Okay, kid, this is where it gets complicated...

Do you ever look around you and wonder how many people it took to provide everything in that room for you? Or in that small patch of your town? It’s the weirdest thing when you think about it. Like, no matter what you’re touching, someone else had to do with it, unless you’re in the middle of a rainforest that has been untouched by machinery. Whether they did it for money or for pleasure or they were forced to do it; someone else did it. And whoever did any of those, the way they did it probably stemmed from someone else coming up with the idea of it.

Like, looking outside I see some very simple things. I see a house, two trees, two cars, a sidewalk, a recycling bin, and power lines.

That house has a roof that someone worked on, and a chimney system that someone else probably worked on, and windows that someone else installed, and a door that someone else painted (and someone else manufactured). It has concrete step that someone built. It has a garden that someone most likely had to purchase the seeds from somewhere else to plant. The trees did not naturally grow on our lawns; someone planted them. The cars take multiple people to build, along with the people who crash-tested them, and made sure the material for the wheels has enough traction, made sure the doors would stay shut. Someone made the sidewalk and the street and the driveways. An electrician figured out how to give power to the neighborhood and someone else installed those lines; multiple people, probably. A graphic designer made the recycling sign for those recycling bins. Someone designed the layout for the actual bins. Someone else made them in a factory.

That right there is at least 20 people. And the real number is probably in the hundreds.

I could go on. 

What do you see in front of you? How many people do you think it took? Ten, a hundred, a thousand?

Isn’t it weird?

That’s why I hate it when people say they got to where they were on their own. No you didn’t. It isn’t possible. Everyone can contribute to society in some way, literally from stamping envelopes to curing cancer. We can all do something big or small.

My point is if you’re not doing something to produce or create or help out or make someone feel good or cure someone and you’re living your life only thinking about yourself as if you were the only person who got yourself there, you are one greedy motherfucker.

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I really think I need to start looking for another job. I don’t want to work away from the restaurant business, though. Because as long as I can still be working minimum wage, I’d make way more money waitressing. I currently make $5.69 on a tip rate so when I’m waitressing on a busy night, it averages to about $10 an hour at least. That rocks. And at Petersen’s, when I’m cashiering, I make $8.25 an hour, and I still get tips (albeit not as many). But honestly, there are a lot of better restaurants I can apply to within walking distance, and since I’m 18, I can legally work at all of them.

I have a year’s worth of experience at Petersen’s so far, and I’d like to say that I’m pretty awesome at my job. I work really well under pressure, I have a pretty good memory, and I never get yelled at by my customers. I can stay pretty calm in the most irritating situations. It took me a while, but I’ve got the food and ice cream combinations memorized pretty well; if you asked me what’s in a specific burger on the menu or a specific sundae, I could most likely tell you off the top of my head. My only major problem is that I often show up to work 5 minutes late but I think it’s because no one has ever enforced it so I don’t see it as a big deal at where I currently work. I think at a place that actually enforced all of their rules, I’d have no problem following them. Little things really don’t bother me, and in my experience I found very quickly that it’s very rare to find someone at a restaurant that can deal with that like I can. Everyone is always complaining about customers asking for too much too often, but I understand that people are nitpicky and that’s fine. I can deal with it, and I think that’s exactly why I’ve rarely had bad experiences. I’m proud of the work that I’ve done. I know a lot of people don’t think working in a restaurant is that difficult, but honestly? You don’t know until you’ve been there yourself. It’s tough. It makes you sweat from running around and from being nervous. If you have a short temper, it’s even harder. You have to learn how to cooperate with your customers and your co-workers (who will more than likely turn into insufferable douchebags when they’re stressed out). It might be another minimum wage job, but it’s not like you’re on your ass the whole time. For some, the way you work literally determines if you’ll be able to pay your bills.

I’d like to think that upgrading from a family-style diner to a classier, more adult place with a bar wouldn’t be too different. Yes, I imagine it being a bit more demanding. I imagine a much more pretentious crowd and a shit ton more training. But all those things I mentioned before about working well under pressure and remembering the things I need to know, well, why would that be any different? I’m sure that the quality of the employment would increase with the quality of the restaurant itself, so it’s not like I’d be working with the same people I do now. I think I could do it. I don’t think it will be easy, but I think it’s possible. And it’s not like I’d get nothing out of it—applying to places that serve alcohol means my tips would be doubled.

The pros of Petersen’s:

• You don’t understand how sweet Catherine, the owner of the restaurant is. She’d do anything for us. I don’t think I could ever work for someone nicer.
• My other manager, Ted. I’ve said so much about him already but he’s the most inspiring person I’ve ever met; he makes sure I get paid extra when I do extra. He’s the greatest guy ever.
• It isn’t corporate, so there aren’t any strict rules we are absolutely required to follow.
• I work on a regular rate when I cashier, and I make tips from that, and sometimes Ted puts me on the floor while I’m still on regular rate so I do make quite a bit of money.
• There are rules and regulations we have to follow, but no one is really mean about it. Lateness and cell phone use for the most part. I guess this could be seen as a con, too, because I’m not learning much and when I go to a place that actually does enforce their rules strictly and actually writes you up instead of threatening to, I won’t be used to it. But, it is kind of nice to be honest.
• They’re really flexible, for the most part.

The cons:

• Sometimes I think they are too flexible.
• For instance, there is a girl who has worked there for a few years now. She is a single mother with three kids (pregnant with a fourth) and she doesn’t have her high school diploma or a GED. That’s all fine, but since she has so much trouble finding babysitters, she’s constantly calling out. Or not showing up. And she steals because she can’t afford to go grocery shopping at home. And she still has her job! That’s awesome for her because she can get away with so much shit, but any other place would never do that. And it isn’t fair to people like me who want more hours and will actually work them when it’s needed. I’m not saying that I wish she would just get fired because I am concerned for her life just like my managers are, but I just know that that kind of shit is unacceptable in the real world.
• There was also a cook that had been arrested four times and they hired him back every single time.
• I’m only getting scheduled twice a week and instead of giving me more hours like I’ve continuously requested, they hired four new people on top of the college kids coming back for the summer.
• Joan. Joan is an assistant manager who has been working there for almost two decades, and I don’t think there is an easy way for me to say this without being horribly offensive, but she is literally not mentally fit for the position. She can’t count and she’s the one that deals with the money. There have been nights on her shifts where they were literally hundreds of dollars short. Personally, that kind of stuff doesn’t affect me. But then it’s like, the fact that she’s been there for years and she knows what she can get away with. She makes herself look busy so no one will ask her for anything. Last Sunday while I was cashiering, I had a line of maybe five groups of people waiting to order, and one of my co-workers was already helping me. Instead of offering to help like she should have, Joan decided it’d be a good idea to get in my way and clean off the ice cream cases that were going to get dirty again in a second. It’s kind of fucked up when I have to be the one to tell MY OWN ASSISTANT MANAGER what to do instead of the other way around.
• Ted is going to be leaving in the next couple of months.
• The job makes me dirty as fuck. Seriously, you have no idea how much hot fudge I come home with on my shoes, apron, shirt, pants, arms, hair, everywhere. Minor con, but still.

I don’t want to make it seem like I don’t enjoy being there, because I do. I fucking love it. I’m so happy when I’m there, even on the days when I really don’t want to be working. Waitressing is such a social job and I hang out with all my friends when I’m at work and it’s awesome! I’m rarely unhappy, even when I have picky customers. The only times that suck is when I have a migraine, or I’ve been on my feet consistently for five hours. Another thing is that I need to determine where the line is drawn between things that ONLY happen at Petersen’s, and things that will happen everywhere else. For instance, if I went to go work at Applebee’s, or another chain, I think certain rules would be applied a lot more and I could actually learn from that. But I don’t know. Is every restaurant as unorganized as Petersen’s is?

I think this week I should start applying to other places. I’m nervous. I still want to be at Petersen’s once a week, but I don’t even know if I could handle that. Such is life, though. I do have to move on at some point.

what a sickening thing it is to grow up and realize that the perfect world that you maybe thought you grew up in is just a coat of polyurethane over a very rough, uncomfortable surface that everyone knows is there but no one wants to touch. it wears as you get older until you discover that it isn’t there anymore. 

and all they show you as a kid is bolted up doors that don’t look like bolted up doors. it looks like pretty people and pretty products and happy politicians who do what they are supposed to do and police officers who do their job right and actually protect you. you don’t question what’s behind the doors because you don’t even know that there are doors there. and maybe once you enter middle school, you hear rumors about the doors, but you don’t believe them. there couldn’t possibly be doors behind all of that, and if they were, what could they need to cover up?

and then you find out that just like there comes a time when adults don’t seem to be referring to you as the cute little baby anymore, there comes another time when blissful ignorance isn’t an option.

and during that time, you learn about pain. and you learn about corruption. and censorship. and death. and murder. and the cessation of certain rights for certain folks. and about how money controls everything you touch. you learn that there are politics in everything — in the production of your computer screen, the streetlights outside your house, your jewelry (and where it was made). you discover power, and what it’s like to be powerless.

you learn that humanity is complicated. we are not happy people. we run on a series of systems and hierarchies. you learn that now is not a time to be happily stupid. and you learn that as a human being, you have a choice of how to go about this knowledge.

you could kill yourself.
you could stop living in a more metaphorical sense and develop agoraphobia and spend your time watching the news and finding more things to be afraid of.
you could leave your house occasionally but wear your sunglasses at all times, even indoors and at night. stay hidden. don’t show your face or use your words.
you could keep your eyes open be a bystander. stay aware but stay quiet.
you could start calling people out on their shit but back down when they fight back.
you could keep fighting, whether you’re an emotional wreck or as stoic as can be.

you learn that that’s what life is about. life isn’t all about happiness. there are a lot of disgusting things around us. a lot of fatal mindsets coming from folks who call themselves “pro-life.” a lot of power-hungry people who care more about the paper in your wallet over your well-being (even if you’re bleeding from some man in a blue suit bashing your head into the pavement because you used your voice). and just as many, if not more people who bolt up these doors for you. the doors they don’t want you to enter. they bolt it up with flashing lights and television and overbearing tests to keep you busy in school. they make you feel better about yourself while robbing you at the same time. you don’t see the doors. they aren’t there. it ends there. there’s nothing behind them.

we are being lied to every single second. until you do something, you are nothing more than cattle on a factory farm. you’ve got life, sure. but your only purpose is to serve them. they don’t want you to know this.

stop accepting the bullshit. open the fucking doors and let everyone know the truth.

It’s always nice to just go out and hang out with yourself, away from home. I just wish there was a place I could go that wasn’t so crowded, but I don’t blame anyone, it’s lovely out and it’s Friday night. I just hate the anxiety of running into someone. It’s not even that I’m afraid people will see me in public, I’m definitely over that. I just don’t like the idea of being forced into talking to someone for an extended period of time. That tension between you and the other party that says “We are obligated to talk to each other because that’s the common thing to do in public. Neither of us know how to end this. Both of us really want to leave. Neither of us want to be the one to abruptly excuse ourselves. Both of us wait for the other to put a stop to this conversation.” Or perhaps it really is one-sided. That could be worse. How do you straight up explain “I want to be alone” when you’re in public? Introverts leave their houses, believe it or not!

As I walked into the book store, I saw two people that I know, not close enough people to tell them about my life, but acquainted enough for us to say hi to each other in the halls at school when no one else is around. I was a few feet away when I turned to them to say something, and then this thought just hit me: “I’m not obligated to say anything to anyone.” They were talking amongst themselves. Who would I be to just barge in on that? It felt like it was something I was supposed to do, just say hi, inform them of my presence, but there was no point. I don’t even know if they saw me. It doesn’t matter.

I think everyone with some kind of social phobia knows—or at least learns, eventually—that no one cares about you. No one cares about the way you walk. No one cares that you’re sitting alone at a crowded restaurant. No one cares that you’re sitting on the floor of the bookstore reading a book titled Cunt. No one cares if you occasionally trip over cobblestone, or your own feet—unless you fall, then a few heads will probably turn. For someone with severe social anxiety, it can often be a difficult concept to grasp. It’s called the invisible audience phenomenon. I learned about it in psychology. Why is it that I’m too scared to ride my bike in fear that people are watching me and judging me, when three hours ago, a girl rode past me on her bike, and my only thought was, “It’s a girl on a bike”? It makes no sense to think like that.

I’m saying all of this because even though I wasn’t afraid of anyone watching me buy a yoga mat or eat sushi alone, I was still afraid that I was going to be noticed. Terrified. I avoided places where there were big crowds (even with glasses on, I can’t see from far away) because I knew there might have possibly been people I knew. People that would talk to me. And guess what? No one talked to me. No one forced me into conversation. No one forced me to go home early in order to get out of something awkward. Everyone was there for their own reasons—just like me—and not one of them was to scope me out to talk to me until I got uncomfortable.

No one notices anything. Don’t go looking for people who want to make you feel weird, because you’ll only find them then.

I’ve felt so weird lately, and I can’t explain why. It’s like I’m an alien in my own world. I’m a little nervous about what’s going to happen in a few months. I guess you never really know what’s coming next, but this is the first year in my life where I have no idea how any of it’s going to play out. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how I’ll fuck myself over, what decisions will be the best, where I’m going to be. Will I get to Chicago this summer? Will I get out of Connecticut for college? Will I live in the city? Could I afford it? How often will I see my boyfriend? Will things start getting more serious? Is that okay? I mean, everyone turns 18. No one knows how 2012 will play out. Everyone has a point where they don’t know, right? Well, not everyone. Some really do just know. But this is the first time that I don’t and… who knows.

I can’t be sentimental about 2011 because it was all such a blur to me. I can’t tell certain months apart. It was so fucking sad. I could tell you the months that I hurt myself really badly. I could tell you the months that I thought about killing myself. I could tell you the months that I cried hardest. But those aren’t the things I should be reflecting on. I lost so many friends and my interest in photography. I have barely any documentation of the year, but I barely had anyone to spend it with so whatever I do have is pointless. I don’t even remember what I did for my birthday.

The most I could say about the year was that I gained my passion for feminism and I changed my direction completely. I became much more open and comfortable with my sexuality. I fell in love! I got hurt in the process but I fell in love and for the first time, I could say it and mean it. I got a job. My social anxiety decreased. I got to see a lot of people. I stopped going to therapy. I owned the shit out of New York. I became more enthusiastic about learning.

But the only thing that sticks out to me is that I became a slave to this awful feeling and it was something that I never thought would happen to me. It’s not something anyone can warn you about, unfortunately. When it picks you, it picks you. You’re done. Good luck caring about anything else!

It passed, and all I can do is leave it where it’ll stay: in 2011.

I don’t know why taking a deep breath always seems like the right thing to do for every situation I’m in, but it’s what I’m doing. The start of a new year doesn’t need to be commercialized like it is to hold any value, and I don’t need to make any resolutions to make it count. I can change my attitude and tell myself I’ll change all I want, and so can you, but whatever happens is inevitable. We all know that.

But tonight I’m putting my foot down and marking this date, January 1st, 2012, as the day I said this:

Absolutely nothing has control over me but me and my damn self. Nobody and nothing. Any decision I make will be mine. Whatever decisions I make will be the right ones. Wherever they take me, I will be in the right place. I will learn from my mistakes and I will do it willingly. I will take chances—I know everyone says this, but this is the first year I’ll actually be able to. I could literally be anywhere in nine months and I have no idea where that will be. A year from now, I will look back at this year and remember it. Who knows what I’ll remember it as? But it won’t be a blur like 2011 is to me.

He hates wasting time when he’s with me, but it’s all I ever want to do. I just want to sit with my head against his chest, or playing with his hands, or just laying down on his lap. That’s why I loved being in the car with him when we were driving back from South Carolina. We were in the backseat, just cuddling, sometimes sleeping but usually talking. I guess we can always just talk, but there’s something different when we can talk and occupy ourselves by intertwining our fingers, or occasionally kissing in between words. It’s really all I want, all the time. I could literally spend all my time just laying in bed with him. You can’t hush someone with a kiss over the phone. When we’re in public, we hardly touch each other. Sometimes holding hands gets tiring because we walk at different paces. That’s okay. I just hate not touching him more than just a peck on the lips for a long time. When we’re alone, I can’t get off of him. Who knows if it’s just what a long distance relationship does to you, or if it really is out of all the love I have for him? Even when we’re watching a movie that we’re both intensely into, I can’t just not kiss his neck or rub his arm. I don’t even think about it. It just happens. I can’t stay away.

I’ll never know how our relationship could have been different this year if we weren’t miles away from each other. I’ll never know how many fights could have been avoided with angry sex (which, let me tell you, is the best feeling ever). I won’t ever know how many tears could have stayed in our eyes if the other one could have been there to wipe the previous ones away. I just won’t ever know!

Long distance relationships are really fucking hard. I’m sure everyone knows that, even if they don’t really understand it. It’s something you have to work on every fucking day. When you have your partner within an arm’s reach every night, or at least a few nights a week, conflicting schedules don’t matter. But when the only thing you have connecting yourself to the other person is a fucking electronic device, you seriously can’t have — or at least will have a very hard time having a good relationship when you have conflicting schedules. When you have a partner that you can talk to at all times of the day, you will never fucking understand what it’s like to only be able to talk to them at night. This isn’t a don’t take things for granted talk. This is simply me saying that you will never fucking understand. Do you know how fucking much I wish I could at least feel his skin, or give him a peck on the cheek just once a fucking night?

When you’re in love and it’s mutual, you don’t settle for anything else. You just don’t. You fight if you have to. You fight others, you fight with yourself, and you probably fight with them a shit-ton. “How is this going to work out?” is a question you ask yourself every fucking day. You make it work out. You spend the money on a goddamned plane ticket if you fucking have to, because the train station was fucking closed. You do what you can just to see them in front of you and not on a shiny screen.

I’m not going to say what’s best for anybody. Sometimes, the pain is just too much for someone, but sometimes, it’s worth it. And when he can hold me, I don’t want to worry about everything else, I just want to waste time with him.

I wish there was a way for me to express my frustrations and reasons why I’m so uncomfortable all the time, without feeling frustrated and uncomfortable. Writing does help, but it doesn’t help me like it did before. Maybe it’s because of the lack of guidance I have, or maybe it was the hiatus I took when I was broken beyond repair, or maybe it’s because I went through a lot of ridiculous abuse and self-harm, or maybe because it just… doesn’t help anymore. It feels like I’m consistently repeating myself: I’m frustrated. I’m annoyed. I have a headache. I was abused. I cut myself almost a year ago and the scars are still vibrant. I hoard and it makes me feel trapped. I live with hoarders and it makes me feel trapped. I’m lonely as fuck. My parents trigger me even when they don’t mean to. I feel tempted to hurt people when I’m irritated. I don’t know what the hell to do. What’s writing it all out going to do if I’m not making any progress? It feels like it’s all I know how to do, honestly. And I can barely do it. I am not in a healthy state - mentally and physically. I am not in a healthy environment.

Despite the fact that I am ecstatic about the next few weeks and all of the things I have planned, my brain is still telling me that there’s nothing to look forward to. Despite the fact that I really want to learn new things and live in New York, my brain is telling me that I shouldn’t bother starting the college process (and I haven’t, even though I know I should). Despite the fact that I know what is healthy and what is not, my brain is telling me to stick with the things that are unhealthy. Despite the fact that so many people believe in me, my brain is still telling me that it doesn’t matter. And I know it does. I know that realistically, the amount of people who believe in me is the only thing that truly gets me through.

How can I live such a life and still be so fucking sad? How can I have so many opportunities ahead of me and continue to be so terribly unmotivated? Everyone asks the same questions. The answers vary. Luck. A bad experience. Serotonin, or a lack of it. Who knows? All I know is that no matter how many people are surrounding me, telling me they love me, I’m going to feel empty at the end of the day. And I know that it’s inevitable for now. I don’t know what it’s going to be like after I move out of here and am on my own. Will I still feel like punching things when a noise bothers me? Will I still get stomachaches when I think about my bad situations? Everyone keeps telling me that things will be better when I’m out of here, and I totally believe it. But how much better, is my question?

Writing this out gets me nowhere, but I don’t fucking know what I need. I’m not suicidal (at the moment), but I’m feeling extremely trapped. If I killed myself, well, I’d be dead. We don’t want that. So instead of that, I’m here, in this extremely uncomfortable body and in this extremely uncomfortable environment and in this extremely uncomfortable situation. I feel so lonely, I really do. I know there are people in the world who understand and who could really help me, but where are they? Don’t tell me that I’m not alone when no one’s making me feel less alone.

Two things before I go into my main point here:

1. I can recognize really offensive/cliche/stereotypical jokes towards groups of people but I usually don’t address the joke (even though I should), because 99% of the time, they don’t offend me/aren’t directed towards me. And people who make the jokes don’t really understand why I would tell them to stop if it doesn’t have anything to do with me, so I usually just don’t laugh or ignore it. Also, I get that almost everyone is part of a specific group that gets marginalized, and there is some stereotype for everyone’s race/gender/whatever, even if that specific person does not fit into any of those stereotypes. The fact is that everyone stereotypes everything and/or everyone is aware of the stereotypes that will probably be made towards them (whether it offends them or not, and whether they fit the stereotype or not.)
2. It really sucks when someone you really like and enjoy constantly makes these kinds of jokes and you don’t want to cause this weird tension between you and them by calling them out on it. This is a general statement.

So now that I have made those two points, I will now say this:

I’ll be honest, I get really pissed off when people make Jew jokes. Sometimes in general, but mostly when they’re made at me. Not offended, just annoyed that people do it. Like, yeah, it’s funny that I’m the only Jew in my group of friends for the most part and that I don’t celebrate Christmas and that I’ve never had a Christmas tree or Christmas lights. I can deal with everyone making comments about that because even though it gets fucking annoying around this time of the year, it’s normal. It’s whatever. But today this kid that I really enjoy being around, Tommy, who makes me laugh until I cry, just pissed me off. I’M NOT TRYING TO MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT THIS AND I’M NOT STILL MAD AT HIM.  It’s just ticking me off. That is all.

We were talking about how I am Jewish and Ted made a joke about how I’m not a “real” Jew since I haven’t had a Bat Mitzvah which was funny in the context, and then Tommy said “Okay, I’m totally going to hell for this, but let’s test it out.” And he pulled out a dime and threw it on the ground and said “Go get it!” And I just stared at him. When people do things like that to me, I just feel really confused. I don’t know how to respond. So I thought for a minute, found the dime on the floor, and picked it up. And while I was doing that, he was making comments like “Oh, she’s going for it! Haha!” I picked it up and threw it at his face really hard.

And the most annoying part was that he got super pissed that I threw it at him. He has a short temper, so I understand, but he was walking around me demanding an apology, and then asking why I wasn’t apologizing, because he deserved an apology because it “really fucking hurt.” So I said “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

I didn’t want to explain to him that when you have to start something out with “I’m totally going to hell for this,” you probably shouldn’t fucking say it. I’m not offended, although it probably seems like I am. I’m just annoyed. It makes things really awkward when I’m actually truthful and say “Yeah, that kind of pissed me off and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do it again.” So I just did what I did and brushed it off for the night.

Making this post probably seems like I’m super overdramatic but I’m really not. I think I have a reason to be annoyed?

Bein’ overdramatic and shit.

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