Wednesday, January 07, 2004

The clutter in my room has begun to climb the walls. Even it wants to get away from itself. The sprawling mass ghettos of cardboard boxes and paper bags reflect the urgency of relief. I grow tired inside nursing the birthings of spilled bags and layered clothing. By looking at my mess one would not guess that I indeed cleaned not more than a week ago. I have let my space fill thus clogging my brain with similarly useless crap. I toss and turn at night and feel frustrated. I pray for my period hoping it will end the restlessness and angst, secretly wondering what I will do if it doesn't.

Spring is only 3 months away.

I wrote her an email because it was easier to write her what I was feeling than tell her. I knew we'd scream. We emerged screaming from the same loins decades ago, and have screamed subsequently since, directing our wails not to the bright light of birth but instead at our flesh and blood. As if coming home from college deserved some grand entrance and an explanation why I pinched her nose when I was two, and called her, "Michelle Smells," when I was 12 (and 24...) We had it out in the car tonight. A vicious aftershock of last night's rumble in the kitchen. I don't understand it. Have I grown this far from the dating world of the college kid? Have I really lost the understanding of drinking till one pukes? Of course not. I never had the mentality. I never drank that way, and when I did, it wasn't passing out on some frat guy and then making the walk of shame in a torn formal dress the next day. No way. No. It was giggling retardedly with a boy at a goth club who had more piercings than Edward Scissor Hands. We are one in the same my sister and I. Two seeds from the same apple.

I'm just a little bit more bitter.

Still, her choice of friends alludes me. The "intelligent valley girls," have raided the Lehigh campus and my sister has adopted all of them as her "girls." They talk continuously in that annoying question voice, and forget about their women's studies minors for chances to go out with a 26 year old player. I wax sardonic as I sing along with Third Eye Blind's "Misfits".... "My people are the misfits, the freaks, the enemy of you and me." Yeah that's right, I say with a self-righteous nod and a kick of my steel toed Docs. That's fuckin' right. My friends are not vapid. My friends read AND understand. We burrow into Camus and D.H. Lawrence and talk about obscure indie movies. I date an artist, a starving one at that, damnit. We stomp to Industrial wanting to forever silence the white noise of life with a high BPM track. Under my skin... you can clearly see the imprint of their obnoxious voices and Coach bags. Fake bitches.

I don't have it better. She retaliates with the recent news that I have joined a gym with hopes to burn away the winter cushioning. She announces to me that I better lose 80 lbs, she hopes I do so that I can finally be happy. What of this "happiness" anyway? I too can be a size 5! If I act now, she might help me to shed weight and the bitterness associated with being the oldest child and the uglier of the two. I smirk, and my eyes well up despite myself. If happiness were a number, my sister would get some self-confidence and I would be slim and trim and giddy as fuck. It's easy to point fingers from the lofty pedestal of pre-med.

I retreat to my books and she ascends back into the hills of Bethlehem for her final semester. My students attach themselves to my legs and tell me how much they love me and I shake my head wondering where we went so wrong.

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