Another Lonely Day

i've been listening to a lot of terrible singer/songwriter indie music as of late. terrible in the sense of warm baths after downing some illegally purchased percs and decorating your forearms with an effective slit from elbow to wrist.

Horse Feathers, Kensington Prairie, Mazzy Star, Lou Barlow, and Ben Harper have been in heavy in rotation, ol' Benny-boy's Another Lonely Day being my lullaby at night. the song fills me with a strange conflict of emotions, giddy as shit but solemnly unproductive. ideas have been hatching, maturing, and taking serious flight to the point of me dedicating nearly four nights out of the week to maintain entries when before i was forcing myself once a month to get a sentence right and giving up after staring at the screen like an idiot.

that's supposed to be a good thing, but instead i've become more frustrated. i almost feel like the writer's block was more a reprieve than this. i'm still looking for that approval, looking for someone to say, "hey, this shit is good. i'd buy it." i've been listless enough to even wonder if my presence as a person is even worth the space i occupy.

everyone wants to be noticed. beyond being loved and appreciated and lauded, you want to be fucking noticed. you want to feel important to some goddamn body and lately . . . not feeling that so much. been feeling like a mooch. want to hang out with friends, but don't have the dough to do it. the anxiety level of such a prospect has shut me in like a fucking hermit. writing. about fantastical lives filled with people that care mercilessly about others, who have money, who are comfortable for the most part within their position and purpose in life.

everything that i'm not.

i've come to loathe my job, but strangely passionate about it. it's still torturous to be there, taking phone calls, getting cussed out for something that you as an individual had nothing to do with, getting overlooked, being lumped in with people that can't spell beyond a third-grade level and speak in so-called professional settings as if they've learned the English language from watching Juice one too many times. but this is where i am. and like they say, whoever the fuck "they" is (i'd like to fucking punch "them"), work with what you've got. save a few people i can count one hand, i hate everyone there. they never left that high school mentality and their maturity level is somewhere in the vicinity of mud-slinging at the girl that reads books. i lose braincells sitting in my cubicle row, which quite unfortunatley is an open setting, letting any stupid conversation about Halle Berry having a baby with a white dude instead of sticking with her own kind pierce my normally impenetrable bubble.

fucking awful.

and so the cycle starts. i want a new job, but can't seem to get past someone looking at my resume. which means to some degree i can't write for shit. which means i'm destined for a desk job that utilizes none of the skills i think i may possess. which means eternal misery.

awesome title for a B movie. Eternal Misery. i'd watch it. repeatedly.

naturally, companionship has been at the back of my mind as well. i'm okay when i'm home, either writing these glourious plots with sweet loves and adorations of the plain, yet awesome heroine or just talking to myself while reading or watching something mind-numbing on the tube. but when i do go out, i find myself wanting that guy to look from the other end of the PATH car and do that weird double-take. he oddly enough walks, or stumbles since the PATH is a rickety piece of shit, over and says, "hey." and we fall in love from there. or hell, date for a month and hate each other at the end. or just become friends. something that would put my emotions to work. i feel a little numbed. perhaps that's why Another Lonely Day doesn't make me burst into the tears i almost feel i should when i listen to it repeatedly.

like i am now.

i want to be a girl that turns heads and not just of the homeless man or the forty-five year old with balding cornrows rocking one pant-leg up and a FuBu jersey. i want to turn heads like my friends do; from the colombian/el salvadorian that nearly causes accidents when, wearing sweatpants and wife-beater to the mixed girl with those huge light brown eyes, adorable smile and laugh. or my chocolate homie with the body of banger, even after two kids and one helluva life, and the face of a model. something. anything. cuz it does come down to physical attractive at the gate. and i seem to not have that. unless the prospects fit the aforementioned description. or they just want to fuck and they see that underlying eargerness to want to be noticed beneath my coolcalmcollected exterior.

but i'm not doing that.

yeppers, still going strong with the whole "no sex" policy. one of my former . . . things was shouldering his way back into my life something hardcore. he was the last person i honestly really and truly liked and saw a true possibility with. with him, i'd pushed aside all of my pessimism and thought i could have something, really and truly, healthy and lovely.

dead wrong.

he started pulling back, claiming busy and i, in some moment of retard-zen, spilled my guts. i didn't say anything along the lines of even a relationship. i just said, "hey, just wanted to tell you, i'm feeling you. that's all." this a-hole took it as a marraige proposal and bailed completely. then i found out i was preggo. ha! wonderful timing. decided to keep it and even that bailed on me about a week later. i told him about tackily through an email. there was no other way of getting through to him, since he egotistically thought i was in love. we exchanged for a bit. he apologized, i let him.

then a year passed. and some change.

and he started calling. pushed and pushed and pushed, until finally, hard-up on excuses and in serious need of attention, i accepted an invite to a local diner for some hot chocolate and a talk. he apologized again. and again i let him.

i'm a fucking punk.

i didn't go as far as letting him in my "no sex" zone, but we did continue to hang out and he did push a little further each time. a hug that lasted a little too long, a peck on the lips, a long, slow kiss. one night i went as far as letting him crash and we messed around. at one point things got a little out of hand. i was listening to my body instead of the voice screaming at me to stop and he pulled at something and moved something else and it honestly felt like rape.

and i freaked.

that's how i knew this copulation sabatical was something so much more than just limiting myself as some sort of redemption. it was truly about me setting my standards and sticking to it. instead of letting people do shit to me constantly. going along with something just to please that other person and maybe me for the moment, but that eventually made me feel like shit later on. in imposing such a determination, i've found myself quite lonely. even he has stopped calling. i've had some sloppy make-outs in questionable places, but even that has left me feeling used up and gross. it still leaves me wondering if someone could truly love me and have the patience to do so.

but fuck it.

like Ben says:

yes, indeed, i'm alone again.
here comes emptiness, crashing in . . .
and it's just another lonely day . . .

like a terribly selfish friend told me once, "i'd rather you be alone than to be heartbroken." i'm beginning to understand the true sentiment behind that rotten phrase. she had other purposes for saying such bullshit, but for my own uses, it does mean something. it means that i have enough love for myself to realize that i indeed deserve what i want and that, no, i'm not fucking picky, i'm self-preserving. i'm not bullheaded as to not compromise. it's not like i have a fucking list, for Christ's sake. but, goddamn it, i want what i want for a fucking reason.

it's what i said and i'm sticking to it.