On not catching up (9/5)
I’ve been meaning to finish my posts about my summer vacation; meaning to do it for long enough that it’s becoming just another thing to stress about. I hope I’ll get to it because thinking about those trips does still make me happy. Like it’s been a rough year inside my head, but I’ve tried. I did some fun things.
It’s really hot so I stayed in most of the day feeling mushy and swollen. I went out to get food and groceries for a little bit. I felt crabby; the Grocery Outlet greeter was really going all-out, to the point that the people he greeted did a double take. I quietly seethed, knowing it was mostly the heat and the stress of the whole thing—starting grad school, still just feeling like my dumb self and not someone who can do grad school.
I always like the last few blocks after I pass over from the Mission to Potrero; highway plus trees plus chain link fence plus trash. I never walk on the clean quiet side of the street, even though this side can be messy sometimes. Taking in all the details of the squished sidewalk next to the highway always makes me calm down.
Saw an old friend last week; she told me lots of stuff, but what stuck in my head is a guy helped her break into a port-a-potty at night in a park, because none of the local restaurants would let her use their bathroom. So that’s positive.
Started thinking about another friend, who I’ve talked to lately—just remembering so clearly a visit I made to him 12 years ago, late summer like now, both of us in our early twenties and sweltering. Through a series of unlucky decisions he ended up living alone in a house with no furniture and basically no access to public transit. I was just visiting for a few days but I still remember his routine he showed me. Walk like a mile or two, wait next to some underbrush for a bus, take it for a minute, walk and walk and then take a student shuttle, pretending to be a student who lost your ID (just pretend to be looking in your pockets and finding nothing and begging for forgiveness).
Just thinking about the shitty things you can get stuck doing and how that’s your routine. And how my friend is doing better now and lives in a really nice place. And I do too actually.