The Mood Swing

I want a guitar.



I want an electric guitar and a distortion pedal and a pair of Doc Martens. And a scream--my scream, my one way of saying everything I had to say back then, and even now.



I want my 20's back. I want my chances back.



I don't blame heroin for what I lost; I don't entirely even blame my own decisions for what I lost--not entirely. I blame the passage of time for what I lost, because the kind of person I want to be doesn't even EXIST in this world that's left.



I just remember a time before everything got so damn corporate, and now even the act of being anti-corporate is in itself a cliche. They sell us products with our own rebellion--"Be yourself, be unique, drink this mass-marketed beverage that you bought in a Wal-Mart." Even the act of saying that--of questioning it--is marketed back to us, an ironic hipster pose found in every bar between Western Avenue and the lake. They even have a little dismissive philosophical term for it: "oh, how meta." But when you come to a point where the questioning becomes too earnest, too real--when not only do you question, not only do you question the question, and even question the mechanism by which the question is questioned--when you actually MEAN it, when you're not just being "meta" but when, like me, you've hinged your whole identity and mission and purpose on the very act of peeling back the layers--well, then you're one step down from that kid in the playground who eats boogers--long past cool, just kinda weird and embarrassing anymore.



Oh, we can question now--but no one listens. Bloggovia is swarming with questioners and screamers--but the old guard has learned the art of deflection, of tossing buzzwords at a problem til it goes away--or even just ignoring it. And the act of questioning has become just part of the routine--so banal, so expected, so rote, that when the question is answered with some meaningless dada word-salad marketing-fed drivel, the public at large accepts it as an answer and we turn our attention to the next shiny bauble. "No comment" used to be the red flag to the bull; now we smile and say "Oh! Okay..." and go find something easier to do.



And I want it back, the time when the existence of the question was not assumed by every newly-hired marketing intern, when it wasn't the first automatic parry to the commercial thrust--when the question itself meant something, and the act of even asking was tantamount to heresy. I want the time when one scream could actually be heard, wasn't something lost and silenced in a chorus of many screamers, most of whom don't even know why they scream, except that it's expected.



More than anything I want someone in my life who understands this. Of all the things I miss about JP, that's the thing I miss the most. This would have been an all-night conversation-with-soundtrack, back then...instead I'm sitting in the living room of a broken-down and empty house, listening to Tori Amos playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on VH1, and wishing for a piece of my life that will never come back.



And I don't even know how to move forward anymore. I look at the people who are in my peer group--they're all off married, having kids, pursuing careers. Their priorities have shifted in ten years, and somehow I'm stuck ten years in the past. I don't want what they've got--but I don't want what I've got either.I feel like if I had some money, I could take the risk of making a change, at least in what I do every day--but not only don't I have enough money to take that risk, I don't even have enough money to pay the bills and keep up with all the little unexpected things. It would be easy to blame LJ for this--but the sad fact of the matter is, even if LJ wasn't around, I'd be in exactly the same situation, except lonelier. And it's not as though I've reached beyond my grasp in buying this house--at least, I don't think I did--and I don't live beyond my means. I don't want to stay in this job forever--partly because of the environment, but mainly because it's not what I really want for the rest of my life. I never saw myself working in an office, and though I love the problem-solving aspect of this job, I have other things that I really want to do. I want to be a creative person--I mean, I AM a creative person, but I want to make a living through it, or at least to have that as a viable, workable option.



But even if I could--even if I had the money--I still have that fear that everything I want to say has already been said, that no one wants to hear about the things that actually have meaning to me. In a way, I'm scared of having no choice but to sell out--to create things that mean nothing to me, that go directly against my vision of myself, and to have a choice between unacceptable compromise and survival.



There has to be a way--but I don't know what it is, or even if it's ultimately worth the effort it would take to find it.