Parts 5 & 6 - A Personal Manifesto

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Endlessecho
Member

since 2003-09-05

Posts 398
I live within myself

0 posted 2004-02-13 11:39 AM

I’m just going to post all the parts at once (not in the same thread – that would be too much).  All at the same time. That way it can be responded to as one piece.  That’s much easier.  Thanks.

A Personal Manifesto

PART FIVE

I sit in my friend’s car.  I’m a teenager; disconnected, but so certain.  I was a walking contradiction.  Oh – how I remember those days.  Oh – how I remember riding in the car, the only person who truly knew me any longer, by my side.

It wasn’t dramatic.  It wasn’t rebellious or life-altering events.  It was the angst-ridden music for our generation pouring out of the radio – Nirvana, Pearl Jam.  It was the same streets.  It was belonging.  It was silly jokes and personal thoughts shared in the safety of leather and vinyl strolling through the same passing scenes as always.  It was the space.  It was the space that we created with each mile that we drove further from my home.  It was the way the car took me in because I belonged there, because I was always there.  It was comfort.  It was stability.  It was the familiarity; so comfortable, so accepting.

I remember when my sister used to sit in this car with us.  I would’ve been in the back seat.  I look around the car and fiddle with the visor above my head – not because I’m nervous, but because I can.  I like the front seat.  I miss my sister.

My friend glances over at me.  I smile.  I smile because she deserves my smile.  She drives.  I look out the window.  The silence isn’t loud and suffocating like the silence at home.  It’s warmer and quieter.  We choose the silence.  It doesn’t choose us.  That’s what matters.

She reaches out and pushes the tape into the player.  I listen to the words.  I like words.  She starts talking.  She usually starts and I fall into the conversation, till it clicks and words pass between us until we’re satisfied and full and smiling like happy gluttons.

“What’s going on with your sister?”  This is where the conversation turns, but so swiftly and gentle that I barely notice and I don’t mind.  I actually look forward to that.  I talk and talk, about things that I don’t talk about anywhere else, because I don’t trust and because no one else wants to listen.  That’s okay.  I don’t want to tell anyone else.


PART SIX

I’m 22 now; an adult.  I have my own place, my own car, my own life.  I have many friends now.  I’ve reached that point where there’s this evident and incredible shift in what’s important to you.  It’s that chasm between childhood and adult; between adolescence and the rest of your life.

My parents still have some power over me.  I guess they always will.  It’s something we all have to accept.  We can never fully escape our parent’s grasp.  We can just try to join hands with it so that when it reaches toward us, our hands lend some control too and the power is shared.  It can be called a struggle or a compromise depending on your outlook.  I like to see it as a solution; a solution to survival.

My father is sick; old and sick and yet he still scares me.  Not in a physical sense.  I’m scared of how I treat him.  I’m scared of not loving him enough.  Part of me is scared that if I can’t love my father, I’ll never be able to love anyone.  I’ve let most of the bitterness go.  But like most things in my life or myself that I dislike, it makes occasional appearances.  It’s apparent in my reactions to his requests.  My inability to not immediately defend myself against anything he says.  It’s found in little haunting thoughts that show parts of me I try to keep hidden.  Selfishness creeps along with the bitterness; holding onto its heel like a twin.  Traveling into my life together and feeding off of each other’s fire, encouraging the onslaught on me.

Last night, I cleaned his car off from the snowstorm for him.  I went to the store for him.  We chatted.  Sometimes it’s easy to care about him.  Because I do.

I tell him I love him and I’m not lying.  I do love him.  But, he loved us too.  Love has too many faces and shadows and rooms.  Love isn’t always a warm fuzzy feeling.  Love can leave you cold.  It can scratch and be tough and sometimes cause irreparable damage because we love imperfectly.  We’re taught imperfectly and mistakes carry through generations.

You can even love too much.  That can be worse than not loving.  Families are torn apart by love; suffocated by the mere volume and substance of it.  Giving too much of something you don’t know how to handle can be explosive.  Love is dangerous when in the wrong hands.  Maybe that’s why I try not to mess with it too often.  I’m scared of the damage I could do.

My father loves me.  I have no doubt of that.  No one is all inherently evil or all inherently good.  My father has helped me at various times.  I have agreed with him, on occasion.  The things that he does know in life, he is very smart about and when his sense of humor manifests itself, I can’t help but laugh and wonder at the glimpse of the other side of the man I barely know.

My mother could be the most gentle and loving person in my life.  She could also be the cruelest.  My confusion set in early, because the key figures in my life were multi-dimensional and contradictory persons who would change with the shift in air.  Nothing was concrete or easily explained and I gave up a long time ago on ever acquiring real truth.  Secrets were a constant and so were masks.  They wore so many I forgot what their real faces looked like.  Reality and fantasy intermixed like food coloring in water and turned everything shades of colors.  Colors that you got so lost in, you forgot that that’s all they were, just decorations to make things look pretty.  Filling in a picture with colors so bright, you couldn’t look close enough to see what the picture was of.  Facades and masks and secrets and half-truths were the elements that made up my family and our home.

Sadelite
Member Elite

since 2003-10-11

Posts 2519

1 posted 2004-02-15 08:35 PM

endlessecho,
This is an incredible outpouring of perception and emotions. I wish more people would stop by posts as good as these! It seems like there is less travel in the prose area and less people stopping by than in the poetry section. What a shame. YOur prose is every bit as masterly colored. I started to highlight the fourth or fifth paragraph from the end where you spoke of loving your dad, but found I would have left a highlighted trail clear to the bottom! And you said that you wished your writing would be as good as mine! Huh, you are much better! Take care. I'll stop by and read another section at another time and surprise you...
Sadelight

Endlessecho
Member

since 2003-09-05

Posts 398
I live within myself

2 posted 2004-03-01 11:47 AM

Thank you so much Sadelite! I know exactly what you mean about the Prose section. It really is too bad, because I've read such amazing stuff here and not many people stop by to read them. I love reading selections here. It really is nice to have this board here along with the poetry. Anyway.. thank you again for your wonderful comments and taking the time to read. I hope you enjoy the rest and can't wait to be surprised.

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