There's a road -

not like, a metaphorical road that Robert Frost writes about -

but a real street, that I lived on.

I characterize it by what I did on it when I was a child

which honestly wasn't much because I had a fence

and I stayed inside it until I was 9.

Actually 15, but 9 sounds more poetic

and less recluse-y.

That's my mother's fault though.

She just wanted to protect me from all the creeps

and weirdos that got at me anyways

from inside the tv screen.

This is that existential suburban cry of desperation

from the mouth of a kid who didn't even understand

what a potluck was until her freshman year homecoming dinner

where kids took a night off from their pills and drinking for a wholesome family event

where I felt even more out of place than I would have at the party

because who knew anyone even did pills anymore anyways?

I wonder how many times my street has been repaved?

I don't ever remember seeing them ripping up the concrete

or having to take a different path to get home,

but damn it if I didn't want an excuse to stay outside of my yard

for an extra 15 minutes, sidestepping the holes punched in the sidewalks.

Okay, it would have been more like 5 minutes because the streets in my neighborhood

are all interconnected but let's say that for the sake

of my pre-adolescent dreams of freedom that it was much longer.

So I'm a lot older now, and I complain about the same basic stuff,

and I know, I know that there's like a million different solutions

to my stupid, ridiculous, over-exaggerated problems,

but I think I got trapped, okay? I got shafted from an early age.

This attitude is learned and hard to break

and there are at least 3 different streets

going in 3 different directions around my building that I can immediately think of

which I could walk down,

or wait, drive down, because hey, even if I got my license a year after everyone else,

I have it now and that's what counts.

It's like when I say I'm going to take a shower or go running though.

You walk into my bedroom three hours later

and I've been sitting at my computer in a towel for two of them,

and I would have put on my sneakers this morning

if I had only been able to find a matching pair of socks.

There's no real excuse for what I'm doing

but it's... I guess the easiest form of escapism

For a girl who got fenced in and was told not to open the gate

even though I knew the combination... and how to pick it,

just in case they changed it.

They never did, in case you were wondering.

I told all my friends the code too,

you could probably still get in if you wanted to raid my kitchen

or say hi to my mom

who really doesn't know how to handle sudden visits like that

so you might want to call ahead

even though we never pick up the phone either,

which is actually disconnected now

and that's not metaphorical either,

that house is like a veritable communication fortress.

We have a dog.

I want to kick him.

We've had dogs since before I was born, and he's

the 5th in that long line, but that doesn't change the fact

that I don't like dogs and never will.

The fact that I tried so hard to bond with my father

by playing baseball and poking the eyes of fish he'd caught,

and sitting next to him in the garage for hours at a time

while he drank and smoked and read a novel

maybe about the compassion I would later

completely refuse to give him because he yelled

at my friends for approaching the fence

and making the dogs bark and called me a whore in the 6th grade

which wasn't damaging, just funny because at that point

I was used to quietly, angrily defending me and my sister,

silently staring and daring him to hit me like he so dearly wanted to ever

since that one time that my mom yelled at him

and stopped him from being the abusive fuck I know he would have been

had he been allowed

makes me even more sure of myself when I bitterly spit sentences at him

that hold up a younger more feminine mirror of himself

before he got all old and sad and sorry.

And you're gonna laugh because I'm a happy white girl with daddy issues

and a goddamned whore mouth who makes damn good sammiches

thank you very much,

but I'm working on it

sometimes

kind of

not really since that April in 8th grade when I decided it'd be a really good idea to

well, lots of things, not eating was probably my favorite because honestly

I still have no idea why that happened and I think it just

the most perfect example of how I operate. I do things

I just do them, okay? I don't have many feelings about them

or needs to rationalize them to myself,

just to the voices of my friends who are a lot harsher than they need to be

which is maybe just me trying to psych myself out so that when I actually

have to deal with people asking why I can just give them an answer

I prepared for one of the voices without having to put much conviction behind it.

and oh my god to think I'd forgotten about that stupid

stupid stupid harmless juvenile party in the 7th grade

that I was embarrassed about for so long

when I do things now that are just so not okay

but kind of are because we're a society just plagued

by dumb taboos and feelings that there are things

we should be hiding about ourselves

and that makes me question why I think it's okay to keep

some people around when they do nothing but

make me upset about what I think and want,

and sometimes I say that's what real friends are

who show you the cold facts about yourself.

But honestly I haven't felt like someone's taken

me and exalted this god awful pit for one minute

because they are too busy telling me why carrying

this pit around is a safety measure

to keep me from running and jumping off some bridge.

But that's not right because I wanted to jump

off that goddamned bridge,
and I was wearing a bungee cord anyways
so you should have just chilled out and been like

you go gay baby or magical unicorn or princess puppy castle dreamboat supreme.

I knew what I was doing. Now I'm just so aggravated all the time

and I say I know what I'm doing,

but do I really? Am I going to wake up in 10 years and not be able to get out of bed

because of the way I behave now?

I think worst case scenario, I try a lot of different things that I always said I would

and that are as awesome as I wanted them to be

and that allow me to throw you the biggest goddamned middle finger on the planet

while I tell you why you were wrong to remind me about GPAs

and the reality principle and the people I'm responsible for

because we all would have been a lot more fucking miserable

if I had finished anything

because finishing something defeats the beautiful dream I had at the outset

and closes that chapter like a job well done that doesn't ever need to be revisited

and I don't want to be the 25 year old who ends back up on the same road

on her mother's couch with a thousand yard stare that envelops

the neighboring houses that are a different shade than way back then.