Monday, January 21, 2013

Seclusion: A Continually Elusive Desire

The noise bothers me still. These thin walls don't allow for much silence. The house seems made for eavesdropping. I need time and more time to read. I need to concentrate more. I would like to focus. I listen to music or Youtube videos to drown out the noises here. My father working from home, taking calls, doing his job from his basement. He gets offended, or lonely I guess, if you don't say something to him everyday. He says I'm withdrawing into myself and becoming distant. The closer truth is that I like being by myself more than around him at times. Withdrawing when conflict looms is not a weakness but a strength.

The coughs of these people, these smokers, still reach my ears. I'm not like them in that I don't smoke, or that I don't know my place. They have jobs and wives and ex-wives, things to do with their days to make ends meet. I'm just here for now, trying to figure out what I want to do. Sometimes it seems these people never have days off. My father is home a lot, but he complains that his job is so hard. I realize he may always be on call, but how hard can a job be that can be done from the garage of his own home?

He doesn't always stay here, but there are days he does. Days I'm off from school, I wish that no one were here. I just want a day to myself. I want a day to be able to think without all their voices and coughs and marital problems and grandkids. Should I have kids now? "Why aren't you married?," someone once asked me. I haven't met anyone willing to marry me who I would rather not just be alone than with them?

Talking still my father. He's solving problems from the basement. Good work if you can get it, I guess. Should I go to graduate school like I want or get a job like some people are telling me to do? The phone is charged. My remedial class phone is nice to stay in touch with people, though there are some I wish didn't have the number. I love texting. It seems so simple and is a nice way to stay in touch without having to talk on the phone. Talking is okay, but texting seems so simple.

Thank goodness, it sounds like a car is starting. Two are here still, but one less soon it seems.

...
Some have left now or are quiet. Another boarder remains: the cougher. He awakes and coughs. Cursing and mumbling to himself, he seems to hold conversations with people who aren't there. "Why doesn't he f-ing answer his phone?," he seems to say to no one in particular. Cursing and mumbling still, he trudges about the house, making more noise. I've manage to finish a bit of a book.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Reflections of Desired Solitude (Blog)


 I sit here on the couch, studying for school, just having listened to her confess, hearing the boarder in the other room, sounding like he's dying, coughing his head off. I can't escape the sounds of other people living here. I come in my room, and I can almost hear everything my Dad and his other friend and boarder are saying. I realize I have it good, but I'd like some solitude.
My dad plans his life financially around his friends living here. He buys as many lottery tickets as he wants. Buys whatever else he wants, because he has extra money, because the other people who live here pay most of his bills. Sure, they are slaves to his emotional will and are pretty much obligated to hang out with him; I kind of think that's why he keeps them around. My dad doesn't keep friends; they don't put up with the way he treats them unless they have to. He expects his friends to be a certain way. You want to tell him that nobody's perfect including himself and to get over it.
I know my friends aren't perfect. They don't approve of everything I do, or don't do; don't approve of the women I have crushes on or pine over. There aren't really that many of them, no matter what you say. Still, now, at 11pm I hear the sounds of someone moving in the other room. I think I'd just like to live on my own a while, or with people I chose to, anyway. This being stuck with a crew of my dad's cronies is becoming tiresome.
My dad lets me live here, pays for things for me, too, I realize. I just need a place that I can make a life that doesn't involve him as much. It's okay for him to be in my life, but I'm surrounded by him, by his friends, by the people he lets leach off him. The cougher I mention is not that bad; I'd almost say he was being taken advantage of more than he was a user. He pays way too much rent to live in a converted den. That's his business, though he does keep it like a pig sty. I went in there before, and there was literally a pile of trash on the bed. No exaggeration: a pile of actual trash on the bed. And his grooming habits leave something to be desired. Once or twice a week he showers, if we're lucky. 
Now the rain falls outside, hitting the window, and I start to get a little peace it seems. I've slept a lot int the middle of the day, and I may not sleep tonight. Snacking on individual packets of cookies, Pringles, Hawaiian Punch bottles. It's not a bad life I know, but I want more. I want to have a car and drive and take a girl to the movies, or better yet a bookstore or museum, not just shenanigans in the back of her friend's car. (Fun though that was.) 
I want to have my own place and be able to invite people over without having to worry about one of the boarders here walking around without a shirt on in just his boxers, chatting up the woman who's spending the night. Or having the cougher drool openly to see an attractive women half his age in the house. I want to be able to entertain on a Saturday night, or have the Super Bowl at my house and not worry about everyone here smoking and not being able to invite friends over who don't. 
Sitting here just short of midnight, reading literary theory. This is what I signed up for, and it's delightful. I really do think I want to go to graduate school. It's a bad reason if it's just because I like school, but maybe it will further my career. Some people say it won't, but how can it hurt. I just need to get the money together and apply and get the right tests taken. I know I'm smart enough and hard-working enough to do it.
Drinking Dr. Peppers, too, in vast quantities, to stay awake, and because they taste good. One of my first girlfriends liked them, too. She still talks to me, sweet girl that she is, sends me a text of "Happy New year" every year, when I have a phone.