alexandra ewing is on the internet.

What I would do with my Powerball winnings

(an update to last year’s MegaMillions post)

• Buy my parents homes (probably separately, because I think that would make them happier, but who knows, money changes things).
• Buy my parents new cars.
• Buy my brother a car.
• Buy my aunt and uncle in Yonkers a beach house, probably down the shore, maybe in North Carolina.
• Buy my parents a beach house.
• Pay for my brother’s college education, and flying lessons, and maybe an apartment somewhere, if he wants one.
• Give every member of my family who has helped out my family a million dollars.
• Try to locate my old co-workers from LnT191 and give them each a million dollars.
• Give all my co-workers at DT1657 a million dollars-ish. (Less for the ones I don’t like.)
• Pay off all my friends’ debts and assure them that throughout our lives I will have their backs when they need it.
• Pay for any degrees they are pursuing.
• Give all of them money too.
• Give various people I love/admire on the internet money to invest in their dream jobs or get health care or even just buy beer, I guess, because it’s really not my decision.
• Give various teachers I’ve had enough money to retire.
• Set up some kind of renewed PGSA, and definitely hire back Doug Woods.
• Pay for all the plastic surgery and health care my mother wants/needs.
• Offer the same to my father, conditional on seeing a therapist.
• Pay for my brother and I to get perfect teeth.
• Take my mother on one of the Viking River Cruises advertised before Downton Abbey.
• Set up a scholarship at a fancy medical school for future abortion providers.
• Travel.
• Purchase myself an apartment in a busy city.
• Buy myself a Vitamix.
• And a pair of Ferragamo Varas.
• And the Miu Miu cat shoes duh.
• Invest enough to provide a future for myself and any family I choose to have, and the same for my brother.
• Pull a Luke Snyder and set up a charitable foundation for the rest because it’s still too much money to have and, like my co-worker C said tonight, I don’t want to end up murdered by my own family for my fortune.

At work, she came over to me when she came in and said “I need a hug.”

So I held her for longer than I’ve ever held the friends I’ve had since middle school and rubbed her back, and after awhile I said, “I’m always so happy to see you.”

Sometimes I just wish I could do more.

Pearls

I am always surprised when someone wants to be my friend. I think of last year, meeting K in class, thinking she was confident and stylish and gorgeous and funny and smart, and when we became friends after a few classes, I couldn’t understand why she wanted to spend time with me when everyone else proved a better option. Online, I tell myself, don’t come on too strong, don’t seem too excited, don’t be desperate for friendships, don’t tell people you think they are amazing. I fail, often, and then feel the anxiety run over. Then when I am too quiet, I realize that I seem snobby, or cold, or too good for people, when all I feel is inadequate.

I don’t know why I am thinking about this, why my mind drifted here. I can’t sleep. Lately I fall asleep slowly, and then twist and turn all night, wake up with my sheets ripped from the mattress and wrapped around my throat. I set my alarm for too early, and still wake up before it. Last week I dreamt someone tried to pry my jaws apart and the pain was so real I woke up, mouth aching. (Grinding my teeth again.)

I don’t think there is a point of conclusion here. I am too tired to be clever, or even pretend to be clever. Oh another thing—everything I do, I halve. I cannot be clever, I can pretend to be clever. I don’t think something, I feel it. There are no facts; there are just kind-of sort-ofs. Why?

I wonder where K is now, if her sister is well, if she ever made it to New York for her 30th birthday, if she ever got back together with her girlfriend with the dragonfly tattoo, if she remembers the oysters we ate over happy hour. One of them arrived at the table and she called the waiter over. “I mean, is this really an oyster?” she asked, raised an eyebrow. It was a bitsy thing. The waiter looked it over, and then admitted no, it was not really an oyster. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and came back with a bigger one. I admire that attitude. She was not rude or aggressive, just forthright.

I can’t get the police scanner to load. My friend Katherine, who is at BU, wrote on Twitter, “I want to go home. Words I have literally never said in the past three years.” I can’t remember the last time I was worrying so hard for someone. I can’t remember the last time I honestly felt like the world was falling apart.

My mother’s best friend is moving to Florida. It’s a very good opportunity for her. Pennsylvania has only brought misery.

Her son goes to bed at 7 o’clock (I cannot fathom that), so we’re having her over for “dinner” at four o’clock. This is approximately three and a half to five hours before when we would normally eat. I worked during the morning, but when I came home, I helped to clean up. My father is making dinner, which gives him an excuse (not that he ever needs one) to be miserable and snap at people.

My mother asked if she could get into the kitchen when he took a break to sit down and he responded unkindly. “So grumpy!” I said, surprised. (I don’t know why I am still surprised anymore.) Then he repeated what my mother said, mockingly, and I told him it was very rude, and he got self-satisfyingly self-pitying about how he can never be right in this family and complained about my brother, who was in the process of coming home from a job interview, and I explained why my brother did this thing he did eight months ago and my father got snide and I told him to go fuck himself, that he is 62 years old, and I’m not going to baby him.

We stopped talking for a bit, and I went back to cleaning, and then when my mother left to pick my brother up from the train station, I thought he cut himself on a knife and came to help and we started talking again, but only barely, and not about what I had said.

I see my father in every man I meet. They are all selfish, they are all mean, they are all ready to belittle you. My father thinks we have a good relationship because he usually treats me pretty well, but I have a lifetime of memories where he walked all over my mother. How can you respect a man who doesn’t respect your mother? And he married her.

A friend of mine and I were speaking last week and he said something to the effect of not being afraid to offend me because he knows I’ll laugh and then truly consider what he said and I laughed and thought, “Because you’re so fucking wise? Where do you get off?”

If I ever marry a man like my father, I hope everyone will tell me to divorce him.

If I ever become my father, I hope everyone will tell me so I can kill myself.