caroline, age one nine

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:28:12 GMT

Leadership. Realistically, before you can care for anyone else you must care for your own person. Before you can guide someone else's health you have to check up on your own; before you show a person where to step your footing has to be secure.

I came to the university three weeks early to train for my position as a Resident Assistant. I am here to help others adjust, to be an example, to be magnified and stared at in the metaphorical fish bowl. When I arrived my blood was still pulsing New York. My veins were crying out for my addiction to the city: begging for the bad decisions, severed relations, and crushed sidewalks. I wanted the solitude back, the quiet nights in the depth of the loud city and the loneliness I dwelled in while in the company of every gorgeous person.

Everything is a comparison, at first. Holding up my wrecked lifestyle at the tailend of my summer movements and tacking it beside the wholesome example I am supposed to set for my residents, still desperately seeking both. Searching for a way to hide one from the other, to maintain stacks of personas. All the while craving Parliament Lights and masochism.

Then days happened, people were thrown into a box and shaken, hard. Ambition collided with regret and I was paralyzed; my emotions tuned to static with the volume maxed, all the words I heard encased in bubbles and hiding in my brain only to explode in privacy. (I pulled more facades over my face and cut everything open only in secret, the secrecy so hard to find when surrounded by these ten people constantly.) These ten people kept me safe. The girls timid or intimidating, the boys outspoken and secure. I found myself defining the negative lifestyle as my past (adding now, past drugs, past false love, past loneliess, sickness, sadness to the original: past love) and creating a new now, managing events and recruiting for the organization of which I am president, squeezing in off-campus friends after dark, discovering the boy who prides himself in how cold he can be, crying alone; I found myself taking control of me.

Now, the atmosphere is groundbreaking. The role I have the play, the title I own, is the biggest motivation I have gained in the past four years. I want to be inspiring, and I want to be inspired.

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 04:46:54 GMT

These are days when the heat wraps you up and tucks you in. It's ninety-five degrees at twelve o'clock at night, and the A/C is only in the rooms that are not my territory.

Lately things have been like this heat: pressing, sticky, irritating, and impossible to escape from without the salty remains drying on my back, my thighs, my hairline. My weight is hanging off of me in clumps, and the heat makes me so aware. I want to strip all my clothes off, but I don't look like I should. I want to go swimming, but I can't handle the bathing suit. Instead I stand in the cold cold showers with my eyes closed. I hold my arms out like someone else is holding them, and focus on my wrists. My little tiny wrists.

Waiting for the subway I can feel lines of sweat trace my spine, or weave down the pores of my calves. Everything is itchy; my messenger bag seems to dig deeper into my shoulder than usual. I am still desperately in love with New York City, but it's starting to pull me down. It's starting to stretch out like the tshirts I haven't washed in weeks. The boys are taking away my dignity, one by one. The incessant workload is stealing my perspective, is turning me into a wallstreet-modeled clone. Realizations that there is no more time. I leave in five days, and all four leading up to the morning departure are work days.

And the sunshine. The blinding fucking bloody heat of the UV rays that are out to kill us. Alicia came this weekend, and stayed for thirty-six hours. After the initial shock of the first in person meeting with a girl I've been best friends with for years, I was singed by her. Her too visible ribcage, her wide and childish beam of a grin, the way our steps lined up perfectly when we walked around Manhattan. We talked about doing E and and living too far away from each other, her in Virginia and me in Michigan. We planned our meals hours in advance and ate ice cream every day. Something was so fucking electric with that girl; when we stayed up until six, drunk and saying every thought that came into our heads. And when she left, in the early afternoon of Monday, I had to take the full day to recover, sleeping in one bed, then another, then the couch.

My mind is over-exposed. There was no form of premeditated protection for this, no SPF 300 like I needed. Now I feel this blanket of over-exaggerated warmth. Like the heat felt when hovering a hand an inch from a sunburn, I am radiating mania. So squeezed by the atmosphere I am oozing out my pores. I am leaving sweat marks on plastic chairs. The heat is giving me a headache, is holding me still and making my nerves tingle in anxious energy. I need to fucking cool down, but for the next two days this heat is still scheduled as unbearable, this sun is going to bleed it's bloody light all over New York City, and I am going to keep living in it.

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:59:51 GMT

I'm being used!
You walked into it with your eyes open. You don't even mind that much.

This needs a lot of editing but I am too tired.

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:19:01 GMT

Accidentally, today I took the D train four stops too far south. The train went slow, and the tracks were so different than what I've grown used to. Skewed lights in the tunnels bared the walls and I couldn't help but feel so magnetized, instead of getting off to transfer I wanted to sit and feel the curves, I wanted to watch the illuminated walls pass me by. I ceased reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot and held onto the warmth from the hour I spent shopping with a friend from work, Joan, and the surfacing feeling of an entirely good day.

It was after my trip back to where I should have been that I was standing in the York Street station, pacing the same fifteen feet back and forth while waiting for the F. I had been scrawling with a blue pen onto off-white paper the pieces of elation I found in the day when I stopped to witness my own small-scale epiphany. The past two weeks have made me so chaotic internally, this new Leonardo and exhaustion from working seven days a week and stimulus, stimulus, stimulus. I keep finding myself wringing my hands or pulling in my cheeks to chew on the insides; I keep finding myself in front of mirrors with my lips twitching and dirty awkward bangs falling in my eyes. Not anxiety or nervousness but excitement keep me flinching. Standing at that station was like the recovery when someone pushes your shoulder too hard: when you're upright again with your center of gravity rediscovered and lips curled up slightly from the embarrassment.

That moment was pinpointed and specific, but established a pulse of comprehension for everything I haven't been able to decipher in Brooklyn. Pacing there I stopped and found my reason for Leonardo, found security and an explanation that ended the discomfort I've been fostering as a result of him. I pressed my palms into the apples of my cheeks and tussled my own hair, smiling into the stained cement beneath my feet. Leonardo is proving that I'm beginning to know who I am. What a tiny monument, right? About the equivalent of a penny taken out of fifty twenty-dollar bills.

The truth is I've never been one to question my own identity, not really. Things add up and amount to who I am; when I question it, when I question anything, all I get is sand. A huge mass of little particles. But it hit me so solidly after explaining to Kaitlyn, my closest friend from school, the events of the past three days: I follow my own code without an awareness for the rules and standards, but knowing they are stone. I have these instinctive morals that even as I act in contradiction to them they are in tact. I realized that my behavior is patterned and consistent, that my character and attitude didn't bend over backwards for Leonardo, and thus will not waver for anyone. Gazing at the fluorescent lights and tiled walls I was suddenly so confident with my decisions, everything became so owned and personal. Leonardo faded from a forward, Colombian, older stranger to a concept in the final product of this Brooklyn experience. This caroline: one nine and in New York. After two weeks Leonardo has this subliminally crucial placement, holding so many parts without being a lead role, or even coming close to that of a supporting character. He's this cameo that changes everything; he's the five seconds that gives the three hour play an entirely new perspective, the minute addition that leaves the audience feeling inspired and surprisingly brave.

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 02:21:34 GMT

Manipulation is a hard thing to overcome, and self-respect is impossible to have a secure hold on when you're lonely. Lately I've been a slave to possibility and the fringes of something I'm terrified to define as hope.

And lonely, slipped in there so casually, so thoughtlessly. Whenever mother calls she desperately asks, Are you lonely there? Do you miss your mama? When really, the very honest answer is no. To both questions. I'm killer when it comes to independence. Being alone is not something I'm scared of, it's something I've been looking for. And here, these three weeks of finding my own things to do, of working with complete strangers and living with a cousin I've had (at the most) two conversations with since arrival, here I am so secure in my loneness. So careful to ignore the word loneliness, because the idea of that is unbearable, but being lone is fine.

That is, until you realize there are people out there, mixed in with the strangers. There are people who will hit on you on the subway then take you to electronica parties in Williamsberg. There are co-workers ten years older than you who suddenly morph to intoxicated amigos, who you can casually drape your arms around for stability through the haze of smoke, bass, and alcohol.

It's so fantastic to get lost in a mess of risk and activity, to lose inhabitions and not just meet the strangers but become one to someone else. It's not necessarily that I'm letting a second or third party manipulate me (not completely, at least) but instead I'm manipulating myself. Letting the not so fucking straight laced lunatic take the controls for a few hours, or days: milling around with the said two four Leonardo character and feeling okay about it. I can't say the manipulation is bad, in fact I know it's not. It's just so strange to be growing out of these precautions I thought were my morals. Strange to not be entirely sure what, exactly, I'm doing.

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 01:57:21 GMT

The things I don't tell you are clinging to my shoulderblades, they are latching onto my spine and almost whispering to me that they'd like to be let go. (hey babygirl one nine, you're fine without us, kay? just relax a little.) I won't let my habits be claimed because I'm convinced they're not really habits, instead it's This is just something I did once because I wasn't feeling good. Instead it's, Oh wait, I just did that? Nah. No- but my head is in my hands and I'm twisting the hairs that have escaped my ponytail with the tips of my fingers.

Tonight I sat and realized I was too run-down to pick myself up off my knees (but did, despite the weight of my own flesh). I hold onto moments to keep myself grounded and cancel out the chance of an attack of exhaustion like this; I hold onto the things that shine a light I doubt other people see. Today I felt one of the managers eyeing me in a negative way, and reacted by doing the best I could, with nerves sparking. All only to hear her say oh, I am so tired, I don't think I can finish today and later, How do you tie your hair up like that? Mine has too many layers, I think. which ended in my doing a demonstration. My mind settled to the notion that she was just making sure she could trust me, on one of those levels I feel like no one else bothers to define.

And later, distracted, and poked back in tune to some type of reality when a customer tells me a story about God pointing him toward our store when he was lost, which was really much more important that one would realize.

I look in mirrors and see my collar bones, hardly visible as they're enveloped by muscle, fat, something. See my shoulders and how they're different than I remember. Maybe it's just that I don't feel stupid wearing tank tops in New York, as opposed to my standard wardrobe in Michigan of nothing too tight, hardly anything beyond tshirts. I'm either becoming more apathetic or more confident, neither of which puts me at ease.

Being one nine is such a stretch- you don't have the satisfying one eight idea that simply being legal is enough to make you feel grown up. In blunt contrast, suddenly, I'm young again. I can't drink and I haven't finished college and I don't know all the things I need to know before I can be a professional of any kind. I'm caught between making adolecsent excuses and being an ashamed adult. My solace comes in discovering the quirks in human nature and treasuring them. Lately, being so new and critical here, I've been ecstatic to find things that are genuine. People that truly consider my advice, point out my enthusiasm, appreciate my position, or smile. I fucking love all the people that smile.

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:40:25 GMT

Some credit needs to be given:

Past love. Said with sighing resignation, because we've reached the top of a hill. With the absolutely draining and conflicting and emotional metaphorical fistfight that leaves scrapes on my ankles and bruises on my trust, the best idea tends to be isolation: he is confined to this little square of my insides and rarely allowed out, rarely allowed space to breathe. Upon escape, everything, everything is in ruins- but so temporarily. That, that jailed past love persona isn't so realistic right now. Spanning conversations and silences and months, the movement has altered from a rock climb to the even walk of a plateau. I'll let this...happen, I decided, and immediately tensions are relaxed, defenses are a little lower. The moment we're in now reminds me of when we first started talking. The playful flirting on his end and cautious insecurity on mine. Me dipping in just the big toe, but only because I know, I know, now that the water is so deep and cold.

Relations are changing. The second job, the retail Fifth Avenue spoiled little kids everywhere job, lets me talk. I woke up this morning craving the interaction promised by a planned activity with Christiaan, my older brother. I just need to talk out loud and have someone hear me. Our planned trek to Williamsberg is completely ignored, and my being on-call for the second job turns to being anxiously needed. On arrival and lingering outside before my shift, the man who works the fruit stand tells me, You, you love apples! as it's the second time I've bought them from him. I leave the store with a girl I work with who lives two stops before me on the C train, and we relate on these levels I wouldn't have expected: work background, school ambitions, attitude, financial history. She is two oh and I am one nine and we talk and talk.

Quarter after eleven holds me in an empty house. It took three weeks in this new city to have all this in a day, when the lines of relationships cross and mingle and change. When Christiaan visits in the city- little me at the second job; when the throbbing pulse of a past love can be dulled to a human name; when conversations can occur with strangers who have potential to change into friends. I'm learning, here. Taking advantage of the blindness that comes with being one nine and asking questions. Letting the color drip into the void of this overlooked age and hoarding it, waiting for something with substance, for some kind of formal result I'm sure I won't find.

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 05:26:29 GMT

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by an incredible elation over the state of things. The state of absolutely everything. I want to learn until my brain swells; I want to smile at every set of eyes I see, or don't see; I want to research and discover. I want to be surrounded by people that are more successful than me constantly, I want inspiration everywhere. Fucking everywhere.

My throat hurts and my body is tired but the time is one two three and after a day like today I am not angry. After a day like today I want to rebuild reconstruct remodel remove the entire world on my own terms, and I know for a fact I'm capable of it. I know there is blatant possibility, blatant potential. World. World, here. Inform me. I'm ready.

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:52:03 GMT

My skeleton is trying to escape my skin. I can feel the pressure on the tips of my fingers; I can feel my blood draining, preparing. In just a second my- my, everything important in my body composition will come drifting out of me. Like a cigarette on a windy day? The smoke flies so fast the cherry goes out and you have to re-light it. That's going to be me. The once-lit-now-half-burned-out-and-pitiful-looking cigarette, my energy drivemotivation, my ambition inspiration passion, my being evaporated and mingling with the particles that hide in the ozone.

It's because my muscles don't have any fuel, and the caffine is making my brain buzz. I want liquor, I want a friend that doesn't make me live up to my potential. I make poor decisions on purpose, sometimes, perfectly conscious and aware of myself (I never could be unstable, no matter how hard I tried). I have scars and memories and --

Distractions: without realizing I had started, I tell myself to stop rocking. Sitting on this floor, shiney like the face of a fourteen-year-old, with the window open wide. Cross legged and leaning my elbows on my knees from my waist up I was rocking, rocking. I need to get some sleep.

(Guilt. The last word of that sentence was guilt. I have scars and memories and guilt.)

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 05:41:18 GMT

YOU ARE A HORRIBLE FRIEND. I am desparate to scream, and scream. I listen to a song that is probably over-played on the radio. I never listen to the radio, or watch television, or read magazines; I am so uninformed when it comes to pop culture.

I am exploding. You make me feel so alone. I want to say, You make me feel so hopeless, so old, like you were the one chance I had and I fucked it up because my expectations are too high.

The brutal part of love, that's now. This is me taking my emotions, every last one, and throwing them on a plate in front of him. In front of a love so mangled I don't know what to call it anymore. Obligation? This is probably the bitter, so so bitter, end. I need an ending. I trust fate and karma and possibility for a fairytale, while looking in a mirror at the solid present. Nothing changing. I know I am holding onto the same one thing for too long, I am stretching out all this pain because at least it is something. Because at least I am still attached to him.

It's because I cannot imagine anyone else. Someone find me! Someone please, please find me. I need to turn away from photographs and look at calendars. Look at all this wide open time and potential. I can be okay if I just let myself. If I let the heat drain out and the red subside. It's so hard, I'm saying. The boy I met at a conference, Cleveland, he is consoling me. I know, hon, I know. It'll be okay, though, I promise. I want to be glued together completely. I want to be something beautiful with cracks down the sides. I want to forget. I want to remember. I want him here, in New York, not diligently attending to his responsibilities in Michigan. I want the summer to be over, to be rewound back to last summer when all we could think about was the horrible gap that would come with college. That was better than this. At least we had palms to hold, fingers to break, lungs to collapse. (At least we had eachother.)

Cleveland says, In a few months, you'll be over it, I think.

I won't apologize for these entries getting increasingly longer.

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 02:48:21 GMT

It's funny how little communities can form with absolutely no discrimination against their members, as long as they possess one distinct thing. Whatever commonground that community is founded on, if you have it you're in. One thing right and all the wrong things cease to matter.

Dog owners are so passionate: they stop to talk to eachother about quirks and habits, their computer desktops are photos they took with their digital cameras, they brag about their puppy like they would their two-year-old, He did the funniest thing yesterday... They'll talk like you're someone they've known since gradeschool, like you're their best friend in the world-- as long as you have a leash around your wrist, secured to a dog chewing something it found a block back.

I decided I want one. I want an excuse to get exercise every day, a little animal that is unwaveringly loyal, a responsibility I am completely in love with. Falling in love with a dog is so much easier than with a person, there is so much less risk involved. While walking, I make an addition to the long-running "vision" with the past love. He dubbed it a vision, for me it's a joke that burns: a tease of something so desirable that its obvious impossibility is a pain worse than being slapped. He always told me it would be dark red. With dark wood and photographs and his musical instruments all around. An apartment for us in a big city, and as I'm walking Opie-fucking-saurous-rex, I am thinking that a little dog is something I want to glue in.

Past, past past past fucking past love. One nine means this was not the love of my life, of my dreams. If it was (I keep feeling these pangs that he mind of been)- but he wasn't. He was just a boy who mattered. I always hear that love stings at the end, that it's brutal and hard and makes you so shattered, so empty. Empty fits, I think. Three months after the fourteen, fifteen month relationship and I still think everything inside of my ribcage has been removed.

That's why I need a dog. I just want someone to love me. And if I can't have that I'll get something to love me instead, something that won't know any better, that will jump on my lap and give me kisses just from my voice uttering his name. And when I walk around with him strangers on the street will want to talk to me, I'll have an immediate support group.

Mind you, this is all for the future. This is for when my mailing address doesn't change every eight or so months. When I'm not one nine. One nine, one nine. I am too young, still, to be talking about the inevitable search for love and affection. I am too something for everything.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 02:46:20 GMT

In someone else's house I lay completely naked on the couch and don't feel guilty. Instead I think of how maybe I should feel guilty, and how it's slightly humorous that instead I feel more resentful. Like, Why didn't you make sure I would feel comfortable taking a glass of wine from your fridge? Oh right, because I'm one nine.

I don't even drink. I've drank to the point of intoxication maybe four times. I've been naked without the intentions of showering maybe five times since puberty, and it's just ridiculous. Sometimes I want to be the person that's just so comfortable with everything. With knowledge, with nudity, with the way things are. Most times, though, I stick to being grateful that I'm not. Grateful that I'm the reserved girl who tries to listen more than she talks. Who has an attention for detail but never really takes the time to point out to anyone else what she points out to herself.

I can't bear the thought of myself bare for more than a minute. I put pajamas on. I'm house sitting, and dog sitting, and after telling myself I don't smoke I take one of the Parliament Lights I bought an hour earlier and smoke it outside. Smoking is an excuse not to eat. It's a restrictor. When I only have x amount of time for nourishment, I smoke a cigarette. (I'm tired of not being what I want myself to be.)

And this, this, is the start of an honesty I've never seen before. It's looking in a mirror and seeing something (seeing baby one nine, seeing generous figure, seeing self) then catching it. Instead of rushing to see someone else I give myself the time of day- Hello. Hello and hey and I'm not even confirming you exist, no, I am the living you.

The dog I'm watching, named Opus, I put my face right next to his and say somewhat harshly, "Op-ie, Opie-fucking-saurous-rex" and he peers at me through two eyes, one blind and one not. Then I relax and play with him; I throw his chew toy across the span of the house, I scratch his ears, I give him a new bone. All the while realizing I am an independent loner with all these strings everywhere. All these ties to people and concepts and pretenses I cannot place in an order that satisfies me, so I toss them in a ball and let them lay where they fall.

The house is darker, and quieter. I'm praying that Opie has calmed down and that the people next door have gone inside. All I want is to sit in the quiet night with nothing- with not emptiness, not void, not quiet, just nothing.

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 05:05:56 GMT

Things were so welcoming, today. The subway, the sunlight, the people on the street. I almost thought my dinosaur was missing until I found it on the other side of its chain. Dinosaur refering to the only constant piece of jewelry I wear: a Tiffany's silver chain with a Tiffany's rectanglar piece of silver hanging from it. Long, narrow silver. Next to it a round bead with big holes, separating the rectangle from the dinosaur. My baby replacement dinosaur from Rachel. Replacement because there was a gold one before it: a baby three dimentional dinosaur that Carly's dad gave her when she was near seven, and Carly gave me for an extensive borrowing period. Then after a year, it mysteriously disappeared from the gold chain I wore it on.

The dinosaur intact and close to me, new clothes bought as a self-congratulatory gift on reaching one nine hanging in plastic from my arm: I light a white cigarette with a black lighter and talk on my cell phone. I'm here, I keep thinking, I'm here.

But later I remember being here doesn't change the fact that there still exists. That I came from a place before this, and a tiny handful of people cross both ways. My brother, Christiaan, who came to the barbeque that my cousin and roommate, Patricia, hosted-- family members know histories, and that's unsettling. At night I think I overhear through the window, She's too young, because one nine just isn't the same as two one, or two six, or three two. Too young.

But it's still better to be too young than too old because you can't go backwards. This way I'm just getting a head start. This way I can prove to be better than expectations, I'll do whatever you want just ask. Ask. Sometimes you're just stuck. And even at one nine, I am stuck in the route you begin to feel at one two, the decade-long in-between time of not being a child and not understanding how to be an adult.

With all of that, with everything riding on numbers and experience, I'm intentionally forgetting to care. Limitations are intangible and thus, in my mind, nonexistant. Like the city I came from: nonexistant. Don't worry about anything that's not in front of you because it's not worth the time. Be here, and now. I'm here.

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 07:55:07 GMT

Becoming one nine started with being one eight. In New York City. In Brooklyn. I arrived from suburb Novi (or suburb Kalamazoo?), and after twelve days of having the second number be eight, the nine replaced it.

One nine: it's a creaky bed on a hardwood floor, and obligations in the morning. The day starts as a too-late night, or a too-early morning; the first action of being older is to have a little more control. Conversing with past love (emphasis on past, please be past) and knowing that since being one seven I have learned so much. A little after twelve am is a phone call from five friends in Michigan (Kait, Alex, Tom, Terry, Alden) with singing and business talk with Kait about Roli & Itly, the soon-to-be-realistic craft company whose website I began earlier in the week.

Nineteen came on a Friday, and on Thursday I was texting Rachel about how I wasn't ready for it, how it's about to take me by surprise and I don't think I want it. But chances of avoidance are zero, and at three fifty-four on Friday, June sixteenth, here I am. Alive and about to record my last year as a teenager.