high school confessions and lost muscle tone

I got home yesterday to find a package on my table.  No, it wasn’t the latest book I’d ordered from Amazon.  It wasn’t CD’s.  It wasn’t a friendly package from a Squishy reader.  It was Tae-Bo Live Advanced 3.  Billy apparently decided to continue the series.

I don’t have the time to spend an hour seeing Billy’s latest device of torture.  I just don’t.

And here I sit, thinking that I’m letting Billy down.  I feel like I should be doing something about it and I can’t.  I’m busy every night and every day.  My Tae-Bo has completely slacked since I started Polaroid Stories.  It was starting to slack when they changed my shift to a later time at my last job, and now it’s just slipping into nothing.

But I still have the best intentions.  You have to know that.  I borrowed two Live Basic tapes from my Mom so I could have a shorter workout when I found I had half an hour.  I haven’t even had that.  I know Billy’s going to be disappointed in me.  I know it.  I feel like a big loser slacker.  I feel like I’ve worked this hard for this long and then I started trying to convince myself that doing the show is just like doing the Tae-Bo because I’m all sweaty or whatever but then this tape showed up and it’s sitting right on my table saying, “But does it get you this sweaty, bitch?  Of course it don’t.  Get your ass in a sports bra.”

I’m scared to go back to that tape.  I’m going to have to ease myself back into it.  I’ll have to start with the basic tapes and hate the blonde twigs again until I can work up to the advanced– my people.  My friends.  The people that I worked so hard with for so many months.  I just abandoned them.  I just left them.  I’m a horrible person.  Really.  Truly.  Don’t come near me.

I ordered three CD’s last week in the mail.  For some reason though, lately, I just want to listen to my old CD’s.  I like the Macy Gray and all, don’t get me wrong, but like right now I’m listening to Weezer.  Right before it was Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Mother’s Milk.  I started off the day with the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa.  I’ve been wanting to listen to old Ministry albums and Jane’s Addiction and Pearl Jam’s Ten.  What’s up?

I think it may have something to do with the show.  I play someone who’s about sixteen or seventeen.  I’m remembering when I was a teenager and all I wanted in the whole world– the only thing that would make my life complete– was a pair of red eight-hole Doc Martins and tickets to the Ministry concert.  I’ve been thinking about how much I was sad when I was young, and how I’d stay up really late writing bad love poetry and think about what my life was going to be like once I got to college.  I remember how sometimes I’d just feel so lonely.  I’d just want to stay in my room and not see anyone.  That seemed to be the only way that I didn’t feel lonely.  Isn’t that odd?  I remember the really bad times– when I’d get so mad at myself and feel so horrible that I’d hurt myself.  How I’d take a lighter and make the metal all hot and then press the metal against my wrist.  It hurt.  I wanted it to hurt.  I liked making my sad lonely feelings into a tangible hurt.  “It’s not my heart that hurts, it’s my wrist.”  Or, rather, in fifteen-year old speak:  “At least my soul isn’t screaming anymore.”

Isn’t that strange?  I haven’t done anything like that in years.  Sometimes, when I feel really bad or sad and I don’t know how to explain it in words, I remember what I used to do.  I remember how I tried to give myself a scar tattoo on my ankle with a paper clip.  I remember my friends carving their names or their girlfriend’s names on their arms and chest.  I remember how self-mutilation became something to do for kids in my school.  I remember how nobody ever stopped us or asked what we were doing.  I remember being so confused.

Wow.  That sort of all came out there, didn’t it?  It’s not something that I’m proud of.  I wish I hadn’t done it.  It didn’t make me feel better, even when I was doing it.  I knew deep down it wasn’t, but somehow I didn’t want to stop.  It wasn’t because everyone else was doing it, either.  I hid my cuts and blisters under band-aids and watch bands.  I don’t really know why I did it.  I guess I still don’t.  Not really.  I didn’t smoke.  I didn’t drink.  I didn’t do drugs.  Just periodically I would burn myself.  It only went on for about a year, and then I stopped being so sad and I found new friends and I got a car and I started feeling like my world was larger and then the hurt went away.  But sometimes I see these kids and I just want to go up and say, “It gets better.  It does.  Your world seems like shit right now, but it means nothing.  It all gets better.  It gets bigger.  These people who are your whole world right now and decide what kind of person you are and what you look like and where you can be– none of them matter later on.”

Oh, the Weezer album is coming to a close.  It may be time to listen to something a little more contemporary to get myself out of this reflective mood.  I don’t have rehearsal tonight (for a real first) so I plan on just chillin in my crib tonight (unless Billy’s sweaty cross-eyes make me feel guilty).  I have to get all my relaxing in tonight, because I have Polaroid Stories and Monks for the next ten days straight after tomorrow.

Yikes.

I’m getting tired.  I’m losing some of my steam.  Not only that, but it’s giving me weird high school flashbacks.  I don’t really want that.  The last thing I want to reflect on is the time that I thought it would be a good idea to pierce my own ear.  Ow.  Stupid.  Or the time that I thought rolling down a big wet hill would be a lot of fun and I slipped getting up and tumbled backwards and dislocated my elbow and didn’t tell my parents because I didn’t want to be in trouble.   Or the time that I stole my parent’s car– I’m kidding on that one.  I was a pretty tame high school kid.  I wish my stories were more interesting, but you know, basically I was a Sylvia Plath in a world of John Hughes.   Not exactly pretty in pink.