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Friday, 03 July 2009

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

  • My big sister doesn't know I can hear her crying.
     
    I'm trying to fall asleep in the next room, but a loud sniffle startles me into wakefulness. Her door is closed, but the heat vent connecting our rooms carries her whimpers into the silence of my room. She doesn't realize how well sound travels.
     
    For a minute, I lie in my bed, listening. She always hiccups after she cries, but she hasn't gotten to that stage yet. It's gone from whimpers to sobs. I think she is muffling the heaving with her pillow.
     
    When I was little, my big sister sang me to sleep every night. When the fighting started, she would tiptoe to my bed and smooth my hair. She sang so softly that some nights I couldn't hear her over the yelling.
     
    I tiptoe to her door, terrified that I will be heard; not by her, but by our parents downstairs. I know the consequences of being caught out of bed after bedtime. I knock softly on the door. By the time she whispers, "Come in," I have turned the handle, put myself on the other side of the door and closed it behind me.
     
    "What's the matter, baby?" I wait only a second to answer but that second is enough. She hiccups. Her hand flies to her mouth and I know she will hold her breath in an attempt to smother the hiccups.
     
    "I have a headache."
     
    Even though I say the words as nonchalantly as I can, I still feel her smile in the dark room. I remember She told me once, after I had broken the baking bowl and tried to tell her I hadn't, "Thompsons can't lie, baby; at least not to each other." She knows I am lying.  She knows I am not lying to hide, but to give her an out. We all need our cop-outs.
     
    She scoots towards the wall and gestures toward her pillow. "Come here; I'll sing to you if you want."
     
    I crawl between her covers, between her and the edge of the bed. I turn towards the wall and she wraps her arms around my waist. I put one arm under her pillow and with my free hand, I smooth her hair. I can feel the tension at her temples. She smiles a little smile, and sings to me what she always does.
     
    "Lullabye
    and goodnight
    Go to sleep little baby
    Go to sleep, go to sleep..."
     
    Drowsy, I burrow myself into the pillow and her chest. She holds me just a little tighter.
     
    I wake up the next morning holding her hand.

Monday, 18 February 2008


  • I've always joked about living vicariously through the people I love but lately I've been realizing just how little of a joke it was and just how much of a statement it is about the way I deal with things.

    When extremely emotionally engaged with someone else, I oftentimes feel nothing of myself but very much of what they are feeling, or at the very least, what I imagine they are feeling.  It may sound creepy or silly, but I sometimes cannot manage to stop what feels like a transmissions of the other person's emotions into my psyche.

    It gets very draining at work.  It proves very difficult in arguments, because I have to turn that off in order to get a point across, and then I feel like an awful person when I don't realize how very much I have hurt someone.

    And sometimes, at times I need it most, I can't get it to turn on.  I hate not being able to get a read on another person.  At work, it might mean that the person doesn't trust easily and I have to prove myself in some way before she'll let me have a little peek into what's going on in her head.  Or it might mean she's a gamer, that she doesn't want to be read because she's only interested in figuring everyone else out.  In real life, it usually means the same thing... either the person doesn't trust me and I have to decide whether to give them time or try to overcome whyever it is that they're not trusting me---or I'm being played with.

    I wonder sometimes about my vicarious living.  Is it healthy?  When I can know an issue before I'm told, I would say it's a good thing, and that whatever can help me help them is beneficial--  but some nights when I come home completely drained after crying in my car on the way home, I just don't know.  I like to be strong, play the superJessica card, but sometimes I can feel the things from work just hanging on me.  I wonder sometimes if this is the right place for me, when it's the middle of the night and my worknightmares have woken me up again.  Then I remember the giggle of the four year old little boy whose mom is finally starting to get her parenting skills back...

    and I start to cry a little sometimes thinking of that little boy and how many others don't get to learn how to laugh without watching over their shoulder to see if they're going to get in trouble for making noise.

    I can't do anything else; I don't know how I lived without this job last year; I don't know that I'll ever be able to get away from this place.  I know physically, but not in the figurative sense-- not without --

    I don't know.  It sounds so cliche to talk about how I see the worst of people and yet, in the weirdest ways, I know I see their bests, too.  I get to see their bests become better and better and better.  And it's good, I think.  I've learned, again and again so many times I think I may have finally gotten it... that you just can't help those who won't be helped. I think it's easier here to see because there's such a distinct difference between the ones who are trying and the ones who aren't.  It's not as easy to tell in real life sometimes.

    After a while you learn the subtle difference between
    holding a hand and chaining a soul.
    And you learn that love doesn't mean learning and
    company doesn't mean security.
    And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
    and presents aren't promises
    And you begin to accept your defeat with your head up
    and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult
    not the grief of a child.
    And you learn to build all your roads on today
    because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans.
    So you plant your own garden and decorate your own life
    instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

  • I just want a normally functioning body again.

    Is it really too much to ask?  sigh... Jessica, be grateful.  Take nothing for granted.  Otherwise when you do, it will disappear.

    As Kat says, Honour through Endurance.

    And thank whatever gods may be for reading period.  At least over reading period I don't have to worry about all the things I miss when I'm sick.

    BWAH.

Sunday, 10 February 2008

  • I had a long talk with my aunt yesterday which was just the perfect thing for me.
    I had a really really bad day at work which was long and annoying.  Not annoying.  Bad word choice, Jessica.  Disturbing.  The most badly beaten woman I have ever seen in my entire life came into shelter and it was pretty much not that bad until her daughter came to visit her and started screaming in the lobby because her mother was standing in front of her, barely recognizable.

    I talked to my aunt a lot about life... which for me, is actually pretty boring. I explained it to her that friends are going through a pretty bad time and that meant, of course, that I do not freak out.  As a general rule of thumb, my emotions are completely controllable as long as I'm taking care of someone else.

    I don't know, I don't think it's such a bad thing. I'm super-Jessica lately, and I haven't been super-Jessica since spring term last year. It feels so good.  I'm back.  I'm back and I can feel myself coursing through my veins, if that makes any bit of sense, whatsoever.

    I miss my siblings so much lately.

    My aunt asked me if I were sleeping and eating alright.
    I have to write a Piers Plowman paper by five o'clock tomorrow.  Sweet jesus, it ain't happened yet.

    I'm so frustrated right now by a couple of different social issues and it's really bothersome.  In general I would just like to say that if one is a trustworthy person one should stop appearing in an enormous amount of ambiguous if not outright maliciously motivated situations.  Also I would like to announce that I do not have the plague and that my neuroses are really quite manageable.  Though if they're not manageable for some, I'd rather they just avoid than pretend... Which I can't figure out half the time if its avoidance, pretending, my neurotic paranoid mental problems, a mixture of the three, or something else altogether.  I'm trying to ignore the possibility of something else althogether.

    This is the point in time my senior year when I would have been writing a fantastically worded well-aimed blow at some issue or another which I have faced/learned something about. 

    Unfortunately the only thing I got right now is a cryptic description of social hierarchy and a "keep on keeping on" attitude.  Dogged determination is the only thing I feel will actually get me through this term.

    That and the fact that laughter relieves so much damned stress it isn't even funny.  Get it?  Ya, okay.

    I love people.  so very much.

long_haired_muse

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    • Name: Jess
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