a choppy salutation

i don't know who you are or if you'll know me. or if you think you already know me. or if there's anything to know, really... or so much of nothing that it just seems like things or somes. the sum, perhaps, of all things.

i have trouble with this. i have trouble writing these days unless it's to somebody, so i'll suppose i'm writing to a some body or a body somewhere, to a who, wherever...

and i can barely keep my own words straight right now
because i'm listening to pandora radio
[distracting]


like i said i have trouble unless i'm writing to a somebody, and i guess my problem right now is that i'm running out of bodies to sum. i'm running out of readers, out of dear's and sincerely's. so i'll start at another beginning:







name: stephanie dignan
age: 24.5
hair//eyes: brown//blue
current location: vinton, iowa


it would be too scrambled if i simply wrote. there's so much that came before this moment... i couldn't possibly fit it all-- and wouldn't want to.
right now? right now i'm in a room with two americorps team leaders and i'm dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. mocassins. since iowa doesn't plow, even if i was to go outside, there'd be no roads to take me anywhere.
last night... last night i got quietly drunk on company and lime flavored soda water that was supposed to have vodka in it. came home to my roommate who always listens, and ate a burrito in bed talking about
yesterday. yesterday was spent in third-floor offices (administrative offices). i've established a colorful File for myself in this program... with disciplinary reports ranging from smuggled baby bunnies hidden in the dorms to a nose ring i wouldn't cover. i was told i'd never get anywhere if i didn't learn to follow rules, and not just the rules i wanted to follow. i was told i better shape up or ship out, and that i don't have any respect for my team leader "as a person". i'm thinking she may be right. i was told by a friend that i wasn't made for institutions, and that as long as i tried to squeeze myself into their confines i'd never be able to breathe. and i'm thinking she may be right.

i'm 6 months into a 10 month program and have been happy for none of it. for the most part, this campus believes me to be an unsociable, negative, isolated bitch. and i don't so much mind living up t0 that. i'm always giving people what they want. what i know they want, when often they don't even realize they want it.

last night, too, a girl i've only ever seen in the hallways:
"we want to be your friend! we're just intimidated by you... you don't seem, you're not really... very sociable... smile at us! be nice to us, we like you!"

it was strange and she was drunk. as she patted me on the head and shook my hand over and over, apologizing and telling me the nickname they have for me "the Queen L" i felt like a socially estranged pseudo celebrity.

i'm just not really that friendly
...
but i won't be a jerk if you're nice to me

i probably won't change my ways. too many lunches eaten in high school bathroom stalls, too many bullies and mean girls. too much hurt.



[i have too many scars to just start walking around naked.]



although i came to iowa hoping for a fresh start, i still don't smile to strangers in the hall, and i still don't know more than 80% of this corps' names. won't know them, either. unless they introduce themselves drunkenly in a bar and beg me to be nice to them.

upon waking this morning to my alarm that doesn't know what a weekend is,
i realized that i don't trust. it would seem when you met me that i'm all too trusting. because i'm gullible, or because i let you hurt me... but the truth is i probably just very badly want to be able to believe you (and you prove i can't) ...and i probably always expected you to hurt me.

i'm incredibly scattered. this week has not run a track expected.

on tuesday, three martinis in she asks: what keeps you going?
hope, i say. even though that seems so stupid. i have hope things are going to be ok. eventually. like one day i'll be skinny, and i'll find love, and i'll be ok.
she's judging me, i can tell. she keeps to cosmos and i'm drinking a naughty school girl with a stale blow pop at the bottom.
i don't know, i say. what keeps me going? the little things. this. a lot of really little things strung together. little things.
yah, you're depressed, she says.
i take a sip of my drink and realize it's just another lilly pad.


i wish i could leave this place. but i'm too scared.
i have nowhere to go. like i said, they don't plow the roads...
maybe that's a good thing,
because if they did
i'd have no excuse to stay.