Sickly Innocent

We had to watch a movie today, for seniors. They told us this time was "the deadly hundred days," warning us of the reckless, euphoric toasts that ravage innocence fully if it hasn't been done already. To be honest, it just made me want to close my door to the world and drink to the sadness of it. Which is what I did.

My boyfriend, my brother and I were harassed while waiting for my mother to pick us up. A pitiful "meathead," as M calls him, was begging for any excuse to fight. He pushed him, threatening to break his jaw, and called me a cunt when I said he needed anger management. My brother kept saying that he would've beaten him up; his idiotic naivety was embarrassing.

M called his friend, a former drug dealer but the sweetest kid I've ever met. He's got rep though, and muscle, and he convinced the meathead to stop bothering us. A sudden crash into the harshest dark corners of the world, for me. A place where strangers threaten to break your bones, and stature is measured by bloody memories. My hands shook with fear, despite myself.

And here I was, a well-groomed sheltered girl living on the upside of town. Prepared to counter snobs and gossip girls and rich douchebags, but not this--not this sheer brutality. Not shady streets and black-eyed girls, not strung-out addicts and ravenous gangs of men. I don't know if I ever will be.

So isn't it swell then, that I'm going to a school of the primped and preened elite? People with high-minded ideas and sophisticated tastes, who buy expensive vintage clothes and shop organic, attend charity events and discuss politics over a bottle of chardonnay?

It's civilized to the point of being superficial, fake and contrived. Why do I feel such rage and shame to admit that this world is the only place I could ever belong?

I'm not broken in the way that counts. Abuse, neglect, poverty, broken homes. I can't say I know how it feels.

Instead I have the maladies of perfection. Masquerades teach you to hide behind a smile and dance as if everyone was watching. Asking, begging the masses to look on with jealous eyes. I know it's a malady that everyone wants--and in so, so many ways I should be grateful.

But even so, the desperate yearnings of escape, which seem to drive all human vices, are in essence
one and the same.

I woke up

drenched in sweat. I have nightsweats a lot because of my medications, I think, but today was horrible.. It's funny how easily we swallow pills, shrugging off the side effects. I hate the sweating and the jittering, but I love the energy, the sharpness and the optimism. And the lack of appetite is sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse--I panic about my bones just as I did in the throes of anorexia. Sure, it makes me feel like a crackhead, but no matter.. Strangely, (sadly?), I kind of find it beautiful.

I can hardly believe that there lies a stormy, summer day outside my window. Now, unshuttered from the haze of exams, I can appreciate this change that seems to have happened overnight. With it brings promises of freedom and adventure. Since I haven't had the time or motivation to learn how to drive (until now, but it's a brief hiatus), I'm waiting impatiently for my boyfriend to be approved for the road test..very, very impatiently. Being stuck inside (suburbia is as good as farmland if you can't drive) drives me crazy (ha pun unintended).

And, I need a job. I'm so sick of feeling guiltily dependent on my parents. And, of course, I'm sick of having an excuse for them to invade my private life. My room is safe. My body is safe. Everything else is not my own.

But then I have to once again ask the question, what do I want? It's easy enough to devote your life to school and studying, with the worthy-enough premise of getting into college. I'll probably be too busy this summer to have time to think about it. But, in this little stretch of time, I'm worried it might consume me.

So

I seem to only write here when I drink. Just warning you all...

So. I'm going to a fucking Ivy League. Albeit, the only one I got into, and the easiest to get into, but one nonetheless. I won't lie and say that it isn't exciting, and that after my remaining APs the future will be bright and shining. For now.

I keep having dreams about my long-gone best friend. The one who ruined my life up to sophomore year. And I see her now and she has no friends; she quit the AP art class we had together; she still looks as sickly as she was when she was on drugs. I am, by all accounts, the winner. I have moved on, and she has stayed frozen in time.

But this little respite is my guilty pleasure. The new meds I'm on, a combination of sertraline and bupropion, have banished my appetite. My therapist asked me about my eating, because she claims that my legs in straight jeans look alarmingly twig-like...

I'd rather not think right now, but feel. I feel summer's breath and oh, how wondrous it is.