Hymenoptera

2010-11-07T08:58:00.001-08:00

i am always wondering

if i'm on the fringe

another hanger-on in

spreading you too thin

why am i so unhappy here

why do people make me so unhappy

when they used to make me overjoyed

why do I care if they are frivolous or selfish

why do i want to get away so bad

just to be around more people?

will i be able to take care of myself better there?

will getting away from this keep me out of trouble up there?

who do I think I am, exactly

2010-10-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

I had a nightmare about you last night

and I developed all those pictures

but I can't stand to send them to you

why on earth are you doing this to me

all I can think of when I think of you

is all the leaves are brown

and the sky is grey.

You've put me through so much pain

and I don't even try to understand why

everything in my head that was keeping me up

has fallen apart and now my future is as bleak as ever without you in it

what will I do here

by myself

in this stupid place

how will I ever get through another semester

of being alone

especially when you made it so much worse than it was before

I love you to death

but you're not my friend

you're not taking care of me

you don't care what's going on with me

you don't call when I've obviously not doing well

and you make it twice as bad because you say all the things I want to hear

I think I might be losing my mind, and I have to keep it a secret.

2010-04-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

I stayed up all last night thinking. Sometimes I have to do that. I started out feeling really bad and thinking that the whole reason any of this started with N is because I got drunk, and everything that is coming to me is my fault because of that. And then again, I got drunk. And it happened again.
So I was beating myself over the head with that, but honestly I've been to too much therapy now to keep doing much of that. I should know at this point that there is something wrong with me, and that I can do something about it.
The truth of the matter is that these last two months for me have been really effing hard. Everynight I would come home and be pissed off at my mom for something or other. She left me with her kid, and not only did it make me mad, it was cutting me off from having a life. This I didn't realize until just recently. When I went on the trip, I had the time of my life. On the way back, I wanted to jump out of the car and never come back to Arkansas. So that was a big thing on my mind.
And then N was being a complete nancy pants. This was far more upsetting than it should have been, and thats because I don't have a life. I don't have a normal twenty something life. I don't hang out with people my age. I mostly hang out with a teenager who is constantly pissed at me and beat myself up over school. For a while I thought I could make this work. I don't think I can. Obviously not, because I am falling the fuck apart.
Its not so much that N is the best thing that ever happened to me. Its that it brought to light how much the rest of my life is kinda sucking. I look at other people's lives at my age and all I see is roommates and nights out on the town, and I feel like I'm an outsider, I got gypped. I suck and it sucks. I feel like its never going to happen for me. I'm never going to be able to have a boyfriend, or silly roommates that I love, or just friends that I hang out with all the time. Because I spend all my time here, taking care of someone that isn't mine.
And all that gets mixed up with N. It all feels like its me, and it feels like so much more of a let down because I'm so cut off from the rest of life. I mean yeah, he's the bees' knees, but he's also a scaredy cat who's never going to commit and I know that.
I just wish it wasn't so hard for me to let go of the idea. I wish he would let me let go of the idea. Is it wrong for me to ask for clarification? Is it wrong for me to want to know? Is it wrong for me to want to hang out with a guy who wants to hang out with me? F my life.

Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief.

2009-12-15T07:04:00.001-08:00

sometimes I just get so mad at my parents. At my dad for being too much of a selfish prick to be apart of this family, at my mom for being too much of a selfish prick to act like she's not resentful that she has to stay here and be with us, and at my dad's wife for sending out weekly e-mails of all the family oriented christmas shit they've been putting together as a family.
I get mad because my relationship with my family, and especially my sister, is complicated and sometimes having a boyfriend is almost impossible.
I get mad because other people have so much family, and so much love in their lives, and so many people who just want them, who want to be around them, and I really only have my sister.
I get mad because I hate getting jealous of what other people have, and I don't like feeling sorry for myself. I hate thinking things like, 'why do I have to be at home every night with my sister and not go out to my boyfriend's mom's house to have dinner while my mom is partying in Nashville and pursuing her completely egotistical 'music' career and my dad is making Christmas ornaments with his new family?'. I hate not appreciating what I have, and all those feelings mix together into this big stream and then I'm on my period and its three hours before my last final and I can't get it together enough to study and I'm crying like a boy in preschool who has just dropped his birthday cake.
Christmas is so hard for us. I can already feel it coming on, with everything thats missing and everything thats there, its so fucking big. I used to torture myself every year by watching 'Its a Wonderful Life' because my dad and I used to watch it every year, and somehow I would just watch it and cry and think about how he must not love me anymore, but I think I'm done with that this year.
But then, I absolutely know, in my heart of hearts, that spending all day speaking in English accents and sleeping by the fire with my sister and watching EVERY Harry Potter movie in a week is more than a lot of people have. Its more than I had this time last year.
I know also that any guy who can't understand how important my sister is to me and how important family in general is to me is not going to be good for me in the long run. Its just so hard to spend all my time alone or looking after someone else. I really feel so much older than I am, and there is so much pressure here.
And, in all honesty, I could have left last night and gone to Josh's, but I can't stand the thought of leaving Savannah all alone, especially when she's sick and everything.
All these feelings of my father come and go, like waves. One day I feel that he is just as selfish as my mother, that its just as much his fault as hers that I didn't go to school for four years or that no one was ever home to care for us. The next day I will feel all his guilt and pain upon me, like he's extending his hand to us and he just can't quite reach. I guess both are true, and none are my fault.
I get mad when people judge me, or really my sister when they really don't understand everything that has happened in our lives. I think that having a hard experience like that can really help you to let go of your judgment of others, once you get past those first reactions of extreme anger at almost everyone (who said the learning process was perfect).
It has its joys and its sorrows, but I guess thats life. And its way better than the life I was leading last year, drinking every night with or without my friends. Its much better. I felt so happy last night falling asleep. I really did.

2009-10-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

Life is less...exhausting, these days. I have less to worry about, less to think about. I love these periods of my life when a man is not sitting in my brain, using it all up.
I am worrying about my little sister a lot today. Our house must be hard for her. Mom's such a dope.
I plan on working hard on homework and hanging out with her today, though. That will make me happy when I fall asleep at night.
I can't explain to you this phenomenon of boys falling out of my head. I need to learn how to get them to stay there, always, so that I am a tiny pillar, a gooey center of steadiness, at all times, in spite of what happens with mom, dad, boys or savannah. I wish I could relay all this to her. I wish I could wrap it up and give it to her for christmas.

Thursday

2009-08-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

I am, at the moment, eating macaroni and cheese and crying. Its been one of those weeks. Like, do you ever feel like all of your childhood friends are getting married while you are getting used for sex, over and over? Do you ever come home from counseling to find your mother still in her slip, talking maniacally on the phone, while you yourself are trying to resolve not to give her all your school money, and/or yell at her to get a fucking job already? Do you ever feel like you are stuck in a life, a certain kind of life, while other people are not? I mean, what kind of a guy talks to you every day for a month, and then as soon as you sleep with him is never to be heard from again?
Okay, enough with the complaints. At least I'm taking baby steps. At least I did talk to this guy for that long. At least he doesn't have a girlfriend. Other than those two small, almost fetus-like steps, that situation completely blows.
And its my own fault for not being able to deal with this house. My mom can take the heat. She can take it. I can give it to her. I'm just mad at my mom. Big Fucking Deal. I'm just having an emotion. I can handle that.
The weird, sporadic-breathing-sobbing thing felt pretty good, though. And its been a while since I've had some mac and cheese. It kind of makes you want to puke when you take huge bites without swallowing. Just FYI.
AND I have successfully not drunk the tall boy I found in my car.

getting dumped. again.

2009-08-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

exactly what it looks like

pushing dirty mop water

around the floor

so that when you walk in tomorrow morning

all you will notice is the chairs

out of place

it gets later and later

and i haven't gone running

and thats it!

i will never speak to him again

just

that.

I will analyze everything

and try to pull some playing cards

from the stringy, flesh-lined gap

i will try to make a perfect poached chicken

from moments of raw onion and cold fat

I will try, my very damndest

not to call or text

because it is all

very clear.

it was all said.

don't act like

you are confused

because you're not.

he is, and if you think you can get something

out of his confusion

with just a little deception

just a tiny bit

of a fine guilt sauce

over a bed of fluffy, delicate manipulation

please write your giddy love stench off

as something not worth all the sweat.

2009-07-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

Things in my fantastically possible future:
1)General Ecology
2)Dendrology with Dr. Gentry
3) Being an outstanding dendrology student with said doctor; being an outstanding volunteer at the herbarium with said Dr. , and eventually weasling my way into the graduate program here with Dr.
4) That is all the inspiration I need to go and study Microbiology right now :)

2009-07-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

I don't like to think about my mother. I don't like to think about her eventual death; I don't like to think about the fact that I am the only one she can ask to buy her a vacuum. I don't like that she asks me if I am okay with buying my sister's prom dress. I don't like the fact that she can't get her life together. I don't like to think of the fact that she needs her meds. I don't like to think of how unhappy she is with herself, of her mental state. Her mental state is what bothers me most, along with images of her becoming more and more ill, more and more helpless. I can't think of the fact that she can't have things that she wants: that she can never, ever grow up. That she has been stripped of some innate ability. That some dealbreaker, some guarantee has been withdrawn from the contract of her living. That she was given a whole life and no tools, crying babies in lush forests, manic men with sinister hearing.

2009-05-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

i live in a tiny day of regret
i go through different planets of it
cycling through
thoughts of that look on your face, turned to me on the couch
seeking my eyes
of the way that you could kiss me
the way that you held my face in your hands
the things you said
then i move to the place where
i wonder what i did
where i
tear myself to shreds
where i
can really beat myself into the ground
for losing something so big
then i reluctantly
slowly
turn to all the pain you put me through
slowly look at it like
a tragic economy

a misguided pamphlet
that none of this is worth it for me
not one single second more
that i should be glad to never see you again
that i should be rough with you
that i should be rude to you
but i can't.
the call comes to head to your house
and for whatever reason, I go.
and whatever i am expecting
i guess i never saw myself act like a dog before
i guess i never was unable to look someone in the eye
i guess i never felt so shifty-eyed
can you see what you did to me?
i came over to show you my stability
to show that i will always be in love with you
no matter how you push me away
to show you that i can be nice
that i can be normal
whatever the insanity
whatever the natural disaster
whatever the fire/crisis/bullshit/neglect
and what did i show you?
that i couldn't even look you in the face.
that i couldn't even look you in the face.

2009-04-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

Whilst the entire rest of the world of domesticity, of normal life, inter-human relational fucked-upness, or even this whole tiny expanse of population is asleep in their beds, or drinking with friends, or buying stuff for a trip, or inebriated in some way, I am here, dancing with depression, dancing with my head, poisoning my pets with smoke and pretending to be talking to someone who's listening, burning my throat with tobacco (or wandering through wal-mart, gleaning whatever small diamonds of burning life i can from elle magazine and drew barrymore's distant galaxy of life). I'm thinking of proust, pretending to be a writer, pretending to think of myself, pretending to get myself back from this year of drinking and non-thought, pretending that all of this (this tea-drinking, this distraction, this isolation, this reaching out to tiny relationships in a bay of internet waves) is going to get me somewhere. Pretending that going farther into myself will somehow let me into someone's life, pretending that this ritualistic egotistical static soul-searching secrecy will somehow lead me back to intimacy, pretending that I will ever be jesus enough to have a real relationship, to be a part of someone's life. I pretend that I need to keep myself away from my sister because I smell like cigarettes and she can't see me depressed, she can't see my thoughts, or else I will ruin her. I pretend that all this selfish bullshit is going to make me okay enough to be around her in a week, every night. That staying up late at night and obsessing over myself won't turn me into a nasty Charles Bukowski late night superstar who growls in the morning and can't give enough of itself to actually love another person. I'm pretending that in a week I will be able to mix the two, that I will be able to be honest and kind and giving and committed when I'm in love with my burnt hideous insides, when the only person I want to think about is my work, my something outside of myself that is me. That my greatness will blossom and shower from all this external extopia, from all this non-interpersonal dealings. That I can be in love with a computer screen glow on my face and the picture of my face in the window sill, deep in scared shitless thought; deep, deep living in anything other than a human being. Ah well. At least I'm temporarily without cigarettes stuck to my acidic lip. At least I haven't thought about Andrew Ross for a whole ten minutes. At least I will be in a good mood at work tomorrow.
What is it that they made for us? They tell you to work and be good for your family, and then they tell you to be there for your family, and how are we supposed to do all this? How am I supposed to be happy at work and at home? How am I supposed to love people who will hurt me, withdraw, make me empty, make me not want to eat?
Today I ate a smoothie. Some fruit, a package of crackers, and a serving of goldfish. But that's just how much I pussied out today. Someday, I will eat again. Someday, or maybe not, I will stop constantly thinking of ways to distract myself from myself, and I will bask in the versimilitudinous shadow of people in my life. I won't think of myself at all. Someday I will have an appetite for banquets of savory fats and animal hide.

2009-04-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

and now its 3am
and look where you've gotten yourself.
into another man's bed
who won't just hold you in his arms
and now you're twenty three
and look where its gotten you
you are sitting up
glass=ashtray
the birds are chirping
head pounding with nicotine
blue and white comforter
wrapped around you and your tiny computer screen
your glowing light of nothing
shining on your face
bargaining for time with a
fucking asshole
bargaining for just time
with someone who doesn't want you
for anything but sex
and now not even that
bargaining on one iota of maybe
on feeling like nothing
just one more time
kara brick is lost
think back to the last time you were happy
how many years ago was that
how many times have you
done this
depression narcotic cigarette late night
puppy dog face pity big earrings beautiful angry authority
procrastination failure loser worthless
worthless
worthless
how many ways
how many
boys classes jobs songs blowjobs idiot pains cigarette boxes
lost in something
that won't even make you happy
lost in bullshit
and people that don't even care
i quit eating
until i am so hungry i can't even think of anything else
then i smoke a cigarette
what else?
did it all begin with chris?
wouldn't it be easy to think so?
but
it didn't
it began with letting yourself be the other woman
and then someone fucked with your head
until you almost died.
why would you
get drunk and try to kill yourself
why would you
lie to me
why would you
tell me that I was amazing,
why would you ask
why you liked me so much
and touch my face
and then stop calling me
why
why
why
is it because
i slutted out too fast
because i slept with you
is it because
you are retarded
is it because
i am not worth your
time/money/drunk sex/couch space/respect
is it because i can't stop shaking
is it because i can't stop thinking
about you
is it because i cannot get my goddamn act together
because i am angry at everything
because i require justice and cigarettes
because i require apologies and communication
and no bullshit?
will i be able to survive in the world
in a relationship
in a marriage
in a future
with no bullshit tolerance?
am i too much of a hardass?
is this all me?
you made me doubt myself
you motherfucker
and now here i am
still going over it in my head
twenty three years old
and up at four in the morning
putting together pieces of what other people have a hold of
will i spend my life
piecing together concepts
cut/paste relationships
substitution recipes
never asleep soundly next to someone
never trusting, never feeling that feeling
is this it?
this cycle of okay then depressed then manic then angry then crazy
better not be it.

2009-04-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

there is always a promise of pain
they will always get you in the end
so don't go thinking
don't go holding out for some perfection
for some flawlessness
because even if its good for a while
expect the pain
expect life
expect milk and honey
expect deep drowning

2009-04-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

1) I show great dedication to my work and to this group.
2) I value my family, and love them.
3) I'm loyal.
4) I'm mature.
5) I take care of the people that I love.
6) Honestly, I'm too good for all of this, and to avoid further madness, I should just stay away, stay the hell away from him, which will be easy, for the most part. Its the sleeping part, the feeling of something being taken away, thats the part that I don't know if I can handle. I have taken all necessary precautions, I have deleted all evidence in my phone. I have planned to go to meetings, I have planned to speak up. I have spoken up. I have felt better, temporarily. I have told myself that this is not the last time I will feel this way, and that hopefully next time it will be for someone who actually means it when they say that I am flawless, that I am exactly what they are looking for, someone who kisses me like that.
7) The problem is that part of me feels that, in spite of the above, it won't happen again. I will not feel this way for someone for another 6 or 7 years, that it will be fuck and run until I'm so empty and shallow that I won't be able to stand myself anymore. Part of me feels that I don't deserve even the torture that I have gotten, and that I should take whatever pain comes along with it, take it, as the price for being with someone who makes me feel worth something in the first place.
8) That is so silly, obviously. I shouldn't be with someone who doesn't make me feel like the lowliest piece of shit on the planet because that person sometimes, in the recent past even, makes me feel special.
9) I don't remember what nine was, but
10) I guess I just don't have faith in myself or the people in my life to fill that nasty hole inside of me. I guess I'm scared that I will continue to feel this horrid emptiness for months. Who's to say? If I'm crying everynight over some asshole I met three weeks ago maybe I'm more of a weakling than I thought. Bluh.

2009-04-06T21:01:00.000-07:00

well i drove by all the places
so have fun with your weed and your needs
and your news feeds and i'll just be

now don't stop just tell me the truth
i don't want no lines just spit a couple lies
like a couch and splatter
see the whole plate shatter when i hit you with wednesday and thursday
like you care
like you'll even be there
but thank god if you won't

break open on friday and leave you covered in me
thank god if i can get away from all this
if i can escape all this and that and bullshit

2009-03-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm trying so hard to be strong about it, strong to be hard about it, to know that I can want what I want until I'm done wanting it, that it will pass but its hard. its hurting. i don't know why its so bad. I don't know why i fell so hard for him. i don't know. i don't know if i can even see him tomorrow. i don't know if i can do anything. i can hardly keep myself from texting him right now a bunch of bullshit about how nobody's perfect but i just want him in my life. which is true. it doesn't need to be said, and i wish i could just get back to feeling okay with being along but suddenly my entire being is consumed in feeling like the only point to all this is something real like that, something like when i was near him, something like him, something frenzied to the point of madness. something stupid. i just want him. and i want him to know that i want him, and i keep coming down harder and harder on me and syd's words are running through my head like a slow sad song, people do what they want, so he must not want me. the thought that he doesn't want me is the worst one; i can go on thinking about everything relatively painlessly, desire is less painful than rejection, self-denial is easier than denial, superiority is more conceited than the nastiness of inferiority.

2009-03-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

there are no promises of
time spent with me sober
but i'm still fucked up about it
there's no real fault, no foul has been committed
but i'm still fucked up about it
there has been no dishonesty, he never lied
its not for lack of shame, no lack of self-awareness
but i'm still fucked up about it
the hours between
when he said he'd call and now
are not a shock.
But I'm still fucked up about it.

2009-03-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

my work is my family
my family are my lovers
and i am finally
finally
cured.
The skies above are blue
At last.

2009-02-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

the days are full of work; my hardest task is remaining calm. many of them i love with my entire self, meme moi complete. even the ones that i do not love, those that make me furious, i love at times.
the dishonesty, the front is what really gets me. the childlike games, the manipulative attitudes, the plateau of ego are the ones that scare me, that i don't even attach myself to, that i pretend cannot even see me.
the industry holds a lot of gems- little boys with tiny dreams and grandiose, undemanding ideals: to not be someone, to not have that relationship, to not put up with that shit.

2009-02-09T10:50:00.000-08:00

I went to detroit to confuse myself with another boy, when i just found out that i don't need it. i love to play these silly games with myself, see how easily i can lose my head. I lean to uncertainty and beg for honesty, I tip and tumble, wobble and fall down. I don't want what they have, I don't want the kisses on the cheek, the love-stoned stares. I want my fucking head on my shoulders. Uncertainty, mania, insecurity, manipulation; the names of my enemies tattooed on my forearms, always three steps ahead of my planned days, shining in a room full of lamps while I fuck up in the darkness.
I'll rid myself of it. I'll take a deep breath and forget about your existence.

25 or 13

2009-02-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot much time thinking of things that should be said, and how I should say them, to my little sister.
I spend a lot of time translating things in my head to French.
I spend a lot of time thinking about boys.
I like to plan my days irrationally, obsessively.
I know that if I really, really want something, I can have it. If I wanted to be the best parent in the world or work in Kenya on native grasses, I could do that.
My big problem right now is figuring out what I want.
I think that thing is the perfect person for me. I think that I am starting to understand that this takes a lot less energy than I have been putting into it. I think I am starting to understand that this could take years of waiting, and perserverance, and passing up, and a lot more thinking.
Maybe I should be concentrating solely on being happy. That seems too big, though. Maybe the perfect person thing is just another thing I will be crossing off the list of things that can make me happy.
I worry too much. I worry about my mother. I miss my father.
My sister is the most amazing person in the world.
I think I'm starting to comprehend which relationships I should be putting energy into and which I should leave alone. As in, my family is pretty f**king crazy, but there are some big rewards to being tight with some of them. There are some big deficits to trying to be tight with others. And boys are not as important as I have thought they were, all these years. They're just not. Sorry.
I don't have the urge to travel like I used to now that I actually have relationships with some of my family members and really, really good friends. I will probably leave the country for a couple of years after I graduate, regardless.
I drank for a year like a normal youngish twenty something would drink, and that was enough for me. I'm so happy to not really drink anymore.
Sometimes I am not really the strong person. Sometimes I am weak and need someone to tell me that I'm fine and perfect just because (thanks D).
I love Lilian Viern Snively, Robin Grace Doss and Sydney Scarbrough more than I could possibly tell you. My love for my sister, however, is vast and frightening in its breadth.
I really should not go to Detroit. But I will, just to be nice.

2009-01-21T17:35:00.001-08:00

I will travel to terrorist-infested countries
to bring you dried teas
I will tattoo my entire body
to make you laugh.

2008-10-20T21:29:00.000-07:00

capacity for cruelty, sadness disdain
react with ever-cheerful light-handedness
to a sanitized equilibrium
where you explode and i cry
it has me wondering
my emotional composition
i am boring pedantic
but worstly cruelly unable to feign forgiveness or gratitude
all this scared me to pushing your face to the ground
pushing you to it

everynight I want to ask you
everynight
how exactly you could do that to me.
so that's the end of that
and i met myself here.

2008-10-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

always stuck in between
fear and freedom
your good hugs and my life at the restaurant
i see how they made it all those years
smiles and dances with employees and bedfellows
condescension and sighs at the dinner table

cut a key from those lighthearted appearances
to open my growth point and escape my intimacy
cracking codes to daily conversation
i'm always figuring everyone out until i
don't want them anymore

i could find someone to let me touch them for awhile
if i could get away from you for one second
if i could move all my shit just one mile
if i could get away from the white t-shirt over your chest
the look on your face and the beer on your breath

tell yourself all you want
that your whiskey drinks will work it out for ya
and i'll tell myself
that there's nothing that the road cannot heal

2008-09-15T18:35:00.000-07:00

all i've been wanting
is the light from your window
shining on my face

neither you nor he
can fill up the hole inside
i'll be needing some
good hard drugs for that business

I'll validate your parking tickets

2008-09-05T08:47:00.001-07:00

he wants me to be speaking to him, nonstop
about how cute he is
that his shoes are good
that the crumbs on the bottom of his feet
are the cutest crumbs i've ever seen
he wants me to validate
his his pajamas
he wants me to always be giving him more attention
than I want to give

he wants me to never be alone
he wants me to always be there
laughing at his jokes
crying at his trauma
clinging to his side at parties
he tells stories about himself
he watches videos of himself
he is so much himself that i can't
even fit into the conversation

NY, NY

2008-08-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that what I miss most about New York is the Film Forum. Every interesting movie that I read about is currently playing there. There, and no where else. Ever.
Of course, there are other things that I miss about New York, something about the whole scope of it, the whole tiny universe that you can get to and from and in and out of on a dirty train full of dirty, clean, insane and friendly people. Its the whole magnanimous, rough, guilty nature of the place. The random fabric that makes up the entire world seems to live there. People from everywhere live together in relative harmony. (That harmony may be disgruntled and frustrated, but hey, people, we're doing it.)
I miss riding my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge. I miss all the insane products- things I would never buy, I guess that makes me a consumer at heart, doesn't it- live frogs, bubble tea, disgusting smells downtown, designer shit and hot dogs uptown (those shoes are three hundred fucking dollars- lets get 'em), knockoff dvds in the underground of the city. I miss that big field in Prospect Park. I miss that restaurant on the east side - even though I never found it again, the thought these things were there, always, made me feel like I lived in some place thorough, lustful, avid, warm . The thought of all those movies playing at the Forum was a comfort, a speck in the distance outside of myself, and I didn't have to go see them to anchor to them. The nights when I did go out with a friend to the Forum for a double feature until 1:00am and then go to that tiny Latin restaurant (open 24 hours a day- or maybe it was just the night) in the nexus of Lafayette and Broadway and read the sex column in The Voice aloud made the nights that I didn't glow a little bit more. I loved the thought of the things I could do. I loved the thought of the candle-lit Sunday night yoga class at YTTP. I loved that subway stop in Queens next to the pizza place with the weird tea sold in cans. I loved the deep, foreign heart of Brooklyn that made feel so alien, like I had taken a cab into another country; a wacked out country where restaurants advertised which rabbi blessed their precious victuals.
These little universes all made me feel like I was a part of something, not so much big, but more made up of reality, whatever it was: it didn't matter, nobody was pulling the wool over my eyes there. I could get to Coney Island in thirty minutes, for no reason, and no one would try to stop me. In fact, they didn't give a shit.
Despite my neighbours' obvious indifference, their joined existence, the city itself, was my best friend. Its absence is my enemy, a very deep pain that I don't think I have ever felt for a person.
Lately I have been entertaining the notion that this is my biggest fault, perhaps even the source of my depression: I don't take enough pleasure in human interaction. I don't know; maybe I always thought it was weak, or maybe nobody done loved me right and all that jazz. Regardless: here I am, sitting in the middle of sanguine life, full of lovely people and untouched by violence or hunger, and I am pining for a city. Weird. Anyway, I'm trying so hard to enjoy my life- to be close to my family, to enjoy the people around me. I don't know why this is such a struggle for me, but I've got my sister wrapped around my finger, my mom runs hot and cold, and everything is beauteous on the boyfriend front. Friends are another story. I've got acquaintances at the restaurant, people who I certainly enjoy, I have a great time when I'm working, honestly, but it just takes me so damn long to open up to people. Help me.

The bf and I found a vietnamese restaurant here in town. My moments of true happiness are here: in eating someone else's comfort food. I shit you not.

2008-08-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

my shoulder is hurting today. yesterday was a day of mania:
my mother was manic because her mother was coming into town. my brother was (extremely) manic because he got into another gargantuan fight with his (extremely) unstable girlfriend. The boyfriend was just tired as hell and I think he's pretty bored with the monotony of moving somewhere new and being immobile. I read an advice column for most of this morning: http://dir.salon.com/topics/since_you_asked/
and have decided that I would make up a fictional entry for myself:
Dear Cary-
I'm a college student with a pretty good life going for me; I'm not really worried about my future career, I've recovered from a pretty deep depression in the last year, and I have a great boyfriend who I love. There only seems to be one missing piece in the puzzle: my dad bailed a couple of years ago (in a catastrophic drug-ridden fiasco)and left my mom in the lurch with my then tween sister. I have taken up a big role in parenting since then.
It fucking sucks. I get so stressed about the whole situation so much. I mean, my mom certainly isn't perfect, and neither am I, and the very logistics of raising a child between two imperfect people, one of whom is not even a parent, is really getting to me. I moved in with my mom, after a good 5 years of not living with her, to help out. Its really stressful, and in a lot of ways I'm the one who makes and enforces all the rules for my sister (mom's a recovering alcoholic and a diabetic). I'm moving out in a couple of days and I'm really worried about it. One the one hand me having my own place will be good for me, and for my sister to have somewhere to go if she and my mom get pissed at eachother that isn't her friends' house, and on the other if I move out my sister will inevitably spend every night (and possibly move in) at her friends house (recovering alcoholic mom, independently wealthy, batshit crazy codependent).
I realize that I have to move out, for my own sanity, although the past year living with them has taught me how to stay out of their fights and put myself first. I guess what I'm asking for is not advice, but a soothing voice in my ear, giving me the breakdown of my next emotional move.

Sincerely,

Family Frustrated

Chez Moi

2008-07-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy to be moving out. Its been so long since I had my own space, and its been way too long since I had the space and privacy to have a daily practice, I hope it materializes. I'm really worried about my mom and S. This morning I was lying in bed, trying to sleep again before the alarm went off and I thought of the time I drug S out of a hot tub and she came up, spitting up water and crying. I couldn't go back to sleep.
Its strange how when you fix something, when you're there for someone at just the right time, it doesn't make you feel better about yourself, or the world, or the event that could have happened. I don't, anyway. It just brings me nearer to it when I think of it, makes me feel worse for here that she had such inattentive parents, and that I, a skinny eight year-old, was the only thing around to pull her out. I feel that way now, like a poor excuse for a parent. I am soo frightened by the distant future of parenthood. I don't know if I'll ever really be able to do it.

Au contraire, I'm looking forward to having a place for Savannah to come to when she needs to get away from mom, where we can hang out without mom being around. I hope that actually happens. I'm just really, really, excited about school this year, having my own space. I think I can really make it work much easier, being able to walk to class, living without TV, having a desk, the whole set up. Maybe I'll get a cheap laptop. Maybe I'll be indubitably happy.

2008-07-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

I feel good today. I am calm and relaxed. I love my boyfriend and do not hate my work. I'm very excited to be living by myself again, and I'm reading more positive things lately.
My biggest problem with the boyfriend is myself. I've noticed, over the years, that this is always the case, but in this instance its more about him them me. Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up: I need to relax, a lot, with him. I am quite a mean person, and although I don't want him to do some of the things he does, I think that instead of just being passive aggressive about it I should just organize my time with him better- that us time is us time, and that there isn't too much of that. This also ties in with the fact that I need to spend more time with my sister, and having him around just isn't really the same, and he doesn't really like hanging out with my sister (which I can understand, but if he would get off his ass and get a car it wouldn't be much of a problem). We will be living next door to eachother, but I would really like to partition off my time there, as well. I need to be alone, a few days of the week, and although it may seem cold to him, nights when I get off work I will probably just give him a goodnight kiss and then hop off to my own bed; and when he calls to see what I'm doing, if I'm doing homework I'll tell him so, and tell him that I need to be alone or that I can't hang out for too long.
What can I say, I'm kind of a hateful bitch. Some people could do this in warmer ways than I can. I'm just not naturally warm, and I'm scared that if I ask for what I want in a warm way, I won't get it (contrary to past experience).
On to lighter matters...
I'm currently reading Les Miserables. I don't know what it is, but the authors I most enjoy are 19th Century French. If I knew more about history I could draw some really pedantic conclusions, so if anyone in the world out there would like to brutally comment on my boring life, go on.
I feel much better when reading Les Mis. I've read the first four hundred pages three or four times (au moins), and the simple literary cheese gets me every time. Selected excerpts:
"What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime and contemplation at night? Was this narrow enclosure with the sky for a background not space enough for him to adore God in his most beautiful, most sublime works? Indeed, is that not everything?What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven."

"He recognized he was not an innocent man unustly punished. He acknowledged he had committed an extraordinary and reprehensible act; that the loaf might not have been refused him, if he had asked for it; that in any even it would have been better to wait, either for pity or for work; that it is not altogether an unanswerable reply to say, 'Could I wait when I was hungry?"; that, in the first place, it is very rare that anyone dies of actual hunger; and that, fortunately or unfortunately, man is so made that he can suffer long and hard, morally and physically, without dying; that he should, therefore, have had patience; that that would have been better even for the poor little ones; that it was an act of folly in him- a poor, worthless man- to grab all of society forcibly by the collar and imagine he could escape from misery by theft; that, in any event, it was a bad door for getting out of misery, by entering into infamy; in short, that he had done wrong.
Then he asked himself if he were not the only one who had done wrong in the course of his disastrous story. If, in the first place, it was not a serious thing that he, a workman, could not have found work and he, an industrious man, should have been without bread. If, moreover, the fault committed and confessed, the punishment had not been cruel and excessive. If there were not a greater abuse on the part of the law, in the penalty, than there had been, on the part of the guilty, in the crime. If there were not too much weight on one side of the scales- on the side of expiation. If the excess of the penalty were not the eradication of the crime; and if the result were not the reversal of the situation, replacing the wrong of the delinquent with the wrong of the repression, to make a victim of the guilty, and a creditor of the debtor, and actually to out the right on the side of the one who had violated it. If that penalty, in conjunction with its successive extensions for his attempted escapes, were not finally a sort of outrage of the stronger on the weaker, a crime of society on the individual, a crime committed afresh every day, a crime that was committed for nineteen years.
He asked himself whether human society could rightfully make its member submit equally, in the one case by its unreasonable carelessness and in the other by its pitiless care; and to hold a poor man forever between a lack and an excess, a lack of work, an excess of punishment.
If it was not outrageous that society should treat with such rigid precision those of its members who were most poorly endowed in the chance distribution of wealth and were therefore most deserving of its tolerance.
With these questions asked and answered, he condemned society and sentenced it.
He sentenced it to his hatred.
He made it responsible for his fate, and promised himself that he perhaps would not hesitate someday to call it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equity between the injury he had committed and the injury committed on him; he concluded, in short, that his punishment was not merely an injustice, but, beyond all doubt, a gross injustice.
Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right. Jean Valjean felt outraged."

And etcetera.....

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2008-07-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Je suis desolee, mes amis (comme tout le monde ecoute).
What I was getting to, with that poorly ended last post, is that my stress level is very high, these days, and stress is the cause of all of this. I have come to this theory: all my previous theories, involving my lacking of value, my lacking of self, my lacking of ability, of humanity, of clarity; that I am heartless, that I am a bad person, that I am a genius, that I am evil, insane, depressed and addicted to substances, and OCD (that may still be true) are almost all just stuff coming out in the stress wash, the dirty dirty laundry detergent (think tide commercials that are more set up like: "You take the kids to soccer practice- your little man got a grass stain on his shorts- No Problem! You just get over it!") of life.
I'm getting to that point in life where I can no longer feel sorry for myself because my car has broken down or my brother may or may not be going to prison. At this juncture, I am realizing that this is just life. And it kind of sucks. And it probably won't ever get easier. The only thing I can do is the PP: reduce all Possible stresses that I Possibly can.
I know this is Possible because I've done it before. THAT is very encouraging. Je vous presentez: the good life list. I've made this list before. But maybe I can actually do this since I'm getting a one-bedroom apartment away from my family.

1) Regular meditation.
2) Regular sleeping.
3) Regular yoga (and/or exercise).
4) Eating well (lots of fruits and vegetables, miso soup, etc).
5) The boyfriend. The last time I was really peaceful, I was away from my boyfriend. So maybe I should just leanr about a lot of new boundaries and me time. Maybe I can really put myself through being in bed by a certain time every night, and getting up by a certain time. Maybe. This is something I should learn about anyways.
6) Don't Panic (As I'm fucking writing this I'm panicking. What if I just can't do this? What if I do it and it doesn't work? Thats my big fear. What if, because this is a totally different envrionment from my last period of something-like-contentment, it doesn't work at all and I just become totally depressed from being
alone all the time? School is like that, folks. School can be like that. Hopefully my fun-filled job will save me from all of that).
9) I don't remember what nine was, but
8)No smoking/ very limited drinking. I feel fanfuckingtastic when I don't smoke or drink and I eat well. This is key.

I have ten minutes to tell you everything.

2008-07-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

I woke up today at ten. I ate a breakfast of apple and cheese and banana and peanut butter toast. I watched doctor who and a bit of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl (ep. 4. S&M. Very enlightening, honestly. My whole experience with the show and the blog (www.belledejour-uk.blogspot.com) has been very enlightening) while I was eating breakfast. I rode my bike home, via providence properties, where I turned in my application for an apartment and found out that there is one open right now right next door to the boyfriend, same apartment complex and everything. I thought about it for a while. Its six inches from moving in together, without all the nasty mindclogging annoyances of living together. I called his mum and asked her humble opinion- because I do not, as a rule, take advice from my mum- and she seemed to think it would be ok because the bf and I have quite literally hated eachother in the past, so we know eachother's bad sides, and this will either strengthen our relationship or we'll know what to expect if the shit ever does hit the fan and we break up and we're stuck with living in the same ap. complex for a year. That would be interesting. I hadn't really thought about that. Unlike most previous relationships I've had, I don't really fantasize about us breaking up, so....It just doesn't occur to me that we would.
Which brings me to Sunday Breakfast.
We went over for breakfast at j & R's place the other day, and I was very tired and kind of grumpy and kind of smashed with the BF about it a bit before we even got there, and snapped at when we did. He snapped back. It was a little shocking, because I was being a bitch before I could even process it.
This has really concerned me, a lot, in the following days. It has occured to me before that my bitchiness (which I sometimes see as the future downfall of my entire web of relationships).

2008-07-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got home from the restaurant and watched TV for four hours. I can't even recall what I was watching, until the end. I tell myself its stress, that I'm working too much, but its just left-over crap from dealing with the boyfriend. I think just hanging out with him too much gets me down. I can't handle it. He's a liar, in the worst sense, but the sad part is that I know most of this is the product of him trying and just not knowing how. Its a trial and error thing.
But thats the thing of it. I feel like clammy monster for wanting someone who doesn't really care about all of this. Someone who just wants to have fun. Someone who isn't going to fake the drawn-out stares and the incessant compliments just to make sure they're still on the right track. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't want someone to pretend that they're in love with me, even if they are and they just don't know how to show it. I want the late nights to be quiet, and the anger to be honest, and the mania to subside.
It doesn't matter, I'm moving out anyhow. Soon enough I'll have all that time to myself, and we'll see how well all my hypothesizing and superiority folds over. I've just gotten to the point where I really enjoy my sister, and I haven't really enjoyed living with someone since Jared and Zac in New York. Maybe I'm just a huge mess. Maybe I should move into a house.
Today Israel got back two bodies in exchange for hundreds, for two or three living men who went home to Lebanon, I presume. I wonder who has the power there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Alas, all the rooms on craigslist compare to the boyfriend's payment for a one-bedroom apartment. I don't care. I need to cough up the cash somehow before mom and sis move out. I just want to be on my own. Hopefully I'll be able to make rent with this new job and loans, and not have to skimp too much on books. I hate skimping on books.

I realized last night, as visions of Hyde and Forman danced before my eyes, that I really do suffer from depression. Probably not more than most people, but I haven't noticed myself falling into lows that affect me all day until now. I haven't realized that all the markers in my life that sometimes alarm me- open sores on my scalp and arms, smoking, not eating well, not exercising, watching tv for alarming amounts of time- are tolls that I am paying for stress about something else, earlier in the day or week or year or lifetime, that I still feel shitty about. Its been a bad couple of weeks, true, and chris is here now, with all his eyes bent on me, and its going to be hard for me to just get me time in. Hopefully once I move out and have my own place I can get some personal, meditative schedule going.

Its crazy how far I've come from last summer in NS. I knew at the time that my life there was fit to make me happy. It was a lot of things: regular meals, good activity levels, regular sleeping hours, and about an hour and a half of yoga and meditation every day. I have been striving for all of this again, but its been really hard to reach here. I really think living on my own (no roommates) will help me in this department, especially if I'm aggressive about my time alone and my time with the Boyfriend.

Memories of last summer come to me now often, with a smug unavailability. I'm sure there are plenty of other outlets that could help me, if I did them regularly, if my life was at all more regular than it is now, that would improve my quality of life. But I know, surely, that the only thing that has ever truly brought me peace is meditation. I have never been as happy as I was then. It was frustrating at times, to be sure (working on a farm and living in one house with nine or ten stinky, horny travellers will be), but all of that seemed to fade so much farther into the background than it ever had for me, and I had been there before. I had felt it much differently there, at other times, other seasons.

The weeks that followed my departure from the farm were very painful. I went to Europe with my (now ex) boyfriend and we had a long, drawn out, working out of our relationship. I didn't exactly make it easy on him, and he was pulling all his old tricks out of his basket. I hate him so much now. Its funny: I've never hated a boyfriend after we broke up before, at least nothing more than a mild irritation mixed with pity.
It ended badly- secrets and lies came up afterward that made that postclosure sting just a little too tangy- and then he started dating S. Just after we had broken up, I had joked with her that she should date him, had long, drunken, gooey conversations about how he had hurt me, manipulated me, how crazed he was. The part that really bothers me is not how fucked they both are, what bothers me is that I know they both like it, a little. Pervs.

2008-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

we walk out on the canned pier
i make myself a model of it
keeping secrets beyond the jumping point

lies fill rings around the stars
until its too bright to hide ourselves
the unhealed cuts, the leaking formaldehyde

ive picked myself another sunflower
another monteur
to squint at in the darkness

2008-07-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

it shouldn't be this big of a deal. i should have just asked him to do something for me, i was close enough. but he didn't really want to, and i was kind of mad about him not even attempting to go down. i'm tired of hearing excuses now. the thought of being used really really hurts. once you do something enough times, it doesn't really matter what you say afterwards. a person gets the feeling that they're not important, and it gets harder and harder to be okay with that, the less important you are.
its my own fault. i should have just asked him to do something else, but in that moment, when he was feeling it, all i could think of was his selfishness, how it used to be in the beginning. the very thought of it makes me want to cry. its happened to me before. i can feel it coming already.

2008-06-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

i now realize
that you have been lying to me for years
making me into your little plaything
fucker

to lil

2008-05-27T20:32:00.001-07:00

so to end my update on my little life
my mom is driving me up the wall, and really my big issue is with her girlfriend, who is the most passive aggressive person i've ever met (in that jovial way where she's always laughing at the wrong time), who is always picking on savannah, which really gets my goat. my mom is that kind of chameleon, you know, who kind of becomes who she's around all the time, so she's sort of turning into krista. i've come to realize that my mom really does seek out dysfunctional people to latch on to, and it has come to my attention that i really should put some time into just figuring out who i am and who i want to be and how to be happy so that i don't end up like that, forever pissed about things that happened ten years ago, last year, last week.

The Great River

2008-05-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

i can see it in his face
the regret of telling me
and the thing that still husbands him
like he never told it

but it doesn't tempt me
i have never been privy to lust
and love is such a two sided thing.

you have to take what you are given
and make joy of yourself with it.

2008-05-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

she would have me kept up tight
she would have me say nothing
about nothing
until the day i died.

it has finally come down to it:
me or them.

2008-03-22T14:33:00.001-07:00

he tells me i am beautiful
he tells me what to do

2008-03-10T07:17:00.001-07:00

He goes home
and I go blind
I can't seem to see past the next hour
the thought of days is suffocating.
All the things in my life
begin to look very grey
the books and the papers
the buildings and the hours spent in them
the foundations of the world
begin to sigh and mumble.
sometimes the light from us
reflects back on the rest of it
making everything so happy
making everything follow my lead

I wish everything else in my life
was as easy and beautiful
as being with you is
I love you very very much.

2008-02-12T07:34:00.001-08:00

you made me
into an animal
and laughed when I couldn't
shake their hands at parties
you made me
into an alien
in a petrified world
you made me into nothing
in a world full of something
you made me fucking numb
in a world
where the only thing worth living for
is feeling

2008-01-29T07:17:00.001-08:00

they call me gorgeous
if he said it i would call it true
they call me mean, orange, ugly and nympholeptic
it don't sting one bit unless he hears it
they've got nothing on me
not with judgment, charts or antiseptic
not jury, not trial, not the electric chair
not fucking macy's day parade
i don't care

what if everything exploded

2008-01-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

i live in bathrooms
i own all the typos in the world
i have a laughable fear of the explosion
which happens every damn day
what if everything exploded

i have a boyfriend
he comes with a fruit basket
with booze and cigarettes and friends
it keeps us together.

the wholeness of the world
keeps me from falling into its parts
the seams are invisible
they sow them with trickery
its a blinding shiny mess

dont you wish you could be that guy
the one that remembers your face
and has all his injun books he reads
the guy that reads the injunbooks

For Thursday.

2008-01-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

I realize that I don't have the courage anymore to write or to dream or to be alone.
I don't know how to get the things inside of me out, or what they are. I know this because I don't have the ability to be alone anymore, to be with them, to be with anyone. I don't have myself. I never had myself but now I don't understand the nature of the thing that grasps me. I don't know what it is that keeps me in an unhappy state when I am alone, or what keeps me from being with other people, or what exactly it is I am trying to prove by actually just getting through the daily depression, by turning small tasks into benedictions, small, unimportant blessings of not happiness but not unhappiness. I guess the faith I have against my mind has taken me farther than some other depressed or chemically imbalanced people that I know, but I don't believe in faith, really, or any of that imaginary relationship with something greater than yourself (which is nothing, by the way) bullshit, but we have to work against ourselves somehow. I just only have that much courage now: not to have a more fulfilling experience which requires considerable bravado, but to make it through the day. These are the things I can do.
I have certain things that I use, namely people, to step on, like a ladder, to keep away from myself. I have certain tendencies, addictions, intense desires, that stem from a horrible, illogical terror of being alone with myself, of being still and radiating with pain from my chest outward while lying on my bed all day in one position, on my side, like a middle aged housewife or a very unhappy old person. The amount of pain I look at in my future is what scares me. The amount of insufferable, small, nagging, unimportant, present pain of everyday life that will continue, unabated until I'm dead, for every moment of every day, because I don't have enough faith to let go of it but too much to kill myself. That may all change. That's just for today. For Thursday.

god don't know nothing 'bout my soul

2007-12-30T11:12:00.000-08:00

Those days
when they say
"bye dog"
as I sit on the couch
invisible
crawl into my bed and cry like a bitch

then take
two shots of concrete
harden the fuck up
do the dishes
eat the eggs
broccoli
spinach
green tea
glucosamine

run outside
sweating it out
think about boys
wait it out
feel imaginary whilst
the worthlessness gets pushed out by these little things

2007-12-16T17:32:00.000-08:00

I wonder if I'm a fake athiest like CS Lewis, who does not believe that god exists but is very mad at him for not existing. I wonder if I am supposed to not feel upset by all of this- my whole life. I wonder if the abyss that I cover up with boys will change if I stop covering it up. I wonder if I need to wade through it like a swamp of muck. i wonder what to do with myself, and if I should write a book entitled "how we fell apart" and if savannah moving out of the house will tear me up inside. A rhetorical question.

2007-12-08T18:44:00.000-08:00

"I don't know if I should go,"
He was saying. "I get a little unfun at parties."
"I think you're fun most of the time."
"Well," He kind of shrugged a little, smirking.
"But don't," she tilted her head up a little sideways, "let it go to your head."
He laughed maybe more truly than she had ever made him laugh. She tried to make him laugh a lot.
"'At a girl." He said.

poor little rich

2007-12-06T18:19:00.000-08:00

girl
I wonder if I'm being trained,not by god, who is emphatically nonexistent (just like daddy)but by another boy, to be fine by myself, playing the piano for two hours a day I wonder if I can train myself or if I will ever stop thinking about my father. if i will ever stop thinking about boys. about jesus. about everything. i want to turn my brain off. it wouldn't have been that bad if he hadn't started talking; coming into my room just to talk and then two weeks later a junkie. that really hurt the most. its when I stopped being able to write. there wouldn't be a hole if he hadn't loved us once but not anymore. loved me once. I wouldn't always be trying to fill it up by another boy I wonder if I will always consider myself empty. no, I wonder if I will ever consistently feel full, if I have to keep training myself. well, of course. I would go crazy and take everyone down with me if not, but i am starting to doubt my strength for the harder things, going home to the family and just being, just living, without fighting all that pain. now that i am trying i am starting to doubt myself. i will be like rich or kerry leigh; i have never actually tried to stay put in one place, in one place, for so long. i have never seen the reasoning behind putting all your eggs in one basket, all your resources into being one person, i am just like all those people i hate and i will make poor decisions for the rest of my life. is it true?
nono, that was just a fantastical moment, i am not really scared of that. i am scared of it, but i am also proud of myself for being able to cure my own boredom cure my thoughts cure my head cure myself of myself for two hours on the piano. i am proud of myself for feeling perfectly fine when i wake up in the morning. i am proud of these things and that other stuff does not really matter, not right now, in the constant moment before the asteroid hits the earth.
its so scary to be here with the light on on all of this. i wake up in the morning feeling relieved that i can live for eight hours without thinking about that one thing i have been thinking about, whatever boy, toy, or characteristic it may be. the tibetans are always late.

2007-11-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

I can keep myself on time
getting up by 6:06
not flossing, constant pedalling
I get up by 6:06
if I go to sleep by 12.
I go to sleep by 12
if I lay down by 10
not crying, constant anger
until my head cools off.
I can control everything except my head.

So you think all you got for your birthday was stood up and a bad check?

2007-11-28T16:12:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe that is all you got. But maybe thats all you deserve. Maybe you should date N. It sounds like madness, and you know he's in love with someone else, and you'd be in way too deep way too fast. Maybe you should just try being normal without having a relationship with a significant other. Maybe you should tell j what is really going down, so that you don't have to deal with the pain of letting it run its course and realizing you are just another girl that comes up to the desk and talks to him.

2007-11-24T13:15:00.000-08:00

good job, honey. You found yet another person to make you feel shitty about yourself. How do I find these people? I hang on so tightly to people who show me, tell me they don't want to hang back. Thats what I do. I find people who make excuses, make shows, make me indifferent, people that don't or won't or can't give a shit. People who can only offer me rides home and nothing else. Thats alright, girl. Its all going to be alright, even if you never ever find someone who really just loves you, just the way you are. Its going to be alright, even if you die tomorrow. Its going to be all right, even if you push yourself into this stupid, crummy relationship again. Its going to be alright.

For Free

2007-11-16T09:45:00.000-08:00

Going to counseling today. I need to bleed myself dry of my boy addiction. Liz says she's not worried about me; I'm just on hiatus. My ridiculous self-esteem level has become visible to me in the last few days. The question of happiness is not so well hidden when I am alone so much. Or, I am caused much pain by the very fact of myself, and having no one around to mask it with, I feel much more unhappy than I usually do.
And there's this fucking mec who is driving me nuts. Absolutely nuts. He's not really even doing anything, but my little mind gets so wrapped around everything that I implode everyday from the stress of it. I absolutely implode.
It really only makes me think I'm fucking sick in the head. That no one would ever want to date me, which is true. I just don't know who I am anymore. I always thought I knew; I was so wrapped up in things that it was easy to say that. But I don't know anything. I don't even know what it is that I really want to do with myself next summer. Not even in a hypothetical sense, like I could do whatever I wanted. I can't even dream up the one thing that would make me happy.
I think it is the farm, but I question whether or not that is because of the people all around there or if it is my time to myself there. Really, its the only thing I can think of; going to a farm in France by myself, learning French, eating good food and meeting good people. But where is the me in that? Where is the me? Who the fuck am I?
I can't think of any singular activity that I could fully commit myself to next summer that would just be me, alone, in silence, enjoying myself. I can't picture the silence. I can't picture any of it. Every song, every goddamn movie is a story of people together:
and when you were a kid you were king of all the carrot flowers
and holy rattle snakes that fell from the sky...
this is the room one afternoon when I knew I could love you
and sit above singing down into your soul
into that secret place where no one dares to go

2007-11-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

I ride the bus
and think about number relationships
I walk home
and think about
february 2005
I sit at home
and try not to think
I lay in bed
and read about myself
I dream about swimming pools
community activities
I am awake
I get angry at everything
someone is turning the nobs to my head

2007-11-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

You been around enough to see
that if you think you're in
you better check with me
because I take full advantage
of every man I meet
I get away
almost every day
with what the girls call
what the girls call
what the girls call
the girls call murder

love poems are the hardest to write

2007-11-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

because love is so contextual
and how do I know its true
how do I know anything
about myself.
One day I'm writing things that make me cry in the bathroom for half an hour between classes, and the next I figure I've got my hands on something real. Something really aware, something unpainful and unobsessive, but the truth is I don't know anything about myself. I don't know what to say to you, when you give me your number. I don't whether to call you right now or to turn you down, turn you around, spit you out. I don't know if this is good, and I get the feeling you don't know either. Don't try hard for me, okay? Don't be too sure about me. Please. Because its impossible. Bail on me if you want. I'll give you another chance when you really know me. That's real.

2007-11-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

The truth is that James will never show up in Fayetteville, eyes shining when he sees you at your desk. The truth is that all he has to do is drunkenly tell you to come visit, and you buy the tickets, knowing that he won't call you back. The truth is that your life is pretty fucking lame and full of lame people and lame relationships. The truth is that you are beating a dead horse trying to love pat. You can't trust him anymore. The truth is that your sister hates you, and you are only making her adolescence more trying. The truth is that Jimmy doesn't even know you, and if he did, it wouldn't work out anyway. The truth is that you only see your father when he needs money for crack. The truth is that you have no one, and you are a hateful bitch because of it, unable to get anyone. The truth is that you are so empty.

2007-11-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

is it fair to say
in the context of only me and you
you made me think that not
that everyone was worthless, so much
as that I was worth less
than you
it is true that I know you were stupid and wrong
but somehow it crept up on me
and its all your fault

2007-11-02T09:29:00.001-07:00

although things are hard now, although things are especially hard now, good things have been happening, especially in the family realm. I have had a few really good family interactions in the past few weeks. The man-diet is what's killing me (I'm a maneater and I need to stop), bad time. I realize its just my mind, running in circles after things, but in a weird way, thats just making it worse. In knowing that the relationships I want to pursue should not be pursued, I'm actually getting to know someone, in little steps, sort of like a normal beginning of any relationship would go; independent of the obsessive caretaking I would normally indulge and not fanatically acting on my every impulse to drag him in, just sort of prancing along in a light, unattached fashion. This is not who I really am, of course. The problem is that I don't catch every impulse, so its kind of like I just sort of like this guy and he probably knows it but I should (sadly) stay away from him, and I have a feeling this may culminate very tragically if I don't really control myself. It is impossible for me to act like I am totally uninterested, because that's not true, and it is extremely difficult for me to not obsessively engage with this person, but that is what I'm trying to do. It feels very sad (its so hard to not do things that you know will give you that instant high - you reach out and get a reaction, your frontal lobe calls it love and releases endorphins), but I think avoiding the mania that is inherent with pursuit (it should more likely be referred to as "hunt" or "domesticate" in my case) is good for my brain. A lot of this reminds me very much of meditation: I want to do something and I stop myself. This is very hard and frustrating, and sometimes when I do this I see the urge for what it is, just a momentary feeling, not really valuable or real, transient.

The hard part is not hating myself for those things, the hardest part is becoming comfortable with the nature of my mind, which I judge to be worthless, detrimental, shallow when in fact it is not anything. My relationships with other people (namely the fam) have benefited instantaneously with my non judgment of their minds. This has been surprisingly easy, in the large part- I just stop thinking about them, or what makes me mad about them. I stop worrying, I don't inquire further into their problems. There is a certain point when this exercise stops being a relaxing one and starts being a stressor, because I still believe that at some point, if you love someone, you step in to their lives and do something for them they can't do themselves. I believe this to a hazardous extent, and still do not understand the nature of relationships in which this is deserving.

warlocks and director's cuts

2007-10-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

they are sanguinary
murderous and cruel
in that way that only cute boys can be.
conversely, when thinking of all the problems
that would arise
I hate him already
My mind is like a spinning top
spewing the drops of liquid miasma
occupying it at the present moment
I wish I could kill it.

boys, boys, boys

2007-10-31T18:06:00.001-07:00

The damned truth is that
I could spend my whole life
riding the ups and downs
of crushing on boys.
They hurt me unwillingly
I'm sure of it
I expect too much of those little things
and too little of the big ones.
I'm too fucked up for him
and every him knows it.
I'm just distracting myself anyway.
Although life is boring, friends
The most painful part about it
is seeing ourselves for what we really are.
Who would want to do that, anyway?

2007-10-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

whole families clad in red
walk arm in arm down the sunny path
heads snapshots football plays

your heart is a web
you bundled me up
in your little tricks

my heart is an oyster
with no pearl
just a runny tongue inside
I hide like a wound

biology and the french whale.

2007-10-25T10:05:00.001-07:00

The school of them
crashing in the wake
of the one I fished out
of the big bowl on the mantle
thinking I could choose one
thinking I knew how to use one
instead of drifting down
to crack my head open on the brick hearth
and flood surrounding regions with a deep sea
of unruly thought.

chat

2007-10-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

KB: I love you.

E Engel: i love you too. what should we do?

KB: make babies, probably.

E Engel: i bet we can do it on gmail

KB: good answer.

E Engel: i hope the name I picked out for our baby isn't taken. I want it to be named DMBfan69.

he wants me back. and that is not what I want.

2007-10-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

its not just a matter of me. How can I go on with my pretentious wants- I want to get drunk and fool around with Aubrey Bonowitz, I want to have friends, I want to be single, I want to do stupid childish things - when he is there, and all he wants is me? How can I go on, carefree and somewhat lonesome, when he is there, crying on the floor and guilt-tripping me with the fact that he is going to drop out of university because I broke up with him? I can't. Its just too hard. I tried to be nice, I tried to just cut it off when I realized it was bad and not draw it out, fight-picking and bitching for three months till I felt like I had provoked him to a point of justification.
The problem is he is so manipulative and he doesn't know it. We are all manipulative, but he is bad. His whole adventurous future is standing on my shoulders, and I have to act like I want him bad enough to put up with it until he is stable, has his own friends, is going to counseling, is somewhat independent.
I doubt that will ever happen though. I don't think the nature of our relationship allows him those things. I think it is just me and him, and thats all he wants. Why else would he run away when we are supposed to play racquetball with other people? Why else would he refuse to go out, refuse to see anyone at all?

2007-10-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

I wish I knew what it is I want from him. How can it be so simple as I imagine it to be but so important? I wish I knew what was fair, what was right of me. Not only what was right, but what was worth it. Is it right that I want him to just take over sometimes, to just let it all out in front of me, to say that he's sorry, even if I am being silly about it? Why do I want him to do it? Is it fair of me to expect that, even if I just told him flat out that that was what I wanted the night before? But he can't just do that. He can't be wrong.Why? Is it fair, also, that I want him to just be emotionally available, to open with me, when in the past I was the one who hurt him? Is it fair of me to want him to stop lying, to fucking reach out to me, why am I always the one reaching? Why am I always the one creating the small moments, with our heads underneath the pillow and the soft voices? Is it true that I am just making myself available to him then, that he is always there, waiting? Is it true that I just have more power than he does, that I can't be molded like he can?

I have decided some things.

2007-10-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

I think a lot of the pain and suffering people feel when they are my age and younger (the 18-31 group) is in the fact that you change your whole conception of who you are around completely. Your threshold for what is entertainment, what is fulfillment, what is worthwhile all has to change. You have to become satisfied with the fact that your primary conversation and gratification will come from primarily one person. You have to be gloriously entertained by dancing butt-naked in front of the TV while your significant other is watching it just to make a weird noise with your butt-cheeks.
Change is always hard, but I think it has become even harder for every generation since television spread en masse over the technological world, and harder for every consecutive generation since then. The curves and splendor of the themes most celebrated in television and cinema have ratcheted themselves into our brains so hard that they can sometimes only be shaken out with mental illness. Think about it: who wants to happy with mediocre domestic bliss? With mediocrity? With sadness? With pain?
No one. Its fucking unfashionable.
The very structure of televised story telling cuts life down to its most exciting bits, cutting from one moment to another in two or three minutes. People are always in a state of meeting each other, making first impressions, or falling in love, causing us to want to always be meeting new people, making first impressions, or falling in love. As some poet who later killed himself said, "The truth is painful, life is boring, my friends." Or something to that effect. One of Rita Dove's friends. But life is only boring if you are bored with what it is, if you expected it to be a party and really it is just you getting older every year, sitting in the dining room with your dog and your mom's girlfriend. Don't freak out.

2007-03-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hey Hey Hey, What are you doing? Do you have your bush pilot's certification yet? Or are you taking a more culinary approach? Is Colin Foster still alive?

Yeah but he's a total fag. Also he has become one of those drunken assholes who picks fights. I am nothing but a junk mail receiver these days nils. Where ya been? What are you doing in the summer? I have to go to fucking group therapy now. Catch you later.

Ahhhh! Well if Colin's a fag, then fuck him. I hate fight picking, drunk douches! Still up in VT doing the pizza thing. Working a bit at a summer camp nearby this summer. You should totally skip out on AR and join the amazing ranks of VT for the summer! Lot's of trees, swimming and good people! What the hell are you in group therapy for? Tell me some stuff and lose the junk. I think I'm gonna hang a hammock in my room in the spirit of summer... Much Love, Nils 

for my anxiety disorder (isn't that great? I have my very own disorder now) it is recommended that I go to group and mano i mano each week. I'll be in Nova Scotia for the summer and the mediterranean, maybe we could somehow possibly see eachother maybe. Somehow.  Don't Much Love Me Just Because I Have to Go to Group Therapy, Kara

You can't tell me where I put my love you sassy cunt! So, you're anxious eh? Well, at least you'll stay on your toes and always be ready for arbitrary raptor attacks... Or the second coming of Jesus... Nova Scotia again? For the farming I imagine. I support your decision, yet demand that you stop in VT on your way. If you choose not to visit me, I will call the mounted police and fabricate an elaborate story involving you and a meth lab. So, you now have my ultimatum. Besides the anxiety, how has UofA been?  Puppies, Pink Fuzzy things, Atari game consoles, the smell of gasoline, Catholic Priests and oh yeah MUCH LOVE,
Nils

but okay I'll visit you. It may be that I will be going by way of spain, so spare me your nagging if I'm a little late. And why the fuck can't you visit me? We'll both get to eat better food and I'm sure you'll be wanting a break from your housewifing. I really am always ready for raptor attacks, but they're planned, you see. For some reason all the raptors are out to get me. And Jesus, although last time my peeps got him first. The U of A is better than I thought, although people are stupid and friendly, which I expected. The classes are good though.  Your Mounts Will Never Find Me Bitch!
Kara

well oh well, spain eh? what's in spain? well i guess plenty of things are in spain, but why are you going? You have to visit me because VT is between AR and Nova Scotia. It geometrically-sensical... I actually have a plan right now to be in Memphis at teh beginning of May for a music fest, so if you feel like coming to memphis, I'll be there for like 4 days methinks... But otherwise I expect to see you in the Green Mountains just south of Canada..
On another note, stupid and friendly seem to go hand in hand in the South. Especially in AR. A man from Texas approached my friends and I at the bar the other night and terrified my friends with his light humour and southern hospitality... I forgot how creepy it is... My Mounties are very good. Don't doubt them. I have a man on the inside...
I miss the honky-tonks, dairy queens and 7-11's,
Nils

Oh yeah but you said to tell you stuff-
I sometimes lay awake at night and wonder why I am even alive. I can't sleep. I've had one full blown panic attack, and I cry daily. I read something they passed out at the last group though and it at least got me thinking about my life instead of just dreading it. Cheesily enough, it was called Rights and Responsibilities. I need to not watch TV, ever, because it makes me feel really depressed and angry. I freak out about alot of stuff and feel really useless in terms of my whole jeus complex of coming down here to 'save my family'. What the fuck was I thinking? That they needed saving? I worry about my mother's legs getting cut off (diabetes) in ten years and having to take care of her, one stupid life event after another. I feel differently about my life than I did when I was younger, but my brain is developing into the drippy selfishness of a suicidal maniac. I'm serious. I have caught myself thinking about how much better off I would be if it all just stopped, if all of this would just go away, all my memories of jesse crying on the couch in a little ball of pain and my morbid fantasies of us all just dying and suffering slowly, in some sort of disaster of nazist regime, if I could just escape everything. This one is not for you nils. I won't send you this one.

But I'm too full to swallow my pride.

2007-03-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

but I have to get to texas
said I have to get to texas
and show the world my blue dress
cowboys and snakes they are my kin
they are my kin

she was a january girl
never let on how insane it was
in that tiny kind of scary world
by the woods by the woods by the woods

"It could be a continuing state of sadness and it could lead to suicide."
What am I doing with myself? How can I tell someone that I'm having suicidal thoughts? Life is too hard for me, poor fucking me. Is that what I'm supposed to say? I guess you should go in and make an appointment for yourself, I just can't imagine how it's going ot make anything better, how is it going to make my life different, how is it going to make my mom stop lying about everything, the pills wrapped in toilet paper, vibrating from her daily spiritual talks about sobreity, all the little fucking secrets, and savannah eating bread for dinner, her math homework all wrong, the little cigarette butts in her desk, spreading ashes all over pictures of her little friends. How is an appointment going to keep me from going home and feeling like shit everyday in that sunny little house? How is it going to help me avoid those daily hours of sacrificial bullshit everyday?

father's father

2007-03-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

What am I supposed to do with my father? I am so debilatated by all of this pain and I don't know what to do with it. How do I deal with him, how do I talk to him, when I hate him so much, when so obviously just wants to use me to get back at my mom or whatever. I can't see anything real in him whatsoever. So what do I do, and how am I supposed to feel about it? Can I just sever him or something? Is that really possible? What about just writing letters for the rest of my life? How can I take him seriously, see him without a mask of stupidity when I have to see him doped up on coke every week and a half? Who is this person, and why is he my responsibility?

so lonely

2007-03-12T07:16:00.000-07:00

Now no one's knocked upon my door
for a thousand years or more
all made up and nowhere to go
welcome to this one night show
just take a seat they're always free
no surprise no mystery
in this desert that I call my soul
I always play the starring role.

february 2005

2007-03-09T07:53:00.000-08:00

Jesse laying on the couch
like a little ball of fear
and his face is like nothing
like he has absolutely disappeared
and you scream and you fight and you yell about something that isn't right
but it doesn't help you three years later when you're still crying in your bed trying to catch your breath.
You don't feel like a hero then, do you?
Nope. and what do you have to show for it? You are nothing.
You haven't felt a goddamn thing since February 2005 and there's no hope in sight
no stable little family life at the dinner table
there's still too much shit to deal with in the light of day to even get any sleep over your failed adolescent performance
the third act
the prestige is all rotten.
But its okay. We don't have to feel anything anyway.
You have just been a bad actress all these years.
The problem is I go between wanting to spend my life in France, planning it all out in the day, to all my suicidal thoughts at night. And people always ask me,
How did you come out all right?
Well, I didn't.
I can't feel anything folks.
I can't feel anything except when writing about february 2005.
You know, they always say suicide is a cry for help, but when I think of it, all I can imagine is the sweet excellence of nothingness. Absolute escape.

The echoes of my mind

2007-02-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in the university bookstore, reading a Christian Bale article in GQ. A song comes on, the one from midnight cowboy, and I look up: the dark wood paneling, the impenetrable mass of new novels, a picture of a blond woman in a sari, the fat black looking at fat black pussies in FHM and shaking his head, where the fuck am I? What the hell is this place I am trapped in? How did culture and life and tomfoolery encircle me so much that I thought it was real?
I'm sitting in the dining halls. I am a sea, surrounded by islands of shining metal. Have I ever been what others think I am? Every once in a while I leave the world of living matters, and human beings no longer affect my universe. I am a total isolation. How can I tell him to get out of my life, when I obviously don't have one? I am a complete nothingness, can't you tell?

You think this is fun?

2007-02-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

Do you think it's fun for me to leave New York, after I finally established my own social network, to come live in Arkansas with my recovering alcoholic mother and and an irate teenager? You think I like it here? Why would I? What the fuck am I doing to myself here? Why do I subject myself to this? To make it easier on my mom by being the disciplinary figure with my sister? To make it easier on my sister to hate me instead of my mom? You should hear the way she explodes at me, for like 5 minutes, after I say one word, after I ask her to speak to me in a kind voice. She just keeps going, and going, depleting my sense of myself as a human being, yelling, veins popping with misdirected anger. And I just take it. I just keep my cool and say that its really hurting me, and then she gets really mad and slams the door. What the fuck am I doing here? Why am I the one who gets on to her about eating a mashed potato sandwhich, when my mom buys her Braums meals with Milkshakes three nights a week? What the fuck am I doing? This is so stupid of me to even be here. How else did I think it was going to work out? Why can't I confront my mother about this stuff? Because I know she won't follow through? Jesus. I am such a sick individual.