"sleeping with the enemy"

I couldn't sleep last night (a combination of the coffee-milkshake I drank with my Panera dinner--a bad idea that left me jived--, the looming "wherethehelldoIgofromhere" anxiety that I've been effectively--or maybe last night proved not-so-effectively--avoiding, and, at the risk of hyperbole, some "emotional turmoil" from supposedly caring too damn much). Is that even possible? To care too damn much, I mean? It's like being in some lonely camp all by myself: the caring corner. And it just feels like no one else gives a damn and they all just look at me and say, "give it up, Les," but how can I? Why are there not more people caring? And why are the apathetic always making me feel like an isolationist?

[I'm not usually this sinister, but being stuck in Central Ohio is making me go loony (no pun intended this time)]. And I don't want to live a mental separatism. So what do I do? I write about it. But inevitably my writing becomes all cryptic and abstract until it, too, becomes its own separatism--my own linguistic world that no one else can fully reside in, that no one can truly enter. A defense mechanism, maybe. And a subconscious one, at that. I'm not one for dishonesty. I couldn't live a double life if I tried (though I'd never try). And yet I feel torn between two wholly contrasting feelings separating my being. I love people. I do. I love them. And I love being with people. And I love serving people. And am shocked and shocked again by the number of people who have reciprocally blessed my life. It's humbling, really-- the number of people who care. (look how contradictory I'm being). But there's this side of me that feels totally alone, even when I'm in a room full of people who love me. Because my mind is somewhere else--some unreachable place--and because, despite my rationality, I'm ultimately moved by feeling over logic every time--and I cannot fully understand or articulate these feelings or the flashes in my mind (usually not even complete sentences) and consequently lose my ability to share (despite my hopeless earnestness) the fundamental-most part of me.

"I am the cat who walks by [her]self..."

My mind's been flashing with: gender binaries, and parasites, and lions, and "Eating from the Outside" vs "Eating from the Inside," and the social construction of "enemy camps", and how complicated they are, and Eichmann, and institutional compliance, which quickly becomes complacency, and the conjunctive relationship between interior and exterior threats-to-being, and rats, and bodies, and violence against said bodies--sometimes using rats, and bullying, and the way the new Sufjan song made me feel all angsty like the sleigh-bells were saying "consumerismconsumerismconsumerism," and my own inability to let go...

All-the-while flashing with: my parents' good natures, and The Christopher Spirit, and milk-crates, and this Pitchfork interview with Jeff Mangum, and the farm, and community, and collective identity, and the way it can be a positive thing with conscious participation, and Cornel West, and language, and what that really means, and whether or not art really can be the ultimate revolution, and knowing that love really does exist, and...

And this is all occurring while my white middle class privilege comfortably manifests: in my friend's apartment, eating chocolate chip cookies, drinking orange juice, and watching The Office (season 3). If this were satire, I could appreciate the irony like a good ugly sweater party. And maybe this is satire after all. Maybe I've got you (and myself) fooled, and I'm living "Behind Enemy Lines." Maybe I'm taking myself too seriously. And maybe I'm becoming an ego-maniac. Maybe I'm not.

"sleeping with the enemy" by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.