Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl by Stacy Pershall

Author:Stacy Pershall [Pershall, Stacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

8

THE TATTOO PEOPLE ask about the most is the Sanskrit that snakes around my neck. It’s a yoga sutra, Vitarka badhane pratipaksha bhavanam, which means, When disturbed by disturbing thoughts, think of the opposite.

I got it to remind me how lucky I am. I got it so that when I’m crying over some stupid breakup or lack of money or whatever passing bullshit is making me cry at the moment, I can look in the mirror and say to myself: Think of the opposite.

The trouble with mania of course, is, that depression always follows.

By the time I came home from London in August of 1989, I was so depressed I could hardly walk from the plane to the car. I was bloated and constipated from eating almost nothing but potatoes for the previous three weeks, a decision driven by a triumvirate of factors: one, they were the only alternative to the meat in the cafeteria, which was either gray or bloody depending on the day; two, I’d run out of money, so I couldn’t afford to eat anywhere but the cafeteria; and three, it was what the aliens wanted me to do, having decided I’d had enough blueberry pie.

When my dad came to the Dallas airport to pick me up, I was all but catatonic. I had a backpack full of books, ticket stubs, and two mismatched shoes that had lost their mates somewhere along the way, and I was wearing the same tattered men’s vest and white dress shirt I’d been wearing when I left. It was as if the trip had never happened. During my last week in London, knowing I was headed home, I assessed the situation and realized I hadn’t changed as much as I’d wanted to. I wasn’t going back to L.A. like Yael or an Ivy League university like Geoff or Africa like Lali. I was returning to Arkansas, where I had to pack up to go to college. I’d been accepted to Hendrix, the same place I’d gone to Governor’s School a year before, and had gotten a full scholarship to cover my tuition. Even though it was four hours away from home, it was still in Arkansas. I’d applied and been accepted to Tulane, in New Orleans, where I wanted to go because it was Phil’s alma mater. Though I’d spent my senior year applying for every scholarship I could find, the sum total of what I received was not enough that I could afford to attend school there. As I listened to my friends in London talk about Harvard and UCLA and Brown, I knew there was still a world of difference between us—they had money and came from a place where it was expected that one would go to a good school. When I told Yael I would be the first person on either side of my family to get a college education, she said, “No way,” and proceeded to ask me if most people in Arkansas were illiterate. “Are you weird there because you wear shoes?” she asked.

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