THOSE WHO SUFFER LOVE
I'm happier in a room full of strangers than I am with people I like the most.
They kind of stress me out, really. I feel like we don't really speak the same language, and I don't know why. It's like we're always competing for something. We're always trying to out each other for something, and I don't really know why or what for. I just want to be happy for them in a separate sort of way and I want them to just... I don't know.
I've got one thin, pretty ballet dancing beauty pageant queen best friend- Always Miss Something- and I've got one thin, pretty well dressed, academic friend.
Every time I get in the same air space as them, I just feel like I'm in some sort of competition, and I'm always sort of coming up short. They'll always be the ones the eyes go straight to, I think. They'll always be the ones who get things. Every time I get happy over something, I get with them and there's is always better. Whatever it is.
And I don't really know what they think- I don't know at all how they perceive any of it at all. I don't know what they see when they look at me. Because I live in a completely separate universe than they do, and I listen to bands they've never heard of and get invited to big punk rock underground art parties in Hollywood all the time that I never go to and I'm only friends with lesbians and suicidals and drug dealers and spend all my time painting things that don't really matter- And I don't really have any friends there.
I don't really have anyone who I'm closed to in the planet where I live. The only people I have live someplace different and don't know any of the things I know.
I don't know. I don't know where I am.
I feel like sometimes the 'very far away' where I've been trying to go is really a lot closer than I thought and maybe the place I've directed myself is in exactly the wrong direction.
I just want to go somewhere that I feel like I understand and have people who I also understand. People who aren't just coked up cigarette smoking rayban wearing pseudo lesbians who live in Laguna or Brentwood and want me to talk about Coachella and Audrey Kawasaki and David Lynch and tattoos with them. And people who aren't ballet dancers or pageant queens or scholarship students and whose favorite bands aren't Fall Out Boy or The Killers and who don't watch MTV or shop at H&M and Fredericks of Hollywood and go on trips down to Melrose just because the Marc Jacob and Fred Segal display cases are always pretty.
I want people who are not from here because I never really feel like I am anymore, and I want people who know what I know. People who just get it. I can't explain.
I just feel isolated.
The only people I ever spend time with anymore are my family. And strangers. I build up these sort of bizarre and constant universes in my head just to keep myself company. And I never read because reading just feels like thinking and drawing is more like breathing and takes less out of me. And I hate fucking everyone I go to school with and I hate their clothes and I hate what they like and their stupid records and all the shitty art they make and I'm just lonely and upset and wish that I had always gone to that school and wish that I was one of them and not someone stuck in the middle of everyone and too tired to reach out to anyone because it's too late to do anything interesting anyway so you might as well just wait til you go off and away to stick your roots down somewhere substantive and maybe there will be real people there, though there don't really appear to be real people anywhere, and maybe that's exactly the way you like it.
And I never eat any food anymore because it makes me feel sick and I'm confused about my family and what no one ever tells each other and I'm tired of going to the hospital so much and I'm tired of never, ever having any fun at all anywhere I go and I'm tired of feeling like the reason I have no fun is because I'm just such an unpleasant person to be around and I'm tired of feeling like I'm always the most calm and mature and soft spoken human in the room and I'm tired of never having anyone around me to be witty or interesting with and I'm tired of pretending that I'm not smart and pretending that I'm not just horribly pessimistic and hysterical all the time, and I'm tired of being pessimistic and hysterical all the time.
And I'm tired of knowing that there are other people in the world who are very probably exactly like me and probably like exactly what I like and probably do exactly what I do and would understand every single word that I say and then knowing that I will very probably never, ever know them at all.
I don't thinking leaving Los Angeles is going to change one thing at all. I think that I'm just going to fall into all of the same holes and I'm going to still not have friends and still do exactly what I do and still just keep waiting for people who are what I think people should be.
I don't want to go away.
I don't think I'll find what I want there either.
I don't know where I'll find it at all, and I don't really think I'll ever take enough chances to recognize the glimpses of it, should it come right in front of me.
I just want to know why I'm different from everyone else. I want to know why what I like is different from everyone else and I want to know why what I think is important is different from everyone and why the way I talk and the way I dress and the art that I make is different. I just don't understand...