(no subject)
I am on the bus, writing from a laptop a friend loaned me. (Said friend being wonderful, obviously.) It is currently 8:13. This means I am currently 13 minutes late to class.
I set the alarm for 6:00am. The time came, the alarm woke me and I willfully ignored it for about an hour. Not a bad effort considering things. Though, the bus to get me to class on time was scheduled for 7:24, the stop is 15 minutes away from my house and I had to consider the fact that I was still wearing yesterdays clothing. I wasn’t going to make it, and I still didn’t want to get up and go.
I will stress the importance of this class now. It being on at 8:00am has been a problem to me all semester and I’ve missed a lot of them. Its week 13, the typical “go over what will be on the exam” week lecture. N’being as I’ve missed a lot of classes study for this exam is more important than it ordinarily would be.
But I didn’t want to wake up. Oh god no. I think about what I can do to motivate me to get out of the damn bed. I decide its been too long since I’ve worn Lolita, and that it had the potential to make me feel good. I grab a blouse and my red floral bodyline JSK. I start searching for socks. I keep finding different white socks, no pairs. I found about five different singles. Finally I find a pair of white sports socks. I consider "can I wear white sports socks?” and answer myself with “No. That’s got to be one of the stupidest ideas you’ve ever had.” I consider this. The statement came into my head all automatic, unthinking. In my consideration I realize I have an absolutely remarkable ability to exaggerate. “This is absolutely _not_ the stupidest idea I’ve ever had. Spending so much time worrying about socks when I am late to class is also not the stupidest idea I’ve ever had by a long shot, but it is pretty fucking stupid.”
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- Whup. The bus is at uni, to class, to class. I’ll continue this later.
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Continued. My internal monologue was ongoing and at some point some part of me asked some other part of me “can’t you stop berating yourself for like, five minutes?” thankfully I responded with “yes, yes I can stop berating myself. That seems reasonable.”
Throughout this little mind exercise I was still looking for socks of course and I found some, my nice pair of white Angelic Pretty socks. On my feet they went as did my Montreals. I had nothing in my hair, no hat, no adornment and my hair was merely brushed at that, this concerned me, but I didn’t have time to look for the matching bow. As I consider this, a button on my blouse pops. No-one else would notice this since there was a JSK conveniently over the button, but this was irritating all the same. “How can the buttons pop due to the stress of my breasts? MY breasts! I practically don’t HAVE breasts. This is recockulous.* This is fucking stupid. This blouse never used to buckle. Am I gaining weight? Oh I could do with some weight gain actually, this is probably a good thing.” As I thought this, I was tromping back into the bathroom to find a hairpin to keep my blouse together. Finally I went to leave the house. I realized it was bright, and my hungover eyes didn’t like this. See Annie is a bit of a drinker and a fiend. One day the sun goes off brighter than usual. Annie rushes back and grabs a parasol to defend herself. Annie doesn’t like the sun. Not. One. Bit. (Yes, I butchered the quote, but if you care well, fuck you.)
Grabbing the parasol seemed to be a mistake. For starters, it doesn’t actually match anything I’m wearing and secondly I missed my second bus by two minutes and I’m pretty sure I’d have made it if I didn’t go on a parasol run. Still, it made the sun go away and that was fantastic. N’as much as wearing frilly clothing made me late for the second bus, it did actually give me a reason that compelled me to get up in the morning. In short, frills are awesome and the sun isn’t.
So I sit at the bus stop. Spend a bunch of time sittin’ waitin’ for the next bus. I consider “the night before” as I sit there thinkin.’ N’how “the night before” didn’t exactly go as planned. See, the plan was to sit down and get an assignment out of the way. Then the news came on. One of Americas leading abortion doctors was successfully murdered after a bunch of failed attempts. Then the second story was about how 15 Australian dudes were arrested for watching a video of an eight year old girl being raped. N’how they suspect 9000 people across 93 countries have downloaded the video. I kept working, did some more assignmenting. But the thoughts wouldn’t go away. An eight year old girl? “How many eight year old girls are being raped right now?” I thought. “And how many folk are watching eight year old girls being raped right now?” the streams of thoughts kept going. I consider that abortion is illegal in the state I’m in and that sucks. I consider how many women I know, wonderful women at that, have been raped or sexually assaulted. I think this, and I work on my assignment, until I can’t fucking do it anymore. I can’t take it. I think about that old article of Biting Beavers. N'those old words. N'how they resonate so hard. Especially this bit:
"We will die in the same world that we were born into.
All of our fighting and screaming, all of our defending and begging and frustration, all of our anger and sadness will die, impotent and ineffective for we are battling an army, the likes of which we never could have comprehended. We are, for all intents and purposes, trying to empty oceans with teaspoons.
And then we get it, we’re not fighting because we have any hope of any real change in our lifetimes. Hell, we’re not even fighting because we have any hope of change in our grandchildren’s lifetimes; many of us have given up hope at all and are certain that the situation will never really change. So why are we fighting? We’re fighting because what else can we do?"
I think about how if you google Biting Beaver its easier to find the Encyclopedia Dramatica page than it is to find the archive of her writing. N'I consider what Cav said t'me when I told him about the video of the nine year old girl being raped. "9000 hey? Don't let 4chan hear about _that_ one."
N'I think about how useless it all is, how nothing will get better. N'how there will never be a 24-hour truce in which there is no rape. N'how right at this moment how many women are in this country, trafficked in from places like Thailand, and raped, and raped, and raped repeatedly in basements. In a country they don't speak the language. In 1995 there were 300 or so in Sydney. but thats pretty dated and not helpful. How many women are in that situation, in my country right now? How many women in my country are being raped right now?
This is only a summary of the thoughts, there were so many more but I can't put them all into writing. It would take too long, it references too many things I've read, too many prior conversations I've had. The above gives the general idea though. I was thinking about the terrible situation the world is in, and how the world might slowly, slowly, slowly improve but it'll never be good enough for me. People will be abused, oppressed, tortured, traumatized and so on and so forth forever. N'then I downed eight bottles of beer and passed out.
I sat there at the bus stop and reflected on it. "The night before" was pretty hideous, and thinking about it was hideous too. N'I started crying. Subtle like, so the other people waiting for busses wouldn't notice. Am I terribly pretentious and wanky yet? I literaly weep for the state of humanity. Real tears and everything.
N'then, then I go to class. N'now? Now I catch up on the assignment I was supposed to do last night.
"We will die in the same world that we were born into"
*I don’t like this word because it’s a gendered slur relating to dudely genitals, but it was the word that came into my head. Just like sometimes when I’m really angry the first internal phrase is “I want to choke a bitch” and then I realize once more that I’m terrible.