It would appear my life is in danger (again) because I enter these very precarious friendships with people who are so totally not good for my health in all the best ways that it’s almost impossible to stay away from them. I’ve always known I’m prone to make bad decisions, i honestly think it might run in my family. I didn’t think that part of me had changed much, but I was still incredulous when I heard the way it was phrased.
We were eating dinner, and it was a sad meal because the dining hall food is sad, and Stirling said, “she would rip your arms off if she knew you were friends with him!” And I think i probably cackle-laughed loud enough to turn half a room of heads, because I don’t understand why these ridiculous things are always happening to me, why I make other people so fight-y when I feel like I’m pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
No one has ever threatened to rip my limbs off before, so this has been an interesting, new experience. The closest thing I can think of was when one girl told people she was going to fist fight me at prom because I got elected to prom court and got paired with her boyfriend. She didn’t fist fight me so that was good, because I was very intoxicated and definitely could not have adequately defended myself and I doubt anyone would have stepped in because anyone who knows me knows I put myself in these situations. Or at least that’s what I used to believe, because that’s what it seemed like everyone else thought.
I’m not so sure anymore. Sometimes I tell Lauren stories about back home, and they’ll always end with “I’m so fucking stupid,” or “Why do I do these things to myself?” And she always stops me to say something along the lines of “Why on earth do you think you are at fault for all the things that happen to you?” And when she asks, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know why I blame myself. But I do.
No one else has ever threatened to tear me limb from limb, but I have gotten my fair share of hateful text messages, slut shaming finsta-posts, baseless rumors, the look-me-up-and-down thing that girls do when they feel like I’m a disgusting abomination of the female race, like the sideways out-of-the-corner-of their-eye glances that signal a distaste so strong they can’t even bear to look at me. And I’ve always assumed I provoked these things, and these responses are reasonable and I deserved them, and eventually they were just something funny I would laugh about alone in my car.
But in all honesty, I’m beginning to wonder why should I be torn limb from limb for spending time with someone I enjoy spending time with. I’d like to believe that my arms and legs are worth more than nonsensical piety, but at what cost am I willing to continue living vulnerable to a theft of my body parts like this? Is a friendship really worth the potential loss of my elbows (the most essential body part)?
I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself that question for a while. Maybe it’s dumb to consider the opportunity cost of relationships you choose to maintain with the people around you, but when you’ve been through shit the way I have you can’t really help it anymore. Questioning other people becomes ingrained in the mind like a reflex, and object permanence never really applies to the good things in the world like it does to the bad. I get cynical at irrational times, and it makes me wonder if it’s possible to ever be damaged so much that there’s no way to ever get past it.
I think about that a lot when we go anywhere. I wonder what the world looks like to you, what it looks like to anyone who hasn’t experienced the things I have and who isn’t the person I am. I want to know what makes a shade of yellow offensive, or why high ceilings are so essential to a house. I want to know what it feels like to meet other people when you’ve never been let down before, if it’s as exhausting as it is when you have. I think about how I don’t know who I would be if christmas songs didn’t make me nostalgic for a childhood I never had, for the adolescence I never got. I want to know what it’s like to still be able to talk to someone you’ve dated, I want to ask how that works. Do you see them when you go home? What do you talk about? Does it hurt? Is it confusing? Do you ever miss dating them? I always regret how much I talk about myself, but I know it’s because there are some things I feel I can’t ask. I know if I did you would take it the wrong way, and you might think I was way too invested in trying to learn about you. So I try not to pry and instead I speak volumes about the mess of experiences I’ve had.
Sometimes it makes me feel crazy, and I don’t understand why I’m so jam packed with anecdotes and dumb facts and small snippets of meaningless memories from a time that doesn’t really matter anymore. And even when I’m alone, there’s still a part of me that never stops talking, never stops generating ideas of things I could say to you, things I could say to anyone. It reminds me of the Watsky line, “you wouldn’t respect me if you heard the typewriter chatter tap tap tapping through my mind at night.” We’ll joke about it but being around me really is like being on a tour, a tour of everything I’ve ever thought or learned or known. And I feel like that must get old at some point, but I’ve also been trying to not default to negative opinions of myself. Like maybe, my thoughts and feelings and experiences are valuable, and maybe my presence can be a blessing, and maybe there really is someone who likes hearing about other people’s lives as much as I like talking about my own.
And I guess at some point my internal calculator decides that some friendships are worth the potential de-limbing of my body. I suppose knowing someone who can name more times you’ve been happy than you can yourself is somewhat beneficial. Even if sometimes they’ll choose to deny things they said at 4am or make reasonable, smart choices regarding when to go to sleep and when to not waste time with you. Maybe, if you have the kind of friend that makes you want to call your mom just to tell her someone walked back from safeway with you, a mile in the rain and carrying your groceries, or the kind of friend who lets you use them as pillow both emotionally and physically when you get tired of holding your head up, maybe that is the kind of friendship you’re willing to risk your arms and legs and trust and hope-in-all-humanity for.
The reality is, I am predisposed to caution and I don’t let people in easy, and I’m *deep*ly afraid that I can’t change. And it’s funny to me that someone sees the bulk atrocity of my personality as “layers,” and it’s funny that people here think I’m smart because back home I was always an idiot putting myself in idiotic situations. What’s funniest of all is the way boxed mac and cheese and miles on foot are somehow helping me write resolutions to a lifetime of sad stories, how driving through the hills and making milkshakes at 3am and wrestling over cell phones and judging houses for their exteriors and people for their interiors and arguing about the number of times we managed to walk to class together (which, for the record, is 4 times), all of these things have helped fill the empty spaces in my life.
When I go back to the place I grew up, I’m still constantly bursting with things to say. My family picks me up from the airport and says almost nothing and I am overflowing with stories about putting it’s-it’s in blenders and driving across the golden gate bridge. I tell them about how I found Gaby’s house again, about being high in the city, about hiking at night and trying to pick out constellations through the light pollution, and I tell them about finding new music, and finding new places, and finding new people, and realizing that somehow the people you find a thousand miles from your hometown can make an unfamiliar place feel like home. So I suppose at the end of the day, I’d give up my arms and legs for that I-really-am-in-the-right-place feeling. Sometimes the right place is the whole bay area, sometimes it’s with a group of people, and sometimes it’s simply the shoulder I lean on.