I think break has been bad for me. I’ve been getting too ambitious. On a two-day trip to DC I packed three books, telling myself that I would finish the one I was currently reading on the 5-hour train ride down. I did not even finish the book I should have finished. In truth, it felt good to finally take my time with a book, to enjoy its parts, the wording, the metaphor; but, equally truthfully, I felt stupid for taking so long. I don’t think 2-weeks is a long time to read a book, but I had a good book-a-week thing going, albeit mostly because if I ever read a book for longer than that someone would notice and go “you’ve been reading that for a while.” Call it peer pressure or call it paranoia. Both are correct.
I’ve recently begun to think that I don’t like reading, but rather the idea that I do. Unfortunately, you couldn’t Guantanamo Bay that confession out of me, so I’ll just pose it as a thought.
Instead of reading, or rather, forcing myself to read, I’ve been rewatching Community again and again. I can’t bring myself to watch anything new, it feels like too much discovery, and I can’t bring myself to watch anything not, at the very least, a little bit funny. I’ve been avoiding Felt Surrogacy (4.9) like the plague. When I watch it with my stepdad, he always rallies against Jeff Winger, who, in his words, “is the devil himself, incarnate.” I tend to brush it off until we get to the JeffAnnie episodes where the writers conveniently seem to forget that she’s 15 years younger than him, but…tomato tomato (it doesn’t work well written out, it seems). He also thinks that Jeff is worse than Pierce. I’ve yet to recommend the Community subreddit to him in fear that he’ll get carried away.
Anyway, despite my earlier declaration that I want a funny show, I enjoy the softer, warmer bonding episodes. Not the finale, because that makes me feel like I can’t watch the show anymore, but Mixology Certification (2.10) is heartwarming, even if it bags on Shirley a little bit (I am Shirley’s #1 defender, for context). I think the overlooked bonding, “less funny” episode is Virtual Systems Analysis (3.16). While Troy and Britta go on a date, Abed teaches Annie how to use the dreamatorium, which, after Annie feels shut out by Abed, alters the dreamatorium leading to Annie and Abed going through some epic bonding! (I’m glossing over a lot, but I fear that I’ll be gotten for academic plagiarism even though I’m not in school and I’m not even looking at the IMDB right now) Like many sitcoms do and notice (in an extra epic meta way!! That’s how I assume the writers see it, at least) there’s a happy ending. Annie and Abed bond, Troy and Britta have a nice date, Jeff and Shirley come back in a good mood, and Pierce tells them that he didn’t sit on his balls. Which earns him a congratulations. When it’s noted that they all had a ubiquitously good day, Pierce concedes that he did, in fact, sit on his balls, and he lied because he wanted the group to be proud of him. I like the joke more these days because it’s a little unmemorable, and when you watch only one TV show for an entire week, any novelty within it is appreciated.
I think my stepdad’s absolvement of Pierce in the face of Jeff has made me soften up to him. I was called an “old soul” a lot when I was a kid (which really meant that adults thought I was lame), so I think I naturally find kinship with old characters. But, as much as he is racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, (really pick your poison here) he’s kind of…relatable.
Obviously, I’m not going to take a pro-Pierce stance, but in every bit, we, the audience, see of Pierce beyond him being the racist old white guy caricature, he wants to be liked. In Celebrity Pharmacology (2.13) he leverages Annie (using his exorbitant wealth) to input his punchlines into the play. He spirals after he earns the approval of the preteens, fulfilling his childlike need for attention and affirmation. I’m not excusing blackmail (it’s not even blackmail really…semantics!), but I will say, as someone who has babysat preteens, nothing feels better than to be called the favorite sitter. Would I sell out my friend to get that praise? Maybe not, but my dad didn’t constantly tell me I was good enough so…there’s that. Also, Pierce’s dad is the bigot to end all bigots (3.6) so the fact that Pierce didn’t mince within the white population, frankly, is shocking. Am I rewarding less than the bare minimum? Obviously. But, and not to be too transparent here, I do find that I lie about not sitting on my balls a lot, not making excuses for him. Also, my balls were metaphorical, if that wasn’t clear.
Back to break. What was I saying? Oh yeah, I’m bad at not having direction. Waking up at 11:30 is working for me. I enjoy laying around until I can’t stand myself and then walking around New York for 8 hours before falling asleep in a bathtub. I call it romantic. Others have used hedonistic, irresponsible, or superbly lame.
I’ve been forced to think about college and whenever I meet with my advisor all I think about is how I have no aspirations. My brother went to college to be a doctor. I will go to college to be…unemployed. I’ve been lying to the people around me that I’ll be a philosophy major and go into law, because that’s the only socially acceptable way to be a philosophy major. Truthfully, I know I won’t do law. Frankly, I don’t even think I’ll do philosophy.
I don’t have passions. I am passively interested in everything. I’ve always been more interested in the container than the substance. Some people want to travel the world by 35, others want to write novels, some want to be married with kids, I want…who knows. I’d take any of those things, or none of them. Break has been good for my own spirit, in that I’m at my best when I’m doing nothing; but it hurts my soul. I remember being 8 and having aspirations of going to Yale. I wonder where those went. It probably started and ended with Stuyvesant.
I think deep down, I still have aspirations of going to Yale. That’s why when anyone asks what I’m doing with my life I say that I want to be a lawyer. I want to be successful; I think. I want people to not think I’m stupid is the more honest version of that. I want to be good, but often, and desperately, I’m reminded that I’m not. It’s cringey to type out because guilt about performance has been co-opted by rich-white-gifted kids who are mad that school got harder as they got older. I’m not mad about the difficulty of school. I’m mad that society stopped rewarding potential. That’s Stephen Adly Guirgis, he wrote The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. It’s a great play. Or, I assume so, I don’t read many plays.
Religion has been useful. Sometimes I break up the Community with Fleabag. I skip the confessional scene. It’s too much. It hurts to see someone living your dream. People might not classify Fleabag as “living the dream”, but I’m choosing to, because she is successful, a bit. Her café has taken off, she stands up for herself, she’s funny, at the very least. When I first watched Fleabag, I always wanted to be Fleabag. I always thought that I was Fleabag. I don’t think I am anymore though. I’m Claire. Which hurts a little. I’m Claire minus the big office. I don’t think I’m any fictional character actually. That hurts more. It leaves little to romanticize and relate to. I’m rolling around in my own filth. It’s grotesque a little bit, perhaps a little dramatic, but that’s what it feels like.
That’s why people pray, I think. Or confess. It’s embarrassing how little I know about religion. Direction is good though. That’s what the mantra has been. I’m bad at delivering on things like this.
Other things I’ve found good over break: the consistency of Chinese characters. People like to criticize Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other variety) for being hard to learn because you have to learn a ton of characters. They don’t get that memorizing characters becomes exponentially easier over time because certain symbols indicate meanings. 氵is a water radical, so when you see it, you know that you’ll be dealing with water. It’s a better version of Latin etymology because why would you learn another language to learn another language? Seems inefficient. In Chinese, you have to learn characters, but that’s still easier than learning words. I’ve found it graceful, if not totally necessary because Chinese is fucking hard. Noticing the small things of a language make it more beautiful and also makes me care about it…container, not the contents, you know?
I really only bring this up because I’ve been collecting tidbits over break. Opinions, thoughts, what have you, that make me more interesting. I haven’t spoken to anyone, not really, so I figure now or never. Not to say that I’m lonely. People smarter than me have articulated the difference between loneliness and being alone much better than I ever could. I don’t mind the latter. I can’t imagine hating the former because of my liking for the latter.
I feel like I keep getting distracted. Let’s cut to the chase. I sat on my balls over break. I lied about not doing it. I told myself I wouldn’t do it. I spent every waking hour repeating it to myself so much that I said it to myself while spending two hours staring at a wall in a hateful self-loathing. I’m thinking of getting a BoJack stupid piece of shit tattoo once I turn 18.
I do not know what I’m going to do with myself.
I do not know what I’m going to do with my life.
People keep reassuring me that it’ll be fine, that I’ll go to (a good) college and my shit will be fixed, but I don’t believe it. They all still think I’m going to Yale, a holdover from when I was 8-years-old, and we’re too far along for me to want to disappoint them.
Secretly, I hope that this Substack will get really popular before I have to apply to college so there’s less stress to it. I know it’s a privilege, but it’s not one that I asked for or one that I really want. It doesn’t feel like a privilege, it feels like an expectation heaved upon me and called a privilege in order for it never to be called into question. I’ve started to sound like Britta.
I sat on my balls, but I keep telling people I didn’t, because everyone else seems happy and I don’t want to spoil the mood. I’m confessing this now because I ran into an ex-girlfriend and she told me that confession is good for the soul. She’s Jewish, so I feel obliged to trust her. Switching sides is a big deal.
In terms of Chinese, I’ve started rushing my homework. Google Translate is one hell of a drug, my teacher tells me not to use it, but I know enough to know what the answers are supposed to look like…so there’s that. I force myself to slow down and tell myself that I’m here to learn, but I’m not sure who I’m trying to impress. I submitted two late papers, only by a couple of minutes each and I felt like throwing up. I have tried so hard to be good that all I really want is to be done.
I worry that I’m always looking forward to the next big thing in life and that I’ll always want to move on. But I don’t know how to exist in one place and be content. I will always want, and even more so, I will hate wanting. I will never know what I want and whenever I think I know what I want, I’ll be mad at myself for not finding it sooner, until it eventually fades and I’m reminded of why I don’t commit.
When he was a senior, my brother told me that he cheated on his girlfriend and chalked it up to drunkenness and irresponsibility. I’ve never wanted to be less like him.
These days I’m worried that I fake being a lesbian for attention because I can’t bring myself to be around women. I also worry that I might have been right on the asexual front because I can’t stand men either. My therapist assures me that there’s nothing wrong with being alone. Except, she’s on maternity leave right now, so that’s easy for her to say.
I’m mad that I wrote this and didn’t read the thing I wanted to. Life is always about the things you chose not to do, never the things you’ve done because there are infinitely more failures (things you didn’t choose, couldn’t choose) in your life than successes. It seems to me that everyone is ok with this, and celebrates anyway. I was told I have an “old soul” since the 1st grade. I was born a cynic. Break hasn’t helped. It’s easy to be consumed.