fuck you, and your untouchable face…

I am not the person who gets what she wants. I am not the person who is wanted. I am the sloppy second-choice friend and the sloppy second-rate girl and at least I don’t look like what the american police apparently think of as a second-rate citizen but does that make me second-rate queer? I can’t win anything anymore even the things that I do, the ones people label with things like “well-done” and “excellent” and stick little stickers on. It’s not perfect, it’s only a 90, it’s only a flirtation, it’s only one conversation, it’s only Thursday that you’ve made it to, it’s not any of the things you have been trying to achieve. The perfectionist I thought I’d kicked out of my body is coming back with a vengeance to haunt my academic and personal pursuits, as soon as I am reminded that I am not succeeding in new ways. I am not six and a half feet tall, and I am not anybody’s awkward boy, and I am not tall and blonde or small and redheaded and I am not in charlottesville and I don’t wear only sundresses and I don’t know what I am doing. I am trying really, really hard to be eight or more people that I am not and it isn’t working but neither is being me because I don’t know who or what I am. Showing these feelings scares away the people who cause them. Instead I show the feelings of hoping and wanting and the feelings that will entice all my goals to happen.

This wasn’t meant to be such a downer but I am in a nervous-failure mood.

I walked the dog and found a worm squirming on the sidewalk. I wanted to help it but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to bring myself to pick up a worm. Instead I pushed it with the toe of my shoe, nudging it to dirt from concrete. With each nudge it curled up more and I wanted some way to explain to this poor flailing creature that this hurts, but it may help, would help more than lying there and drying out in the afternoon sun. I did my best but I had to walk away and for the next half hour I wondered what happened, if the worm made it down into the cool soil or if it died, agonized, on the edge.

That is the mood I am in. The mood to worry about worms and to want to slap people for my own insufficiencies and insecurities.