Last night, just before bed, I watched “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” That was a mistake. Because every time I watch a somewhat emotional/scary/heart-pumping movie just before trying to sleep, I end up lying awake well past the 15 minute sleeper mark, while M drifts off soundly next to me and the darkness creeps in over my pillow.
I wanted to wake him. He went to bed earlier than I did, preferring to watch The Family Guy instead of the movie. (Side note: What is the obsession with this cartoon? I don’t see the appeal but grown men and women in my life are crazy about it?) I wanted to talk to him about how I felt like I wasn’t going to buy tickets to the Deutsche Bank Championship this year or Madonna. I feel like with the price of gas and everything – I don’t want to spend money on frivolous things. I wanted to tell him I’m scared. I’m worried that gas will be $5 a gallon in a few weeks and I wont be able to afford to drive to work and back, that we’ll never be able to afford a home. I wanted to tell him I’m thinking Depression instead of Recession. I wanted to tell him I’m glad we live at my moms because at least we don’t have a mortgage right now, but I know how hard it is for him. But does he know how hard it can be for me too. And while we’re at it, what are we doing next weekend?
But I stayed silent. And tossed and turned and listened as cars drove by. I heard a sound not unlike a gun shot from the movie but when I startled, M pulled me in, and in his lazy, sleepy voice, said, “It was just something rattling in the pick-up bed.” And it could have been that, or ladders on a rack. What I did know was that it wasn’t a gun shot. My imagination was running wild on me again.
But in that dark, blackness, I started to think about myself, the way I am, the things I had said earlier that day, the things I said and regretted, things that now made me want to chuckle. I thought about the weekend and how quickly it went by and how life goes by so quickly. And I began to well up… I could feel the hotness and the heartbeat inside getting strong. I could feel just how beautiful and strange this life is and everyone in it. How I miss my best friend who I don’t even know anymore and how scared I am that she wont be the same girl who left us so many months ago by the time she comes home. How I wish I could do more and be better and how I imagine myself to be and not how I really am. See, at times, I picture myself differently than I think others perceive me because I know deep down what I mean by things, or how I felt when I said or did something. And isn’t that the point? Trying your whole life to get closer to who you are, to show people what you’re truly made of, what your capable of achieving? But it’s just so difficult. Because you are someone already to so many people. You’re in a silent pact to be that person to them forever – or at least the near future. And so you are you.
Saturday night, at a bonfire, I texted one of my friends. I wrote “I had a great time with you today. I love seeing your family and you’re all so cute together. I’m so glad we’re friends.” And she wrote back “Have you been drinking?” And it was perfect in one way, because that is how we are together, as friends, and it was silly and right. But it also meant that even though I feel this way about her, she may or may not really know it.
And today when I awoke I remembered that I had bad dreams all night. And I couldn’t remember the gist of them, only that they were fast-paced and realistic. Not the kind of far-fetched crazy dream that you can wake yourself from.
This is what I think about.
This, and the fact that last week was a cyclone in
And black.
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