urbandruid

We needed a few things last night, so we drove out to Wal-Mart. The Clovis Wal-Mart, where last summer I sold fireworks with my friends.

There was a booth in the parking lot, same as last year. Same company, same exact location in the lot. Jonni would've kicked our collective asses if we'd thrashed the place as badly as these people did, though- all the boxes thrown out back, and somebody's Dachshund puppy wandering around. (Granted, Jonni brought the baby with her, but this was when he was really really little. And he was way cuter than the puppy.)

It wasn't the same. I knew it wouldn't be, but as we walked past I got a glimpse of strangers in the booth, heard the sound of a generator that worked...and I had this terrible attack of nostalgia.

Nothing is the way it was last summer. Nothing stays the same.

And I hate it. I hate the changes, hate that they're not here anymore. Hate that we never got the chance to do the booth again- though how we'd have done it with the Clovis chapter alone is beyond me. I'd have been sitting there all day by myself, or it would have been me and Michael, and I always felt sort of redundant when he was selling. I'm, you know, not as good at it. But then, he was almost a car salesman. Too many speeding tickets, or he would've gotten the job.

Hell, they should've hired him anyway.

*sigh*

I miss them, but I don't even know how to write and say that I miss them. It's like they've gone a lot farther away than Arizona. Lindsay in Russia seems closer, though I'm sure this has to do with the fact that Lindsay and I actually email back and forth more than Michael and Jonni and I ever did, except when Michael needed Cam stuff from me. Michael was militant about his Cam stuff sometimes.

Okay...a lot of the time.

It's just funny and strange and not a little bit sad- my friends are gone. To Arizona, where there are no legal fireworks.

[reconstructed from what LJ ate]

So I'm supposed to be meeting my friends at the blood bank, Michael and Jonni and Will. And I don't really want to go.

We don't talk anymore. Haven't in a while. I know M and J are busy and they're moving, but it's not as if we have forever here. But J is busy chasing the kids around, and Michael seems to only want to bully me into taking Camarilla club offices that I don't want. Again.

Our games don't happen, or they happen and no one tells me about them, which ammounts to the same thing as far as I'm concerned. They don't call, they don't email, and I, either because I'm petulant and pissed off, or just because I'm tired, don't initiate contact. I think it's because I'm pissed, though. And I am. I tried not to be, since they're leaving for Arizona in ten days, but what the hell? Why not? Makes no difference anyway.

I wanted to have a party, one last get-together before they go. But they don't want a party. M wants to go see a movie or something. And I- Sigh. I used to go see movies with my dad, and other people I didn't really want to deal with. You sit in the dark for two hours, don't speak, and when you leave you have the movie to talk about; impersonal, requiring no real person-to-person contact.

I don't want my relationship with my friends to be like this. But it is becoming this, whatever I want. It frustrates me. It makes me want to scream, bash my head against the walls- but none of that would change anything.

In a way I am acting as if they're already gone. Hard not to, when they seem to have forgotten that I exist.

I was so happy for a while there- I had friends I saw face to face, friends who stood by me when others stabbed me in the back. Friends who, when made to chose between those others and me, chose me, when all the times before that that had happened to me, almost always people had run quickly as they could away from me. But now I can only wonder where it's gone, the good times we used to have. The happiness.

And I tried- I tried so hard to hang on, to not be angry and to not be sad. But it's not doing any good holding the anger off, they don't speak to me anymore anyway. When I see them tonight I know what they'll say- been busy, you should have called...you missed a great game. I have never understood the game schedule and now I suppose that I never will.

I don't want to go, but I will. I'll go not because I can donate blood; I can't. I think I've become anemic again. They told me to take iron pills, gave me lists of really weird stuff to eat, pushed the raisens and the orange juice... and my iron levels go down. So whatever. I give up. But I'm going because it's too much to explain why I wouldn't want to. They never call, but that they would notice, remark on somehow, sometime. And it's too much to explain why I can't face them, why I'd rather not. Going is easier. Putting on the false fronts at which I've become so good, is easier.

My friends have become strangers. It's no wonder I already feel as if they're a hundred miles away.

I struggle at the line between what I am and what I'm not, and my eyes have that half-tranced sort of feel they get when I've been working too long on one thing. I just spent the past two hours taking screencaps with the digital camera- cramp finally went out of my hand a few minutes ago- fast forwarding and rewinding and pausing the damn seaQuest tape, advancing it frame by frame, snapping away... Forgetting that I have closed caption come on automatically when I hit the mute button, so I've got some good caps with text I'll have to edit it- it's always somebody else's lines, or just bad lines- ah, how much I'd forgotten. The paradoxal dichotomy of loving this, and being embarrased by it. I always thought I could do it better, but that the raw material was there to make...something.

I'm still not done, either; I've still got to go through them all, toss the ones that aren't worth fixing, crop out incidental crap like the sides of the TV, try and sharpen up some of the marginal ones... Plus editing the old ones for size (they're a bit blurry for desktop wallpaper, though about the right size...)

Typical lack of priorities. I have a biology test on Friday, and a lab practical exam a week from tomorrow. But it's not like I won't study; I just need a break. Not being driven out of my mind by crazy relations and my equally crazy Camarilla friends would be good, too, but I'll take what I can get.

Everybody means well, but good intentions are not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I make lists of things I want to do, but then I ignore them, because suddenly they feel like work. I don't want to stress about what's supposed to be fun, you know? This is exactly what happened to me wth the Cam, finding myself caught up in the work until it's not fun anymore. If it weren't for my friends and the fact that they are my friends, I'd throw in the towel and the character sheets, give up LARP. I'm just too tired, and I have too many other things to worry about, too many other things to do with my spare time when I've got it.

I always take the thankless jobs because I'm nice. Well, you know what? I don't feel like being very nice these days.

Every time I think about this stuff, I just get pissed off. Part of it is that I'm having a Monday, but the rest- argh!

And as if I weren't having a fun enough time of it here, I've just discovered that we're nearly out of decaf soda. As in, there's one can in the fridge, and that's it. Oh yes, and we're broke.

Hmm. Perhaps I should go work on the Mac; I may end up putting my fist through the bloody thing, but at least it'll be done with, and I can honestly tell my mother that I was temporarily insane.