if i don't own it, it owns me.

if i don't talk about it, keep the spiraling words on a leash and let them into the backyard, then they go crazy inside the walls of my house and they tear down the walls and eat the carpet.

about a month before I came out entirely

When I was eighteen and you were still learning to drive we both finagled transportation to some neighborhood in the borough. It was hot outside and I was warm but not sticky when you started to talk about your ex-girlfriend and how you met her. How it was that she had been your first.

I found out many years later that there had not even been sex. That you were two kids, really, still practicing feelings and words and the dance of courtship.

But as we walked I told the story of the woman who had brought me out of my old shell, and whom i would have married if you could do that sort of thing in high school. We kept going, around cul-de-sacs and parked vans and kids playing. You kept talking about things that seemed dirty at the time: who liked who, what it was like to kiss a girl or meet her parents, how to come out. I was, at first, scandalized that the men on ladders painting and the women minding children and the kids on their bikes would know that we sometimes dated GIRLS.

And then, slowly, as the afternoon stretched on and the landscape changed from houses to 7-11 and the hair place, I realized two things. One, they probably were not listening that closely. And two, it didn't matter. We didn't have to know who we were. They had no say in it, either. It didn't matter what they thought of us. We didn't need all the answers about our lives. You didn't seem like you cared what anyone heard because you didn't care what anyone heard. Your life was your own.

This seems so simple now. But I want to pass it on.

i am not sitting in a local coffee shop right now

I like studying in Starbucks because the people noise and the music drown out the clutter in my head. I am not referring to voices here, but rather the detritus that blows about my attention-challenged mind like garbage on an abandoned beach. The urgent need to silence the distractions present in my own mind (mostly worries, flashes of insight about other people, fleeting thoughts of things I need to do for another class, or food cravings) outshines any constructive political need to avoid Starbucks/national chains/being out of my living space so long that my suitemates forget I exist.

And so I sit here, bemoaning the terrible music and cringing when certain people walk in and insist on harassing me. The devil you know...

I'm proud of myself, but

the trouble with lesbians is that we/they expect everything to be laid out beforehand. we don't wait for things to develop as they go; instead we plan it in our heads and then act it out. and then we are surprised when things play out differently than we expected, or we imagine where things could go and how bad they could be. it has to stop.

I'm also very aware of the fact that I feel like I did that one time I was sixteen and had a crush on someone unattainable. I'd run into her in the halls at school, and she'd always say hi, and I'd either start mumbling back (if i was alone) or nod and start talking about something very impressive (if i were with my friends). But mostly I would be distracted by my whole body turning to jelly. at that time, i didn't quite know why. now i do. but that doesn't make me any more graceful or any less afraid to fuck up.

school update

and...my Signal Transduction lecture tomorrow is by someone with a Chinese name from the department of biomedical genetics. Neither of these is ever a sign of a good lecture. At least they saved the notes as a ppt file instead of a pdf so we can actually annotate them.

It's the little things that count, I swear.

FUCK. Dear Andrea, please don't start things unless you can finish them.

I am unprepared for life. I feel jumpy and irrational and out of control. Last night scared some sense into me, probably, about how cautious I should be with myself. I also have confidence in myself, though. Just maybe not enough.


The song that popped into my head earlier was Digging for your Dream by the Indigo Girls, especially this part:

Every day that you get up and force your cards
Playing your story in fits and starts
Take your prospects and your pickax and you trudge down to the stream
And you bloody your hands digging for your dream

I'm trying here; that's all I know. It has to be better than nothing.

don't be hopeless

she said write. i want to write about the way your eyes sparkle and how i want to hold your hand. i want to write a story about two girls and a walk in the park and butterflies and crossword puzzles over coffee and conversation, but i don't have the words.

she said talk. i'd like to tell you how i feel with words and music and lights.

yes. say yes.

off my chest

Dear T, C, A, and anyone I may have forgotten: I can't be your emotional support this week. I'm falling apart myself. Stop asking :)

Dear P: I am not in love with you. Sorry.

Dear a different person named P and M: way to haunt my hypothetical nightmares. Someday I'll look back on all of this and know that I'm stronger.

Dear S: my speaking frankly to you is less that I want to be your friend, and more that I want you to see where I'm coming from. acting deferential to you seems to be a quick ticket to getting steamrolled. although maybe later we can be friends.

Dear alarm clock: please work.

nerves

i have to do something before i miss my chance.

surprises.

You are wrong. I agreed with you while you were standing there staring me down looking for absolution. I agreed with you for no other reason than to make you go away, because I couldn't hear well enough to argue and I couldn't stop the room from spinning regardless.

"You're not into men," you said in the same tone you'd use to say that the dog peed on the bed and that's why there's a yellow puddle. "You're not into men." Simplifying, explaining to a small child, smoothing over everything that happened. "You're not into men," as if you would know, as if you could decide for me, as if I had forgotten my lunchbag on the kitchen table and you were bringing it to school annoyed.

I am not the one that needs to be forgiven here. In fact I am very sure that your problems that became my problems have little to do with gender and a lot to do with the fact that you're a controlling ass. and i think you know that.

(I'm not into asshole men. I'm not into men who smell bad. I'm not into men who try to take over my life. I'm not into manipulative jerks.)

class of 2011

This the start of the real thing.

Nobody is going to tell me what to do or where to go. All this freedom is dizzying in its massive proportions; it's both terrifying to have so many options and exhilarating to know that almost anything is possible.

Lately, though, I'm more anxious than anything else. What if I follow my gut and it turns out to be miserable? What if I can't decide what to do? What if my stubbornness in refusing to move back home is not sticking up for myself so much as a foolish, rash, desperate decision?

I don't have to listen to anyone. But I should probably decide on someone  to take advice from.

egad

i need an older sibling right about now.

addendum: shitshitshitshitshit.

rambling

I love shaving under my arms. I love the long, wavy, uninterrupted line that extends from my knees to my elbow when I stand with my arm up. 

the line at an angle to the curve that cups my ribs and dips around toward my belly. 

the curve that only seems to exist on my hundred-pound woman's body

the body that is. not. angles. it is curves forming an ellipse fused with spheres

lava lamps are beautiful and they contain all roundness.