one of my dichotomies: my thoughts may be unrestrained but my actions are still pretty inhibited. in high school, i thought this was evidence of levelheadedness but it turns out i'm just really scared. fear of embarrassment is a factor in every decision i make. the good news is that i get less afraid every year. at this rate, i should have myself whipped into shape by the time i turn 42. so, save the date: on july 8th, 2021, i'm gonna throw a killer party.
anyway, i came up with a little gimic to psyche myself up to do things that freak me out. (read: i'm poor and i can't afford therapy.) i started finding moments from my past when i felt really free. none of them are all that crazy. i've never set fire to anything (well, not anything big) or encited a riot. i just think of times when i was able to turn off the critical inner voice and just enjoy my life without worrying about everything. (yeah, it's cheesy, i know. shuddup.) a lot of my 'free' moments involve people on myspace so i thought i'd recount some of them. humor me.
high school, sophomore year. some friends did a class presentation that involved costumes. this one guy had this dark grey robe/cloak thing that i thought was cool. i asked him if i could borrow it & the next day i wore it to school over my clothes. it was pointless & it looked silly, but it was fun. i know that doesn't seem like much of a rebellion. but for someone like me who remembers every nasty insult i've ever received, it's remarkable that i spent an entire school day cheerfully acknowledging weird looks and cries of "what the hell is she wearing?"
high school, junior year. the first time i went dumpster diving. too bad they moved the krispy kreme on stratford. i have a lot of good memories of that place.
senior year, february. i was thinking it was valentine's day, but i think it was actually a few days before. somehow i ended up in a snowy graveyard with jason & jarad. we salvaged plastic flowers from a garbage can. behind the graveyard was a field and then woods. at the edge of the woods were some empty cement sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?). we placed fake roses on the askew lids, like we were mourning the rain water that had collected inside. on the way out, we passed a statue of a woman. i put the rest of my bouquet in the stone basket she was carrying. the snow & the darkness made the whole thing seem like a solemn ritual.
here's one for joel. he was visiting from texas. it was his last night in town and we kept him at jason's until really late. when he decided it was time to drive him back to andy's, we took our sweet time. joel took pictures of us in the car on the highway. every time the flash went off, jason would be driving blind for a few seconds. we stopped at a gas station and loitered in front of the No Loitering sign. then jason took a detour through a field. there's nothing like off-roading in a buick. we made that trip take as long as possible because we didn't want to say goodbye to our friend.
there's a park in winston that grows a maze of corn each year and charges people to walk through it. they call it the Maize Maze. har har. i can't remember when this was and i'm having trouble remembering who was there. but late one night, i suggested to whoever i was hanging out with that we go walk through the maze. it certainly wasn't the first time teenagers had trespassed in the Maize Maze in the middle of the night and it wasn't even the first time friends of mine had done it. the only thing remarkable about it was that it was my idea. part of me was kinda hoping we'd get hauled in for trespassing. we didn't, but we had a fun couple of hours sneaking around, running from skunks and spooking ourselves with horror movie references.
one night in college, i waited out a hurricane by going bowling with a dozen people i didn't know.
summer, 2000. i felt free the entire two weeks i was alone in new york city.
august 1st, 2003. i danced even though i can't dance, because when it's your wedding you're allowed to look like an idiot.
this ended up being a lot longer than i thought. enough babbling for one night.
No comments:
Post a Comment