inside it feels all the same

Undoubtedly, being home unearths a great deal of nostalgia and long forgotten memories. They say, "they" being some rumor or psychological study that I heard about long ago, that every seven years, a person undergoes a change, either of personality traits or some kind of extreme emotional change that makes some kind of pronounced difference, an evolution of self so to speak.

It's strange, when I look at pictures of my teenaged self, I feel so removed from the person in the photographs, like I'm looking at a stranger.
I see myself, the familiar features, but is there an inner core of me that resonates with the person I see in the pictures or was it just some sort of passing personage? Is there an everlasting personality, whoever "Laura" is, or am I merely a collection or reactions and reponses to various catalysts and adaptation to my surroundings?

I certainly feel different around my friends from my teenaged years. I can't put my finger on it...but something's...changed. Perhaps its the separation of paths that we've all embarked on, the natural course of life, but I can't seem to get back to that place of comfort and shared years of experiences that has previously bonded us.

Or maybe I'm back to where I've been all along, feeling like very few can understand my wavelength or relate to me on a deeper level. I miss Jon.

What do you expect?
As for other affairs, like I've said before, I've been flying by the seat of my pants, leaping before I look, and generally letting my impulsiveness take the wheel . I know you don't approve and I know I shouldn't do this and shouldn't do that, I need to slow down, control myself, etc....but I've lived my young breathless life too long under the thumb of an authoritative male. I just want to be free. However, your caring and recognition of my value intruiges me, and lord knows I prize vulnerability in others but rarely reveal it of myself.

What do you want from me?
You sly dog. I don't understand what it is you're after or maybe I know exactly what is is and I pretend to remain in denial for my own amusement. The truth is I like you. The truth is I wish I didn't. I think sometimes that I can see through you but maybe this is the front you put on with all the girls. Either way, chase me down or let me go. I won't dangle forever.

I leave now with this:

Everything is more complicated than
you think. You only see a tenth of
what is true. There are a million
little strings attached to every
choice you make; you can destroy
your life every time you choose.
But maybe you won't know for twenty
years. And you'll never ever trace
it to its source. And you only get
one chance to play it out. Just try
and figure out your own divorce.
And they say there is no fate, but
there is: it's what you create.
Even though the world goes on for
eons and eons, you are here for a
fraction of a fraction of a second.
Most of your time is spent being
dead or not yet born. But while
alive, you wait in vain, wasting
years, for a phone call or a letter
or a look from someone or something
to make it all right. And it never
comes or it seems to but doesn't
really. And so you spend your time
in vague regret or vaguer hope for
something good to come along.
Something to make you feel
connected, to make you feel whole,
to make you feel loved.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

...

The more and more I learn and grow and unfold, the more and more I realize the futility of human existence and the frailty of our confidence in our own self-importance. Strong words and a strong statement I'm sure but if you look at our actions, our impulses for creativity and our clinging to faith and spiritual belief, our society, every individual, we are just trying to matter.

I realize the older I get the more...cynical and stoic I become regarding both my relations to society and the world around me. I attach myself to a disaffected disposition because it's easier than being outraged and feeling powerless. The news I read, the cataclysmic events and traumatic dramas I hear about still affect me to an extent but faced with the fruitlessness of any long term effect I can accomplish...it's easier in my opinion to take the easier road.

Goodness. I'm a 60 year old trapped in the body of a 22 year old.

You might think that by reading the paragraphs above that I am a miserable human being when in fact, I'm more in love with life than ever. All the new experiences, the new people, the new ideas and books and events are constantly thrilling. I feel completely unencumbered. Completely free.

It's as if I have been trapped in Plato's cave-blind, deaf, and dumb up until lately.
I want to know everything there is to know about everything. I want to meet strangers and hear their life story. I want to taste the best food there is to eat. I want to take myself to the edge of the line and cross it. I want to feel real. I want to feel alive with every waking moment. I am currently in a state of complete surrender to my senses. I would also love to find someone who can understand this.

But so far, right now I only wish to understand myself.

Unstuck but floating in the great unknown

I've had these moments, ever since I was little
where it's almost like my mind dissociates from my body
I ask myself "Who am I?" "Why am I Laura Delahaye"
"What does that even mean?"
I feel so entirely separate from the identity I have created within my own society
that the thought of not fully embodying it...scares me to pieces.
These moments will happen frequently, suddenly
I remember vividly leaving my grandmother's house at eight or nine years old
musing to myself, who was this body, this person I had been born into?
Really, what does it mean...to be me?
It's interesting that this happens to me at a point where
above all things, I should know myself.
But the more often this happens
the more distance I develop between my actions and my waking mind
the more I realize that I am a mystery unto myself
Organized, devoted, and determined at work
In my personal life...who knows what forces it is that guides me
All I know is that I feel strange...
Yet strangely at home in my skin
I'm happy yet I am bewildered
Betwixt mind and body lies the truth of being.

Stuck in a state of impermanence

As tough as these days are, as hard as these working days and sleepless nights have been, I can't help but wonder about my future self. Am I going to look back on these days as the times where I was free, unencumbered by the needs of a relationship and children...a time that I rarely savored but should have?

As much as I should live in the present, exist in the moment, I am constantly torn betwixt my future and my past, worried about regrets, consumed with past mistakes and musings about the future. I guess because I'm so unhappy with my current state of affairs, I can't help but hope and long for the best of times.

All I know is I can't enjoy things the way I used to. I crave spontaneity, freedom, lazy days. But who knows, I could instead be plagued by cabin fever. Lord knows, I will never be satisfied. Just got to try and find those transcendental moments when I can, when I forget my troubles and just...bask in whatever joy I can find.

It's all happening for me. But I don't know if I'm ready...

Take a chance on me

He was older than me, that I knew. And my superior which heightened my predatory need to conquest. The setting for this seduction? Hollister, a retail chain which marketed the Southern California surfer lifestyle to teenagers in the form of tee-shirts with sexually suggestive slogans such as “Winner of Wet Tee-Shirt contest”. It was a proper first job for me at age 18, offering little responsibility other than greeting guests and folding jeans. My Hollister store, consistent with their image, hired a bevy of tanned nubile teenage boys and girls with whom I would bond over bitchy customers and share store gossip.

For those who haven’t ever held a position in the service industry, retail stores and restaurants provide the ideal setting for a hotbed of drama: young men and women forced to interact with one another in pursuit of a paycheck for hours at a time with little distraction. They form insular communities, mini high school societies with its own cliques and more partner-swapping than swingers saw in the 1970’s.

Enough of the briefing, let’s get back to my mission. Fresh from a school year that had two senior boys who were best friends fighting for my affections, I was drunk on the power of my own sexuality and was ready to take it for a true test drive. When Adam, the new manager, was introduced I was immediately entranced by his flirtatious looks and his own arrogance at being the ringleader of a throng of blonde jailbait. It started innocently enough, us loping back playful insults over camisoles. Years of being the “friend” of the pretty girl had coerced me into developing an acerbic, and sarcastic sense of humor which to my delight, guys responded to and flirtations often consisted of this back-and-forth banter that occasionally culminated in a make-out session in a garage. As previously stated, Adam was older, 26 to be precise, and when he responded in kind to my subtle jabs I was thrilled but shocked when he asked me to meet him for ice cream the next day. Time and the alcohol abuse of my college years has erased much of what was said and exchanged during the date but I do remember hours later hooking up (no sex) in my white Jetta outside Target. I was all id, all desire, all want with him. I didn’t care about propriety, being lady, playing hard-to-get, I just wanted. I dropped him off at his car around 10:00 PM, jamming Led Zeppelin, screaming the lyrics at the top of my lungs because the want wanted to stretch me and take me alive. The next day at work, we were boiling over with the secrecy of our tryst, locking eyes knowingly, burning with the knowledge of each other.

Although I knew him, I didn’t really know him. Although our banter at work was witty and sharp, I slowly gathered from brief conversations that other than this strong need that yanked at my skin, Adam lacked the capacity to fascinate enough to foster true love and affection. At the time I was still entertaining the admirations of a number of other suitors so when our embraces faded off, I rarely thought of them until the grapevine informed me he had pursued another of my co-workers. Slightly bitter, I mocked him openly for his choice, who was known among retail circles for being promiscuous. I soon left for college and thought of him occasionally on a particular lonely night, longing for someone to inspire that same strength of desire. The want that consumed me.

Spring Break of my freshman year found me in my old stomping grounds. Fresh from a breakup that made me feel achingly vulnerable, I reunited with some Hollister colleagues and we decided to venture down to Santa Cruz, where Adam was now living, to surprise him. My guy friends began taking bets on how long it would take Adam to try and hit on me. As we walked into the Chili’s where he now worked, I saw him immediately, quaint and colloquial in his uniform but still pulsating with the same energy that stirred my long-starved want. Adam was pleasantly shocked, and we ended up back at his place taking shots to ease the tension of time passed. He lead me up to a little alcove in his expansive apartment and confessed his feelings for me which he suppressed because of my pending leave to college. I ate up his sweet, false words and we continued right where we had left off, the want expanding and growing inside of us. He took me to his bedroom, intent on finally having me. Our want became even more passionate as I fake-pleaded to go and return to my friends upstairs as his threw me against the wall and peeling my clothes off as easily as an orange. I never relented, never allowed him to obtain what I held. I eventually left him, drained and plagued with want for me, as I returned to my friends victorious and filled with the power that comes with a conquest. I haven’t seen him since.

I’ve tried for years to find someone that reawakens that feeling, that zing. Was it a product of my surging hormones? Or was it the result of the manifestation, the inundation of feelings of power and control? All I know is, sweet Adam, we’ll always have Hollister.

Nothing would astonish me after all these years, except to be understood.

I have nothing witty or poignant to write at the moment.
It's strange...sometimes the words will hit me at a sudden moment. While I'm eating a sandwich. Or spacing out at work. Or in the middle of a banal conversation with someone. I excuse myself politely, grab a pen, crayon, or even eyeliner and a piece of paper, a napkin, the other side of a bill, whatever I can get my hands on to write down the ongoing flow of sentences.

All I know is that right now I'm itching to do something...creative...expressive.
I'm currently entertaining:

-Buying a used or old camera and taking pictures. Photography, once something I dismissed, is beginning to grow on me.
-Writing a screenplay for a pilot or feature. Gotta do something with the ideas bouncing around in my head
-Improving my personal space. Whenever I see a gorgeously decorated room in a movie, TV show, or while visiting a friend, I always wish that my room could look like that. I need to stop wishing and start being proactive. And pick up my damn clothes for once.
-Learn a language. I am entranced by those who speak a romance language.

Well it's a start. I guess I am searching for some other mode of expression because I've been feeling so lost and adrift lately. I need some form of self-actualization since lately I am mired in doubt over who or what I actually am.
But then again maybe what I am is nothing except an accumulation of the perceptions, thoughts, and information garnered from others. A tabula rosa (rusa?) with no agency.
But let's not get into a nature vs. nurture argument here...

I will end with a quote that has been sticking with me:

"There are moments when times stands still. Moments when you're beyond life and yet still see. And then time begins flowing again, your heart beats, you stretch out your arms, you take a step forward. You still know, but you no longer see."