a poorly written essay on operant conditioning

I need to write something so I can go back to sleep. It’s currently 5:12 AM in sleepy Hershey, Pennsylvania! There’s a little sister on the pull-out couch beside you and a very nice boyfriend in the bedroom. There’s a chance of showers and chocolate bars later today. At about 9 AM we see an 85% chance of insomnia-regret. Coming up next, more on sleepless wonders with fewdstamps…

I moved across the country, I moved back home to Alabama. Since I have rearranged the furniture in my “room”- the upstairs bedroom in my dad’s house. I’ve been struggling everyday with finding a balance. Accepting that I’ve moved and the decision is far-passed made, being happy and accepting happiness IN Alabama, and lastly feeling like I’m in a direction. There’s at least a moment everyday that I don’t feel balanced. Moreover, it’s become increasingly hard to feel or want to be a writer anymore. Why have I become so fearful in the past couple of years. Where is that daredevil?

It’s all necessary. I sit in my room, legs up on my short dresser that doubles as a coffee table for my typewriter and discarded clothes and find myself lost in the bare wall in front of me. Barely four months I’ve lived here- an apartment far beyond any standards or glimpse of ‘luxury’ I held before. Boxes are lined against the door, innocent to the travels we’re about to take but ready. More ready than I am. They’re necessary, more than I thought before.

I moved here a year ago and I have never felt so different in a year. Never so far with accomplishments and failures, equally. Heartbreak I would have never wished to read about. I can’t blush or cry or feel anything but pride. Though I’m aware of the pain I know is ahead. By Friday. When all the books and short summer shorts and flea market bags and club wigs are packed and the room is emptied. When I look at this ‘luxury bedroom’ bare for whoever next, just as I looked at that weird Spanish-style studio apartment with no working A/C last summer.

It’s weird to feel so different than the person I just was a year ago yet feel the exact same angst. But here it is, looking at the highway as an empty canvas, as open doors and with a new name if I want. Something like “Anne” or “Elle.”

Little Girl, Big City part 2.

Where am I going?

When should I begin?

Who will go with me? Who will stay?

I was fired/lost my waitress job last Wednesday. The same day I returned from vacation, needless to say I’ve got no money saved up and I’m looking at returning home at the end of this week. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I went bargain shopping with my friend Jessica then hung out at her place watching shitty tv programs with her and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is a child actor and an extensive film enthusiast. We had a pretty good time watching “reality shows” and drinking fancy tequila drinks he conjured up (with a little dash of an equally fancy joint). On my drive home I watched the Hollywood signs and lights dance past my car and into my heart, the Magic Castle, and odd corner cafes and insignificant street signs that have made a nostalgic nest in my heart. Could I love LA after-all?

It’s not fair to feel like you’ve accepted a path and your gut, your parents, your boyfriend- everyone is on board! But you’re not. You’re not ready. You’re scared, confused, and really feel like throwing your life to the fate of a coin toss. Heads we stay, tails we go. Or would it be the other way around?

I scheduled an audition at 3 pm today. Why not? It’s an extra in a crappy sounding pilot, but it’s something I’ve never done in Los Angeles and I felt like I should try to get all this done in my last week here. I’m probably going to cancel it soon. I’ve got to go, I’ve already made the plans.

I just called to cancel and the line was busy. I constantly look for a sign in everything, but sometimes things just happen and you go with it without thinking so damn much! But not me, not raised in movies with narrations and connections and signs! I’ll call again.

One year later.

“I gave you everything! I gave up everything- for you!” She cried out, pleading him to stay. But she wasn’t really pleading him. He didn’t know this of course, but it made no difference all the same. “How can you do this to-” She looked up at him, face shining, face soaking, and hushed her sobbing all at once. That’s when he walked out.

Their daughter Sophie was watching from her the crack under her bedroom door. Sophie would slide out of her bed slowly into her cushy mouse slippers and scamper soundlessly over to the door. Her tiny blue mermaid lamp gave just enough light to provide a good show of her parents feet. She did this every time they fought and on the nights before Christmas, to Sophie the yelling and crying were just part of the ballet she saw from between the floor and the door. Sophie loved ballet- almost as much as her daddy.

When the door slammed Sophie jumped up and ran out of her bedroom. “Daaaadddy!!” she shrieked and ran towards where he once stood. The mother stopped Sophie, scooped her up and shh-ed her saying “Quiet baby, everything’s gonna be okay now.”

*

“‘Everything’s gonna be okay now!’ That’s what she said! I wanted to say ‘what’s gonna be okay mom?! when we got no money? when daddy never comes back and it’s your fault? or is it gonna be okay when you start to hit me as i grow up lookin’ more like him than you?!”

“Sophie, I thought you said your stepFather would hit you?”

“Sure. I mean, they both did. Wait, are you here to listen to me and take notes or ask me questions?”

“I’m just here for you, Sophie. Whatever you need.”

Daddy… Sophie whispered and picked up the stuffed bear she had been talking to from the sofa. She walked calmy, dry and not-crying to her small blue garbage bin she painted a mermaid on and threw her therapist in- with all the others.

*

“Sophie!! Where’s dinner?!” her mother cried.

There’s a bar near my apartment in Los Angeles called “The Woods.” It’s dark, the people are damp and it draws you in with a mysterious thirst for adventure- but mostly a thirst to get lost. I’ve been there two times and both times I’d say I was successfully lost in boozey loud laughter and unappealing sexual glances. It’s probably one of my favorite bars in the city, though the martinis could be better.

Today is the 4th of July, one of my favorite holidays. Though, I’ve celebrated the 4th less than any other holiday. The weird thing about the US’s Independence Day, opposed to several other countries, is that no one else celebrates or chooses to acknowledge it in any festive way. Cinco de Mayo we all get drunk! Whatever St. Paddy’s day is we open the bars at freaking 6 am and little people are kings for a whole day. I was in South America for two 4ths in a row and the most celebration we got was drinking homemade fermented fruit juice and hearing a few distant gun shots. This 4th I’m visiting my boyfriend in Pennsylvania who happens to be working the PM shift in the ER. So, I’m drinking a glass of tawny and watching the Woods from his back patio.

I don’t know what it is about watching Woods, it’s not like watching a movie- I mean nothing actually happens. But there’s intrigue lying beneath those trees. Something is happening. Squirrely animals are feasting and nesting, bugs are fighting and mating, coyotes are readying for a night’s hunt. (I don’t actually know if there are coyotes in Pennsylvania, but I’ll run with it.) Maybe someone’s lost. Maybe someone’s burying a body.  Or maybe there’s an eclipse of happenings in these woods and everything is still aside from the ruffle of the trees and one girl watching and writing about this particular forest. And that’s something.

But this evening I have something to ask these woods, I’m feeling ‘here’ again. Here, in my head which is discovered, found, unraveled before another fellow. Another someone to love, I could, probably do love. And I want to hide. Run into the woods, maybe leave a note, maybe not? Disappear and get lost with myself. Running first at fast out of fear then slower and slower until I find a tree stump or rock or anything that calls my name and invites me to sit and laugh and feel free. Free of disappointment, disapproval or just discovery. Free to feel me and safe with just me. Which is the struggle between being a Woods-person or.. a People-person.  And most who believe they’ve discovered ‘me’ would say “That’s the alcohol talking. That’s why you can’t drink, can’t stay inside! You gotta get out! Socialize, get a job, be somebody.” In the Woods, you don’t gotta be nobody. You can speak with double negatives, speak to the trees, listen to the trees. You can be dark, you can be damp. But for how long before you become a fossil?