It’s unbearably hot and stagnant in my greenhouse of a room once again. Normally this would start my day off all wrong. Today, however, there is something harmlessly trivial about it, erring on the side of nostalgic even. I’m remembering sticky summer days in front of a fan… These days were filled with those cheesy, plastic, red-and-white checkered tablecloths held in place by baked beans, condiments, and various so-called salad dishes. Summer ’tis the season of swimming pools and chlorine, horse flies and mosquitoes. As much as I love the introspective depth that comes with winter, there is something to be said for the carefree slowness of summer. I’m actually looking forward to spending my summer in Florida this year. Perhaps I’ll finally get a chance to know the landscape. My eyes and senses are open and ready–bring it on! There will be camping, sun basking/ appreciating, picnics, cook outs, and time to listen to the soft buzz of dusk as the world unwinds. I’m clearly excited to no end. In fact, I’m counting on summer to revive my sense of self (moving toward Self simultaneously), my sense of the present, and moreover, the sense of gratitude that comes with that notorious, ever-waiting feeling of interconnectedness. Yes, I’m coming to realize what an affinity I have for summer apart from the simple sense of seasonal contrast I once relied on. Now that my life has become more abstract (aka “adult”), the summer season has grown to represent and therefore, mean something quite different—namely freedom. Cheers to 3 months of that!
t has been almost two weeks since I’ve made my decision to be happy. It’s been one of the best decisions of my life. I haven’t been so happy in such a long time. I’ve been inclined to take care of myself, like eating healthier. (It helps that it’s Passover, so no starchy stuff with yeast for me until Saturday evening.) My father was right. Happiness is a choice. It’s made me realize that other emotions like sadness and anger are choices too. This revelation has been a spiritual awakening, one I’ve desperately needed. It’s spread into every other aspect of my life and made them a little brighter. I hope that I can inspire others to make that same choice for themselves.
For the past few days I’ve been brooding over the next step. This next step, I’ve concluded, is to elevate my confidence enough to speak my feelings. I mean, I’ve always been able to speak up about my feelings to whomever I had those feelings for. I know that I shouldn’t let the past stop me, but my past experiences have not necessarily been so positive. Especially since I was the one who was always speaking up first, if at all. Does it drive them away when I say something? Am I too forward? I don’t know. I do know that the risks I have taken in the “game” have proven failures. But I also know—there can be neither success nor failure without trying. Do I roll the dice again? That’s a question I have to think about some more.
“She speaks in a tongue no one understands, but they don’t understand because they don’t listen.” That phrase has been running around in my head. I wrote those lines as a start of some song lyrics. But somehow the lines are extremely relevant to me. My love of languages tends to annoy others, especially when I use them, but there are others who appreciate it in turn. Maybe I feel I am unheard? I don’t really know. The feeling of understanding words that aren’t necessarily your own is one of the most fulfilling, because it means you’ve achieved a new kind of understanding.
I just looked at the calendar and I realized something. School will be over in about a month and even though it will be nice to be home, I will miss it. I love being with all the friends I have made here and I love going to classes. There is still three years to go, but in the long run, it’s not a lot of time. I’m enjoying it immensely and I’m enjoying it while I can. My friends—all of them—are the people I want to be friends with for the rest of my life. Even though I know it’s not necessarily going to work out that way for all of them, I still cherish them as important elements in my life.
Well, tonight will be fun. We’re going to make some pasta, proceed to consume it, possibly watch a movie or play with our lovely little deck of Apples to Apples, and then just hang out. (This is what I love about college!) Then I have to drive early tomorrow morning back home so that I can go to a Bon Jovi concert tomorrow night. (I’ve had tickets to this for months, I’m so excited!) Unfortunately I’ll be missing our Saturday night movie night for the second time in a row, but hey, you win some, you lose some.
Cheers!
Today was a great day—more great than usual. As soon as I walked into work this morning, my boss’ boss came to ask me to do something for him. I agreed (as opposed to normally chatting on facebook), so I worked all morning long. Then I went out to lunch at Jake’s—I was amazed that the guy at Jake’s knew what I wanted. I guess maybe he knew that I was a vegetarian since I had been in there before. Awesome. Then I went back to the office and ate my delicious pizza. After, I went to Joe’s office for a conference call. Boring. Cecilia and I were there and clearly we were bored out of our minds. Just other mindless drivel about our jobs.
Then I left work (yay) and went shopping—no success. I got on the train and went to Chestnut Hill. Then we went to dinner, got drunk and then wrote this journal entry. If I was sober, this would be so much better.
1:34 pm I slept in today for the first time in ages. It’s difficult to know how long that is… I have no sense of time anymore. Got up, got some lunch/breakfast… it’s so beautiful outside. I love spring in the south… I’m gonna have to move outside soon because I feel like a waste of a person being inside all day, doing work. We aren’t meant to be indoors. If nothing else, that is something that I firmly believe. I haven’t talked to boyfriend yet today… In a way, I kind of like it when he goes away. I can spend a night in, to myself, and I don’t have to worry about that whole balancing time between friends and boyfriend either. I think it will be good, in a lot of ways, that in a few weeks he won’t be on campus anymore. I think having school and boyfriend separate is good. And I think seeing each other a little bit less is good, because than we’ll actually want to spend good time together. We could have the rest of our lives to spend together, and in the meantime what I need to focus on is finishing out this semester. I’m still hungry. I think I might go grab some pop tarts.
11:31 pm Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you, remember I’ll always be true…
I miss him. I’m not gonna lie. Silly, I know… it’s been what? Two days? We’ve been apart for over a month and that was not at all easy. That was pain, though. This is just more… I wish he was here next to me to cuddle up with, because I’m about to go to bed. I feel kind of lonely.
Sometimes I forget that everything really will be alright. Not easy, but alright in the end. He does love me. And I do know that. I need to trust more and he needs to grow up some. God. Oh how I wish he would grow up sometimes.
Is it bad to feel like I need to be less needy? Less obvious? Should I be playing hard-to-get after we’ve been together for eight months? I suppose I was extremely hard-to-get back in the beginning, but that wasn’t intentional. That was because I wasn’t even fully interested. Now we’re in a relationship, we’re in love, and to be completely honest, I am really in NO WAY aloof. I don’t open up easily because I’m shy, but underneath that I’m messy and emotional. Sometimes I’m afraid that he won’t be able to handle my craziness anymore and might just give up on me altogether. I think one of my biggest fears in life is that I’ll never find a boyfriend or spouse who can be as close to me and make me as happy as my best friend does. Maybe it’s meant to be that way.
2:18 am “You sit there in your heartache, waiting on some beautiful boy to, save you from your old ways…”
SAVE YOURSELF DAMMIT! AND NOW! STOP STICKING IN THE SAME MUD AND MOVE THE FUCK ON! SAVE YOURSELF! RIGHT NOW!!!
6:42 pm So, I am a little calmer now. I still feel that a few days apart is really good for us now and then. At least for me. I call it “the detox.” I feel calmer after awhile. Relaxed. It’s rough for a day or two but then its great and I almost want to stay away so that things keep making sense. But then I remember how good things can be after a break, or you call me, and I want to hang out if for no other reason than to feel that way again. Then a few weeks or a couple of months goes by and the cycle starts all over again. You are both the best and worst thing for me. We go together perfectly and yet not at all. I cherish our friendship. Ours is a very strange and unique one. Our hours at the diner, our video games. The sex, the foreplay, the cuddling. The want to see each other so often. Why is that, I wonder? I don’t hope that our friendship will never change but I do hope that it will always be strong and strange and meaningful. I want to always be special to you and I want you to be special to me, no matter who we are with or married to or whatever. I wish we could promise this to each other, but we are too much of “we don’t know what’s going to happen” kind of people.
My life is unapologetically confused and twisted with obsessive thoughts re: the false boyfriend I’ve been pretending to have, pathetic work concerns, and family obligations. I miss other people. I’m without the things I could have done or been, and am with the ebb and flow of an unchartered life. I am so with that. I have broken up with the attorney, which was a foolish relationship to begin with, so I know I deserve the abysmal state I’m in. I’ve become very clever at ignoring signs, gut reactions, and tricking myself into thinking people are something they aren’t. Am great at it! Well, at least I was finally honest (very drunk) with him, we should be able to be friends at some point… Am very very sad I won’t be having sex any time soon. Extremely upsetting. Have realized I can’t have just casual unattached sexual relationship because sooner or later someone’s going to think their falling in love with the other one, very unhealthy way to live. I wonder if having sex one last time will be a very bad idea? Probably not wise… Well, maybe will have a chance to get back to things I really love and have let suffer because of my selfishness. Oh god, will miss him so much. I’ll keep you posted re: disintegrating.
This morning I woke up late, but it didn’t matter because there are no “adults” in the office. As soon as I realized that, Dann and I went to get breakfast at McDonalds. Man, I love a McDonalds biscuit…probably because it seems so sinful and because I get to feel their buttery awesomeness on my tongue so rarely. Yum. I’ve finally learned that I can’t order the whole meal, since I never eat the hash browns. Also, since I’m cheap and I knew there would be coffee at work.
And there was coffee! I was kind of looking forward today, since there were only 3 of us in the office. My goal was to take a shot at cleaning off my desk. Or surf the internet. When I got there, though, I didn’t feel like working, and the McDonald’s sausage biscuit kept me full until 1.30, which was bizarre. My officemate didn’t come in until 11 because he overslept. This did not help my mood.
I finally got up the momentum to clean out my inbox and respond to several overdue (and/or forgotten) messages, clean the piles of paper out of my office, and read those things I had meant to read 2 months ago. A slow day is nice, but now I realize that I’m glad I don’t have them often. They are… too slow.
Shannon came into town tonight. She usually works on a cruise ship, so she always has interesting stories, and she also always has not very much luggage. We went to dinner at Sangria and I had a very bad mojito (not enough simple syrup) and a over-spinached quesadilla (I realize it was a spinach quesadilla, but really. I just wanted more cheese).
Then off to Smokin’ Joe’s with her, Dann and another couple, where we had too much beer and talked loudly about how ridiculous it is that HPV is kept secret when it is so common. We railed on about that until the boyfriends had learned enough and it was on to other things, but apparently the conversation after that wasn’t rousing enough for me to remember now. Add in a semi-stumbling walk home and a refusal to let Dann drive to Taco Bell, and there you have the day and night.
All in all, it was a good preamble to the weekend.
Mr. D and I have been in serious negotiations over the last few days about how we should be spending our time. These negotiations have been heated, turning Cuban missile crisis-esque quite quickly. JFK is played by Mr. D, yo soy Castro and the USSR is this nebulous mix of drinking, partying, staying out late, sleeping in late, not eating properly, working out sporadically and generally being lazy. Castro and the USSR are likethis and JFK ain’t havin’ it. Mr. D hasn’t issued any key policy changes YET but he has ordered increased surveillance of the situation to assess any potential damage the USSR has or could cause(d) to his homeland. Castro is pretty indifferent and self serving and hesitant to give up her borracha ways. Ways that either have her stuck motionless or in a perpetual state of motion. She’s not sure which…
There is so much happening. Our wedding party is next weekend, so we’ve got all these plans to finalize. El will have to order food tomorrow while I’m at Jodi’s Bridal Shower. I almost can’t even wrap my head around it anymore. Not just that we’re married after 10 years but just all the bullshit of these things…and we’re just having a park picnic with 60 some people. I could never have one of those ridiculous princess faerie tale affairs. Wouldn’t happen.
Things with the comic book are working out well. He digs my writing, which is great. It’s script writing, which is what I wanted (albeit not film related just yet)…and it’s a paying job. Getting started with a writing career has been like working a 14-hour day and maybe getting paid for 4 of those hours. I am worried that El is going to break and demand I get a “real job” soon.
Dad got the job in Wisconsin. He’ll be moving out there next month. I’m curious how mom will handle the news. I really don’t think she was expecting him to move so far away. Of course, I still really think she expected him to beg her to stay. Whatever…not my relationship and dad seems SO much happier than I’ve seen him in decades. DECADES. Pool stands at:
Barbara: 2 weeks out
Me: 2 Months (Out on June 1st)
Elliot: 6 months
Six smart sharks swimming slowly- worst conversation ever yesterday- first delayed by beating, all I needed was a yes or no- call home very good- need to live close to my family Chicago #1 choice- AHHH application needs to be done today- ankle still being uncooperatable- still disregarding spelling rules- book is coming along- still enjoying the process which is good/the only way to write a bit worried about the pace- stab wound from host brother-jerk- why does ankle hurt the only month when I really really need it- there are only so many pear 5k’s and barefoot marathons- maybe spilled the beans about D being sick- should warn him- trying to stay afloat and not drown in the lesson plan flood- work grad school hard to figure out- hopefully it works out- I just need to a free ride to a great school- fighting!- gre- Not looking forward to day trip- maybe soccer on Sunday, if I can’t play I can at least be a rowdy fan- embassy sent out a warning about seeing the torch- hmm- school inspector does not make me happy- unpleasant burberry incident eww, right on main street- disregard embassy warnings? Eight hours on a bus? Probably- there is a creepy guy trying to read over my shoulder- I don’t even think he can even read English- hey creepy man, can you read this? You’re creepy
