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.