High high hopes for a living

I cannot stand Panic! At The Disco. My boyfriend likes them, but I think the lead singer is the kind of guy who wacks off to the idea of the good guy he thinks he is. Like he gets his nut off thinking about himself assisting old ladies cross the street or donating to charity or helping children get cats out of trees. I cannot explain why this irrational and nonsensical thought occurs to me every time I see him, but I dearly desire to kick him in the face with a muddy boot. So, explain to me why I woke up this morning (on my day off, no less) with that stupid High High Hopes song in my head. Grrr. Annoying.

Over the past few days I've been overindulging in a expansive buffet of emotions. I'm always trying to get to the island of happiness (otherwise known as the chocolate fountain), but other patrons keep getting in the way. As a result, I'm at the fucking salad bar, which only offers numbness, occasional dollops of panic, and a beautiful shell-shocked feeling, which prompts me to walk around furniture stores for two hours without knowing why I'm there. I did go to the cemetery, which calmed me greatly. Put some headphones on and ignored other people and chased a black cat across the damn thing, which in hindsight probably wasn't a smart move. Got some good Insta shots. Felt my shoulders relax for the first time in awhile. And I thought-I have to keep busy. That's the only way I'm gonna beat this.

So instead of sitting in my office staring at my computer screen or wandering World Market like some sort of war victim, I spent some time with my old compadre, Tee. In junior high, she disliked me, which is fair, because I was fucking weird, and I didn't like myself, either. In high school, she disliked me up until she realized I didn't give a fuck, and she sealed our friendship by hurling a huge wad of construction paper at my sleeping head during Social Studies.

"Hey. I don't like your name, so I'm gonna call you Rae."

Alas, Rae was born. And from then on, Tee became a part of my family. Brad joined in not long after. He showed up at my sixteenth birthday party with a handful of burned Korn CDs (which I still have) and I had absolutely no idea who the fuck he was, but everyone cheered when he walked in, so I got him in the deal, too. We were pretty inseperable. Tee taught me how much of a stick up the ass I was. She taught me how to drink. She never cut me any slack. She stood by me when I kept falling to my knees. She never sugarcoated the facts, no matter how many times my stupid ass wanted to ignore them. Most of our friendship was either spent being drunk, dancing to Enrique Inglesias, or her chasing after me with a flipflop, which is a Cuban's all-purpose version of conflict resolution. Now the tables have turned-crazy, flirtatious Tee has a beautiful home, a lovely wife, and an adorable kid. I don't see Tee very often (something I want to try to fix) but she now lives around the corner from my parents. When we do get together, we usually go and eat at BDubs (Buffalo Wild Wings) and we regale each other with stories from both sides of life. If there is a silence, it is comfortable. And we always end up doing something-like looking for furniture, or as in the case of yesterday-she took me down deep in the swamp so that we could fight off bugs in the mad quest for a nice piece of driftwood (which she tried to cut with a hand saw, poor thing). We weren't successful, but all the things that have been bothering me just kind of melted away for awhile. It's hard to overthink when you're fighting off bugs on a mud road in the middle of Deliverance country. And Tee, who is good with her hands, who fixes things and creates things and redid her entire house from top to bottom, can take the root of my bullshit, tweak a few things here and there, and hand my brain back to me with a few good things installed. Grateful is a sad, sad adjective to describe my state of mind.

I left Tee to spend time with her wife (and made plans to go hang out at her family's camp in a few weeks), but I didn't want to go home. I had been given remission; I wanted to stretch it out for as long as I could. So I called Scott, and he picked me up at my parents' house and we listened to old rock music, went to Elmwood to the Halloween store, then to District for Monte Cristos. We sat at the Lakefront watching gulls trying to rape each other and I demonstrated that I cannot eat a powder covered sandwich without looking like I've dive bombed a pile of cocaine. And Scott, who has been faithfully shouldering this storm with me for the past few weeks, was there for me as he always has been. Maybe it's in your subconscious, he said. Maybe you're intentionally looking for the things that remind you of the things you don't need to be reminded of. I denied this initially, but after we had parted for the evening, I thought....maybe? It is hard to ignore the insight of a person on the outside, a person who's known you since kindergarten. Scott is always surprising me with his depth of insight.

What he and Tee had said made me recall: I did these things as an adolescent. I got stuck. And I sat in it until it held me fast to the Earth. Maybe Adult Rae and Adolescent Rae are still talking to each other too fucking much.

After we left and he had dropped me off at my car, I felt like someone had taken weights off of my back. I actually listened to good and angry metal on the way home instead of putting 'Apologize' on fucking repeat. And I went home and drank and baked a cake and watched It with Sid, with my head full of vague, sandwichy thoughts. Before we went to bed, I took the dogs out. And the remission ended right there. There are a few horribly beheaded mushrooms on my sidewalk which sadly bore the brunt of my emotions. I knew the calm would end. I know it's not over yet. But thanks to those two, I feel like there are more remissions in the future. I washed my face and passed out, and now I'm typing this shit while I figure out how to recover pictures from a fucked up drive.

Today is a good day. Maybe tomorrow might be, too. Even if it isn't, I have to keep remembering that Adolescent Rae finally peeled herself out of that puddle. If that psychopathic drunken head case could do it then, Adult Rae can do it, too. One day, all this won't matter.

And maybe I can deal with that stupid song for a little longer. Right now, it makes sense.

i still want to boot kick that guy though

-Rae