Displacement Issues

Do you know what I woke up thinking about?  Camping!  Urrrrgh!  WTH?  My subconscious slept on the wrong side of the bed!  Clearlllly!  We’re sohhh not on speaking terms right now!  If there is one thing that I don't miss?  Not one bit.  Is my parents ignoring the fact that they bought me a bed!  And placed it in a warm room right next to our own bath!  Thank goodness we have the ability to grow.  Up.  And say, "You know what?  NO…Torment is for criminals!  Tie my hands behind my back and feed me olives rather!  At least that way I can use my lip muscles to make your life difficult!!"  To give credit where credit is due?  Even though I wished really hard that I wasn't.  We were alive.  While we camped.  That's always fun!    

But for years I never knew what our neighbourhood looked like over Easter and New Year!  Instead we spent those holidays surrounded by both very sober and extremely drunk strangers, and I call some family members, strangers because a few of them turn into someone I don't recognise when they’re drunk.  I can barely keep up with one personality per person.  When the Old Year turned into the New Year, everybody starts banging pots and pans up and down the dusty road between the row of tents!  I’d be asleep in the tent, begging the air, “Just…just shoot me now!”  Like the air had a gun?!?!  Kids, I telya!  The things they believe when they’re desperate!  And I wasssss desperate.  Even a bullet wound woulda offered me solace!  

Feel like I'm about to work through my own "ocean" issues.  What's an acceptable hourly rate for working through your own issues?  Maybe a new pair of boots?  I dunno.  We’re gonna have to negotiate a fair exchange, me and I.  I mean?  Fall asleep on the mattress?  And that’s after the trauma of bathing!  Omg…Starting to sweat!  O_O!  Wake up on the grass because seventeen more people who didn't come with us decided to have a sleepover in our tent!  Hogging our blankets.  While the residents freeze on the grass, not knowing at which point during the night they were either pushed off or just rolled off at their own peril!  Do you know what that does to a person?  Not knowing at which point they were pushed off the mattress or whether they rolled off themselves?  You're stuck between being okay with it, and being angry with someone else!  That uncertainty?  It's draining!  Hoping you weren't laying on an ant heap!  In your sleep, you're asking yourself how you got there!  Still having to hope, "Please don't let me be sleeping on a heap of ants?!?" 

And then all that sand.  Uuuuurgh!  My teeth are attempting to retreat deep into my gums right now.  I can taste the grains!  Too much sand on the beach!  Even in the ocean!  Sand that's looking for a new home in your crotch!  Ewwwwwwwwww!  That's just the worst kinda sand!  Sand with displacement issues!  Those grains should see Doctor Rambler, I'm getting good at sorting out issues!  The city really needs to think about cementing a portion of the sea for people like me.

One year it rained!  You’re trying to tell me that our parent’s didn’t see the thick, black clouds before we left home?  NeeeeeO!  I bet they didn’t even bother looking at the sky that Thursday!  Every bit of our clothing got soaked!  We sat soggy and miserable in the car, while the tent put its hands behind its head, like, "Ahhhhhhhhhh!  Just what I needed today!  Space!"  A-HA!  This has to be why I don't like rain!  Mannnnnn, I'm on a roll today!  I'm digging deep within my past and successfully unravelling my issues with wet things.  First the wet sand, and now, the wet….rain.   

The only thing that I looked forward to was taking a walk along the shore for hours by myself to collect breasts!  I mean shells!  Shells!  I didn’t find the pointy ones!  And I didn’t put two into my bathing suit and pretend that I'd grown breasts in the time it took for me to get from the tent to the shore and back!  I didn’t.  Not one time did I do that!  You’ve got the wrong girl!  It's her!  Not me!  Do not defame my character!  And you're like, "GASSSSSSSP!"  Oh please!  Don't sit there and pretend as if you didn't do that!  You know that we even had spares!  A set of breasts for everyday in case we lost one or both while we slept…cold, itchy and hopeful!  

Asking myself why people say, don’t sit there and pretend?  I find that very closed minded and jumping to conclusion-tious!  Like it’s just assumed that one can’t lean over…and pretend or do a cartwheel…and pretend.  Yet, we pretend in so much that we do!  Paying bills?  We pretend to be happy about giving someone else our money.  Offered second helpings of a dinner you really enjoyed and want more of?  Pretend to be full!  Get out of bed?  Pretend to be energetic about it.  Asked what condoms are used for by a three year old?  Pretend not to faint!  I was just so tired!

I just realized that I’m sitting here (and I am sitting!) trying to prove myself wrong, because I did just say…don’t sit there and pretend, and now my argument is getting rather heated, with me. 

I’m like, “Why do people say that?” 

I respond, “You tell me.  You’re the one who said it!” 

I come back with, “You have a big mouth, you know that!?” 

I counter, “Hmmmmmpf!  That makes two of us!” 

I close with, “Shut up!” 

……………………..silence