justine

i'm feeling slimy inside, it's coming from anger and my hard heart towards justine. she's roadtripping to bloomington, but won't come to chicago. it's funny. i try to be completely honest on this blog, it seems to be what i need and what my readers like. and by all means, you should give your readers what they like! but i try to be kind to my readers- i'm much harsher on ch and esp. on g and my mother than i am on my friends i know read. heaven knows i complain plenty about a and z- but their good points far outweigh my minor whines. i feel like i have a much harder time with balance on justine. i feel i'm snide too much of the time. she's only what, 19? i remember how young i was at 19. and she talks about how cool i am. and in return i'm mean and sneer.
i guess it all comes down to the high price of friendship with me. i've confronted friends about it before. if i like you, i can be a really awesome friend. but i need to see that you care. you say that i'm important to me, i need you to show me. and i'm often thanked for my honesty and it's deepened the friendships. certainly with g and with mairee. i feel that justine is by far the most interesting cousin on that side of the family, and i feel like i've done some investing in her. i've followed after my mother and blazed the trail for oddness as the oldest cousin. she wears prada now, but i guided her to her first pair of chuck taylors (i'm still wearing her flags, 8 years or so after she grew out of them). she could see grandma's reaction to my nosering before she got her own. she was the 2nd person i ever came out to. i send her care packages, introduce her to stars, encourage her ani fixation, pepper my blog with quotes. on her blog, she titles my link "my blogging inspiration."
and of course, it all comes back to my own hangups. miserable and depressed, i spent my highschool years searching for an escape, looking for a place to run away to. i actually considered moving for the farm a time, so i could go to another school, perhaps find a place where i belonged. i did realize it'd be futile- if i couldn't find community or transportation in east pa, it certainly wasn't gonna happen in west pa. once i'd planned my escape, i had a summer of all sorts of experiences, and one of them was taking the greyhound to philly to visit jason at temple. i was shocked at how easy it was, to find this whole other life opening before me. i wondered how my life might have been different if i'd figured out how to get to a city earlier. i wonder who i would have become if i would have had an slightly older relative i could escape to, someone who was interested in me and cared about me, a safe place i could try out new ideas and independent life away from my parents. maybe if i'd been a bit older, and got to know aj before she was married and had kids and got saved... i mean, i did ok on my own. i have a polaroid cory took upside down of me on my bathroom mirror, with a shaved head sitting on the counter at work with the teleflora directory on my lap, and there's a quote from the newspaper taped to it. i don't know the name of the girl who said it anymore, but she was a jazz flautist, and she said, "when i came to chicago as an adult, i realized this was the only place i ever had found community- people who wanted to dream some of the same dreams as me."
does this sound like i want justine to move in with me so i can impart my pearls of wisdom on her eager ears? that's not what i'm trying to say. running away seems to be my particular issue, it's not a genetic or learned behavior on either side of my family. (heaven knows i was the only person not at my other grandma's funeral, which i still haven't forgiven myself for, even if z has.) i'm just starting to get myself figured out, i'm certainly not wise enough to give anyone else more than a listening ear and suggestions (ie advice you don't have to follow). i just feel that justine just gives me lip service, and this hurts me. our grandma will always love (and call and send letters to) her idea of me, which is so very different from who i really am. justine knows who i really am, and she think's that person's cool, but she doesn't really care. That's fine- there are lots of cousins i don't really care about, personally i mean, i care about them in a general sense because they're people and even more important, family. it's just she talks like there's something more. it makes me feel hurt and not cool enough and not particularly interesting. some people wear their smile like a disguise. those people who smile alot- watch the eyes. i know it cause i'm like that alot. you think everything's ok, and it is- till it's not. i don't know. i need to get to sleep. take some flower remedies. i've been having a gloomy day.
i'm adding this story from west pa here, at the end: mom called me a couple of weeks ago with gossip. my grandfather and mr dutch have been friends for forever, and she said, did you know the dutches had a gay son? i was shocked and surprised, and she told me about no one knowing him very well while they were all growing up together, and him going to nyc, and having occasional contact with the family. and the dutch granddaughter was recently married (she's a good friend of justine's, perhaps that's how this story fits into this entry?) and her gay uncle came to the wedding. i guess it was the first time everyone had seen him in a long time. but mom was calling to say the newest gossip was that he'd committed suicide. i guess everyone's talking about it- grandma said it was because he had aids. i'm so glad i get the gossip filtered through mom. i only get the interesting bits, and not as much judgement. and then she says, "so i guess i just want you to know you're not the first person to run away from west pa- no, wait- it was ME that ran away from west pa!" and at that point i was stuck on what to say next. yes, i thank her for taking me to the other side of the appalachians. yes, she's such a better mother than hers was. but does this negate some sort of radicalness for me? am i less of a person for running away from east pa instead of west pa? will i never be qualified to whine because i only spent summers in west pa? is there some sort of point value to radicalness that needs to be counted up and compared to each other? does justine get lower points than me cause she goes home for the summer? do i get lower points since my mom was so cool? i don't get it. even if there is some stupid count, and i loose, that doesn't negate that i spent all of growing up feeling like everyone in the family could relate and i couldn't. even those who didn't quite fit had some point of reference and i had none. i feel like i needed to run away and figure out who i was before i could come back and interact on my own terms. it makes me think of my dresses for my mother's wedding. in the pink flowered one i was a bitchy stressball florist, melting away emotionally. silently sobbing through the service. this is how i feel about my mother's wedding. then i went downstairs, and put on my purple dancing dress. and i twirled, and a kissed me, and i spun out of her arms and we went up stairs and i was the one who ordered justine's dad out on the dance floor and got the shy moving. and everyone says it's wonderful how caitlin is coming out of her shell, and kyleigh is the only one who trys to blow my cover.
now i'm spent. i hope this makes me feel better. what would be really nice was if i could sign online and post it.