Immaturity - 5/5/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

Life with my father is going a little shakily. Neither of us is feeling very well, because we haven't been sleeping or eating very well. We are having a hard time with logistics. In addition to the significant problems, small, dumb problems are arising. For example: We cannot find the fish food. We looked everywhere for it. My mom is still not talking. The last time she fed the fish was Sunday. My dad finally suggested that he could send out an email to his colleagues, asking for fish food. Then I said that I could just put a note on facebook. He said that this was a better idea. So I did. It went like this:

My fish is starving. 2:12pm Wednesday, May 2

Alright you guys, I could really use some help. I am putting out a general appeal for fish food. Because of circumstances I don't really care to explain, we cannot find the fish food, and we cannot go get more fish food. The fish is really not high on our list of priorities right now, but I would still not like it to starve.

So, if anyone has a beta, do you think you could just bring in four or five beta pellets to school and meet me somewhere and give them to me? I'm hoping that at least one of you has a beta.

This would be really very helpful! You will be doing a good deed! You will be saving a life! I know this is really random, but what else is facebook for?

I also know that I did not actually mention any of you in this note. I'm sorry if the tagging was unnecessary. I do not really know how to use facebook.

Alright, well, thank you.

A few people responded that they were sorry, but that they didn't have any fish food. Then the perky acquaintence going to Graham (who I will now call Andrea) suggested that I ask a biology teacher. So today I went around to all the biology classrooms begging for fish food. I was finally given some by the freshman ecology teacher who is also our neighbor.

Fish saved!

Wednesday I had rehearsal for four hours - jazz band followed by the dress rehearsal for the play. Before jazz band I had an awkward conversation with Julian. All of my conversations Wednesday were awkward, actually. I was just too slow.

I don't particularly want to be in a play. I cannot play the music that we have to (even though it is very easy) and it does not sound good anyway. I was relatively miserable during practice, and bored, and very, very hungry. But when Eric said something about how we all had better things to be doing, I thought, "Not me. Not really. Even though I am not exactly having a good time, I would not like to be somewhere else." Then I asked myself why. And it was because of the bandies. Not Dave and Eric, or even Speedy and Laura. Not the bandies that I am friends with, because I am friends with them. Just all of the bandies who were there, because they are bandies. Just hearing Nicole and Emily and T.K. and Cassandra and some random drummers sitting in a circle and laughing, and knowing that we were all wearing the same t-shirt and that we were all there for the same purpose, and that we were all hungry and bored, mades things feel okay. I was okay with being there.

The New Ann has changed her mind about it being okay that I don't feel anything about my mother. She asked how my mother was doing, and I said something vague. Because, I dunno, what do you respond to that? Then she asked if I was going to visit her, and I said something like, "No, or... Not for a while at least. She said she doesn't want people to see her like that, and besides I can't this weekend, I'm doing this thing... This like... I'm being in a musical sort of, because there's a marching band in it and they wanted a real marching band and I'm sort of just doing it out of guilt, I don't really want to, but I am, so that's basically all I'm doing this weekend..."

Then The New Ann said that she could not believe that she was hearing all this shit about band when my mom was in the hospital. She said that I had the responsability as an adult to visit her, that that was more important than the play. She said that she could not believe that neither of my parents expected me to visit. She said that this was just another way in which they are treating me like a child when I am not. I didn't talk much during that session. She talked a lot. She said that I need to start making my own decisions because I have no control over my life. She said that I do not even know who I am or what I want. She asked if I wanted to go to Graham and some other things, and I said that I didn't know, that I didn't really care. Because I had broken down. I didn't know what else to say. I was crying hysterically. She said that I have been so ridiculously sheltered that I am not ready for college. I am not really ready for life. Then she gave me the business card of a psychiatrist. For medication.

I didn't know what to do after that. It's true. I can't make decisions, and I don't care, and can't live my own life, and I don't want to. I look at all of my options in life and think, "I don't want that." So what am I still doing here? Maybe I'm just not cut out for life. Maybe it's time to say, "Uh, no thanks."

And she's right about the freaking out, too. When I freak out, I can too control my actions. I am just not acting like an adult. I am just refusing to be responsible. I am just shouting, like Kurt Vonnegut's sister Ally, "I give up! I give up!"

So I sat in the bathroom crying for an hour, not knowing what to do, not being able to make any decisions. The first decision I made was to throw out the business card. I didn't even know why. I just did it.

I went home for a little bit, and then I went to work. For most of the time I was there, I still wasn't thinking or feeling anything. I was still going on autopilot and living on a minute-to-minute basis. Then I took out the trash. In the alley behind the store, an iron spiral staircase was casting its shadow on a brick wall. The shadow was sharp and black and stretched out to the point of not looking like a spiral staircase. It spread out all over the brick wall. It had a life of its own. It was beautiful.

So I stood in the alley with the trash and listed the reasons that I guess I will give life a shot: - that image right there, in the alley behind the store - the bandies

I guess that the New Ann has some points, and I guess I overreacted to/misinterpreted some of them. But I don't think that she entirely has the right idea either. I am not entirely immature. I am not entirely helpless. I will have to do a little more evaluation of where she is right and where she is wrong before I go back to her. (I have decided that I am going back.)

It also brought me back a little bit when I came home before the show and my father said, "Aidan, sit down and help me make a grocery list." And we both sat down at the dining room table and tried to remember what the hell we eat all the time.