2003-06-11 - 5:14 p.m.: listerine 2

26. i've always been obsessed with spaces… ever since i was a little kid. i loved boxes, holes, cupboards… anything cavern-like—and if it had a door, bonus points. we moved around a lot, but one of the houses (the 7-year house) was over 100 years old and had a couple of really neat secrets. there was a tiny door in the back of my closet that led to a tiny space with a stair-shaped ceiling. i would hide in there… bring a flashlight…read… draw… just sit and pretend to be hiding from something or someone. i don't think my parents even knew about it until the day my mother came in to help me "clean my room." (i was a major packrat… kept everything… "cleaning my room" meant, basically, going through everything i owned and throwing out everything without a memory attached to it. somewhere in the depths of that hell, i heard an "oh!" it was found. i was told not to use this hiding place anymore because what if the door locked? what if the stairs caved in? what if i was stuck in there and the house caught on fire? what if i passed out from heat exhaustion and no one could find me? i remember pointing out that now that she knew where it was, she'd know where to look for me. no. forbidden. i would still open the door occasionally and look in…show it off to special visitors… i never went inside again. i've broken almost every rule my parents have ever set for me. without regret. but this i didn't touch. i had nightmares for a while about the house melting like a candle—it never caught on fire—the wax from it being sucked into that little room like water down a drain. i haven't thought about that in a long time.

27. my most painful-to-recall memory is from spring of 4th grade. i was a "new kid" at this school… and was recruited almost immediately into a pretty tight group of friends... angela, melissa, julie, jill, kara, jessica and erica. i don't remember exactly what happened or why…. but for some reason erica was suddenly and unceremoniously cast out of the group. things got cruel. notes flew in a girlish sort of war game. i was still a relative stranger so never said or did much, but i sure as hell didn't take the side of the underdog... i know that. i don't remember who had the idea (and i really, really hope it wasn't me) but someone decided that it would be a good idea to concoct an evil-smelling mixture of condiments, ammonia, vinegar? i don't even know what else… put it in a cup and set it in her gym locker on a friday afternoon. the idea was that the odor would strengthen over the weekend, causing a great deal of embarrassment on monday. it did. she went home crying. the group broke apart shortly after that… over the summer, i think. angela and melissa stayed best friends. julie and jill paired up. kara joined the marching band and jessica went punk and started painting her fingernails black. i wandered again… i don't know what happened to erica. she didn't respond to any of our ensuing overtures of friendliness… i don't know if she ever responded to friendliness again. i would like to think that it was just an unpleasant blip in her life… that she got over it quickly. i would like to think that it was just an unpleasant blip in mine. but how *do* we get over things, anyway? i haven't had or belonged to what i would call a "group of friends" since then. i wonder why.

28. i feel weird about sifting through my past. it doesn't feel real. ever.

29. i feel weird when i recognize myself in books or songs or any other fixed display… it makes me look for reasons to say that it's NOT me… that i'm NOT like that, no matter what it is.

30. i hate being called nice.

inward...outward