I wish I was home. Home has so much right stuff that no other place, even the capital of Corecto, could never have.
I have never before appreciated ‘your mom’ and ‘thats-what-she-said’ jokes. I hear pronounced silences, where my friends would have chipped in with the appropriate line. It is unnatural for a teenager to go that long without hearing those words.
I take guitar lessons now which is pretty sweet. I play with a baby guitar, or I guess those in the know would say ‘half sized’, because it is easier for my little swollen fingers to stretch the shorter distance. Reading music is extremely difficult because I play one bar, or sometimes even a note and I have to stop and think where I was a moment before. Everything I play is ‘sight reading’ even if I played it a hundred times before. Learning new ideas is virtually out of the question. I instead revisit the ideas of self-discipline and patience. And I SO could use the lesson.
I am surprised by what I can get used to without actually remembering that I have gotten used to it- does that make sense? I am sitting here, with my IV ball ‘plugged in’ and it seems like that is what everyone does. It seems habitual, but I only know its habitual because that is the way people treat it. They are calm and act like it’s normal, so instead of being like ‘WTF is this thing and what exactly is it’ and all, I just read the signs and play chill. I’m getting good at reading cues. And playing make believe.
There is a main office at our apartment buildings and ever time I go in to play pool, watch TV or get a movie, they all say “oh hi nicole” and make small talk and ask me questions about things that no one could know except if they
a) stalked me CONSTANTLY
b) talked to my mom or other parental units
c) met me
…and frankly, and for the sake of sanity, I’d like to think that the first one is out. So I make like I know them and just avoid names and detailed conversations. I’d seriously be the easiest kid in the world to kidnap. I mean, if they just acted or even suggested that they knew me, I’d be holding their hand and walking with them. I’m sort of being sarcastic, but kind of not, if you follow. I’d like to think that I’m pretty lax about the getting-to-know-you thing.
I play make believe a lot as well. Once upon a time in a far away kingdom, a 16-year-old sits in her yellow walled chambers cutting out pictures in magazines, glue up to her elbows and a crick in her knee. The curtains on the glass doors are pulled back to reveal seemingly endless trees, giving way to ocean and the distant bank of green. The porch overhang blocks out the warmth of the sun but no light. The phone rings and she bounces on her bed, laughing with a friend. She runs upstairs, the dog following close behind. She boils water and puts on pasta and is making tomato sauce and is just adding brown sugar. Enter parents and dog. Pasta noodles tossed in sauce and schlepped into a casserole dish and into the oven it goes. Plates and silverware and candles and toasted bread and then desert and clean up. She plays a piano interlude maybe. A knock at the front door. Friends. Then it’s popcorn and movie selections and a game of Life with good friends. It’s still summer. And the girl runs down the stairs and sleeps tight that night.
I dream of my house in a kingdom as far away as the sun. And of another time and the other way it could have gone.
Ahh the simple life. Good times.
“It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.” – Albert Camus
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