Neurotica

Sad music can take me from a perfectly lovely mood straight into the depths of emotional despair—whereas happy music, when I’m feeling blue, makes me wanna throw my i-pod into oncoming traffic and strangle the next smiling person I see.

Sometimes I stare at my skin in the mirror, certain that at any moment it’s going to burst into a thousand pimples, returning me to my most awkward and hideous pre-pubescent phase of life.

Thursday morning, I woke up with a fat lip because I bit down so hard in my rage-nightmare that I actually injured myself.

When I hear a vacuum cleaner, I have an uncontrollable urge to hum the same pitch that it’s making at an almost imperceptible volume, every time.

I have attempted to clean my belly button by wheedling the corner of a bar of soap to fit the tiny hole, on more than one occasion.

I have four imaginary girlfriends ranging in age from 24 to 40-something and they all resemble Madonna ...


I had two mental fights today: one over years of emotional torture, another over dust bunnies and pubic hair.

I often find myself pretending to be my ex girlfriend, or my older brother, and I judge myself with all the harshness that she/he does. It’s how I gauge how much to disapprove of my un-coolness. Like right now, they’re both vomiting in a bag…or on their laptops.

I am standing in two canoes at once. In the golden boat, Oprah is demanding I have liberation, confidence, strength, and a peaceful mind. In the other, the boat that brought me here (ironically), I have all the neuroses listed above, any many, many more. The neurotic canoe is built out of all my experiences, and my (perhaps overwrought) reactions to them. I have paddled very far in said canoe. I left home in it, took it to school, collected stories, hopes, dreams etc—all in this one canoe! It’s made of my mental dysfunctions, so it’s a rather large canoe; however, I am filling it with good stuff at a much faster rate than I am enlarging it.**Are we still in the same boat? I hope I haven’t drowned you in metaphor.***

As a result of the freedom I have experienced thanks to the power of my convictions, paddling this crazy canoe, I have arrived at a possible docking station. I listened to sage advice, read books, meditated, and ate vegetables. I have learned a lot sitting in my canoe, and the weight of responsibility seems to be bogging me down. With each new lesson I learn, I feel obligated to remove one of the planks of dysfunction that created my vessel. I do have that option of leaving this canoe behind and taking the new one.

The old boat threatens to eat the new boat, and then crap it out under the water. The old boat could mock the new boat into hideous disfigurement, making it less than sea-worthy—and the crazy part is (if we could narrow it down to just one), there are a lot of folks who would respect me more if I allowed the old boat to do so. Maybe I can climb into the new boat and disguise it as the old boat. That sounds like a lot of work.

Does anyone know what I’m talking about? Or is this another one of those hypothetical, neurotic questions like all of the above? I’m having a hard time letting go of my neuroses. I worry that without them, I won’t be fun or interesting—I say this as if I could give them up without a second thought, like cutting carbs. Well, if I do lose the neurotics, at least I’ll have my overwhelming arrogance to keep me from getting too close to enlightenment. I recognize that self-loathing is just an extension of my own ego…and I hate myself for it. But I know another good Italian girl, born on August 16th, who had an ego...and it got her pretty far...but now she's a Buddhist Jew...hmmm.