Sometimes

Sometimes when I close my eyes I try really hard to imagine I’m somewhere else and hope that when I open them I’ll be there. Sometimes when I reach for things, I try to use my thoughts to move the object into my hand, rather than moving in reach. Sometimes I snap my fingers and hope stuff happens. Sometimes I imagine I’m shooting a fireball out of my hands, or using my fingers to guide liquid from my drinks into my mouth. Sometimes I jump into the air and imagine not coming back down. Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend to be flying a space ship. Sometimes I pretend to be a detective in a film noir and I shrug up my coat and Mutter witty lines at myself. Sometimes I pretend to be British or Australian, depending on how well I’m pulling an accent. Sometimes I think of using the Robot to punctuate things I say to people. Sometimes I walk past people who look “cool” and break into a wide grin for no reason. Sometimes I pick things up and open doors with my feet. Sometimes I stack things in restaurants for no reason. Sometimes I flip coins to make my decisions. Sometimes I imagine that one day I am going to fall asleep and wake up and find out that I am still 8 and everything since has been all a crazy dream.

Sometimes when I stand up too fast when it’s particularly warm or hot I get very near fainting. I’ve only fainted proper once, because usually I remember to do the only thing you can do in that situation, take some deep breaths and lean on something. It’s a scary feeling because your vision goes out entirely in a haze of orange and there’s this great constricting feeling and your balance doesn’t work and everything buzzes. I imagine it’s sort of how it would feel to die. I get this problem once in a while. Particularly in summer or when I’m excessively tired. It usually happens in little bursts, and can be kind of unpredictable. It usually happens right after getting up, but sometimes it waits a little bit before hitting you.

I’ve looked up stuff about it, and there are a couple of explanations. Low blood pressure (huh), low blood sugar from not eating (plausible), some sort of a heart condition (runs in the family), all sorts of stuff. Any of them could be likely. I don’t know if I care. The internet says to go to a doctor. I haven’t been to a doctor in about 4 years. Can’t afford that luxury. My dad offers, but I never accept because I don’t like doctors anyway. Long story.

I really hope dying is sort of like that, because it’s not altogether unpleasant. It’s like taking a nap, only you’re standing and your eyes are open. I’ll let you know if it is, okay.

I went to a gambling hall because in Montana, you can waste your money at 18. It was really small, mostly because it was essentially a novelty attachment to the red lion hotel it was in. I was carded, which I find hilarious because for fucks sake, I look young but not that young. I hope. I was wandering around and looking at the fancy machines and it occurred to me, Hey, I already waste my money on novelty clothing and musical instruments. Gambling is just a different way of doing that without the ability to look silly when you go outside. I went to the bank that same day and was solicited for a savings account by the bank lady, and I told her that when I had one I often had the problem of having money in my savings that I couldn’t get to and needed, and that when I stopped running out of money all the time I would take her up on it.

Humh. Different day, I talked to a homeless guy named Randy (well, he talked, mostly) because I couldn’t hear him asking me for a cigarette and I didn’t have anything else to do. He’s been living by the railroad here in Kalispell for some three years now, made it through two winters. He told me he came from Oregon and lost all his money after his wife divorced him and spends most of his time doing odd jobs and begging. There are a lot of churches around here, so he gets by okay, but he was quite correct when he said that you can’t buy a job around here. He’s got some stuff together and told me he has a plan to go down to Florida on a discounted bus ticket for $128. When he gets there he plans to work on cleaning up the oil spill, because he heard (or thinks) that they’re just hiring people up down there. He got on to talking about how many rich assholes there were up hear and would yell and point out pickups driving by with boats on the back and tell me how expensive the boats were and how much he hated the guys with them who just tool around on them in the lakes. He told me about some houses that he worked on up north a bit, closer to Glacier, where single guys were building houses with dozens of rooms just for themselves. We talked about what a shame it was that they’ve been putting these big box stores in Kalispell (they just opened a Wal-Mart Supercenter, and it is ridiculously huge) but they’ve been building them way out of town, so he can’t even panhandle properly. He is apparently 60, and apologized for forgetting my name already because apparently he has a touch of Alzheimer’s, just like his mom had and died from.

We were interrupted by a swarthy, sort of overweight guy who was maybe in his mid to late forties who walked up to ask him about churches around town, and I was treated to the sidelines of a conversation between the two. For one reason or another the guy didn’t really acknowledge my presence unless I laughed. He apparently jumped off the train headed to Seattle in the middle of Glacier Park because He had some problem with a stewardess and felt like some other stewards were watching him. The police (“the law”) picked him up and dropped him off in Kalispell, and while he was able to get a hotel room for a night (at $100 which seems pretty outrageous for this area) but he didn’t have the cash for another one, so he was hoping Randy could help him find a church to help him out. Apparently the Lutheran church had agreed to help him, but hadn’t gotten back to him with the money, something that he swore several times about. He offered to let Randy stay in the room with him in exchange for the help and after some more discussion where Randy said more or less the same things he had already said to me, the two walked off.

Humh. At the wedding, I talked to a photography major in her senior year about a project she was doing concerning people who have had suicides in their immediate family or of a close friend. It was a multimedia project where she would interview them and then photograph them holding something that reminds them of the person who had killed themselves. She had taken a semester off of doing it, because she found the whole process emotionally draining, but was ready to gear back up and finish it. She talked about the fact that almost everyone she mentions the project to has had a similar experience, especially given the state of the State.

April said something about being passively suicidal. I really hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s a good description? I tend to explain it like so: my passion for living for the sake of living was broken a while back, one way or another. I continue to exist, certainly, but I don’t really feel like I have any ties here. If my life were hard, I might simply enjoy the challenge of existing, if it were insurmountably so, I think I’d quit. As it is, I’m just a bit listless. I want something to happen in my life that would create or justify a massive change, I think. But that’s gotta be me, and there’s not much I can do when I can’t even see two months from now. Ultimately, it was probably a mistake to go to college. Not because I don’t love learning or I won’t succeed, but I hate making decisions that I can’t change and debt is pretty much one of those. I’m not worried, though. I have no time or reason for worrying. Everything that happens happens because it was bound to and nothing could have ever been any different. I just dislike the concept that I may be tied to something for any reason. It’s funny to say that I breathed a ridiculous sigh of relief when I was informed that in the case of my death, my student loan debts will not be transferred to anyone else. Haha. People don’t believe that I’m this morbid, because I’m actually a cheery and relaxed person most of the time. I’m just ignoring it, is all. No reason to let your mortality prevent you from enjoying what life you have, right?