I like this entry without on the one hand overstepping, or on the other hand seeming to damn with faint praise. I do, though.

[viridian]

I always call it serendipity, too, but that's not exactly right either.

Anyway, I do it too, and I don't think it's crazy. My most recent one was "Clementine" by Sarah Jaffe, but it happens all the time. I think if you're a person who thinks about things, you'll find meaning in everything.

[erika]

I ended up editing the above entry to write:
* Edited to add, 8/25/2012@approx1AM: In my original sentence above, I wrote the right word while thinking of one of the wrong ones (serendipity). The word I was looking for was actually synchronicity, one of the words I said wasn't right, which panda was able to point out.

Yeah, this entry was written when my head wasn't working quite right; fucking migraines & attendant aphasia.

--

I don't think you're overstepping or damning with faint praise. I'm easy like that; I tend to like people who like me back. :D

There's something to be said about the tendency I have of working the hardest to be intelligent & interesting on entries that say the worst things about me, as if my abilities with prose will somehow negate the fact that I'm talking about killing myself, or about the idea that I'm a horrific person, or that my brother abused me.

I mean, there's definitely something to be said there, but I'm not sure I know what that thing is.

[erika]

I ended up editing the above entry to write:
* Edited to add, 8/25/2012@approx1AM: In my original sentence above, I wrote the right word while thinking of one of the wrong ones (serendipity). The word I was looking for was actually synchronicity, one of the words I said wasn't right, which panda was able to point out.

Yeah, this entry was written when my head wasn't working quite right; fucking migraines & attendant aphasia.

----

Music is very important to me. God that sounds like a line I'd use in a first date, and so boring, but it's true! Music is very important to me! Even when I'm suicidal levels of depressed, I still care about 3 things: my dogs, my friends & family, and music. (I think there's actually a fourth thing but I can't remember what it was.)

It's not so much that I have this idea that itunes is reading my mind or something, although I joke about it occasionally, it's more that certain things if present will occasionally strike me as apropos to the situation I'm in, and lyrics are one of those things.

Also, I'm sure the fact that I have playlists I play when in specific moods, containing music that is more likely to speak to that mood——probably helps.

[enemyofperfect]

There's something to be said about the tendency I have of working the hardest to be intelligent & interesting on entries that say the worst things about me, as if my abilities with prose will somehow negate the fact that I'm talking about killing myself, or about the idea that I'm a horrific person, or that my brother abused me.

From the examples you give, I assume that by "worst" you must mean "most personally upsetting to erika", right?

To me, this entry showed insight, conscience, courage, and even (this is the part I was happiest about) hope: it's good not to want to drown the sailors, but even better is if the siren can find something more sustaining than snatched moments amid the surf, too.

[erika]

Actually, "worst" in that context doesn't actually mean personally upsetting, not in its entirety. Worst is also the things that will upset my friends.

It's time for a history lesson! (lulz, the idea of me as a teacher is pretty laughable. I'd probably start wanting to throw things after an hour.)

When I started journalling online, I was 12. I'm not even kidding. I was always fucking precious, but still 12?! Anyway, I wrote with probably zero readers until I moved to LJ in February of 2002 when I was 16. I friended a lot of people and didn't really recognize that that would mean those people would probably check out my journal too.

Suddenly I had people commenting. More than that, I was reading about their life & commenting as well. It's a reciprocal relationship that tends to build friendships, especially if you chat on IM and whatnot.

I have ... hm... probably 3 or 4 of my closest friends now from that time period. And over time, my writing became less about strictly documenting my life for an unseen audience, and transmuted into telling some of my closest friends about what was going on with me.

That seems to have translated itself into a different writing style which has only become more evident over the years. I now use "you" far more often to refer to the person who is reading this, and say things like (in this very entry) "everyone is going to read this and think I'm crazy" or reassuring people that I know the music isn't really speaking to me.

When I write about things which might or may upset other people, I keep that in mind now. I didn't used to; I had a very hard-line stance on honesty—it's my life, I thought, and I'm the one writing about it, so why should it matter to me if it's going to upset other people? But it's not my... I mean, I guess I'm just not the type of person that can ignore hurting people. And writing about myself like I deserved to be upset or to die, even, hurt people. People that I cared about.

Not to mention these were people who weren't going to criticize or castigate me for caring about myself. It was strange; I was so used to being ignored when I was upset, and told that I was wrong to be 'bothered', that it shocked me that my friends left happier comments when I was somewhat optimistic and sad ones when something bad happened and I decided my life was over, but most of them never really criticized either reaction, and those that did had (for the most part) good reasons to.

It wasn't my friends' reactions that make me write in a more hopeful manner now; I'd venture to say that the blame for that lies with the years of therapy, but ... it certainly has helped.

I've privatized most of my entries before 2009, but seriously, there were a lot in there where I wrote about the "worst things" with no real concept that they were supposed to be upsetting. A lot of the more suicidal ones are really very creepy when I re-read them; I was so fucking relieved at the idea of an end to my suffering that they come off as pretty happy, actually. Not personally upsetting to me at the time, no.

My older brother (panda has started calling him Voldemort, I have to admit I'm tempted) is a different story. And writing about him is also similar to my writing about the idea that I'm a bad person. I was never happy when I wrote about those things, but it's ... not as simple as saying I was personally upset, it's more like I couldn't understand why I was that way, or why I deserved the way he treated me.

It wasn't that I was questioning that I was a bad person, or that I questioned that I deserved the way he treated me. For years & years, I absolutely did not. I didn't write about those things questioningly in the sense that I wondered why someone else would have those ideas, I wondered "why am I this way" and "why does he treat me this way" in the same way that people wonder why good things happen to bad people. I didn't debate the "fact" that I was a bad person or that my older brother deserved to hurt me, I wondered what made it necessary.

So yeah. Not exactly personally upsetting, it was more of a philosophical debate—like the idea of death. People hate it, no one really wants their loved ones to die, but nobody questions that it happens and most people don't question that it's necessary/natural. For a very long time, it was actually damn close to impossible to get me to be angry or upset on my own behalf.

Now that I've given you that history lesson, maybe you'll understand why I actually laughed when I read the first line of your response. "Personally upsetting"? I understand why you'd think that, but no. Generally the worst things to write about are the ones that upset my friends. I use that as a general barometer.

I just unlocked a formerly privatized entry from 2006 that might clear up some of the difference I'm talking about.

[enemyofperfect]

I'm relieved as long as it's anything other than my first startled interpretation -- namely, that those were some of your most grievous sins -- but, yeah, ahaha, that's a bit of a difference, isn't it, between the reality and what I guessed?

It was a good history lesson. Thank you.

[viridian]

There's a reason my friends and I call it "psyTunes" - music can be uncanny. I think it's the universality of a lot of it - it's easy to find the message your mind needs to hear. But realizing that music felt vital to me in a way that it doesn't to other people was one of my obvious clues that I needed to be in music school.

[erika]

Lol, I love how I re-read my comment and immediately thought "jesus christ, did I just describe myself as precious when I meant fucking precocious?"

Clearly I need to proof-read my comments better. >_>

[erika]

Yeah. I don't think music school is the path for me personally, although I wish it was, but I do miss volunteering as a DJ. I think I'll try to go back next semester.

[enemyofperfect]

Heh, I knew what you meant!

Meanwhile, your icon argues strongly that your inadvertent claim wasn't even inaccurate.

[erika]

Awww, you're a sweetheart. <3