hemoglobin levels

I have this thing with bleeding.

It's not that I like blood

or that I like pain.

It's that I'm pretty damn sure that you have to have both good and bad in your life at all times.

So I make my own bad sometimes.

Blood, in the world outside the electrical leaps between my neurons and my fingers and a keyboard and fiber optic wires, actually makes me want to vomit.

My head starts to sound weird, my heart gets huge, and I start to sweat in the oddest of places.

Torn skin bothers me on a level that rivals nothing else in this world that I've encountered.

                              Except maybe a few things.  But I like to forget those things exist.

Blood.  That stuff.

I have a thing about it.

Metaphorically speaking, I say, with a pipe held smugly in my right hand as the thumb on my left hand rests pompously beneath the strap of my vest.  Why, I am just the smartest little finch around, aren't I?

Anyway.

I need to bleed a little.

A counterbalance.

I know the reason I took my job is because I'm still feeling guilty--still feeling like a failure.  I should have told my grandfather--the person I have loved most in this world--that I loved him on that balmy Pacific Northwest morning in early July.  I should have been a better granddaughter.  But I fucked it up.  And I didn't tell him.  And so when I got a chance to tell him, he didn't even recognize me.  He was just a shell of himself.

Small, weak, pitiful in so many ways.

This job is all about pandering to that guilt.

And another thing, while we're on this whole guilt thing, I still feel guilty for things I've never even said.

I hate the mean part of me that lurks in corners and thinks nasty things about people.  That's the part of me that won't forgive.  The part of me that demands accountability.  The part of me that dreams of revenge.

It's a sickening thing.

I keep trying to kill it--trying to smother it with hope.  I keep failing.

I'm a really good failure.

Oh, yeah, me with my 3.9 GPA.  I'm good at failing.

I'm incapable of learning anything in school because I dismiss my classes within the first week as nothing more than hours of witnessing my classmates have a dick measuring contest.  So I check out.  Scribble in my books.  And then, come assessment time, I pull out a lot of banal platitudes that sound pretty impressive and there.  Another fucking A.  Boring.

It's not because I'm smart.  I'm not all that smart, really.  I'm actually kind of profoundly stupid.  I mean, really, I take my glasses off my face in order to swap them for a pint of frozen yogurt in my freezer.

It's just that I find school to be so--formulaic.  And I learned the formula.  I know how to play the game.  I know how to sound adequately intelligent based on arbitrary societal standards that have no value to me whatsoever.

And RIGHT THERE.  I'm a pompous bitch who thinks she's better than 99% of the people in her life.  Why? Because I'm terribly disillusioned with life and I find it aggravating that a lot of people are fine in the system.

Fuck careers and money and big fancy houses.

I want a tinyass apartment in a dirty city, books spilling everywhere, and neighbors who think that I'm crazy.

   But you know what I'm gonna fill that tinyass apartment with?

      More laughter and more love and more appreciation for life than other people can even hope to dream of.

Another thing, right there.  I'm an angry little motherfucker, aren't I?  One with a dirty mouth, a sense of entitlement based on warped logic, and I am very quick to discount others.

Not good.

Selfish.  Egotistical.

Narcissistic.

But this is all just an exercise in bleeding.

An exaggeration to draw out the blood.

Because a part of me needs to be unhappy.  A part of me needs to hurt.  A part of me needs to want to change.

Because things are quite lovely, actually, despite having a cold and desperately craving a popsicle.

I have a job that breaks me down physically, but builds me up emotionally.  I have friends that are willing to laugh at me just as often as I am laughing at myself.  I have a man who really makes me feel like I could grab the moon and stick it in my pocket, or do something else equally ridiculous and whimsical.  I have a family that indulges my whims and supports me so that I can chase silly things like sentences.  I have a cat that is always willing to snuggle.  And while I may find class discussions to be a bit useless from time to time, the texts that I have this quarter have already engaged me outside the classroom in splendidly intricate ways that overlap with the pastpresentfuture.

And this loveliness--this happiness--is like a loaded gun.  If I get too happy, the trigger is pulled.

A counterbalance.

Pain.

Blood.