now hear this
pay attention to me
'cause i'm a rich white girl
and it's plain to see
i got every kind of thing
that the money can buy
let me tell you all about it
let me amplify
i got diamonds
you heard about those
i got so many
that i can't close my safe
at night
in the dark
lying awake
in a sick dream

I am tired. In a word.

I am tired of going to a job where I am employed as a contract attorney but where I am doing work that requires perhaps a ninth-grade education.

I am tired of fighting - and sometimes giving in to - daily bouts of nausea. And no, it's not that. Or the other that. It simply seems to be how stress manifests itself in me these days. Lucky me.

I am tired of not being able to find new glasses because I apparently have a freakishly large head and all the current styles look like kids' glasses on me.

I am tired of tragedy. I have watched perhaps a total of one-half hour of coverage about the space shuttle, even less about the war we're apparently going to start any minute. I honestly can't take it. I feel almost un-American, digging my head in the sand about it, but it's too much.

I am tired of hardly ever having the courage to say what I need to say or do what I need to do or admit that I need what I need.

I am tired of this still being true, three years later. I know I'm the only one who can do anything about it. I wish I had the same optimism now as I did at the end of that entry.

I am tired of being a bad friend. The number of friends I have let down in one way or another in recent months is overwhelming. I know I do it, but I don't know how to stop.

I am tired of not knowing where I belong. I want it to be here. I've been here seven months. It doesn't feel like home yet. Nowhere does.

I am tired of being afraid of what I don't know.

I am so, so tired.

<rant>

Of course, it could just be Valentine's Day. I fucking hate Valentine's Day.

Write it off to the fact that I might be an angry, bitter, perpetually single woman in her thirties who hasn't received a valentine from anyone except her mother since the sixth grade when you were forced to give them to everyone, but there is nothing that inspires my rage lately like walking into the grocery store or the drug store or the Target or the freaking gas station, for the love of God, and being bombarded with everything from chocolate to cookie dough to flowers to wine to air fresheners with big bright red hearts all over everything.

It's all so pointlessly ridiculous, and I'm not saying this because I am single. (No, really.) I will continue to boycott Valentine's Day no matter how coupled I ever become. Frankly, I consider it one of my more attractive qualities: no boyfriend or husband of mine will ever have to do jack shit for Valentine's Day. The only thing I would ask him to do is ignore it.

It just doesn't make any sense. Do you need Hallmark to remind you to tell the person you love that you love them? Do you need a calendar to give you an excuse to have a romantic evening? If so, then you deserve to spend the rest of your life communicating only with words found on those goofy foul-tasting candy hearts.

</rant>

Here's the problem.

If I have a little, I want more. If I have a lot, I want less.

If I have none, I want some. If I have too much, I want none.

Of whatever. Of everything.

I'm not entitled to feel like this. I'm really not.

I do have a job, albeit temporary, but I have it for now. It's a paycheck, a decent one. I can't complain.

I have a close family, all of whom I know love me without limit. And they are safe; I do not have a husband or father or brother who is away, far away, in a strange vast land, fighting ghostly enemies.

Despite the disappointment I've inspired lately, I have an inordinate number of friends who would drop everything to be at my side, for no more reason than the fact that I asked.

I know all of this. Big surprise: it doesn't help. It only makes me feel guilty. I have depressive guilt.

So, what now? I'll be fine, of course. Of course I'll be fine. I'm never not fine, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't fine. So, I'll be fine.

Tired -- incredibly, soulfully tired -- but fine.


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