why i am here

a lot of things in my life have been changing.  i just graduated from an 'elite' college, and i am still reeling from that experience.  along with figuring out what to do next, i have to figure out all of the people i am and how they fit together.  to start, i am an artist.  i make shit.  and my last piece of work was a work that i want to share here.

If you only knew

I wanted to start from the beginning.  I wanted to tell you the truth.  The best I can.  I wanted to tell you how the grass got cut intermittently, usually on Saturdays and with a cigar.  I wanted to tell you that spilled milk was exempt because my dad got yelled at for that when he was a kid and he didn’t want it to be such a big deal.  But other things were.  The pope is infallible.  We pray the rosary on some nights and dad has beers on the others.  He passes out before dinner and we have to wake him up.  When I was 3 I had quiet time while my brother slept but I peeled his eyelids open so he would wake up and I could leave my room.  Mom was napping or sewing or watching soap operas.  She worked at Macy’s on nights and weekends and now dad is trying to find another job but he is too old and they think he will cost too much money to put on payroll.  He has to buy health insurance or he will be fined, Mr. House and Senate, but he still has no job.  He’s mad but secretly I’m happy because a few years ago he had varicose veins in his leg and they did a procedure to freeze them but it didn’t work and he had to wait until the next calendar year for mom’s insurance to kick in again and that’s when they stopped paying for it.  I wish I could stop telling you.  My brother thinks that he might have something wrong too like me.  In first grade my teacher thought I might have ADD but my mom didn’t believe her.  I didn’t get diagnosed until college and they told me I hid it so well.  And that I have depression.  I have trouble affording my meds.

The end gets caught up in the middle you know.  We would go to the park and my mom tried so hard to be wonderful.  And she was.  Her red raincoat wasn’t really waterproof but it had flannel on the inside.  She kept one scarf from when she lived up here in Des Plaines just in case she got to come back.  One time we went to see the duplex where they used to live but everything had changed and she cried.  When my mom brought me home from the hospital she was so scared she would break my arms that she didn’t change my clothes for three days.  My dad plays word games on the computer while he looks for jobs or researches aliens or predicts bank closures.  He tries harder than most people I know.  We had to stop the car when Mom saw the house that she grew up in in Waukesha because of her dad and she and her brothers walked to school and he left the gas running in the garage.  I sit in class where we talk about liberal ideals but I walk out of the classroom and it evaporates.  Your meetings, your dinner date, your massage are things I don’t understand and I don’t live up to.  But everything changes.  Recently, I took back y’all.  My mom was against it because it wasn’t who we wanted to be, but when I’m here it feels more natural and it helps me be okay with the people who are too busy and important and talented to deal with people with any problems like me.  There are rules here I still don’t understand.

I would like to tell you that I’m white and from the aspiring-to-be-middle-class and that I am over-educated for what my parents supposed I would be.  But they are so proud.  I wish I could tell them how hard it was and that when I walk off that stage I will be able to breathe again.  They gave up so much.  I wish it didn’t have to be this way.  Sometimes I am a shell of all the things I wanted to be but now I don’t want anymore.