arlita

december 1st 2023

personal

im in a new house. a new place. a townhome. i love being in a new place. i love moving. i get to find all of my stuff and put all of my stuff in a new clean controlled organized place. i lose my stuff during moves, that is a price i pay. anyways im in the new place but it doesn't feel like my new place. it feels like the last tennant's old place. and the permanence of this living arrangement is very. i look around at all of the little things about this new place that. well i wish weren't so permanent feeling. like the upside down sometimes sideways outlets. and the small holes in a couple of the doors. so many tiny fixes need done in the bathroom. it's a bit dirty and crusty in the corners. this place does not fully represent me. i have no idea why i feel like it must. but the worn wood stain on the cupboard doors and the tasteless swagless penniless amazon basics shit hanging on the walls are not from me. (there's an awful clunky plastic broom hanger on one wall and a clothesline on another). and despite that, i see around it, and live in this house. we have lived and eaten and worked out of this place for a few months now. that's a good chunk of rent money and several grocery cycles at this point. but it doesn't feel like it is my house. i sincerely need it to. i promised myself to keep this place kept. i have been. reasonably, i have been.

recently i tried a new type of edible that has thc-p in it. i have no idea if the symptoms i experience from the edibles are from the thc-p specifically or something else in them, but i had a very awful time. well not entirely, because the high from them is very close to the real thing, and the bad symptoms didn't start until the next day. the dude at the smoke shop did warn us that the effects can sustain into the next day. which they did with some new effects. i had no energy, i was extremely tired, i had the worst post edible brain fog as well. and my brother who tried them in the same night as me had the same experience, so the next day we joked and have now started calling it skip-a-day. and stupidly, i ate more a couple nights later. the day after doing that i found myself basically blinking in and out of alertness, effectively completely unable to do anything for myself (i needed my husband's help making lunch, any time i used the stairs i was wrapped around my husband's arm as to not faint, etc.) and wow i felt like i got stomped on. one big solid crushing stomp directly to the top of my head. AND. to make matters worse, i also got the flu. i was fevered, fainty, weak, hungry. but the mental side of this past week has been wild. at one point i was so faint and helpless i gently bumbled myself onto the cold kitchen floor and layed myself down while my husband stuck around to help me get up when i was ready. and while i was laying there i was looking across the floor at the dust bunnies and scraps of paper and hot wheels cars shacking it up under a hefty active spider web, i suddently felt extremely overwhelmed. it's only been a few months and the corners are already building up impressive piles of house debris and human shed. i can get all of the dishes done but not at the freqeuncy at which they become dirty. same with laundry but worse. i'm able to do keep house as much as im not able to keep house.

as i was a kid, i took in a lot of information about the adult world. and how kids fit into the adult world. and what adults do and what kids do. and no matter how much information i thought i had, all of this data is useless. the things that happen to you as a kid happen usually because of adults. this is what i majorly missed as a child. like i knew it, but i did not understand the implications of it. by that i mean i knew that i went to school because my mom dressed me, the bus driver picked me up, other kids my age were in class too, a teacher taught me, then my bus driver took me back home. there are moving parts to society, that was clear to me. and being a person in that society is also clear to me. the existence of our government and the existence of stores and banks and libraries and open parks and colleges are all things you can participate in in society. ok, those are the moving parts and you get pushed along? no, that is wrong. you do not get pushed along. well, you get pushed. just not along. your hand isn't held, it's gripped tight and yanked. maybe i'm just an overly sensitive undiagnosed and extremely not well adjusted girl but this is devastating. this is isolating. every single adult involved in just one school day each had to work relatively hard to make that happen. my mom had to set an alarm to wake me up on time, she had to keep enough laundry clean for me to choose something to wear every day, she had to pay my lunch fees, she had to sign off on medical forms, she had to enroll me, she had to go to the store and buy me clothes, she had to convince me to go to school every day and usher me onto the bus. the bus driver had to get on the road in time, drive the same path they drive every day three quarters of the year, they had to safely drive a bunch of restless energetic children to school on time, they had to apply for that job position in the first place, they had to get a special driver's license, they had to exercise patience with every rowdy kid encounter. the moving parts of my day as a kid gently pushed me into the next thing into the next into the next. kids are little passengers of world. then we become the drivers of the world. and i do not have my license.

well, i have freedoms and my own whim and will but i am also so seemingly programmed to echo the same corrosive day-to-day routine that runs through me, from my mom, from my dad, from their moms and their dads, and their parents, and probably their parents. i do not drive and i could work and i have worked but at this time i do not. i stay at home literally most of the time, i spend more time with my kids than my husband, he works a lot and has a salary so sometimes works even more than what he deserves in pay. i know for a fact, a real and true unchangable fact, that i am not doomed. i am not cursed. most people can find solace and/or escape from any position, and this is no different. this is exceptionally escapable. but i actually don't want to. well i kind of want to. my parents didn't teach me much about cooking or cleaning, or about getting interviews or making phone calls. they taught me their own routine that barely got them through adulthood. they were deeply unprepared to have kids and they both had three each when they learned they were having me. they were deeply unprepared to prepare me for getting older. for keeping my own place nice. for asking for help. recently i have noticed and said outloud to come to terms with it lol that i lack confidence. i am not confident. i do not speak up. i do not advocate for myself very well. i am instilling it in myself now. i am waving my arms out at what look like red-hot death lazers but are just the red strings of fate connecting us all. when you go outside wearing a weird outfit, you don't get shoved into a red-hot death lazer. a beautiful woman with shiny blue hair looks you in the eye and compliments your outfit. this is wonderful news i found out and have been trying to share. i do not fully blame my parents for my rubber bones work ethic. they handed down their fear of opening the door to everyone who knocks and declining calls from weird numbers and approaching people to ask for simple help, and i've had a few years to turn those gifts over in my hands and i have decided i do not want them. and instead of regifting them i am attempting to shred them.

at this point every single memory in my head has been recontextualized and probably re-written with whole new lighting and perspective. i don't live in a townhouse as a stay at home mom with a hard working husband because of all of the obvious reasons. like ok yes we live here because we pay rent here, im a stay at home mom by complete choice, my husband charismatically worked his way up to the position he holds now. but actually i do this because this is what i know. i know how to stay at home and send my daughter to school and read books to my toddler. i know how to clip coupons and cook meals. my husband knows how wake up early and to be a good little worker. a good little car driver. tank refueler. fast food consumer. i see with my eyeballs there are many many ways to live, lots of different types of days to have, but i am bound by a bigger actor and a bit of my own timidness to play out this life i walked right into carving out. and when i look back on my memories of being a kid in that dynamic, having a place to live as long as rent is paid, mom keeps me fed and clean and dad affords the groceries, my life suddenly feels overshadowed by that cookie cutter. suddenly this isn't my cute little townhome anymore. this is my indefinite busywork.

at some point i know my confidence will wax fuller again, whether the circumstances have shifted or not. i'll blog cutely then.