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[Aug. 9th, 2007|07:09 pm] |
It's official!
I'm going. |
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[Aug. 7th, 2007|11:23 am] |
I am (99%) taking this semester off to volunteer in Africa. I have all of the program information, my parents' approval and Noah's encouragement; I have a doctor's slip for the proper vaccinations; I have a restless heart and a deep curiosity for what lies beyond my often drunk, increasingly sad, ever materialistic bubble.
And I wonder. What are the "right" reasons to up and go to the most mysterious continent on the planet? Yes, I have always envisioned myself going to Africa. Perhaps it's the books I've read, the postcolonial childhoods I almost mistake for my own. And perhaps it's the movies, the hot, animalistic magic in fascinating images on the Discovery Channel, the word itself, Africa...
I used to imagine myself going after college. Joining the Peace Corps, championing women's empowerment and HIV awareness. Late this July, as the school year became a less distant threat and a more pressing issue (and I had yet to register for a single class) I began to think of what else to do. It's not that I want to drop out - I love school, I do. In fact, I love my school. I love the walk from the library to the campus rec center, I love the dark neighborhoods behind Woody's pizza, the frat boys who mingle with hippies and the raucous drunken gatherings that result. I like myself against the context of the CSU crowd. I like that I'm smart, that I party, and that I am not so like or so different from anyone else there. It's just that this year has presented me with a slate that is entirely blank socially, academically, everything-y and I am trying to determine how best to use it. Is this my golden opportunity to break from the convention I've feared all this time and just go?
I must let go of the idea of a parallel universe, because unless I do I will never do anything. Decisions are decisions, there is no right or wrong because it will not be any other way. I have this impossible notion that if I go to Africa, the parallel Grace that might have chosen to stay would adore fall semester at CSU, salvage the ashen relationship she has begun to miss and cherish so much in hindsight, accomplish remarkable things. And then of course, if I were to stay here, might I lie awake in Fort Collins on a Friday night, mascara caked beneath my eyes and liquor running its course through my limbs, wondering what I might be doing silhouetted against the red shock of morning sun in Ghana? |
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[Aug. 5th, 2007|10:05 pm] |
Hi.
It's really weird. I just went back over TONS of my old entries. And wow, I wrote in here a lot. Anyway, I was trying to detect a pattern in my life, or my emotions, or my somethings, because this summer I have been completely out of sorts. I feel like I've lost touch with myself so profoundly. I keep losing things, dropping things, breaking things (goodbyyyye, camera). I keep messing up. I wake up ridiculously late, I watch the afternoon clouds roll in and too much television. Sometimes I cry, and sometimes I smile. I work at the store a lot, go out in downtown Boulder with rediscovered friends, and hit the gym with the gusto of an athlete. But it all feels totally meaningless. I'm going through the motions of somebody else's life. I have little to say to my parents, and I've selfishly treated Noah's reluctant presence as personal therapy. I know I've relied too heavily on him for company, sober conversation, blah blah... but I'm grateful he's been so willing to listen. I drink enough NyQuil to cure any cold and any flu that has ever been and ever will be. I smoke lots of cigarettes, and I say ridiculous things for a laugh.
I'm just trying to understand this place in my life. I'm praying (to the God I don't believe in and the self I've lost) for understanding.
I wonder. Do I take this split from happiness, this bleak and empty slate as an opportunity to switch paths, reset my thinking, try my hand at something new? After all, I don't have anything to lose. I no longer have any hearts to break or close friendships to sever.
Or do I keep doing what I'm doing in the hopes that it will bring me happiness in a different way?
At what point in a person's life is it okay to take a life-altering route, a risk that may lead to a free fall and may also lead to something beautiful? It's a quagmire, really, because when you're content with the way things are you are unlikely to take such a risk. There's too much to lose. But when you're down and out, desperate for change and with nothing to lose, is taking a risk just reckless? |
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[Jul. 25th, 2007|01:38 am] |
I feel like I'm dying. Like the last wisps of my existence are disappearing into the atmosphere. They leave little trace. Those who knew and loved me once are too far away to bear testament to my being, and my acquaintances, though numerous, cannot have much more to say than "She was good on paper."
Or maybe not. |
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[Jun. 25th, 2007|05:14 am] |
I drew a little diagram in my journal yesterday, a quick cartoon version of myself, and shaded in the percentage of myself that was given to Abbie and the percentage of myself that was given to Andrew (figuratively speaking, obviously) and then I redrew myself with what was left. One shred, right down the middle, with only part of a mouth, neither of my eyes, and a vague wisp of a body. That's how I feel.
I am fucking lonely and alone. I need to allow myself to feel this, to feel broken and scared to death, because that's what I am and why shouldn't I be? Abbie and I consumed each other's lives, and then I switched to Andrew and became even more consumed in his life, his friends and all that jazz, and both of them disappeared from my world at exactly the same time and I am a wisp, a shred, and I am not kidding when I say : I am scared to DEATH to return to CSU. It makes me feel like I'm going to choke or throw up or something. I can't remember the last time I felt this way.
I cry a lot, too. Out on the deck I joined my parents, who were watching the sun go down, and I couldn't be bubbly-at-work Grace or drunk-at-high school-party Grace. I was me, in my jammies, my knees against my chest, and I opened my mouth and out came everything. I cried so hard my dad teared up. I told them that I feel desperately alone and like everyone - EVERYONE - hates me right now. And I'm not even sure why. I hurt Andrew, but not on purpose, and he has that entire social network (which feels like the whole fucking world) on his side. I know I was never particularly close to them, and I know that he has more of a right to be their friend than I do, but it still feels like shit to know that I am returning to a place where even my acquaintances resent me.
How did I go from the best two years of my life, the silliness and laughter and romance to this upside down world? What did I do to deserve this? Part of me believes in Karma, that we get from this world what we give, and I am retracing my steps to discover what it is that I have done to lose all of the things that gave me joy. Here come the waterworks again, and I'll let them, because I also know that things get better. I believe that I am a good person, that the things that drew Abbie to me in friendship and Andrew to me in love are still there, that I am funny and all that, but fuck. Nobody knows you when you're down and out. Ain't that the fucking truth. |
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[Jun. 21st, 2007|12:35 pm] |
I reached another conclusion about my life tonight.
It all started when I wandered downstairs and plopped on the side of Noah's bed and burst into tears until he put to rest the history textbook he was devouring (smart kid, that one) and watched me with frightened eyes until my shoulders stopped shaking and chest stopped rattling. He asked what was wrong, and I tried to verbalize it as eloquently as I could: "I have no friends. I mean .. I'm lonely. I mean.. no one here loves me. Like, if I were slated from the face of the earth tomorrow, it wouldn't leave a mark on anybody's life. That's not a suicide hint (chuckle, nose-wipe) but.. yeah."
I had to admit that it wasn't that, exactly. I sounded like a little girl in everybody-hates-me mode. So I took a breath and rephrased, and came to what I think is more like the truth.
"I feel like I make these amazing relationships with people and we fall in love with each other, even friends, but I always manage to ruin it. So the bitterness and resentment at the end cancels out the love at the beginning. So it never matters."
I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is. My relationships do not last, and the amazing ones I've had have been canceled out. It doesn't matter how sweet a friend or lover I was, because I always leave a bitter taste. One step forward with somebody, and then a step back, so it goes to zero, where I've always been, and it makes me wonder if there's a point? What's the point in making a dollar if you throw it away, or creating a piece of art if you smash it? |
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[Jun. 19th, 2007|12:12 am] |
Jesus christ.
Well, for one, my allergies are fucking out of control. My entire head feels like a dust storm and my eyes and nose and throat are in constant tickly ready-to-sneeze position, but the damned sneeze never arrives. I'd take Benadryl and hop in bed with Noah's laptop and a season of Futurama but I applied self-tanner at 10 and have to wait until 2ish for it to set (aka for me to turn ghastly orange) before I can shower it off and go to sleep.
I don't know why I decided the above information was relevant, because it's not. It's mega not important to anyone, not even me, so let's move on.
I just browsed over a fair few of my livejournal entries from this semester, and it occurred to me how FUCKED up I was. Because I didn't even write down some of the things I should have. I didn't talk about the pictures I took of my ribs in January that scared me enough to delete them, and I didn't talk about the fact that I took NyQuil almost EVERY night for four months. (Liver? Are you all right?) Everything in my world became about routine and control, from the soup and apple I had every night to the lollipop or cough drops I had an hour before bed; to the route I took to class and the stretch I did each morning. I looked forward to tests with the anticipation I used to have before weekends, because tests were something I knew I could do well. I knew the steps I needed to take to ace them, and I took those steps, and I aced those tests. When I had nothing to do, things felt scary. That's when the plastic bottle of McCormicks would come out of the freezer, that's when everything would be shot to shit. That's when every dark and frightening thing would start to unfold inside of me, and I couldn't take any steps to keep the feelings at bay. It was like flipping a switch, turning a face, inverting a fraction. In-control Grace was replaced with something else.
And when I think about it now, I realize it's because I didn't THINK or FEEL anything on my own last semester. My days were composed of a can of iced coffee, class, the gym, soup, homework, and NyQuil. Hell, I didn't even let myself feel when I slept. And so weekends I would be loud and silly sometimes, but more often than not I would fall apart. Sometimes I kept it under wraps, sneak away and write it down on a piece of paper and throw that paper away later, and sometimes I could dull it with a cigarette buzz and more liquor until I'd be drowsy. But sometimes I'd hate Andrew, and I'd tell him so. And once I fumbled my way through a party and had my parents pick me up, because Abbie had grabbed my arm and seen where I had cut it, and I felt as ugly outside as I felt within, and by the time my mother called my cell phone to tell me she had pulled herself out of bed at 1am to pick me up, the makeup was all the way down my face and my lips were cracked and tasted like tears.
That's how it went second semester, and I'm still trying to figure out what scared me away from myself. Why did I stop letting myself think and feel and giggle and cry? Why did I numb everything and go through my weekdays like a robot, and apply extra mascara only to unravel on weekends? It doesn't make sense. |
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[Jun. 16th, 2007|11:23 pm] |
Our basement has been emptied of furniture and life for large, cool-in-the-summer tiles to replace the old carpet, and beige and faintly olive paint to give dimension to the walls. The only thing that wasn't moved into temporary storage is our piano, and I had to fight my way through the tall, pointy grass of the pasture to retrieve the bench from our barn.
I'm rusty, of course, after having lived the past ten months in a tiny, two bedroom (and piano-less) apartment in Fort Collins. I would sing along with feeble music emitted from my shitty computer speakers, and quietly, while I folded laundry or dried my hair. At home now, I can go down and shut myself away with the piano for as long as I please, and tonight was such a night. It's even better now, with absolutely no furniture downstairs, and tiles instead of carpet, because it has the effect of an echo chamber and my voice and the chords resonate and swim together.
I was first inclined to play tonight because a Bob Dylan tune had been stuck in my head ever since it popped on my iPod at the gym. After I figured it out on the piano and exhausted my own rendition of the song, I started playing new chords and translating the ball in my stomach into my own lyrics. I sang a confession. I unloaded my guilt into each echoing room of the basement with little reserve, and before I knew it my music was being replaced by sobs and I let the rest of the guilt out into my folded arms. Because all I could picture was him, curled up into a ball in his bed, with friends to drink with by day but nobody to hold him at night and tell him that he will be okay. I pictured the curve of his legs and the shape of his forehead, and everything I know of his body bent like a twig, like something casually broken by a girl who was headed elsewhere from the beginning.
He admitted to me once that he felt temporary to me, and is this proof? Was he temporary? He was my world, couldn't he see that when he made me laugh, and couldn't he see that when I languished in his arms and my pupils dilated to take him in, and couldn't he see that despite what I've done? Only the corners of my basement know the extent of this grief, and this shame. |
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[Jun. 15th, 2007|05:39 pm] |
In the wake of the destruction of my second love, I've experienced a landslide of new feelings. So it's true, then, that one romantic experience doesn't dictate the next. My relationship with Matt lent little guidance to my relationship with Andrew - the one thing it did teach me is that I can't bring old scenarios into new ones. Each romance is an entirely clean slate, a different piece of fabric. The mistakes and successes you have with a lover are exclusive to your relationship and cannot - should never - slip into your connection with someone else. So I learned that.
I wonder how many people are able to experience both sides of romantic devastation in a lifetime? In other words, how many people have had their heart truly broken and have then truly broken another? In order for this to happen, I think circumstances have to be exactly like mine: I fell in love with somebody for the first time and was broken. Broken because my first love was simple and naive, and Matt, despite his shortcomings, became god-like in my mind's eye; I feared I could do no better or love any harder, and when those dreams disappeared I fell for miles.
And when I found love again, after losing a bit of faith in its existence, it was with somebody who was experiencing it for the very first time. I became, to him, the bearer of light and laughter and warmth; his future and his dreams. But I knew better. And when it ended, I am now the breaker. He has been slapped with the cruel reality I withstood years ago, and there is nothing I can do now but step back and allow him to heal and rediscover his own strength, the way I did.
The first cut is the deepest.
It's hard to sleep at night, wondering if Andrew's first heartbreak is as painful as mine was, and knowing I caused him that pain.
But maybe I have to be okay with that. I was Andrew's first love, and unless I was to be his last, it's inevitable that I would be his first broken heart. I know he will come out stronger and better from this.
And I really hope I can, too. |
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[Jun. 14th, 2007|05:28 pm] |
My breakup with Andrew has set my mind reeling. I felt bitter, then relieved, and now I feel guilt.
I rationalize my actions toward him in my head. I say, "I cheated on him once, a year ago. He forgave me for that. He fell in love with me after that. It's not relevant so his decision to list 'All Girls Cheat' as a favorite song on his facebook profile is stupid and irrelevant." But the guilt reminds me that I kissed someone at the beginning of this summer.
"Yes, but we weren't together, and some girl locked lips with him this summer too. She blew smoke into his mouth." But my guilt reminds me that this is different.
"All right, I messed up. But why do some girls get to mess up without consequences? Why does Andrew hang out with a group of people who kiss and deceive each other without having their self-worth or reputation smeared?" To which my guilt challenges: So? You don't respect that kind of behavior, so why should those girls set the standard for your actions?
I suppose he put up with too much of my shit, while I put up with too little of his.
And I suppose a lot of the way I feel has to do with my pride. I don't want Andrew to feel about me the way I feel about Matt. But maybe we need those people in our lives to teach us these rude life lessons. I'm GRATEFUL for my relationship with Matt because it taught me that I can survive anything. So maybe I don't look back at him as a god who I want to love forever. I shouldn't expect or want Andrew to worship me forever. It's a lesson for both of us. |
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[Jun. 12th, 2007|02:50 am] |
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I should mention that I'm working at Pitaya this summer. It's a cute little clothing store on Pearl Street. The girls I work with are very trendy and beautiful and kind of boring, but I'm trying not to be picky with my friendships. I can't afford to do that anymore, because all my friends (Abbie) are moving to New York City. |
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[Jun. 11th, 2007|11:23 pm] |
The most beautiful and sad part about being in love is that it trumps everything else.
All the whirlwind ideas and feelings in your life become lifted and irrelevant when you make eye contact with the person who knows your soul for what it is, even if that person is all the way across a crowded room and your gaze meets just for a second. It's a check-in, a "you're still on my radar" look that lends you the unspoken confidence that although the two of you may spend this party mingling with friends and drinking with strangers, you'll leave together with your fingers intertwined and dream with your heads on one pillow. You know that in the event of something awful, if you're to trip on a chair leg or spill drinks on your shirt, he will arrive shortly to laugh and help you fix your mess, and that if some psycho comes to hold you at gunpoint he just might be the one to risk his life for yours. Love is two people willing to take the same bullet. The beauty of love is that suddenly every grandiose objective you've set for your own life becomes less mandatory. You realize that fulfillment is within the heart and brain of another human being - not in a salary or a title or fame or respect. You think that maybe being his lover and best friend might be just what you need to feel whole, for the rest of your life.
And when love ends, which it often and tragically does, you are reminded once again of yourself. You think, that's right - I like psychology and I love to sing late at night with my piano in the darkness of this basement theater. You remember that your sense of humor is a little different and that your thoughts go other places. Family and friends re-assume their positions in your life, as if they had not temporarily slipped from it, and it's almost as though the love never happened. Things pick up exactly where they left off a year ago and everything in your world (except you) carries on unaffected. Because love transcends time the way it transcends the people around you, the way it transcends dreams, goals, and even your own personality. It is an entity in itself, in which two people become each other.
I'm one person again. The me that has been evolving for two decades, and isn't it funny how I have to be reacquainted?
Sometimes, I feel free.
But sometimes I feel half. |
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[Jun. 7th, 2007|01:03 pm] |
I suppose I'll know I'm over Andrew when I feel brute sexual attraction toward men again.
Even at the end, when our relationship had crumbled to a point where it was no longer tangential to what it was, when I realized I was beginning to fall out of love with him and saw in his eyes the same, when our time together was marked by tension, silence, and small talk - EVEN then I was deeply attracted to him. Probably because we had been through so much. A car accident. Months of togetherness. He had the ability to make me laugh until I folded in half - a quality possessed by few. Sure, I giggle and snicker all the time, but laugh in fits? Uncontrollably? My father says it's one of life's greatest pleasures, hearing me laugh, because it happens so rarely. Andrew had it. And I respected him, his quietness, his patience, his openness to people and their differences. Everything about him added to his appeal, and I would catch myself watching him the way I imagine horny old men look at teenage blondes. He'd step out of the car, into the gas station for cigarettes, and I watched him walk in, pants slung low on his hips, hat flipped backwards with the casual cockiness of someone who has no idea how gorgeous he is. I could hardly wait to go down on him and have him on top of me. His lips against my earlobe and I was a fucking goner.
I'm not really attracted to anyone right now, at all, so I guess that's good.
In non-Andrew (and only partially sexual) news, I also miss Abbie. I black and whited a picture of us for your viewing pleasure.
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[Jun. 5th, 2007|12:06 am] |
I need to recognize that I'm bitter. I need to acknowledge these feelings and accept the shitty outcome of our relationship before I can hope to move on, heal, and learn from all of it. It's okay for me to feel weak. And it's okay for me to feel wrong. I messed up. I messed up in retaliation, for the most part, to my own (possibly misguided?) perceptions. When I felt like he stopped caring, I hurt him on purpose. When I resented him for his distance, I sought attention from other guys. Immature, yeah. But whatever. I'm still bitter. I'm bitter that I spent a grand load of fucking time chumming around with his friends, and when I introduced mine he didn't bother to face forward and look them in the eye. That I never said a word against a single person in his life, even the guys who told him I was no good, the ones who talked shit and acted rude to me. Did I ever say, "Your friend BLANKITY BLANK is a dipshit?" Nope. I smiled and acted as friendly as you please. And the girl who sat in the background rubbing her hands together, WAITING for us to crumble, the one who thinks she's somehow superior to me intellectually but who has to be aware that I can dance circles around her temporal lobes - did I ever breathe a word against her? Nope. I tried to like her. I tried to like rap and I tried to watch football and I tried to be someone I was never fucking cut out to be.
And this is why Kristen said, "Grace, look at you. This isn't you."
And it's not. And that's a good thing because I will never again allow myself to feel like somebody's accessory. I won't sit on anyone's shoulder and laugh at their jokes and play with their friends and bat my eyes at their mothers because I have my own sense of humor to amuse myself with, my own friends to love, and my own family. It's not his fault. It's my fault. And I'm grateful for this trusty little lesson.
I. am. bitter.
I HOPE he goes around telling people I'm the antichrist. And I hope he finds that blonde bombshell who will fit right in with everything else in his life. And maybe everyone can like her because she won't be so difficult..
AND ME on the other hand - fuck if I know. Part of me is terrified that the way I've acted in this relationship is reflective of the way I relate to the entire world, and wouldn't that be a heartbreak?
But it isn't. This is the other side of the same coin. I was too open, too willing to love with Matt. I gave him my heart and let him tear it to shreds time and time again. I filled him with my soul, my deepest secrets, my tears, and I took his, and I combined our respective features in my brain, wondered if our kids would be beautiful or too pointy looking. And with Andrew I didn't let him in. I came close a few times, but it's too fucking risky. Because when you let someone in, they have the power to poision you, your heart and your lungs and they can choke the air you breathe. So I kept him at a distance and laughed and we had fun, but now look - I approached our love in a whole new way and I'm STILL back at square one. Next time there will be a balance, I hope.
I have zero interest in boys and men right now. Absolutely zero. A rebound is so totally unappealing to me. Boys are idiots. You think you're free, and you think you're beautiful and independent, but they chase you down and hold you until you stop wiggling. FUCK IT.
Let's bring this all full circle.
I'm bitter. |
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[Jun. 3rd, 2007|01:02 am] |
Hi.
So it's always the moments before we break up that I tell myself we must, and the days afterward that my mind reels with horror. What have I done? What if we're meant to be? Oh god, my Andrew, baby, come back, love me, make me laugh and laugh and better yet let me make you laugh. I love you, you know. Every single bit about you, from the fucking home videos I sat through with your family. The miniature you, playing next to some body of water, looking devious and blindingly blonde. And I even love the you who I know I don't love; the you who wants to play golf and listen to ghetto rap. The you who laughs at things I don't always find funny, the one who hangs out with girls who I would never be friends with but who I WANT to be friends with because they make YOU laugh. Does that make sense?
I love the you who whispers exactly what I want you to whisper in my ear in those quivering moments between reality and climax. I felt your arm beneath my back once, and I concentrated on it. I remember feeling your weight on top of me and listening to your breath against my neck, but all that mattered to me was your arm, gripping the small of my back. All of my vital organs were held close to yours with the strength of your arm, and your fingers moved every so often, maybe once every other thrust, in minute gestures. Whether you meant them or not, they told me that I was safe, and cared for, and I needed them there. I love you, and you know it. We didn't break up because I stopped.
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I sang at a bar in downtown Denver tonight. The govnernor was there (my brother works for him, and I imagine guilted him into attending) but it was the first semi "important" audience I've sung for. Not that it matters. Singing is not really a part of my life anymore, and my only "fans" are parents' friends, friend's parents, ex's parents, and me :) And this is how exciting, dark, and blurry it was for everyone involved:
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[May. 29th, 2007|01:22 pm] |
So Nicole's (NicolefromLtown, for those of you who want to peek her LJ) latest life revelations have really set me thinking. Except I don't have to do much thinking, because she nicely expressed the feelings that have been ringing between my back and breastbone for, like, months.
I am alone. To put faith and trust into another human being is foolish, because they too are alone and will act accordingly. Even if their actions are at my expense. Even if it means I will be hurt. So I must follow my own moral compass, no matter what. I need to stop compromising. I need to stop putting other people before myself because even the loves and best friends of my life have never consistently done so for me.
I've told people before that love is both the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It sees me at my finest and then it weakens me until he, whichever he happens to be the object of my affection, rises as I shrink and eventually frees himself of the relationship on safe, respectable ground. A saint. With sympathy. Strong. I hate him, them, for this.
Come, you said, come as you are, and maybe you thought you meant it. I love you, all of you, the light and the dark. What a joke!!! Seriously! I mean damn, when I'm on point - when my jokes are making your friends laugh, when my hip bones make a nice little valley for your hand to rest in, when the light inside of me shines through my eyes and my smile and my happiness rubs off on you, you better believe you love me. You worship me. And when I falter? When things start to fall apart and I can't puke sunshine all over you; when I reveal some of my uglier truths, show you my scars, my weaknesses? There you go. I watch your back. Oh sure, you look sad, you were broken by some evil, evil girl. Yeah, you're sad to lose your trophy, but not sad enough to care for the human being who learned to care for you. This is why I fucking left.
FUCK.
LOVE.
THAT is the reality of love. The love part is an illusion. This is what happens. |
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[May. 28th, 2007|08:43 pm] |
I've done the angry thing. I've done the too fat, too thin, self-loathing thing. I've done the confident thing. I've done the boyfriend thing, the love thing, the meaningless fucking (while pretending it's still love) thing. Twice. I've done the single thing, the drunken hookup thing, the have fun with your friends thing. I've done movies, songs, books, TV - too much TV, probably. I've done the smart thing. I've done the dumb thing. I've done the not so juvenile delinquent I'm-stealing-sunglasses-from-Target thing. I've done the leader thing and I've done the follower thing. I've done the beautiful thing and I've done the ugly thing, the work out every day and don't eat until your face looks pretty thing, I've done the who gives a fuck I'll eat Dairy Queen right now thank you thing. I've done the best friend thing, the lonely thing. I have definitely, absolutely, positively done the drinking thing.
I'm on the cusp of some new thing,
(and that's a good thing)
because very few of the above do it for me anymore. GOOD night.
* |
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[May. 18th, 2007|10:51 pm] |
This was a weird year. And now tis over. I'm cleaning out my apartment and every so often I wander over the computer and plop down for a Facebook session or a 2-minute conversation on AIM, and then I put more things in boxes, pull more things off of the walls. It kind of feels like I am packing up this year as if it never happened. Every memory in this room is being pulled away with each poster I untack, each unused condom I toss into the garbage, each picture frame I place carefully in a box. I don't know how to explain it other than that, really.
First semester passed like a dream, because I was in love. Love does weird things to people. It makes you feel endless and beautiful and like nothing could possibly go wrong.
Second semester kind of felt like a bad NyQuil hangover. I lost fuckloads of weight and sometimes my bony shoulders and facial lines were mistaken for beauty, but they weren't beautiful. Far from it. I filled more and more of my school notebooks with sad bits of poems, ceaseless rambling, and spent all my energy trying to avoid real life with alcohol, sleeping aids, and manic exercise. Blah.
I dragged a razor across my forearm in the shower one evening, drunk, and waited for the tiny red drops of blood to prove that I had done it. They appeared, slowly, and then my skin rose in defiance against my violence and I had three pink little lines for a few weeks. I didn't cut myself because it was a release, or because I needed to, or any of the reasons I've read in psych pamphlets. I think I was just curious.
I stole two pairs of sunglasses from Target with my roommate and got caught. I have to complete some program this summer to avoid court and a stained record.
I'm not a cutter and I'm not a thief. I guess it's important to figure out the things I'm not, right?
I am a good (albeit imperfect) student, though. I got five A's and a B+ this semester without exerting much effort. If only I'd put a little more time into a few of my speeches for that silly class I could have gotten the first 4.0 of my life. Eh, well.
Back to packing :) |
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[May. 13th, 2007|04:59 am] |
Life is beautiful. Sometimes it is even beautiful when cast in the light (or non-light) of sadness. Things fall apart. Your best friend was, last year, someone whose presence lit up your world, ignited your sense of humor; someone whose every word was understood and who got your words too. She's leaving. After months of distance she is finally leaving. Your boyfriend was deep, silly love, and he's leaving too.
I'm at an organic coffee shop in Old Town, in a red chair so large that I can sit sideways, my head propped against one stuffed arm and my calves dropped across the other. My face is warmed by the sunlight streaming in from the large window, between the fronds of potted plants and through the curved glass of a gumball machine. It sparkles, it really does, and the sound of a motorcycle revving and the smell of cigarette smoke wafting in on the breeze reminds me that summer is just around the corner. The budding life on the tree-lined streets is beautiful, and I realize that I'm beautiful too. I hear it from drunk male mouths and the bored, sleepy eyes of drunk girls, and after a while, that external beauty was how I equated my worth. Will this dress show the hip bone I've been running and starving myself for? Will this new mascara widen these tired eyes so I can remain upright at yet another alcohol-soaked gathering? Every night I forget and am forgotten.
But today I am beginning to remember. I have a book in my hands, and I am reading it half-assed because I am also watching the street and the day and the people around me. I feel a little more like me and less like the girl I was these past several months. Whoever that was.
Who was that girl caught with stolen sunglasses in her bag at Target? The one who doesn't know up from down or friend from foe? The one who says "don't let me drink" while she fills another glass until the liquid encapsulates the top like a globe? The one whose mistakes and obsessions were beginning to look like her...
But the world is beautiful, and I'm glad I can at least acknowledge that, even though I've lost my best friend, my boyfriend, and myself. I acted shameless at parties and within my relationship, over-exercised and under-ate, was caught shoplifting and am to be prosecuted. Somehow, I know that these less than desirable events are not the consequences of who I am, but of who I am not. I've made some really bad decisions, but they only become mistakes if I don't learn from them. Who knows? Perhaps in a year, I will have salvaged myself from this ruin. |
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[May. 12th, 2007|03:39 am] |
When I'm by myself I feel the best. Lately.
Tonight I was at a party, and I smoked too many cigarettes, batted my eyelashes too many times, laughed at too many things that weren't funny, and finally walked upstairs in shoes that were too big and holed myself in a little bathroom that felt like it came right out of a different century. Peeling wallpaper and dark paint, and I looked at myself in the mirror and was struck with how beautiful I looked. To myself. I'm not going to sit here and write about how gorgeous I think I am, so don't misunderstand. But in my reflection I was able to appreciate the line of my jaw, the depth in my eyes and my mouth. I smiled and I didn't smile and all of it was lovely. I don't know if I came to any realizations in particular; certainly nothing to gush about in a journal entry, but I saw a beauty in me that I've had trouble seeing lately.
Geez, life. Why do you get so hard sometimes? Why do you fool me into thinking I have you completely figured out and then crack down on me with whole new bouts of confusion?
There are people I used to think were amazing, friends who lit my heart like a furnace, and suddenly I cannot stand them. I see that they are ugly and that they weild knives at my back and flowers at my front and all I want - all. I. want. is something real. A friendship that is absolutely real. Sometimes I feel like the only thing real is myself, the me that goes to bed with me at night, the me that holds myself when I'm cold or afraid, the me that sees the me in the mirror and falls in love. |
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absolutgrace's journal