I am really kind of scared about what the next three months are going to be.
I cannot, cannot, cannot be my mother's therapist. And yet I'm the only person around, and so it's falling on me.
I am completely and utterly the wrong person. I can cope with this objectively. I can't cope with it when you tell me every single detail of how fucking terrible you feel and how awful my father is UGH. I want to scream. I am SO incredibly fucking angry but there's nothing I can do about it. It's misplaced rage that can't be released, ever, because I can't hurt you anymore than you're already hurt.
This is so fucking unfair. I feel like everything in my life is conspiring to ruin my happiness. What the fuck?! Finally I'm intrinsically, actually happy, and finally I feel at peace, and that's when everyone else in my life decides to try to make me as fucking miserable as they possibly can.
I'm okay. Sigh.
Friday, May 29, 2009
A Mini-Project of Sorts
I started another 365-ish project, except it's just for the summer this time. I'm on day 20.
It's a relief to have a real camera now, instead of a point-and-shoot. The results are so much more satisfying.
Summer is usually a big long period of reflective thought, for me. A lull. What the hell am I going to do when I'm a part of the real world and get two weeks of vacation a year, tops? That'll be fun.
I've been thinking back to my past selves and musing upon how distanced I feel from them. I was never the kid who wore her search for self on her skin. I wore what felt right, nothing crazy. No statements, just a nice shell. I didn't go through those phases. I was never a punk, or a skater, or a goth, or even one of those middle school nerds (I was nerdy, but not in the same way). I did start listening to Sonic Youth and Elliott Smith in seventh grade, but that's something else entirely.
Instead of trying on different clothes, I tried different outlets of expression, different modes of being. Nothing ever seemed to stick. I read a book every day in elementary school, absorbed in fantasy worlds, devouring anything that fell into my lap. I miss that. I played sports - soccer and then basketball and then softball, for five or six years. It stopped being fun. I used to write poems everyday; I used to think in verses, stumbling upon couplets in the middle of the night. I wanted to be a writer, but my stories petered out and died in the middle, and the characters never had the ring of truth. I stuck with poetry longer, but I don't do that anymore. I remember when that was "my thing." My teachers would coo over them and praise me, have me read them aloud (while I died of embarrassment, seriously), submit them to contests. I was good. And then I just... stopped. I didn't know what to write about anymore. I was smart enough to know that my angst was dumb but too young to have anything substantial to write about.
Impasse.
I played piano and then violin for six years, but as with everything else, I just kind of hit a wall. I was good but nothing more than that, and I didn't enjoy it enough to be more than that. Our house is full of the flotsam from my attempts at self-actualization.
Eventually I found photography, and I think that's the one that's stuck. For eight years now, I think. I think it allows me to look for what my poetry was getting at all along - capturing a moment, evoking a visual, restructuring a sublime mental image. The paralysis I felt with everything else - the inability to fully express what I meant because of my own limitations or because of the medium's - is generally eliminated. Photos can be a halfway point between reality and theory, and I think the constraints inherent in the medium make it more challenging and fun.
I don't know, but I think I've found it. I can't think of a medium of expression that would better suit my personality, or something I would be happier doing for the rest of my life.
It's a relief to have a real camera now, instead of a point-and-shoot. The results are so much more satisfying.
Summer is usually a big long period of reflective thought, for me. A lull. What the hell am I going to do when I'm a part of the real world and get two weeks of vacation a year, tops? That'll be fun.
I've been thinking back to my past selves and musing upon how distanced I feel from them. I was never the kid who wore her search for self on her skin. I wore what felt right, nothing crazy. No statements, just a nice shell. I didn't go through those phases. I was never a punk, or a skater, or a goth, or even one of those middle school nerds (I was nerdy, but not in the same way). I did start listening to Sonic Youth and Elliott Smith in seventh grade, but that's something else entirely.
Instead of trying on different clothes, I tried different outlets of expression, different modes of being. Nothing ever seemed to stick. I read a book every day in elementary school, absorbed in fantasy worlds, devouring anything that fell into my lap. I miss that. I played sports - soccer and then basketball and then softball, for five or six years. It stopped being fun. I used to write poems everyday; I used to think in verses, stumbling upon couplets in the middle of the night. I wanted to be a writer, but my stories petered out and died in the middle, and the characters never had the ring of truth. I stuck with poetry longer, but I don't do that anymore. I remember when that was "my thing." My teachers would coo over them and praise me, have me read them aloud (while I died of embarrassment, seriously), submit them to contests. I was good. And then I just... stopped. I didn't know what to write about anymore. I was smart enough to know that my angst was dumb but too young to have anything substantial to write about.
Impasse.
I played piano and then violin for six years, but as with everything else, I just kind of hit a wall. I was good but nothing more than that, and I didn't enjoy it enough to be more than that. Our house is full of the flotsam from my attempts at self-actualization.
Eventually I found photography, and I think that's the one that's stuck. For eight years now, I think. I think it allows me to look for what my poetry was getting at all along - capturing a moment, evoking a visual, restructuring a sublime mental image. The paralysis I felt with everything else - the inability to fully express what I meant because of my own limitations or because of the medium's - is generally eliminated. Photos can be a halfway point between reality and theory, and I think the constraints inherent in the medium make it more challenging and fun.
I don't know, but I think I've found it. I can't think of a medium of expression that would better suit my personality, or something I would be happier doing for the rest of my life.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Unemployment Blues
Kevin and I saw a turtle yesterday when we went for a walk. He was cute, and couldn't run away. HA.
Anyway, the job hunt is going shitsauce. I kind of figured it would. I got offered interviews while I was still at school and then they'd hired everyone by the time I could come in person.
I don't really know what to do. I'm pretty sure trying brick-and-mortar stores is going to be a crapshoot. I've just kind of been browsing craigslist, which actually seems to be working better. We'll see, I guess.
I'm not sure how much I care whether or not I make money this summer, which might be problematic for my parents. I don't know what to tell them.
Money made so far this summer: $88 in photo royalties. Received one large photo of my face, a weird book, and a $40 computer manual as compensation. So far, my hobby has been paying off in the form of weird odds and ends and foreign magazines. I should have a shelf devoted to it. Maybe if I put some more stuff up for sale I can make at least a little more. Better than nothing.
I'm kind of feeling like this will be a summer of odd jobs. I don't know what else to do. I should just try phone sex, really. That shit pays a lot and the stories would be great.
In other, MUCH BETTER news:
1. My sister got a cat! His name is Laurence and I am SO jealous.
2. KENNA IS COMING IN A FEW DAYS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I AM SO HAPPY
:D
Monday, May 25, 2009
Back in the US
I don't know how to feel (not about being back from the UK, just about life in general).
It feels kind of like watching a bad movie that will just end, eventually. As though it's life projected onto an astral screen.
I feel intrinsically happy but also frustrated and helpless. I want out, a little. I want a year to pass.
It feels kind of like watching a bad movie that will just end, eventually. As though it's life projected onto an astral screen.
I feel intrinsically happy but also frustrated and helpless. I want out, a little. I want a year to pass.
Monday, May 11, 2009
What purpose in these deeds, oh fox confessor, please?
My parents are pretty much getting divorced.
If not officially, in every other sense of the word.
I've seen this coming since I was ten, but it I can't make it stop hurting. When I'm at school I can ignore it. When I come home, my mother is an emotional wreck and my father is just gone.
It's no one's fault.
Life is shitty sometimes.
I shouldn't be that upset, because I can't do anything about it and I'm getting older and soon I won't come home for extended periods of time and it won't matter if my parents live in the same house or are together. I shouldn't be upset because I had a great childhood and a fantastic relationship with both of them which is more than most people can hope for.
Part of me wants to break things and just sob and sob, but a larger part of me recognizes the futile nature of getting deeply upset over this. Life is not perfect; sometimes things that really suck just happen and you have to deal with them. There isn't really another option.
I kind of wish I didn't know that. I want to act out or be awful or just run away from it. I am jealous of my sister for being older and out of the house and more distant from it emotionally. I want it to be three years from now when things have worked out. I hate being confronted with the ugly reality of someone I love feeling totally shattered, left trying to pick up the pieces and start over at 55. I don't want to be the one comforting my mother; I don't want to feel like someone needs me. I don't want to know that she doesn't want me to feel this way but that there's no other way for me to feel. I don't want to see the faults in people I really, really love or see them wound one another or have either of them cast in an evil light.
I can't put my finger on what part is breaking my heart. My parents are human and there is no point in placing blame, and realistically things might not change that much. They'll probably be happier in the end.
I think it's just the feeling of "home" crumbling apart, the death of a concept and the realization that what I thought the future would be is not what will actually happen. It has to happen sometime.
I feel like I'm falling into ice water every time I think about it.
If not officially, in every other sense of the word.
I've seen this coming since I was ten, but it I can't make it stop hurting. When I'm at school I can ignore it. When I come home, my mother is an emotional wreck and my father is just gone.
It's no one's fault.
Life is shitty sometimes.
I shouldn't be that upset, because I can't do anything about it and I'm getting older and soon I won't come home for extended periods of time and it won't matter if my parents live in the same house or are together. I shouldn't be upset because I had a great childhood and a fantastic relationship with both of them which is more than most people can hope for.
Part of me wants to break things and just sob and sob, but a larger part of me recognizes the futile nature of getting deeply upset over this. Life is not perfect; sometimes things that really suck just happen and you have to deal with them. There isn't really another option.
I kind of wish I didn't know that. I want to act out or be awful or just run away from it. I am jealous of my sister for being older and out of the house and more distant from it emotionally. I want it to be three years from now when things have worked out. I hate being confronted with the ugly reality of someone I love feeling totally shattered, left trying to pick up the pieces and start over at 55. I don't want to be the one comforting my mother; I don't want to feel like someone needs me. I don't want to know that she doesn't want me to feel this way but that there's no other way for me to feel. I don't want to see the faults in people I really, really love or see them wound one another or have either of them cast in an evil light.
I can't put my finger on what part is breaking my heart. My parents are human and there is no point in placing blame, and realistically things might not change that much. They'll probably be happier in the end.
I think it's just the feeling of "home" crumbling apart, the death of a concept and the realization that what I thought the future would be is not what will actually happen. It has to happen sometime.
I feel like I'm falling into ice water every time I think about it.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Hey, there's a letter for you
I feel cold, robotic, and hate-filled.
Angry for no reason.
I kind of need to get out of here. I have so much work to do and I have zero motivation. I just want to go home and curl up with a book in my own bed, or maybe stare at the ceiling for an hour. Anything not here.
Angry for no reason.
I kind of need to get out of here. I have so much work to do and I have zero motivation. I just want to go home and curl up with a book in my own bed, or maybe stare at the ceiling for an hour. Anything not here.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Rains
It is thunderstorming for the first time this year and it almost feels like I'm home in my own bed.
It is raining so hard I can't see the sky.
Thank god.
Here is a list of ideas for the new Split-Cam I got, because I will forget, otherwise:
- double landscapes
- powerlines
- overlaid portraits (sky, artwork, trees, anything...)
- maps on faces
- twinning
It is raining so hard I can't see the sky.
Thank god.
Here is a list of ideas for the new Split-Cam I got, because I will forget, otherwise:
- double landscapes
- powerlines
- overlaid portraits (sky, artwork, trees, anything...)
- maps on faces
- twinning
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