I kind of have a history of running away.
Scared of myself and other people, particularly in DC? Move to Europe.
Europe did not work for various reasons, move to Pittsburgh and miss Europe horribly.
Pittsburgh not working out? Attempt to head back to Europe.
Europe did not work again, nor DC? Back to Pittsburgh and continue to miss Europe.
Too physically ill for Pittsburgh? Face those demons and head back to DC, missing Pittsburgh and Europe consecutively.
Things are marginal at best in DC, attempt to move back to Europe.
Physical health prevents this and a gumption is worked up to stick it out here in DC and do the life long dream of a club/store/space here.
I miss Pittsburgh like nobody\’s business. I think I have finally mostly come to terms with Edinburgh (but probably because I have not been back in eighteen months), but Pittsburgh seems to eat at my resolve to stay here. The growing art and music scenes intrigue me to no end, and I miss always having something to do every day and night of the week. I miss my friends.
I tell myself I did not feel so empty there, but that could be situational due to what is going on here right now, as well as a lapse in memory. I generally always feel this empty, so whether it be Europe, DC or Pittsburgh, the black hole core remains the same. The difference being, at least I always managed to have fun in Pittsburgh and Europe. DC seems to be the place where I sit isolated in suburbia and struggle to heal.
Yea, healing. La dee fucking da.
Here in DC, a social life takes money. It was never a problem before. I always managed to have a few quid or dollars to ride the bus or gas up my moped. Here it costs me $20 for a tank of gas that only lasts 250 miles. It is 20 miles into the city, and when you add the 20 miles roundtrip four or five times a week for doctors appointments, plus trips to the pool, I run out of gas quite quickly without ever having a social life. And forget the metro – I cannot afford it. So I sit at home.
Pittsburgh beckons.
I never see you, we\’re never together, I\’ll love you forever Quick – probably the only person on my friends list who can name that song is the one person I am thinking of as it plays. Gah. Anyway.
I can never move back to Pittsburgh. Business plans to do it here aside, I can never again live in a place that has cold winters. That scraps ever returning to Edinburgh, too. My two sanctuaries would now be hell for me.
Just experiencing the mild DC winter a few months ago was enough to make me realize that my joints and muscles should not be exposed to cold temperatures. My doctors and all research I have done on FMS and arthritis have confirmed it – cold bad, wet heat good.
I have to move south. If even DC\’s mild winters are too harsh for me, I have to find another place. And how the hell do I manage to do this when all my doctors are here, as well as my business partner, our plans and our licenses.
I do not have the slightest rapport with any southern city. I like the Raleigh-Durham area, as well as Chapel Hill, but even the North Carolina mountains are going to be too cold with all the snow they get. Nope, I have to go further south.
This is utter crap. The only places I want to move to are Edinburgh, Dublin, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, maybe Philadelphia or Baltimore, Toronto and somewhere along the southern Chesapeake Bay in Maryland or Virginia. Warm, southern states have never occured to me, nor greatly appealed to me.
Whatever, I suppose it does not matter. In the short term, I am stuck here. In the long term, this is all my delusion anyway, right? So once I stop \’escaping\’ it will \’go away\’ and I can move where ever the fuck I want, even if it that is Anchorage.
In the meantime, I just plain do not want to be here. It is boring. My alter-ego says \’well, if it is boring, change it – if you miss Pittsburgh, start that shit here. If Katy can do all her stuff with FMS, why can you not do yours?\’ Positive thinking has not been so lost on me in a long time.
What the hell is the goddamn point fixing this fucking city? Who the hell is going to listen? Mae\’s got her DC Collective Space thing going on, some of the ideas for which she did not have when she first told me she wanted to have a communal space – ideas that later appeared after she, Jessica and I talked about getting the place on U Street and all the stuff I have always wanted to do for a place like that. Jessica and Mae backed out on me, saying they would rather find a house to rent because it was easier, but then they hooked up with Penelope and are doing the Collective Space. I have not spoken with Mae since she erupted at me at NCOR.
So DC will have their space, and sooner than Mark and I can do anything about it, because they already have the community\’s backing – financially and otherwise.
Baltimore has a space now, too.
And yes, I actually am thrilled that this stuff is finally happening for this area. That does not mean that I do not feel some sort of bitterness, however, as my plans are now pretty much irrelevant to this area. If we compete with the DC Space, we will get blackballed and our space will turn into a comics and game store where people go to game in the open space and game over the computers. Which is Mark\’s dream, and has nothing to do with me.
I cannot remember ever feeling this irrelevant or lost before. Since I started dreaming of getting out of here at the age of 13 or 14 (I wanted to move to New York), DC has always been my fallback crutch. If shit did not work out elsewhere, I could always move back to DC and do it there, because since I was young DC has been lacking in communal, kid-positive, open space. Well, it will not be much longer, and it is not because of me.
I could swallow my pride and work with Mae, Jessica and Penel, but Penel and I have never gotten along all that well, Mae and I have not spoken since the blow up, and Jessica does not even acknowledge me when I say hello at shows. (I hate girls.) Sure, I could swallow my pride and bite my tongue when all the backwards \’activist thinking\’ starts to trip up my personal bullshit alert system. I could bite my tongue when they want to diversify the punk scene by introducing people to other white vegan kids who–and herein lies the diversity–like hip hop instead of punk. I could bite my tongue while I watch them take every leftist rhetoric as gospel without first thinking and questioning. I could bite my tongue while they say the IMC can do no wrong. I could bite my tongue when they refuse to bother with legal things that will keep the space open, like following the fire code. I could bite my tongue when they they want to fight for equality for one variable but blow off other variables as not being important. I could bite my tongue when they insist on doing things the same way they have been done for 25 years, and still do not work beyond a tiny group of people.
Or not.
Sometimes I am not sure who I am more mad and frustrated at – Mae and her ilk for the above stated problems–among others– or myself for worrying about such things and not being able to be happy like that.
I do not know what the answer is. I do not know what to tell myself. Writing about it and rehashing it over and over again with myself is not helping, and only two 45 minute sessions of therapy a week are no longer anywhere near enough. Christ.
I do not know what is worse–talking too much to everyone the way I used to, or being too afraid to talk to anyone at all, the way I am now. Damn the wall, and damn the lack of it. I really hate not knowing how to draw the line, nor where to draw it. I hate not being able to reach out to people to talk when I desparately need to, and I hate people being too afraid to talk to me or not wanting to talk to me or just whatever it is. Randy, Parker and Cat spill their entire lives onto my lap because I am \’good at picking up the pieces and helping to figure things out\’ but I cannot even tell people when I need a fucking hug.
Maybe the most influential relations I have had have not been with Jesse, Jamie, Chris, Arvin, Karen, my parents, Eric or RJ – maybe they were with Aaron. Our relationship has turned me into an emotional cripple. Speaking of the devil, he is visiting me in July; he bought his plane tickets a few days ago. Funny how I can rely on him for that when previously I never could, and the people I could rely on before I cannot now. Dynamics change. Individuals change–even I have, depending on who you listen to. Some days I do not see it. Like now. Now I feel as fucked up and sick and as stuck in a rut as I did in 1999. And just as alone. Blah.
\”I don\’t want your stories anymore / they were fun when I was four / I\’d do away with the pixies if you could give me something more\”
