Eight Days

How many are left until I go back.

Good riddance to 2009.

I don't know if I can characterize any year of my life as a "bad" year, because there always seems to be a mix of good and bad. I think the best year of my life was the 18th one, full of adventure and change and new beginnings. Of course that meant that the 19th one was going to suck balls, at least kind of. Or maybe more that 2009 was going to really bite it. I'm not sure whether or not the beginning to year 20 was a fortuitous one. I got a clean bill of health, but I anticipated that, and I spent it hung over, having a nurse stab needles into my neck one by one in a bright and sterile room.

I don't think that counts as a good one.

I kind of wish I were more balanced. I feel like everything that propels me to do well is also inevitably my undoing. I am obsessive and perfectionist and thus I do well in school and can't stop working on something until it is finally done. I am obsessive and perfectionist and so I am constantly wracked by fears of inadequacy and body image issues (just like every other girl in America, but oh well). I spent a year working out and trying to eat better and lost the extra weight but now every time I eat I feel guilty. It's not useful anymore. It's just awful. I don't know how to make it stop. One's immediate reaction after a meal should not be "oh shit, I ate, now I have to go work out or I'm going to get fat." That doesn't make any sense. It frightens me that something in my brain can be going that wrong.

I am armed with the past and the will and a brick

I think 18 was the best year of my life so far. Full of everything new and success and triumph and only good things.

I'll be 20 soon, and as good as the last year was in a lot of respects, just... fuck, so many shitty things happened. I'm going to be pretty glad to say goodbye to 19. Most of them weren't even in my control. They just occurred; they forced themselves on me.

The feeling of being actually, truly sad seems so foreign, but it happens every so often lately. This summer and this year. It is such a piercing feeling. I feel like I have a strong and mostly immovable core, built up over the past five years of rapid changes and new situations and outer storms and conflagrations. That's comforting. And when some terrible arrow cuts through it all, I feel so awful I want to vomit. Each time it's a new kind of pain, foreign and surprising and mesmerizing.

I think I should stop expecting things and instead just let them happen. It always seems to work out in the end.

It's strange, the way certain songs will always be associated with certain periods of time in your mind. I've been listening to Frightened Rabbit again; the last time I did that was winter break. Hearing it again brings up so many different and conflicting emotions. I remember walking through the woods at home in the snow with my headphones in, feeling absolutely exalted and terrified and sad all at the same time. Heartbroken and euphoric, confused and enthralled. Snow always makes me feel better. It makes me want to set off into the unknown. I can remember the happiest moment of my life, one of absolute and pure euphoria and freedom. After thinking I was going to die for three months, after feeling absolutely crazy and insane and unspeakably awful, I walked home in the snow and it just broke like a fever. It fell away and I watched fat flakes falling from the gray sky; I could see them a hundred feet up hurtling toward the earth. I felt like I was dying, or melting, or falling apart into a million exalted pieces. Every so often I feel so happy that I don't think my skin can contain it.

But yeah, every time I listen to Frightened Rabbit now I'm back in the woods, feeling exalted and uneasy, happy but bitter and a little disillusioned. Tonight I just feel a little nostalgic. I want to go back to last year, before my family decided to finalize all of the fractures that had been there for so long, before the last traces of my childhood burst apart and disappeared into the ether. I always saw it coming, though, and I feel like I've been divorcing myself from home for the past four years, trying to make the final break less painful.

It's been a strange day.

Back... again...

The whole returning home thing is becoming a recurring theme this summer. It's a little strange. Pittsburgh was nice, though. Maybe I'll write more about it later.

OMG CUTE.

Reminds me of the dream I had the other night that was full of fluffy kittens, no joke.

Also reminds me of the baby squirrel we saw running around in that girl's hair at the Roxy.

End, again.

Leaving NYC tomorrow, unfortunately.

Waiting around with my sister while she cleans her apartment (I keep trying to help but it doesn't seem that there's much I can do) for the person who's coming over later to maybe live with her for the next year. We'll see.

I had a great time, but I'm feeling pretty melancholy today. Maybe it's PMS, more likely it's a combination of that and Father's Day really just dredging up a ton of horrible emotions. I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel like I'm an open book about most things. I'm not really ashamed of anything, or prudish, or any of that. But when something actually hurts me or bothers me in a way that is more than superficial, I can't talk about it. It stays corked up on the inside and even if I desperately want to say something the words catch in my throat and die.

And so instead of doing something fun right now, I'm in my sister's apartment, alone, thinking about my newly broken family and trying to fight back tears. It isn't working. For some reason, having someone see me cry is absolutely mortifying.

No Cars Go

Literally.

Thirty miles to Philadelphia and the car starts making a weird rattling noise. Good things. We turn around; now it's 1:30 and I'm sitting in the living room, waiting.

I find that depriving myself of sleep to the point where I don't really care about anything works really well for situations like this that involve a lot of waiting. Time just floats by without you noticing.

Ostensibly I'll be in NYC tomorrow. Ostensibly.

Off Again

I'm going to NYC tomorrow, the long way. Driving to Philly first (or maybe Trenton? I'm not sure) and taking the train. So I guess I'll be there tomorrow night? Even I'm not sure.

It's hard to make plans when the time frame changes every day. Still need to buy a plane ticket back.

I'm excited, but a little nervous. I'll take my film camera again. Why not? Apparently my sister isn't talking to my dad. Shit. I hope this doesn't get awkward. Maybe she was just lying to make my mother feel better. Or being lazy.

I don't know. I can't be angry or distant, can't take sides, and I hope to god she doesn't want me to do any of those things. I resent her just a little for her distance.

But still, I'm really looking forward to spending time with her.

Dancing Days

Kenna told me to google the dream, so I did.

I don't have anything better to do right now, admittedly. I'm thinking of a photo for today and waiting to take a shower (I just went for an 18-mile bike ride... and it's hot out).

Anyway:

On birds:

To see deformed or odd birds in your dream, indicates that you have a unique outlook and perspective on romance and love. The dream may also represent a lack of understanding in affairs of the heart.

On Asia:

To dream that you are in Asia, suggests that you need to adjust to some situation. If you are traveling to Asia or thinking about visiting Asia, then your dream may indicate your anticipation of such a trip.

To see an Asian person in your dream, represents an aspect of your own self that is unknown to you. Additionally, to see an elderly Asian person, represents wisdom and knowledge.

On airplanes/airports:

To dream that you miss your connection flight, indicates that you are feeling helpless and trapped by some situation. You feel that you are being held back, either physically or mentally. Alternatively, the dream may also suggest that you are feeling disconnected in some aspect of your life - work, relationship or home life.

To see a busy airport in your dream, signifies the desire for freedom, high ideals, ambition, and hopes. It is an indication that you are approaching a new departure in your life. Some new idea is taking off or is ready to take off. You may be experiencing a new relationship, new career path or new adventure.

On being in a taxi or hailing one:

To dream that your are hailing a cab, suggests that you need to ask for help in order to be able to move forward in some waking situation.

To dream that you are in a cab, indicates that you are being taken for a ride. Someone is taking advantage of you.

So... I need to ask an elderly Asian person for help, and they will then take advantage of me?

I'm seriously chuckling at the thought of someone specifically being Asian having ANY kind of meaning. Aren't they just people? What if you're an Asian and there's an Asian person in your dream?! If you're Asian and YOU are in your OWN dream, does it mean that there is always an "aspect of you that is unknown to yourself"?

Also, the site told me what seeing my own grandparents meant, but wtf does it mean if you see someone ELSE'S grandparents?

God, what a total fail!

Strange

I had the strangest dream last night. No, really.

First, Polly and my Dad told me that I could go to the Philippines this summer if I wanted to. I said yes, of course, and we tried to plan it out. I got on the plane to go there and we stopped in Thailand first. We were at some strange kind of wild animal park, but it was part of the city, and I just wandered through alone. I started to feel a little nervous. I saw these strange birds on top of a few poles, and one flew down into my hands. It started to burrow, and created a little suction pocket so that it was actually stuck to my hands. They were like some strange combination of cat and bird. Other people noticed and did the same thing. I realized I didn't have my camera with me and started to freak out a little bit, and decided to go back to the hotel or whatever to make sure I'd left it there. I saw a few people I knew on the way out (I think that was part of a different dream, though).

Somehow, I ended up instead at the Manila airport (though in my dream it wasn't SUPER ghetto). I was going to catch my flight home. I went through security and everything and then I realized that I didn't have any of my luggage or my passport, and that I couldn't go home. I started freaking out a little. I took a shower in the airport bathroom (which had showers?) and walked around in a towel. I ran out of the airport dripping wet and wrapped in it, trying to find a taxi. I didn't have any luck on the top floor (where you catch the airport-endorsed ones), and instead people just gawped at barely-dressed me, so I went outside and ran down to the front of the building, which looked more like a courthouse or something from outside. All of these kids were in some weird kind of internal part of the first floor, having a party. I tried to talk to one of my friends and ask for help but she was on drugs. There was a creepy-ass basement thing with a strange elevator of sorts that was more like a small metal cage, but I quickly realized that was incorrect because you couldn't take your luggage up or down it.

I stood around on the street for awhile, trying to see a taxi to hail. Found one, waved my arms like a maniac, and he came over. He wouldn't take me back to my hotel unless he could see my passport. As I talked to him, a car full of Indians was making fun of my rapid arm movements and laughing disdainfully. I was crying and I didn't know what to do and I confronted them. They told me that my smooth-talking skills were lacking, and that I should've been able to get him to give me a ride. I asked where I could catch a taxi that wouldn't make me show a passport, and they said that the only other place was across the street. We all crossed the street (?) and I started to talk to them. I said I was nervous because I wasn't supposed to take taxis alone (totally true, who knows where they might take you?) but didn't have a choice, and that I only had a few hours or I would miss my flight and not be able to get home. They softened a little towards me and understood more. We talked for awhile, and they were still kind of mean, but not as mean. Then I looked at my phone and realized that the time it listed was 1 pm, and my flight was at 4, but my clock was actually off. Kevin told me the real time was 4 and I had to just scrap the whole "catching my flight" idea.

After awhile I realized that we were actually in the Indian grandfather's limo, heading who-knows-where. It was packed full of strange people. Kevin was there, somehow, and I asked him when HE planned on going home, since I was trying to leave as soon as possible. He didn't understand when I told him I was trying to rebook and I had to tell him like twenty times. We got back to my room (incidentally, it was the REAL room I stayed in in Manila last year) and I straightened it out.

I don't know how anything resolved, but when I got home I realized that my parents had been playing tons and tons of computer games in my absence, because there was a scoresheet tacked up on the fridge.

Shut it off!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Oh but I

Today was a little overwhelming. I think I spent at least ten hours trying to write a good three-page essay for US Foreign Policy, and I don't even know what "good" was supposed to be. Fingers crossed that whatever my hands managed to wring from my brain was at least C-material, because that thing was 30% of my final grade. I like that class because I feel like it's challenging, but I hate the fact that everyone is older and more knowledgeable, has had the professor before, and in general makes me feel like a total ignoramus.

I have a presentation on Wednesday and a 12-page essay due on Thursday that I haven't started yet. Deep breaths.

Tonight is a little break, though, I guess... at least a couple of hours worth, since I was either in the library or in class from 7 am this morning until 4:30 in the afternoon. I walked around in the rain, talked to Kevin back home and my mother, who is actually in California (same time zone for once) visiting her sister.

I've been listening to Gulag Orkestar all night, imagining bomb shelters and Eastern European summers and toy pianos abandoned on less-than-picturesque beaches with gulls in the skies above. I am ready for summer and slightly craving oppressive heat, the kind that makes it so that you no longer give a fuck what you're wearing and just want to be as close to naked as possible.

I need space to think. I can feel my brain trying to check out, and my fight-or-flight instinct inclining more towards flight, but I keep reminding myself it's a little too early.

I own every bell that tolls me

Strange dreams last night.

We were on a train hurtling through the countryside, and it looked like the countryside in the Philippines... rainforest-y and rice-paddied, alternatively. We were slaves and we were trying to escape, but some woman at the front was watching us. Finally we convinced everyone (I think there were four of us). We ran through the forest and over the hills and then the forest was Oregonian and we were hiding in a thicket surrounded by snow. One girl was left out and she came tunneling through the snow with a Bible in her hand because a verse told her where to dig through the snow, and we were all together.

Then it started over and we were back on the train like in the first part, but everything was different. One girl had to get up on the wall and be the clock, and I was annoyed that the motion of her hands as they counted the seconds conflicted with the other ticking clock. She couldn't see out the windows and we couldn't convince her to leave. No one wanted to, and somehow escape seemed impossible and everyone was watching us more closely. It was slipping away. Finally I ran away but no one came with me, and the forest changed again like before, but I was the one outside the snow, with Tala and a bunch of my friends inside. I was holding the verses and trying to follow the instructions to dig through, and I could hear the people inside, but I could never get it right, and so I just kept scooping the snow away with my hands. The wall never seemed to get smaller and I don't know if I ever got in.

In other news, we don't have a place to live for next year nailed down yet. Ha.. ha... ha.

Waitlisted... like a FOX!

I think I am going a little bit nuts from stress. Which is probably why Kenna and I have a random shit blog called Shrike People now. You should check it out.

I am waitlisted for two classes, which are almost the ONLY classes I can take to fulfill requirements. Jesus fucking christ. If I do not get in to at least one of them I will rip out something's heart. It could be an artichoke's, but we'll see.

Anyway, my horribly crippled schedule as it stands now:

MWF, 10:20-11:20 : Spanish Comp/Conv (301)
MW, 12-3 : Photo I
MW, 6-7: Self Defense for Women
TTh, 9:40-11:20: Colonial Latin American History (141)
Sunday, 7-8: Ghanaian Music and Dance

KILL ME. I just want to take fucking International Organizations or Econ 100, is that too fucking much to ask?

Mulled

I feel like I am slowly slipping and falling over and everything, everything is covered in a sheen of beauty.

It's all sideways.

Brevity lets you fill in the spaces between words with something better than what would have been there originally.

I had a great day, the kind you would read about in a book, full of twists and turns and with a very happy ending. I am curled up into a ball of safety and warmth and I am prepared to have the best sleep ever, then bust my ass tomorrow with a workout and homework. This has been great.