10.22.2006
The sugar is wearing off now...
Two very mundane points for a brain-dead Sunday evening:
1. I just ate a sugary, Krispy Kreme, choco-tastic cake donut. This is not the first time I've ingested an uplifting substance mere minutes before I plan on trying to sleep...it makes for interesting dreams and a broken night's sleep.
2. I am mentally preparing myself for a change in my morning commute tomorrow. After an enlightening conversation with another teacher last week, I realized that it takes me too fucking long to drive 7 miles. I'm setting out, ambitious and optimistic, early tomorrow morning...to make a break-through in my completely uninteresting drive to work.
In other news, I was sitting here on my computer typing the above notes when Jewel's "Foolish Games" started playing on my random iTunes mix. It was slightly weird that this song caught my attention...given my long-standing opinions on Jewel (I could go into this, but the hate began with the popularity of a song that contained a particular lyric that goes something like, "I was happy and you were sad and it made me miss you oh so bad.")...
...but, a little known secret about Jewel and I's relationship is that I used to like Pieces of You a WHOLE LOT. I bought the album for a whopping penny through Columbia House when it came out in 1995 and didn't really expect to think much of it. But, as it turns out, I ended up listening to it, nonstop, for a good six months or so (skipping the aforementioned song). I'm not even sure if my friends at the time would've known this...because I would imagine that my sixteen-year-old self would do my best to hide such an uncharacteristic sensitivity to girly-music (...yeah...well...)
SO...back to why this song caught my attention. I haven't heard it in forever and when it came on, it unexpectedly brought a wave of feelings and old memories to mind. I had this vision of sitting in my bedroom on a beanbag that always lacked the comfort of quality....I had just gotten home from being out with my friends and, of course, my "girlfriend" at the time that I was head-over in love with. I was probably intoxicated, to some level, but even without substances, I always had a habit of just sitting by myself and doing nothing else but listening to music...my mom used to call it "watching the radio"...it never weirded her out too much, because, apparently, she used to do it to...
So...girlfriend...It was during a time in our relationship that I had expressed my feelings to her...over and over again...everything was incredibly overwhelming and life-encompassing...fuck, I couldn't even pretend that I thought about anything else. There may have been a high school life outside of being fully engrossed with another person....college?...a world outside of suburbia?....nah. Nothing else mattered to me...and, of course, she...well...I don't know....but, she wasn't there with me. It's all the typical shit...saying one thing and acting out another...and dragging me along for, what turned out to be, several years.
Now, I don't think about this everyday, as I am over it. There's certain things that will always hit a nerve about past experiences, but even so, not nearly as much as they did the first time around. But, when this song came on...and I'm not touting this song as the greatest bit of pop music EVER...hell, it pretty damn cheesy....regardless, there is one lyric in it that made me feel like I had been thrown back to 1997. I was hit with such a vivid flashback of sitting in my room 1o years ago...breaking down and uncontrollably crying...I could have been punched in the stomach and felt better than I did that particular night. I can't remember if anything had happened or if it was just a result of built-up, confusing feelings...but, the real pain that I felt back then washed over me tonight without any reason.
I used to be struck by how nonchalantly one person could toy with another's feelings...I swore to myself that I would never let something like that happen again...and I sure as hell would never be caught doing something so cruel to someone else. That was a while ago...and, since then, there's a good chance that both of those commitments have predictably eroded.
I guess sometimes I just feel like I've developed a bit of a callous for experiencing feelings as much as I did back then...it's not like I consciously work on it, but I think it's just a built-in learning and safety system. I was, and still am, reluctant to accept the fact that there are natural, human elements, such as emotions, that I have very little control over. And, particularly, if I'm going to have sweeping emotional flashbacks, I would like them to not be brought about by Jewel.
So...basically...my brief experience tonight was nice. Hardened or not, I still have stuff inside of me that remembers and knows what's real and that it doesn't stop existing...even if I want it to.
1. I just ate a sugary, Krispy Kreme, choco-tastic cake donut. This is not the first time I've ingested an uplifting substance mere minutes before I plan on trying to sleep...it makes for interesting dreams and a broken night's sleep.
2. I am mentally preparing myself for a change in my morning commute tomorrow. After an enlightening conversation with another teacher last week, I realized that it takes me too fucking long to drive 7 miles. I'm setting out, ambitious and optimistic, early tomorrow morning...to make a break-through in my completely uninteresting drive to work.
In other news, I was sitting here on my computer typing the above notes when Jewel's "Foolish Games" started playing on my random iTunes mix. It was slightly weird that this song caught my attention...given my long-standing opinions on Jewel (I could go into this, but the hate began with the popularity of a song that contained a particular lyric that goes something like, "I was happy and you were sad and it made me miss you oh so bad.")...
...but, a little known secret about Jewel and I's relationship is that I used to like Pieces of You a WHOLE LOT. I bought the album for a whopping penny through Columbia House when it came out in 1995 and didn't really expect to think much of it. But, as it turns out, I ended up listening to it, nonstop, for a good six months or so (skipping the aforementioned song). I'm not even sure if my friends at the time would've known this...because I would imagine that my sixteen-year-old self would do my best to hide such an uncharacteristic sensitivity to girly-music (...yeah...well...)
SO...back to why this song caught my attention. I haven't heard it in forever and when it came on, it unexpectedly brought a wave of feelings and old memories to mind. I had this vision of sitting in my bedroom on a beanbag that always lacked the comfort of quality....I had just gotten home from being out with my friends and, of course, my "girlfriend" at the time that I was head-over in love with. I was probably intoxicated, to some level, but even without substances, I always had a habit of just sitting by myself and doing nothing else but listening to music...my mom used to call it "watching the radio"...it never weirded her out too much, because, apparently, she used to do it to...
So...girlfriend...It was during a time in our relationship that I had expressed my feelings to her...over and over again...everything was incredibly overwhelming and life-encompassing...fuck, I couldn't even pretend that I thought about anything else. There may have been a high school life outside of being fully engrossed with another person....college?...a world outside of suburbia?....nah. Nothing else mattered to me...and, of course, she...well...I don't know....but, she wasn't there with me. It's all the typical shit...saying one thing and acting out another...and dragging me along for, what turned out to be, several years.
Now, I don't think about this everyday, as I am over it. There's certain things that will always hit a nerve about past experiences, but even so, not nearly as much as they did the first time around. But, when this song came on...and I'm not touting this song as the greatest bit of pop music EVER...hell, it pretty damn cheesy....regardless, there is one lyric in it that made me feel like I had been thrown back to 1997. I was hit with such a vivid flashback of sitting in my room 1o years ago...breaking down and uncontrollably crying...I could have been punched in the stomach and felt better than I did that particular night. I can't remember if anything had happened or if it was just a result of built-up, confusing feelings...but, the real pain that I felt back then washed over me tonight without any reason.
I used to be struck by how nonchalantly one person could toy with another's feelings...I swore to myself that I would never let something like that happen again...and I sure as hell would never be caught doing something so cruel to someone else. That was a while ago...and, since then, there's a good chance that both of those commitments have predictably eroded.
I guess sometimes I just feel like I've developed a bit of a callous for experiencing feelings as much as I did back then...it's not like I consciously work on it, but I think it's just a built-in learning and safety system. I was, and still am, reluctant to accept the fact that there are natural, human elements, such as emotions, that I have very little control over. And, particularly, if I'm going to have sweeping emotional flashbacks, I would like them to not be brought about by Jewel.
So...basically...my brief experience tonight was nice. Hardened or not, I still have stuff inside of me that remembers and knows what's real and that it doesn't stop existing...even if I want it to.
