mystery!

forty-two is false.

forty-two

yes.

Distance

I feel like the 20 years of support I got from my parents were a lie. I feel like it was conditional, like it was dependent on my status as a science overachiever. and now that I've walked away willingly, become someone they didn't ask for, they don't really give a shit anymore.

Day 17- highs and lows of the year

2011 isn't over yet, so that's cheating. (so is skipping days, but whatever)

In 2010 I was a junior and then a senior in college. I was 20. I went on dates. I was in a shitty relationship and I had a good job. I had wonderful friends. I was in the Vagina Monologues.

One of my highs is that I solidified my social and political beliefs (as they are now). I met people like me and emulated them, but I also learned from some new friends with different experiences. I became a lot more independent, partially because I was sure of myself and my beliefs. I learned my way around Rochester. I got my first piercing.

Lows: the week I spent in Rochester that summer: expensive and traumatic. New Years' eve was boring and emblematic of why I hate my hometown. I was worried about what to do with life; what direction to take. My confidence meant arguing even more with my parents.

sure, i'm writing my paper

I'm just in awe. When I look at you smiling over your latest heavenly creation I can see the girl in your pictures, smiling and apprehensive and young, and I can see your eyes lighting up when you're looking at a cookbook, analyzing it for content and design.

make my skin crawl

A conversation I had today about family expectations got me thinking. Some amount of time after I came out to my dad, I remember sitting with him in my family room, across from each other in the two armchairs. We had been talking about grad school or my major or something, and he said something I'll never forget. "I don't care who you marry, or whatever, just as long as you can take care of yourself, be self-sufficient."

This was maybe my junior year of college, and I remember being so relieved that he was expressing support for this being-gay business that I didn't even contemplate anything else. But I guess it sums up his point of view--the main goal is to be self-sufficient. To be able to take care of myself. I like that he expected his daughters to do this, and I like that he was straightforward with me about his beliefs.

At the same time, though, I wish there were a little less pressure. In his family especially, success is measured in dollar signs and digits. It's measured in job security and ability to network and the freedom to take time off for "the things you really love." My aunt recently asked me what my "earning potential" would be by next August. I couldn't find the words to explain to her that I'm more concerned with things besides that number.

I'm coming from a position of privilege: my parents are married and my dad has had (officey) work consistently since he graduated from college. My mom's job paid for pool memberships and summer camp and new clothes and all the things that I took for granted as a kid. They have good credit and they sent us to college, mostly due to financial responsibility and saving.

But is that really it? Is a house in the suburbs with bed frames for the kids I'm not planning to have really all I should be shooting for? I wasn't any happier back when somebody bought me American Eagle t-shirts every couple of months. More presents under the Christmas tree didn't keep my mom and me from arguing, and they didn't keep her from arguing with my grandmother either. My dog was a fancy purebred, but we didn't love him because we could trace his ancestry back through decades of champions--we loved him because he was glad to see us when we came home.

arrogance

Mr. Employee and Mr. Team Leader, you just talked about why you kicked out some guy who was trying to use the wireless internet. "Everyone should have to work retail and a factory job at some point," you said. "Campers, they come in here and don't buy anything and use the internet all day. It's insulting."

Yeah, well, if you're working for minimum wage, sometimes you can't afford Time Warner, and sometimes you can't afford overpriced salads and espresso, either. Minus bandwidth problems, the internet is not exactly a nonrenewable resource. I can see five empty tables on this side of the building, so it's not like us campers are taking up someone else's space. So let it go.

Day 14- earliest memory

New Jersey, circa 1992: walking up the wood-paneled hallway in my parents' house. There was a half-wall, and on the other side was my plastic play kitchen. I remember the carpet and the couch, too, but I don't have any memory of events, just the place.

My oldest memory in which I remember something actually happening was also in Jersey, probably '92 or '93: falling face-first into a pile of snow that my dad was trying to help me climb. I think I was on the sidewalk, and the grass from my yard was a foot higher, kind of on top of a stone wall. He was trying to boost me over, and I fell. I remember my vision going blurry for a second, then getting up.

calmer now

I'm freaking the FUCK out. i'm aware that I'm not handling it especially well and I'm aware that it's not anybody's fault.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I don't know that I can make myself do work anymore and I don't know how I'm going to afford grad school and I don't know if my parents are going to deliver on their promise to bring furniture. I am afraid of becoming dependent on another person. It makes me feel guilty and ashamed, even though it shouldn't if that person treats me right.

I don't know how to sort through my own values to plan for my future. Sara my old therapist told me that I could tell the difference between my values and my dad's, and I believe her--I just have to listen to myself.

I'm jealous of the authors of all those dumb lesbian books who said fuck it, I'll write and live and work and make something of myself. They seem so free, so unafraid.

The look in my eyes that I'm sure was there last night was just me trying to calm the fuck down. Your fears and worries sound so much like mine that sometimes my inner voice jumps in and echoes. Then it's hard to stay in the moment--to do anything besides freak out. I don't have answers, and I don't like it. I want to say something more substantial than "it'll be all right," because it will, but that doesn't necessarily make it easier to sleep at night.

The other thing is that it's sad. I feel powerless to help myself sometimes, stuck, and I don't wish that feeling on anyone, especially you. I feel like I can't help you either, or even provide decent advice, because I'm there too, and then I feel like I'm not being supportive enough. (this makes me sound like one of those annoying masculine-type overthinking solvers)

Day 13- Somewhere I'd like to move or visit

I no longer harbor the desire to run away from my life by moving somewhere far away. I would like to attribute this to a new maturity and ability to deal with my problems instead of just leaving, but realistically, it's that I fought tooth and nail to survive and eventually find happiness in the city I ran away to in the first place.

I guess I'm also afraid of becoming too static, of staying here for too long and not "fulfilling my potential" or whatever, but I know I have to leave eventually.

I made a list of places I'd like to see when I was flying back from Europe. Let's see if I can remember them all:
Cinque Terre in Italy
the pyramids in Egypt
Scotland
Sicily
more cities in Spain
San Francisco
a Women's World Cup game, anywhere
the Amazon Rainforest
the Great Barrier Reef
Mayan ruins
Chicago

As far as where I'd like to live, I'm not ready to contemplate "where I want to end up." It's too final and too dependent on other factors. But I definitely want to move somewhere else after this year. Somewhere near the ocean, any ocean, for sure.

Last night

I dreamed that everything was on fire. I was in a place like Venice, with water in places where you’d expect grass. There were dolphins, and I think that’s how it got started: Steph told me that if I called the dolphins over to me, using some kind of tool maybe, it would start a fire. Somehow I knew that I had done this before, and that things would happen exactly the same way if I did it again (Harry Potter time-travel style—it was the same event that I could see twice). It was bright sunset light, and I did whatever this thing was that called a dolphin. I played with the dolphin for a few minutes, and I was sitting on a wide stone staircase with a bunch of other people.

My sister decided she wanted to get a soda from the store across the street, but before she got there, it lit on fire. The fire was starting to spread, and my dad was yelling at me, but I couldn’t hear him. My sister and a bunch of people that we had been sitting with—a bunch of butchy lesbians—got up to start fighting the fire. I knew already that it would end just fine, and this girl April I know would come out telling stories about how she had literally chucked balls of flaming charcoal or something into the water with her bare hands. I wasn’t worried, but I wanted to help. I waded across the street to the outside of the store and started taking things from people inside that the store owner wanted to save: board games and food and stuff.

At one point I walked away to throw something in the trash, and ran into a girl I went to elementary school with. Her name was Kristen and she had long dark hair. She wanted to know why I wasn’t worried, since my sister was in there fighting the fire, but I couldn’t explain that I had seen this event before. So I walked away and continued carrying things for people.

*

I guess I could interpret this to mean that I know that everything is crazy right now, and some things are unstable, but that I'm also aware that I can get through it. and that I know my strengths?

Day 12- Bullet your day

Okay, it's July 23, 2011.

• At midnight I was throwing everything I wanted to pack into a pile on my bedroom floor in my parents' house. I had clothes folded neatly into vacuum bags...or at least, about 1/3 of the clothes that I needed to bring back.
• Started actually putting things into my backpack and suitcase
• Decided I was going to need a third bag, and started unearthing my old gym bag from its hiding place in the coat closet
• Dumped gluten-free food products into the gym bag. It's mostly cake mixes and granola and stuff.
• Commenced freakout that I had too much stuff
• Remembered that I hadn't finished eating dinner (microwave Thai noodles; I really had it together) because I was freaking out over fighting with my parents
• Freaked out a little more, and found more stuff to pack.
• Around 1 I finally finished eating
• Packed more, showered, and went to bed at like 2:15am
• My alarm went off at 6am. Snoozed.
• 6:05: out of bed (see, I'm getting better!) Packed laptop and charger, phone and charger, and continued squeezing stuff into my suitcase
• 6:20: got dressed and doused my bedhead in the shower
• 6:30 to 7: repacked suitcase so it would actually close; abandoned clothes hangers but not the textbook I want to sell back
• 7 to 7:30: ate breakfast and made powdered-sugar-coffee
• 7:30: OHSHITi'mleavingin15minutes: packed "lunch" and shoved all my other crap into my backpack. Got stuck wearing a hoodie despite 95-degree temperatures.
• 7:45: entered car
• 7:46: returned to house for water bottle
• 7:47: departed Melissa Ct. with Dad driving
• 8:10: arrived at SEPTA station
• 8:10-8:20: uncomfortable conversation with Dad about how it's okay to tell them about problems I'm having, too, and general attempts at reassuring me/encouraging me not to fuck up further
• 8:20: Andrea and her 4 bags board the train
• 8:22: realized that hoodie clashes with shorts.
• 8:25: the 8:22 train departs Doylestown
• On the train I finished compiling a list of Europe expenses so Steph and I can properly split the costs. Then I looked at my pictures and tried to write.  Made a little progress. Texted.
• 9:40: arrived at Market East train station in Philly with 4 bags. Successfully remembered to get the duffel off the luggage shelf.
• 9:50: found Greyhound station, 1/3 block from the SEPTA station. Discovered that yes, it is also really hot in Philly.
• 9:50-10:03: stood in line to pick up will-call tickets.
• 10:05-10:50: Sat on my suitcase, surrounded by other bags, in very dignified fashion. Watched people in the Philly Greyhound station: overwhelmingly unwashed.
• 10:50: friendly gay man with Spanish accent demonstrates how nice it is to be tall and friendly: he asked me where I was going and reported that the bus to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton was in fact boarding.
• 10:51: ran down the platform to the bus
• 10:55: got called a lady, as in "son, move out of the way so this lady can board"
• 11:00-2:00: sat on bus. Napped, wrote my thesis, facebooked, bummed around.
• 2pm: deposited with bags in Scranton bus station, which is sadly becoming a familiar locale.
• 2pm-3:20pm: wrote, stared into space, charged laptop, drank overpriced  starbucks coffee drink from vending machine
• 3:20pm: "hmm, I wonder if the bus is here"
• 3:23pm: boarding announcement. hauled crap to bus and got on.
• 4:15: bus stops at McDonalds in the middle of nowhere. Resisted urge to buy french fries.
• 6:35: bus finally arrives  in Syracuse. Fight down carsickness, walk around building, and see a very pretty girl--who waves and walks in my direction. Success.
• Arrive in Rochester, at some point
• Made coconut-ginger-mystery vegetable rice
• Went to a wine-racking party at my roommate's boyfriend's apartment and met cool people (oh, and got lost on RIT's campus)
• Drank wine
• Slept in my own bed with my girlfriend!

Day 11- iPod randoms

I hate shuffle, but here we go.

1. Slow Pony Home-  The Weepies (skipped- sooooo not in the mood. I'm going back to Rochester and I'm hyper)
2. I'm Gonna Find Another You- John Mayer (ew. sucks and reminds me of a miserable breakup. skipped)
3. Come So Far- Hairspray soundrack (catchy! I downloaded the whole thing from a friend my freshman year and never listened to it. but....skipping. corny)
4. Homebird- Foy Vance, Grey's Anatomy soundtrack (I would probably like this song if I listened to the whole thing. it's calming. I haven't heard it in years!)
5. Rain City- Turin Brakes (from one of Steph's road trip mixes, I think. it's a little too rhymey for the moment, but I'd fall asleep to it)
6. An early chapter of an audiobook I downloaded from the library. It's probably junk lit and it's called Deep Dish. (next!)
7. End of the Beginning- the Rembrandts (ickkkk. i bought the album on a whim because they sing the FRIENDS theme song)
8. Don't Stop- Fleetwood Mac (finally something I like!)
9. The Handshake- MGMT (listened to this one too)
10. Heal Me- Melissa Etheridge (hahahahaha ughhhh)

Back to my regularly scheduled pop/Tegan and Sara marathon.

Day 10- First love and first kiss

I was eighteen when I had my first kiss, with a girl who categorically only dates really butch lesbians. This is what I looked like that summer.















I don't know why I'm making that face, but...all of her girlfriends are the type with inch-long hair and baseball caps and baggy jeans. Needless to say, we went on three dates and gave that up real fast. Later I found out that in the stories she told other people, our first-date peck on her driveway when I dropped her off became that we "hooked up," and our interactions for the rest of that summer became "that I got attached." It also turned out that she's absolutely batshit. But my first kiss was sweet. We walked around town and went to a diner. She took me to Walgreens and gave me a corny plush flower, and we sidewalk-chalked in the middle of the night. I dropped her off at her house and it was just a peck on the lips, but I was a kid and it was a huge deal at the time.

Love. I mean, there's teenage love, where you don't have to be in an actual relationship with them, but there's still that attachment, and then there's give-and-take, honest-with-each-other grown-up love. There's more to that last one than that, but honestly, I don't have the words. That first kind, I've had. My first one was a girl from a town about 40 minutes from my parents' house. We were "involved," on and off, from the summer before my sophomore year through my posts about needing a big sister this past winter. There were big gaps and other relationships, but it was this tortured long-distance mutual pining, texting-all-the-time mess. We had a couple of fights and there were a couple of times that we almost got together, but it was mostly a cycle of longing, brokenheartedness, and hope. I never really told her how I felt, though, that at some points there were a lot of good things between us. I never opened up about it at a good time, and at some point I figured out that that's where I went wrong. But I guess I learned to do that-- to be honest and to go for things.

Sometimes I feel like I have a handle on the real love thing, knowing what it means. I think I get it a little better now. It doesn't mean forever and it doesn't mean things are perfect but it means...something big.

Day 8- A moment you felt most satisfied with your life

July 11, 2011. I was sitting in a restaurant, literally under the Duomo, which is this fabulously pretty church in Florence, Italy, eating delicious authentic Italian gluten-free pizza. I realized that Steph and I managed to save up for this trip and find pizza I could eat, and that I had a wonderful girlfriend to miss and a job I felt good about to come back to.

Day 7- Your zodiac sign and whether it fits your personality

I don't have much interest in this stuff, but I can do google and I can do introspection, so here goes.


Aquarius Strength Keywords:
- Witty
- Clever
- Humanitarian
- Inventive
- Original

Aquarius Weakness Keywords:

- Stubborn
- Unemotional
- Sarcastic
- Rebellious
- Aloof


Humanitarian and original, I'll take. Clever and original, sure, I guess. As for witty? Ehh. I'm definitely rebellious and a little bit stubborn about some things. But I'm very emotional and generally the opposite of aloof. I'm about as sarcastic as the average person, I guess, unless I'm around my wifey. So, fail.

mammal-shaped holes in my heart

I don't want to be here. Every cell in my body is itching, screaming at me to run out, to get away, while I still have a little dignity and self-respect.

Melodramatic, sure. But honestly, out of the time spent in this house, 50% involves missing my dog to the point of distraction, 30% involves arguing with various family members, and 10% involves missing my friends and doing not much else.

Regarding said puppy: the emptiness is literally visible--no furry friend on my floor, no matter how many rooms I search--and metaphorically crushing.

My parents seem to be out to erode my hard-won self-respect, and my sister's, too.

This is the crushing-loneliness stage. It'll pass.

tomorrow will be better

I ache because my friends and my girlfriend are so far away, and because this house is so full of anger. I would want my puppy because he was comforting and company.

I ache because my puppy is not here. I want my puppy whenever I'm sad, really, and I'm sad because he's not here. The house feels empty.

I ache because my puppy is gone gone gone and death is not something I can even wrap my mind around.

I am in the habit of looking on the floor for my dog whenever I enter a room in this house. Every time I get up to move, I steel myself for the pain of not finding him. Then something catches my attention for a split second, and I keep walking, and I turn the corner or open the door and look for my buddy, and then...emptiness.

This house is a rough place to be this week.

Day 6- 30 facts about yourself

1. I want two tattoos: a back piece that looks like the line of ocean water as a wave comes up the shoreline, and a half-sleeve of a sunrise. Both in full color and stylistically like...pastels. (also, I can't describe tattoos especially well.) I also want my left lower helix pierced with a tiny silver hoop.

2. I skipped kindergarten. I've been a year younger than my classmates since I was five. I was also third in my high school class of almost 500. Numba three does not get any recognition.

3. Facing the challenge of coming out was the best thing that could have happened to me when I was 17 and 18. I learned to stand up for myself.

4. I love the ocean: the colors, the waves, the sun, the shapes, the plants.

5. I've tried rugby, crew, badminton, tennis and jogging, and given up on most of them. I did play soccer for 10 years, though, and I want to try hockey.

6. I tend to go for androgynous-ish people, and girls with curves.

7. I love jewelry and accessories more than anyone really should. I could look at little silver earrings all day.

8. I feel lonely almost all of the time that I'm by myself.

9. Spiders, centipedes, roaches, and most other icky bugs squick me out. Ants and moths are just fine, though.

10. Speaking of being squicked-out, the worst thing for me is mutant fruit. Colossal multi-lobed strawberries? Double grapes? fruit-inside-fruit? EWWWWWWWWWWWW. words cannot describe.

11. I love desserts involving apple or pumpkin. I'm not a huge chocolate fan, but I crave milk chocolate on occasion.

12. I have a ridiculously fast metabolism. It slowed down briefly when I was about 15 or 16, but besides those few months, I've been like a small furry animal. I eat every couple of hours. Like, as kids we used to have "morning snack" in the four-hour period between breakfast and lunch. If I miss a meal, I become a lethargic, grouchy, sad mess. I have never technically weighed enough to donate blood.

13. My lucky number is supposed to be three. I remember this in conjunction with the number 13 because when we got soccer jerseys every season, my friend was always excited for 13, but I would hope for three. Don't ask.

14. I still use the Oxford comma. My weirdest pet peeve is when college-educated people don't know the difference between affect and effect.

15. I like the most stereotypical lesbian music ever. but I honestly love it.

16. Singing in the car is my favorite form of stress relief. Belting early 2000's Tegan and Sara is a private and entirely necessary activity.

17. I'm addicted to caffeine.

18. I had a teacher in high school who went out of her way to show that she believed in me, and it still means a lot to me. She wrote me a letter when I graduated, and I still have it.

19. Heights make me dizzy, but I love roller-coasters.

20. I'm a feminist, and you should be too.

21. I get sick in cars and buses, but planes are fine.

22. I was directionally challenged until I was eighteen, and now I'm fairly competent. Gluten or maturity?

23. As a little kid, I had a yellow security blanket with red stitching on my favorite spot on the lining. I took it everywhere, and my mom eventually cut it so that it was small enough to carry around. I slept with "Blankie" until the middle of high school. Oh, and when I was like four, Blankie married Puffy, who was an orange teddy bear. They were both girls.

24. Ab exercises and a gluten-free diet have kept me safe from my old eating disorder and compulsive exercise. Staying out of malls and away from magazines helps too.

25. I love smooth, bold pens. I like nice highlighters and Sharpies for the same reason. One of my life's dreams is to find the perfect set of fine-tipped markers in a rainbow of colors.

26. I've bought and read Harry Potter #4, 5, and 6 in Spanish.

27. After watching Disney movies as a kid, I used to imagine myself as the knight-in-shining-armor human superhero type who saves the pretty girl with my wits and brawn. I never imagined myself as a guy...just as someone really tough. (So...Erica...from the little mermaid.) I feel like I'm still trying so hard to be that strong, and sometimes it works.

28. Once upon a time, I loved someone and didn't tell her. I vowed never to do that again. I've kept my word.

29. My favorite flowers are red hibiscuses. I also like daylilies, roses, and tulips--anything with overly large petals.

30. I like converse shoes.

SOO bored

my girlfriend is pretty. that's all :)

Day 5- "a time you thought about ending your own life"

Meh. With the exception of birth-control-induced PMS depression my senior year of high school (during which I couldn't do much more than sit around and cry for a day at a time), the worst things ever were was my sophomore year of college. I wasn't anywhere really close to suicidal, thankfully. Somewhere in about September, everything started to fall apart, beginning with my relationship with my good friend and roommate. We were living in this tiny, hot double with no privacy, and it was horrible. She's a pretty strong personality with a lot of "friends," and I was the listener. It started getting tense (she thought I was ignoring her, I felt like she was pulling away from me, we were arguing over who was whose lab partner, etc.) and then got worse (homophobic rumors, passive-aggressive post-its, general glaring) and worse (silent treatment).

That was about the time that all of the people from our freshman hall started to show their true colors--I'd thought that they were mutual friends of my roommate and me, but it became clear that they were (a) kind of shallow and annoying, and (b) totally not on my side. Long story short, I didn't really have any friends on campus. I'd had to break up with my very first girlfriend, thanks to leftover baggage from the previous summer, and I was feeling pretty terrible about that. I was tentatively and uncomfortably "seeing" some other girl for a while, although she was mostly a substitute for all of my other friends, and she was just totally failing at making me feel good about the relationship or at setting boundaries. Eventually, I started falling for a friend back home, who had a girlfriend but was confessing feelings for me. Of course I had no one to talk to about this situation, because I wasn't speaking to anyone I'd made friends with the past year.

Oh, and I was slowly realizing I hated my major, and I was reeling from a shitty...friendship I had broken off. That fall sucked.

and this was a pointless post. oops.

June 13, 2011

I’m thinking about love. It’s one of those words that’s skittering around the corners of my mind, straining toward the surface when I least expect it. I just sometimes feel like I’m on the blurry line between like and love, or between friend-love and romantic love.

I was watching TV just now, and Carmen was talking to Shane about the real deal. I’d forgotten about that phrase, somehow. And I think that this here is the real thing. This is one of those things, those irreplaceable, unforgettable, feel-it-in-your-pores series of relations.

When you said that thing about the cookbooks—the pretty ones—my heart started racing. I can’t explain it, except to say that most things about you have that effect on me.

(this is short and unimpressive, but honest)

Day 4- my views on religion

Religion creates more problems than it solves. Faith serves to unite people, to create a community with common goals, but those goals…sometimes they’re good for the world, and sometimes they aren’t. Honestly, I’m not sure about believing anything that someone reads out of a book or announces to a crowd, just because some other person said so. I just…question everything, and that makes religion…something I’ll probably not be involved in.

Periodically, I feel compelled to start going to services or Passover Seder or something. I know that what I’m looking for is mostly a sense of being with people like me. I guess I looked for that rather than for Catholic services, because I feel a little more in tune with my dad’s side of the family, and with being…a minority…and with the faith and/or community that a lot of my friends belong to. Let’s face it, I don’t have a lot of devout Catholic friends (or really any genuinely religious friends) but I do know a lot of people, including my grandparents, who are connected to Jewish communities in some way.

I don’t know. Every time I go to one of those things, I feel entirely out of place. I feel some kind of urge to look for spirituality in other places, too, but it’s one of those things I mean to research but never get around to doing. I feel like it’s one of those things I’ll never completely settle into. Mostly, it doesn’t bother me, though. I feel like I got “right from wrong” from my parents, without any of the heaven and hell stuff.

Negative agency

I’m sweating and shaking, mostly just because I hate the phone. I just pulled my name out of applying for a full-time job in the healthcare IT industry, one which I am rather underqualified for and which pays much better than the program I’m joining up here.

And I’m relieved. I’m happy. I’m not sure how everything will work out, but I’m sure I made the right decision.

I sat through a 90-minute meeting yesterday afternoon with my section of the department. It was inefficient. They’re making administrative changes and adding another layer of corporate-esque software to (presumably) improve record-keeping and connectivity between something-or-other. It was all sort of redundant and vague, like the categories were badly defined, and the person leading things didn’t seem like he was convinced that it’d improve efficiency. The rest of the attendees (of which I was the only woman, unless there was someone who didn’t speak) seemed bored and disconnected. I didn’t get the sense that people had any faith in the departmental reorganization or the software. I did get the sense that there were things they wanted to be doing—that they had plenty of work. They’re programmers and software engineers, and from what I understood of the list of tasks, a lot of them (including me) would be doing a lot more “other crap” for the near future. I could feel the dissatisfaction in the room.

I realized about 45 minutes in that I’m doing this life thing right. In twelfth grade we had to write a memoir about a significant event in our lives. Mine was badly done, but it was about taking control of a social situation that I was unhappy with, and not letting some girl walk all over me. It was called something corny like “taking the wheel,” and it was one of the first times I had been decisive. This time, I feel like I’m in charge of my own life. If I don’t want to sit in a giant room filled with windowless cubicles, doing what someone else says to do, then dammit, I don’t have to. I wanted to get out of school and do something that I believed in. So I’m going to. 

Day 3- my views on drugs and alcohol

I actually just talked to the person who made me my first drink. It was D-Day of my freshman year, and it was a screwdriver in the upstairs bedroom of a house in the white-coat ghetto. I could barely finish it, but this was where I discovered that (a) I hate screwdrivers, and (b) no, one drink won't make you barf.

I'm still not sure if it was meant to be a date. But that ship has long since sailed, and I'm happy with how things turned out. Also, I like drinking much more than I did then. A little is good for relaxing at a party, and a medium amount is good for losing myself in pop music and not thinking for a while.

And by "a medium amount" I mean about two strong drinks. A strategically spent ten bucks could give me alcohol poisoning.

Day 2—where I would like to be in 10 years.

Ten years is a colossal timespan, when I think about it. Ten years ago was 2001. I was finishing sixth grade in the third of the three elementary schools I attended. I hadn’t begun to conceptualize the increasing number of hints that I might be queer, although in retrospect, they were there. My body had just barely started contemplating puberty—I think I weighed sixty pounds. I did convince my mom to let me shave my legs that spring. I had about three friends, because I didn’t know how to be close with anyone, and I didn’t know how to make friends.  I did know that I needed those three girls, though, because you were toast if you couldn’t sit with anyone at lunch.

Ten years from now is 2021. I hope I own a car. Something not “nice,” but one that says something. Electric, maybe, or a VW Bug. I hope I live in a small city, close enough to the ocean (Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, whatever) that I can visit often. I hope I’m with someone who cares back, but I hope I haven’t done anything like signed up for a mortgage with her, so I can move or travel freely if I really want to. I hope we have a dog, and maybe some fish. I hope I see my parents a few times a year, but I hope I talk to them a few times a week. I want to see my sister’s kids a lot, if she has any then, and I hope I talk to my cousins occasionally.

I hope I’m done with grad school by then, so I can do something with that Master’s of Public Health, and that I’m thinking about getting my doctorate soon, or an MBA from somewhere really liberal. I want to be doing something that lets me support myself and that does something good for the world. If I own a business, I want it to be sustainable and in a field that lets me build community or donate the profits. I hope I still write. I hope I can act or do drag occasionally.

I hope I vote and that I know who my representatives are, but I hope that I’m also working toward radical change if it’s still needed. I hope I’m in—or running—a feminist group of some kind and that I read a lot. I hope I have gay friends and straight friends and half-Jewish friends and friends of different backgrounds. I hope we have someplace to go dancing and to drink, but I also hope that we host dinner parties. I want to know how to make good drinks. I want to know how to surf by then. I hope I have my back piece done.

I hope I still believe in myself. I hope I take care of myself and my friends. I hope I go to my high school reunions proudly, with a girl on my arm, and I hope I go to Meliora weekends with that same girl, but also with stories of all the things I’ve seen and done since graduation. I hope I’ve taken lots of pictures of my people and my favorite places. I hope my parents are proud of me and that I’m happy.

twitchy

I'm sitting in Boulder, and I'm a little too warm. My anxiety today is raging and distracting, and no matter how many things I get done it doesn't seem to want to go away. It's like a little misbehaving animal or something, tangling the pit of my stomach into a knot and smacking me upside the head every time I try to settle down and work.

It wants to grab onto every little thing I encounter and make it into a big deal. Ants. Dishes. Grad school. Work, quitting my job, going on vacation, planning planning planning. Money.

Dear brain, I took my citalopram. I ate. Stop it.

Day 1--My relationship

My current relationship is the best one I've ever had. I have this problem where she catches me grinning like a fool and I try to pretend I'm just being goofy, but actually I am just that happy.  (but you didn't hear that from me. shh.)

I'm with someone I can trust. she listens and like...cares back. I feel like one of those disgustingly happy coupled-people.

new plan

this happened at 4am

Shorty scared the hell out of me on my way to the bathroom, and now I can’t go back to sleep. I haven’t had this problem since high school, but it used to happen occasionally: I wake up sometime after three, and stay awake until bedtime the next night.

I was lying in bed thinking fairly clearly, but now a lot of it is gone. And I was starving.

• ·         My mom is probably so rude to me lately because she’s mad (sad?) that I didn’t come back to the nest.
• ·         Times. Times are good so I don’t feel like I’m waiting around the whole day for things to happen.
• ·         I really need to find an India House buddy, fast.
• ·         I wonder if Grammy had a spice rack that I can use.
• ·         I still didn’t call Uncle Jeff. Fail.
• ·         Thinking about whether I could get away with using someone’s ID to go to the gym and take pilates classes. Alternatively, how to rent Pilates DVDs for free.
• ·         How to make friends. Shit.
• ·         I need to finish my thesis so I don’t feel guilty reading about other things
• ·         Starting a book group (feminist, etc.)

Now I’m playing solitaire and watching the sun rise like it’s Christmas morning (except I used to read Redwall and Harry Potter and I certainly never used to eat) and hoping that somehow these things work out.

gray

I have not succeeded in running away from the feeling of sitting alone on a rainy day, desperate for social interaction and knowing that by tonight, I may not have left the house.

Sometimes I hate summer. I'm reading the internet instead of working and I'm looking out the window at cars waiting at the traffic light, thinking "is this all there is?" I know that in two hours things will have shifted again and there will be people here and someone will have cooked something at least semi-edible, but for now, I'm feeling a little down about my social life.

I have time. I'll meet people. The rain will pass.

observations

is it weird that I like watching you squeeze limes?

I don't know if it's the actual squeezing (hand and arm muscles at work) or the fact that you just know that it needs lime. Or maybe the look of concentration on your face as you measure just the right amount.

probably your (visible) sense of taste.

same old, same old

From your perspective, this seems like the stupidest fucking idea ever. But I didn't want my four years of things like community and support and progress and learning to be a hiatus--I want them to be my life. I'm too prone to depression and not enough of a morning person to bother with anything less than living my passions.

I need more than bars and Pier 1 stores to keep me going.

I have to figure out how to do better than living and dying by federal funding (of nonprofits and/or my future education and meals), but I guess that's where all the skills people have listed on my letters of recommendation come in.

teaser

I feel like I'm doing this right.  Not that "everything has changed" or that "suddenly things come together," but that I'm working things out a little better, and I've found a person to do them with.

it feels like sunrise. not the first day, but a new one.

Ani Difranco- Reprieve

This album took me through two summers ago, when I was commuting and sad and empowered all at once. Commuting because I had the CD (it was one of the last CDs I bought; it's from a record store that caters to all the punk kids in my hometown) in my car and listened to it over and over.

I would get halfway through A Spade by the time I got to the parking lot. I was usually late, so I wouldn't finish the song, and in the evenings I would return to my car, exhausted, and the first thing I'd hear would be the few lines she speaks, about the responsibilities of women.

I used to sit at the long light near the park, singing to Half-Assed. I thought it was funny because I had just driven between fields and was about five minutes from my windowless cubicle.

I loved that job, though. The CD just reminded me that I couldn't do it forever.

like a toddler learning to walk

I have a job and housing for the next year. I have coffee supplies. I can now cook chicken in a pan on a stove. I have clean dishes and clean clothing and I know how to find a doctor. I can take the bus to my appointment tomorrow. I have to submit my work hours and make sure I do not starve to death in August, but these I can do. Success.

one step at a time

I have heartburn so bad that it is coursing through my entire upper body. I have a pounding headache and a sore back and I'm so tired I could cry. But I'm more than halfway done with the weekend from hell (as in, moving from the fourth floor of my dorm to temporary housing with my grouchy parents) and I'm still alive.

oh, and I graduated, mostly-sort-of. I was so worked up about the moving thing, and the asking people to store my stuff thing, and the working out an apartment thing, that the actual graduation was barely on my radar. (anddddd I still need to finish up my thesis, but that is much less scary than this moving-out-while-being-glared-at crap.)

I'm sure it will hit me eventually that a lot of my friends are leaving, and that next September I will not go back to school (although AmeriCorps is placing me at Rochester City School District...good transition, Youth Year!). but until then, I'm really proud of getting this far without breaking down, damaging any relationships beyond repair, getting disowned, or having a panic attack. success!

"surprise"

Life lesson of today: Food is really really good. Stop skipping meals. You will find that you want to spend less time in the fetal position and more time getting shit done.

badly written and smacking of every time I have ever spoken to a counselor

please be proud of me even though I did not take the easy route. please be proud of me for not taking it.

please be proud of me for growing up and for getting over.

please remember that in other places it is not expected that you finish college, and please be proud of me because I did.

please be proud of me because I earned A's and B's, even though I could have done better.

please be proud of me even though my grades dropped as I found my passion.

please be proud of me for finding a passion. and for finding a person. and for loving my friends. and for trying.

please be proud of me in spite of my mistakes. please be proud of me as a leader and as an activist. I want more than anything to be honest with you and have it be all right.

this is not in the mother's day spirit

It was about last July, when I came back to my parents' house after visiting Rochester, when I realized that there are some things Mommy can't fix.

that sentence there does not convey how heartbreaking that realization was. I climbed into her lap (please imagine this; I'm almost five-four and she's about five-six, and she was sitting in an armchair not exactly expecting it) and lo and behold, it did not erase the hurt of the week's events.

fleetwood mac

they're one of my mom's favorite bands, and in the 90s the Dance album was one of the handful of CDs that she kept in the car. she had Rumors too, I think, but played The Dance more often.

The songs, now, are inscribed into the back of my brain. lyrics, music, backstory (since of course my mother knew which band members had dated or been married), images of the streets of Bucks County flying past the minivan windows. She probably played it in Florida, too. I was a smart enough kid; I grasped the emotions and the events even five and ten years before puberty.

I was a damn late bloomer. The Sign of Womanhood [tongue-in-cheek...I know plenty of people with uteruses that are not women and even more who are not "ladies"] that happens in this century to people who are certainly not adults did not arrive until I was almost fifteen. Tenth grade. Normal emotions started their debut when I got off gluten--the end of my senior year of high school.

It's weird to look back on the changes in how much I could feel. and the ability to have reasonable human relationships. it's weird to remember sort of generally loving "The Chain" because it was catchy and because the music was good, and also to remember being eighteen and hearing my own brand new actual heartwrenching yet energized longing in the same words. Driving home from work with the windows down, using my left hand to mimic the drums and feeling my own pounding heart.

also, it's funny knowing exactly why I was so fascinated with Christine McVie's low voice. thanks, puberty.

another one: my sister and I have been able to mimic every guitar twang in My Little Demon probably since she could talk. weird now that I know what he means. To have been there, trying to keep it together for someone whom I'd decided deserved my best. To even know the difference between my best and my worst...I guess I know now to value the ability to know how I'm relating to other people. (knowing when it's okay to open up, though; now there's a challenge.)

once upon a time

I gave away my heart more than once before I learned you should wait until you're going to get one in return. and now I have.

I could have claimed to Know Some Things about myself at the age of fifteen when I met the teacher with the hair. Fast-forward through the boring parts to the end of junior year when I drunkenly made out with a friend of a friend. eye-opening. I was right.

and then...more. less to fast-forward through this time, to D-Day on the quad and your car and fifteen minutes ago in the sun.

urgency

it would have been okay if you had followed me out of your car


but it's okay that you didn't.

collection of images

upheaval.
control.
balance.
fear
longing
excitement
isolation
finality

like getting up in the middle of  the night and opening my bedroom door to the pitch-dark hallway. I know what should be there, but I don't know what will be there.

I'm operating on blind faith in myself that I will be able to get up in the morning [in both senses]. I haven't always trusted myself, but some days I think that if I don't trust myself then I can trust no one. and most days, I think that's certainly true in matters of What to Be When I Grow Up.

I've got no anchor. I have nothing but what I've built myself. but that's not so bad.

I feel like now is the time in my life when I should be rereading Thoreau and Aldous Huxley.

consciousness raised. (trigger warning?)

this is what I was thinking about as I walked to the med center for class on three hours of sleep: One of the reasons I'm a feminist is that feminism is a way of explaining some of the things that happen in our lives. It's easy to think of every good or bad experience as isolated events that affect us individually, but sometimes I'm finding that things are part of a broader pattern. If I'm in a particularly militant mood, the  language is more or less that some things I've gone through are part of the systematic violence against (girls/women/LGBQ people/youth/non-Christians/whatever). But tonight I'm not feeling angry so much as contemplative, and these things make me kind of wistful.

I'm a feminist because it wasn't just me who saw the thin women on TV portrayed as worth loving and the bigger women portrayed as either funny or angry, but always single. It was also not just me who heard the words "fat slob" spoken in their own living rooms about women with BMIs over 19. It was not just my old friend who was beaten up in high school for coming out. For every one person who comes forward about being sexually harassed at work or who resents being whistled at in the street, there are countless more who are silent. My mother was not the only person who had to decide between paying for day care and leaving her job; in fact she was not the only young woman who didn't earn enough money to live on her own after college without a significant other. Years later, I was not the only one whose significant other got away with shit because he was physically larger. And these are just white middle-class troubles.

feminism taught me that none of us are alone. but somewhere in that, it makes us able to unite.

I want to draw little hearts on things in sharpie.

badly metaphor-ed and about growing up

i should no longer be naive enough to believe that you or anyone else can save me
should because this is usually true and i am usually a big girl and i am usually just fine but
sometimes I need to be reminded that I have the oars I can save myself

the next post won't be so miserable, I promise.

I am completely aware that this is stupid and neurotic and irrational but between the following things I feel more than a little alone.

1. I'm getting nothing from my parents but doubt, and really there is enough doubt in my own head from living with them for 17 years.

2. (here we go with the part that makes me sound pathetic) my dog is gone. now really, he's--was--a dog. we put a lot of emotions into those big eyes that maybe aren't there, and people have weird attachments to their childhood pets. but a being that loved me back and was always glad to see me, no matter what, no matter if I messed up or told him his breath was bad or slept in late, is gone. it's not like we could really talk while I was here. but I feel a little lonely without him nonetheless. unconditional love is a lot to ask for from a human.

yes, I am near tears again. whee.

3. everybody I know has their own shit to deal with and their own anxiety and problems and shit they need to take care of. Other people's emotions always rub off on me, especially people I'm close to, and most of the people I'm close to are stressed out about graduating. So I feel caught in this whirlwind of misery and stress and not-knowing that isn't just mine.

it's hard to ask for support. I wasn't raised to do it and it makes me feel a little guilty, since everyone has their own issues this month. But I need a big sign that says "be gentle"

4. everyone needs to stop asking me what I'm doing with the rest of my life

5. i need to get better at answering this question, and at interviews in general.

6. another sign I need to hold up? "needs a hug."
because I don't have all the answers. That's part of the reason that I'm taking a year for pete's sake. I don't know how to plan everything and coordinate things and find answers.

but I'm willing to try. that has to be worth something.

Sunday

All of my dreams are about houses. When I was younger and used to dream, I rarely noticed the scenery; it was always about the people or the feelings. Then there was most of college, when I didn't sleep enough to dream. But now I'm aware of every tile and hallway and storage space.

Unrelatedly, I'm having this weird social anxiety. It's different than the fear I used to have that people didn't like me. I feel...displaced.

deep breaths

more things are going to be done. conversation-type things. good things, I think. okay.

ew. angst.

not enough. not enough. not enough. not enough. not enough I can type it until the letters lose meaning but it will stay, carved into the backs of my hands and the top of each page I write where I can always see it. I am thinking less of the pages in magazines saying lose weight lose lines lose frizz and more of words yelled or muttered in the kitchen and upstairs hallway of my adolescence. 

not enough problems correct

not enough crumbs wiped

not enough hours spent in Grandma's quiet house

not enough muscle 

not enough work hours scheduled, not enough job applications, not enough salary, not enough notice about wanting the car

not enough time spent downstairs, not enough of an answer to questions about tomorrow night, not enough chores and too much sleep

not enough Being a Part of This Family

not enough calories to sustain a monthly cycle.

and then later, not enough sex for the man, not enough time spent studying for the A, not enough credits for a second major, not enough sleep to have dreams or an end to the backaches, not enough research credentials or work experience or cover letter revisions to get hired, not ever enough.

no surprise, really, that now I can't tell which are my thoughts and which are echoes of old words. and less of a surprise that occasionally I wonder whether I listen well enough, whether I ask enough questions or too many, whether I understand enough of what's between the lines of things you say. this is what i really am wondering today, and that up there is why.

scattered good thoughts

Gonna make it.

also, she takes my breath away.

rant!

I felt like shit when I first woke up and rolled back over, and the feeling seems to have stuck. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it probably has to do with the number of Things going on in my tiny slice of existence. I feel a little trapped and a little alone, like one of those dreams where you're trapped in a fishbowl and you're the only one that realizes you aren't a fish.

Venting commence.
1. Dear person (who is not my girlfriend), leave me the hell alone. You need some damn therapy and not some goddamn senior with her own problems to get you through transition and dealing with your friends being abroad. Latching on is not a good let's-be-friends tactic.

2. Dear best friend, it bothers me more than I'd like to admit that you have become absent and a little self-absorbed. I miss you. I also sort of need you.

3. Dear universe, can I please have my puppy back now? Thanks.

4. where am I going to live?

5. what am I going to do this summer? How am I going to afford Europe?

6. why won't it stop snowing already?

an incoherent way of saying that i like you for yourself

I want to eventually make this into something more coherent, but here's where my mind has been wandering. I don't feel too good about the form it's in at present...

i like hips. mostly i like personalities, but i like freckles and shoulders, separately or together. i like facial expressions and calves and people who fidget.

none of these apply to victoria's secret models.

i like this about myself even though it is a set of things that happened and not a set of things I worked hard for.

keep breathing

I need to go for a drive in the country and blast music and sing until I'm hoarse. I need to lie down in the sun and read fiction for hours. I need to make a necklace and unstring it and make it again. I need, essentially, to lose myself in something.

I'm afraid that if I lie down and cry, I will not be able to get back up. probably irrational, but I'm a little lost for hope at the moment.

(backstory, my dog probably isn't going to make it until I go home on the 30th, and I'm not feeling too good about job prospects in Rochester)

end of a rough day

Maybe I am asking too much of my mother. Maybe it is hypocritical and selfish and it applies too much of that thing where you apply your own standards [feminism] to people who don't believe in them.

but for the love of all that is good, would it kill her to support me, even if my dad doesn't? to be her own person instead of parroting the things he says? to understand that I'm about to do things differently than she did? to [act like she] believe[s] in me?

I'm not even asking for her to defend me against him to his face. just to maybe demonstrate that she's thought about this for herself.

and yeah, I recognize that this is ugly. it's representative of so many conflicts in my household. and it's things that I think are too cruel to say.

jumbled and out of context

I am still trying to forgive myself for this:

Emotionally I am a big spoon, in most of the ways you'd imagine. I listen. I'd hold. But every event from conception to the year I quit soccer has graced me with narrow shoulders and bad circulation against my will, and generally my-arm-around is almost painful.

I'm a collection of recessive traits and weird genes from two families of tall, curvy, strong women (among other things) and sometimes I feel especially out of place in this body. I somehow never learned the language of comforting words or when to hug, maybe because I wasn't listening and maybe because people don't teach you these things when you cried easily and when nature didn't give you childbearin' hips.

I'm not sure why I'm thinking of this tonight. Also, it's hard to be not so good at the things you sometimes want to do.

words

I liked the way she said "yet."

bill watterson is my hero.

this is how i feel sometimes about dirty words like "july 2011" and "graduation".

change in the wind

I am a reasonable person with restraint, dignity, and patience. I'm shy.

...and then i smell your shampoo and my mind is blown

academic panic

why did i possibly think that writing a senior thesis was a good idea?

i feel like i've forgotten everything i've read since August, and I have zero pages of the main document written.

shit.

I am too shy for anything but the following

her words make my heart race.

ovaries? check!

I feel like I should be writing something, because I have a good amount of emotions going on, but I'm feeling strangely writer's block-ed.

I never wanted to kiss anybody so badly as I wanted to kiss her the past few days. Sure, part of it was the buildup, the delay, the mutual hesitance that kept it from happening. But a lot of it was her presence. the energy between us is unlike anything I've ever known. like cotton candy, soft and more pliable than it should be but indelicate and strong. I can't explain it but I feel a physical pull that's entirely new.

I'm also nervous as hell, but I'm aware that it's mostly myself that I'm afraid of.

This is actually how I feel. written a few days ago

Desire I feel you finally, an ache in my hips and a pulse in my chest. Pull me closer but hover in suspense until less-chemical peals work their way to the top

In her presence there is no questioning the meaning of your cries. I promise to listen to you this time, and I swear I'll let your beat enter this electric space

not Over, just Worrisome

I hate this. I hate this from the base of my stomach which is encompassed so nicely by the harsh sound of the word Fucking. The blistering uncertainty, the crushing dread. The sense of the inevitable sudden announcement that they've been mulling over this for ages. Not the you fucked up; I never get that far, but the you chose wrong, the I can't do this, the sorry for letting you try.

It's not even that speech that burns the backs of my eyes. It's the day or the decade before where I know something is wrong but I don't know what and I don't know how to hit the brakes on the oncoming car crash that is my heart.

This ought to be titled Impending Doom because I try to tell myself it's all right and it never is. (and this is what I mean when I say my anxiety is about every other time as well as tonight. I write so it doesn't eat me alive.)

lightbulb moment

I have a strange relationship with my hair. I realized exactly the terms in which to discuss this during a rather banal class discussion that started with an excerpt of Jack Halberstam's Female Masculinity. 

My forearm hurts from writing pages and pages of a study guide for an exam I took on Tuesday, so I'll write about that later. (but no, this is not about to turn into a me-questioning-my-gender-identity piece)

But that's why it made me so happy when you said you liked my hair short. I feel right with it short.

on backrubs

it feels good to know from the inside that I'm doing all right (rather than looking for cues from someone else).

the reason i was banging the keyboard

this is what i want. she is who i want.

i think we don't have to follow anyone else's path.

meh

I'm anxious beyond words about the future. I don't actually know how to do this without support. I need to make decisions and take action and get unstuck.

I know it means bad things if I don't get unstuck. staying here might create different bad things, of course, and as much as I don't want to face the reality of that prospect, it's time.

I should either be responding to a certain email or learning some science, but all the channels in my head are going "shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit" and not much else.

the thing

my hands are shaking. actually, so are my legs.

a post that is just song lyrics

The clouds are blown away
I hope you`re here to stay
`Cause I`ve got me needing more of you
Guess I`m falling for you

You walk away
My eyes caress you
Then you turn and smile
You`ve caught me thinkin` of love with you
Guess I`m falling, I may be falling for you

Since I met you days are brighter
Life`s uneven loads are lighter
When I hear you whisper the words I long to hear dear
Now I look into your eyes
I`m lost in knowing that you are all I want 
My need for you is growing
Guess I`m falling, I think I`m falling for you
Think about falling for me too

explanations

About a month ago I went to this campus health event for women to reconnect with their bodies. Lots of potentially sappy stuff, but we wrote a letter to our bodies. I'm going to type it up and post it (to all, what, three readers I have) for two reasons. One, because it's not like I'm the only person to have gone through this stuff, and two, because it's sort of an explanation for why I'm moving as slowly as I am. I had this hidden in the back of my desk drawer for a while, but...I shouldn't feel ashamed. I'll grow more if I acknowledge that these things are part of my past. Okay. (nervous)

and the stress dreams begin

I had a ridiculous and mostly terrible dream last night. I lived in a huge house whose outside structure was actually a very large tree (don't ask me about the environmental ethics of this one) with four or five other people about my age. Some were still students, but I had graduated and didn't go to school here anymore. It was morning, probably late spring or summer, and everyone in the house was either awake or already gone. I was feeling sick, but took my turn in the shower. It was an enormous shower in this very nice bathroom, and there were lots of fancy jets and a huge shelf where everyone kept their bottles. The tiles were white and they looked very nice in the sunlight. I took my sweet time, and shouted out to the next person when I had finished.

I walked back into my room and got a look at the clock, and suddenly I realized that I was late for work.  (DUH, now that I think about it, if my dream-self was well-rested it had to have been at least noon.) Then I realized that the house was out in the suburbs (of Rochester) and that I worked in the city, but that I had forgotten to buy a car. It was the first day of classes for my housemates, and they were too busy worrying about getting their books and stuff to be able to help me. I couldn't find a ride from anyone, and the dream ended with me borrowing a bike and embarking on a very long journey under the blazing sun. I was going to end up sweaty and disgusting for work.

Not too hard to interpret, eh?

side note

I'm sitting next to a beautiful girl

(and I'll write a real post later tonight)

clarity

Everything is laid out for me for the next while and I've never liked the sight of a road map so much. I found some things I can do with passion and if I get a few good days in I'll have the energy for the next challenge.

I know what I have to do.

I'm just happy.

Not a poem

Today i can't drink coffee fast enough to keep up with my beating heart that's racing from chasing you around your own mind

You're feeling unprepared but I'm following the pop song floorplan you sketched on my pillow and it's like playing hide and seek blindfolded using my clumsy fingers to trace my progress and look for what i know is there

My saving grace is that our houses look the same, well you can see and I can remember so we're fine, fine, safe here.

But we could sit on the couch and be just as warm and it'd still my pounding heart

i'm approaching the end of the earth

I'm scared to death that my parents won't support me if I stay here. I have this idea in my head that they won't emotionally support me, but it's totally realistic that they wouldn't financially support me.

But I know I have to live by myself. I know this is one of many paths that are right. I am even pretty sure that I can do it. it's just scary when I'm not sure that the some of the smartest people in my life believe in me. right now I feel like I have to do all the believing.

this has been your angst-ridden blog post of the day.

another short one

I am absolutely sure of pretty much everything right now. it feels so good.

I know I want this career. a thing that can make my heart race when I'm lying in bed thinking about it. a thing that will do some good somewhere.

I know I want...this. whatever it is.

I am content. (except for this finishing-senior-year business)

progress

I need to have some thoughts on Audre Lorde. Two pages' worth.

I also need to be a big kid and solve my own problems. This makes me nervous.

Too bad I'm not a Women's Studies major

there are like 6 classes on feminism at this school. Only six. That's not even enough to make a women's studies major. that's not even enough to take one per semester. why in the world is there so much overlap between the introductory class and the philosophy class? So frustrated.

Oh. It's probably because we don't even bother to discuss the readings in class. The whole thing is some kind of glorified group therapy meeting.

grumble grumble.

largely undepressing

I don't know how you feel either. 


That first part there is pretty standard. It's the frustrating, often miserable truth that I rarely know what's going on in my own relationships. I'm really, really good at seeing the essence of a person, and sometimes terrible at knowing what they're thinking about me.

So every involvement, or whatever, is nothing less than a leap of faith. Faith that I'll get hurt badly (since this is more of a guarantee than a question) but mostly faith that I can deal with it.

Well, that was dismal. Enough. Because this time I feel like maybe it'll be all right, in the sense that I feel more like my usual lit-on-fire feeling will turn into a firework and less like the fireball is about to hit my house. I don't know why that is, exactly, but I have a feeling it has something to do with the person.

This is not reassuring, and I'm sorry for that. I can't run from it like I usually do.

But I get happy when I see her. and i like that a lot. I feel unconfused and excited and very ready to go back.

pulling it together

i want this time to be not bad, for her. desperately. i'm going to do it right, in the chivalrous sense, hopefully. if she'll let me?

i had this thought the second i read that text.

it feels like driving my parents' new car.  the pedals are really sensitive and every twitch of the foot either sends you flying or stops you instantly. (as in you have to be really really gentle, not as in i feel like an emotional roller coaster. this is why I should be sleeping at quarter to five in the morning.)

It's bad timing for me to go into hibernate mode, but I'm feeling a lot of tension and pressure. I talked to someone at UCC a lot about telling the difference between my (inner) voice and the "voices" of people in my life. They all tend to argue. A lot.

I think it's a big part of why my parents stress me out so much. If they're already in my head and then they start saying the same things, it's like shouting. So yeah, this week there's a lot of shouting in my head, and it's hard to concentrate.

I'll be back.

Edit: this makes me sound like I'm hearing voices. I'm not, i promise.

so much

The past few days have been at once really uneventful (in terms of things I've physically done or seen) and totally crazy (emotionally, as per usual).

Earlier I had the intense urge to listen to Wonderwall (trite, yes, but also true):
And all the roads that lead to you are winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
But I don't know how 


I want to take you ice skating and hold your hand.


Until I have some privacy I won't be able to write much, unfortunately. But my brain is ON.

Dear Dad,

I know that this is right. I know that I didn't feel much of anything at all until I "should have" had my life planned out in some reasonable capacity, and now I am playing catch-up in comparison to where you were at 21. But this is my life and these are my next five years (and fifty years) in which to believe in myself and in what I'm doing.

I know for sure that I'm not ready to give up my energy and time and passion to a bunch of old guys making money off of someone else. Maybe I'll throw myself into the corporate world someday, but for now I am quite content working against oppression and not for it.

Who wants to hire me!?

cat-dinosaurs

I had been running around looking to feel something, looking for the moments in life that spark with energy and promise. When I read that today I felt like I had reached one of those moments.  it was a moment on a journey, for sure, but it was one of the better ones.

I have never had this happen to me before. this mutual feelings and mutual excitement thing. really.

This distance thing is killing me, and I feel...pressure...certainly, but mostly I'm feeling like a spinning little girl in a bright dress on a sunny day and everything is free.

I believe in myself.

writer's block

i'm really trying to write a poem (and create a mix CD and read tumblr and drink chai and talk to steph)

but:
I was grinning like a fool more because of your presence than the cider.

extreme frustration

Dear Adviser #1,

Please stop making my life unnecessarily difficult. I do not want to wake up every day to harassing emails from you full of "extra work" you thought up or "special rules" you pull out of your ass. Also, please answer my emails in which I ask you questions--I know you open your Outlook Express because I receive harassing emails FROM you. Stop creepily finding me in random places on campus to ask me questions. We have scheduled meetings, email, and telephones for a reason.

Much love,
Polanski