I CANNOT BE AFRAID

Having music or radio in the car. I find it weird and distracting. I find myself turning it down to a barely audible level. I find myself hearing things in it, a soft voice talking for a few seconds over the music or other talking, I do not know if the radio does this sometimes or. Having a speedometer is strange after 2 years. I find myself looking down at it like a novelty, testing my instincts when I see a cop and get nervous.

So I got this new car, a Gray Ghost; it smells like my sister, and has her sorority and jesus stickers in the back window. The steering wheel feels greasy and it is so responsive it is like I am riding a freshly broken colt. Gelding. I don't think you ride colts, too twiggy. "Coltish" is an adjective I like to hear describing a woman. I do not believe it is self-applicable, I am something less thin and more calculating.

(How many animal characteristics, though, do we anthropomorphize fourth-hand from Disney, who got it third-hand from Ysengrin and Reynard, who got it second-hand from Aesop. Horses are honest but when feral become possessed by an evil spirit. The dog-kin are so clever, the cats are hedonists (except the lion, who is respected). Birds are nature's quirky retards.)

"Calculating" is often a negative term that implies scheming or dishonesty. This is not necessarily so. Sometimes I feel like such a calculated being who is never fully present but always adjusting, endlessly, for the anticipated moment to come. One of the worst feelings to me is realizing retrospectively that I have misjudged a situation and what someone of importance wanted from me, out of inattentiveness or selfishness. I try to avoid this.

Everything is new, lately. New non-studentness, job (april 1st), new love, new non-smokingness, new hair, new car. This new self is not yet calculated enough to function in the world without the salt and lemon of minor confrontations stinging raw new skin. My ankles are getting caught in the vines of unexplored jungle growth; I will make it through and emerge as the subtle and lovely amazoness, but be patient please, and kind.

Understand that I just mean to be good, and have a good life, and be okay.

branch: I want my family and I to have a relationship that is respectful; reasonable. Pleasant. Sometimes days this feels achieved for a few moments and other days my dad is a total dick to me again which, god. Something about how my dad can be a dick gives me two unbearable feelings number 1) In that way where you don't really even see your dad much and he frankly doesn't really have the smallest inkling of who you really are inside and what goes on in your daily life yet he speaks to you with a great amount of familiarity which is just viscerally shocking like a hobo on the street suddenly screaming at you for your sins. 2) In that way where it suddenly reverts you to your 14-year-old self with knee-high pleather black platform boots and (more) blemishes and more heartbreak and hormones than a scifi convention (which is basically where I wanted to be more than anything as a teenager; I would have been a queen). But something snaps and you just become this literally-kind-of psychotic 14-year-old you who wants to get violent. And then you cry at work, which, jesus, that place is full of enough drama... somehow.

And then you don't get home until after 8 because you were wandering around running various some-more-unnecessary-than-other errands, buying too many groceries because it is nice to be in the store and select products for yourself that you may enjoy. A new bra. A good bra is damn hard to find. Do not even get me talking about my breasts in this stupid blog because that is something I am not prepared to do tonight. Ten dollars worth of gummy candy. A small terra-cotta pot and saucer to turn into a garlic roasting device.

In the car between the errands the radio talks and talks and talks