Wednesday, September 15, 2010

July 4, 1826

This is crazy. But I can’t stop writing. This one is completely cathartic. (Fuck, that’s what I’d prefer it be.) I’m terribly sad. I’ve written about my lost group of darlings who kept me sane through three horrible years at Paul D. Schreiber of High School of the Port Washington Union Free School District a bunch of times before.

I’ve never been the most prompt of letter writers. Often , I never wrote at all. (Which angered those who were on the receiving end who received from me…nothing.) I guess this is payback time. The phone and I don’t get along as well as we used to. (My voice usually paying the price.)

Sad. Oh weeks ago, I indicated to a sibling a lovely story of her sister- one of the lost. (I know, I make them sound like The Lost Tribe, don’t I? But that’s actually not a bad way to think of them.) I wrote that I had a post about her wonderful sister (who is unable to rejoin the world). Something dreadful happened in the years she was away- transforming her into someone unrecognizable and unreachable. That’s the horror. The terrible sorrow. She was delightful, wickedly funny, loving, and totally unaccepting of self.

The latter I learned many years later. I think in our few intense years together, we all took her behavior as simply neurotic, invisible, smart girl pains that would slowly heal only after leaving the hell that was Paul D. Schreiber High School of the Port Washington Union Free School District. Well they didn’t. And hope against hope, I thought making contact with a sibling on FB would somehow get me closer to my lost sweetheart. But that can’t happen. Not in real life. There is no substitute for the real thing, but I wasn’t looking for a substitute. But I was looking for something I frustratingly never found. (Expectations will be the death of me yet.)

In fact, I felt a hand in my face, attached to an arm stretched forward as far as it could go. I was not to be allowed in. I wasn’t wanted. Not like when I was a fixture at their house. The days when her sister and the rest of the tribe could read each other’s minds was long, long, ago in the Dark Ages. I was asking for a taste of something that is no more. It is not she, the sibling, who is at fault. It is I for wanting more. More than possible for anyone to give. That hurts.

I feel so goofy “becoming a blog exhibitionist.” It’s the same damned me I always was. I’m just on a written page for the world to see if it bothered to take the time to read my “poils of wisdom.” Some are you are wise beyond your years. Give yourself a hand. Always a little (sometimes a lot) angry, usually acerbic, very often funny. There’s a lot of funny in this world. Unfortunately, many fail to see the humor in it. Too bad. I find it much easier to live as if we’re part of some ghastly uber- Super Thing’s big joke. That’s helluva lot more interesting than God.

There is nothing good about when I feel lousy the way I do every fucking day. There are no lessons to be learned from this. I’m not of the school (surprise): “cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Anyone who says that is not being honest with himself or is a blithering idiot. Yeah, so you survive your cancer. You’re always looking over your shoulder for the horrid thing that’s next. Or waiting for the other shoe to drop. Pick your cliché. The effects of chemo stick to your psyche like a piece of chewing gum. (Juicy Fruit?)

Yeah, so I’ve learned not to be frightened (for the most part) to say what I feel. Trust me, this wonderful ability to communicate and share really bites when it comes with the everyday worry of picking up some ordinary upper-respiratory infection and dropping dead. (I always feel so terrible for poor Freddie Mercury. He was so frightened about the reaction he’d get telling the public he had AIDS. When he finally screwed up the courage and did it, he died the very next day. A la Jefferson and Adams both surviving to July 4, 1826 and then dropping both down dead as if they planned it that way. Like when you’d tell a girlfriend, let’s both wear skirts tomorrow! Yeah, just like.) C’mon, y’all, we live in a bad place, so let’s enjoy as much as possible.

Oh, about the communicating and sharing? Don’t even think so for a second. I’m just on my soapbox pontificating. I don’t see any dialogue here, do you? Any sharing. Nah, fuhgedaboutit. I wasn’t made that way. I just often appear so. (Oh my, so curmudgeonly today, aren’t we?)

I’m just sad.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Franny,
    First time I ever posted to a blog. Except some comments I left through the years at the The NYTimes.
    Glad to see your picture. You look good. Sorry you don't feel as well as you look. Most people don't look as good as they feel.
    Keep writing. You sound like you're having a good time.
    Love,
    Vivian

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Vivian,

    Please keep reading. It makes me feel better knowing that you do.

    Love,
    franny

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Fran,

    Just remember if everyone was happy in high school there would be no John Hughes movies! I think even if you talked to the happiest of our PDS class (and if they were being honest) that they were miserable, hormonal messes as well. That fantasy of everyone happily going through HS...maybe that only happens in those HS musical movies. As for the rest of us-we just remember only the good parts so in hindsight it seems better than what it was!

    ReplyDelete