i
want
to
go
home
and
sleep
in
my
less
comfortable
bed
and
i
wont
mind
because
i
will
be
home
home
sounds
good.

song of myself

this is like a vicious cycle that wont let up on me. its normal to feel sad when your boyfriends leave, when friends leave, when you say goodbye to your parents. but this is just becoming something im not sure i can handle at times.

i hope i dont sound like a self-loathing little girl looking for attention when i tell you that im dying.

but i cant tell you that im dying because you wont understand. you will tell me to join a club or talk to people i dont know.

theres a little more to it than that.

sometimes i feel like a dog being locked in a cage that only my friends and family can unlock. there are those times when i am freed from the cage and i experience the life outside.

the life outside is amazing.
the life outside is beautiful.

im so jealous of the life outside.

because before i know it, the friends, the family have gone away and its back to my cage. my cage where i dont get to feel and i dont get to be human anymore. im just around for everyone else's amusement or for everyone else to ignore. and it seems as time goes by its harder and harder to turn around, to admit defeat and go back to my cage.

i want the life outside. but you cant understand that and you never will. because you dont know. you never had a cage. and now this is my home. this is where i eat. this is where i sleep. this is where i shit and lie in it. this is where i die inside.


yeah, thats really how i feel and im sorry if you dont care and im sorry you even read this. im sorry that you have to listen to me cry even though youre not listening at all. im sorry youll never understand. you dont know what its like.

conversation with myself.

its time for a solid plan. its time for me to talk to myself on the internet...go:

first things first: you came here for school. that is why you are here and obviously the only reason why you are here. you must succeed in that if absolutely nothing else. otherwise you have wasted money, time, lifespan and brain power for no reason. portfolio review is next semester. if you fail that then you are fucked. yes, fucked. between now and spring you must do all you can to not become fucked in the sense of failing portfolio review. other kinds of fucking may be acceptable but will be handled on a case by case basis. should you become fucked in the sense that you fail portfolio review, it will be time for major life assessment. by the end of this semester you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you may be successful in the review the following semester. if chances are you will fail and as aforementioned be fucked in this way, the options of transferring schools, switching majors and some forms of self mutilation will be explored. these options may include transferring to uga, gsu, aiu (back up haters), ksu, switching to business or some other businessy thing major or gouging out your eyes. The latter is not the recommended avenue seeing as to how you cannot do anything other than art and would not have much hope for that without one or both of your eyes.

now we move on to how one can survive in the meantime. you have approx. six and a half months left in the regular school year, add two months to that if you choose to pursue summer classes. long story short you will be miserable until you either: a: know you must stay here and finish out your college. you will know upon passing the portfolio review b:pursue other options outside of tennessee. you have six months of misery ahead of you, but it doesn't have to be all that bad. something made you come back here this year, so surely theres a way you can stay here and be okay. though you long so much for the familiar and to be closer to home at the same time it is hard to see yourself anywhere. face it girl, youre fuckin awkward and youre gonna be fuckin awkward across the globe. dont try to hide it or run from it. the time has come to embrace it. it took you a long time to make the friends you had in high school. its going to take you a long time again. you may never make good friends here and maybe thats ok too. as long as you can find someone in the near future that you could call to come assist you should you fall down a flight of stairs resulting in injuries, which can and very likely will happen at some point, you will be fine. whoever said college was the best time of their life was probably drunk for a solid portion of it. you are not drunk now. you are not usually drunk. everything hurts more when youre sober. here, have some chocolate.

dont be fooled, you are a changed girl. in the time since high school you have become much more reserved, retreating back into your shell. this is because by the end of high school you had confidence radiating from you. you had solid friendships and had found something you loved to do and were beginning to get good at it and you were comfortable in your location and felt safe and loved. you dont have those things now so its natural that your confidence should plummet. dont get scared about it, its ok. theres nothing wrong with a shy girl and if youre lucky youll get it back in time. youll need it later.

bill sent you his list of dates for the rest of the semester:
9/29
10/5
10/13
10/20
10/27
12/29

you will work most of these days which takes you up through the end of 2007. between weddings and trips home/visitors this takes you through the end of october leaving you with just the tail end of the semester to go. this is certainly feasible. sorority stuff will keep you busy even if it isnt stuff you want to do. school will as always keep you busy and it will never be stuff you want to do, but no matter. these are the things you must do. these are the things that will remind you youre still breathing during those times when you forget, which has been a lot lately.

you will go home in october and at that time you should get your strobes. maybe you could start a new project. it doesnt have to be anything scary, maybe just some photos of yourself. maybe you could contact the basement gallery. the owner wanted you to exhibit there sometime. maybe you should get a project going and give him a call. you could order one of those commercial photography books youve been eyeing on amazon. you could teach yourself how to shoot commercial. shoot some random products in your house add it to your portfolio. take it down to atlanta over the summer. get some clients. make yourself known. kick some ass. burn haigwood to the ground.

wait, dont burn haigwood to the ground. thats arson and youll be the first one they suspect.

naturally.

you know more than you think and you have a better grasp on yourself than you think. but not many people care how you feel and what you think and in truth they shouldnt. your throughts are not that interesting because while everyone else is moving on you are wallowing and no one likes a wallower not even you.

quarter life crisis

everyone you meet is fighting a great battle- Plato

this weekend was my joint 20th bday party with ebeth. kelley and jordan came and braved treacherous rain storms and a superlong drive just to be here with me. it meant so so much. i find that these kinds of things matter much more than they may have in the past to me. after the weekend was over i felt like everything was over now back to the grindstone again. forget that fun and friends and laughter do in fact exist. walking back into my room with tears in my eyes i saw the flowers that reminded me that someone out there in the world gives a fuck about me. its those little things i suppose that matter ultimately.

it meant so much that they came.

elizabeth says that maybe we arent supposed to really be happy. maybe life is just about those few short moments when you are afforded something that makes you truly happy. maybe all we're meant for is just living in hopes that we can find one of those good moments within all the bad once again. maybe those who have so called friends are just kidding themselves.

maybe they are.

its like sex. theres so much you have to go through. but all you really want is that ten second orgasm.


this kind of sucks though.
you think about these kinds of things when youre twenty.

i should probably just shut the fuck up. when i get work things will get better. im just alone because i dont get to do what i love to do right now and that makes me sad. maybe when i get work things will get better.

or maybe they wont get better.

and in that case i will chalk it up to elizabeth being right as always. its we're all just working toward those few good moments.

stream of conciousness

i swear its like i fix one thing and then immediately fuck up another. sometimes i dont even wait until the first thing is fixed to fuck up the next thing. its like i cant get all my eggs in one basket. toying with emotions, that must be my game. i never wanted to be like this. i feel like im slipping away. i feel so stupid for messing around with the one solid thing i have going on right now. heres a great idea angie, why not piss the one person off who still acts like he cares about you. that seems like a grand idea!

leave it to facebook to cause relationship problems.

i dont want to be that couple that fights all the time, but maybe thats how it always is supposed to be. if we arent fighting its probably because im in some kind of emotional wreck/state of depression that prevents me from having the willpower to fight. the rest of the time i do things i know are wrong and i know will mess things up but i do them anyway. so we fight. i feel so stupid, but i cant just beat myself up because then it will seem like i am trying to get people to feel sorry for me. i dont need sympathy, i dont deserve sympathy. frankly i have done little right in this whole thing. i open doors i know shouldnt be opened and i have major problems showing i care. i sound like a great girlfriend dont i. no one deserves this kind of treatment and i need to fix it.i just know ive said i needed to fix it but i didnt. obviously i didnt because once again i find myself furiously typing here on this stupid assed blog about the same problems over and over. im so mad at myself, but my constant hypocrisy prevents me from knowing what to do next.

covered in rain 9.11.01

i remember six years ago. it was a tuesday like this and that night when i looked outside there was nothing in the sky.

nothing in the sky.

i was fourteen years old and i was scared to even go out on my front porch because that day the whole world had been revealed to me. no longer was evil just preserved for history books. it was the first time i realized that evil resides in the here and now. it was the jading of my generation, the first time we saw the world for what it was and the tenacity of the human condition.

and it was scary.

the main thing i remember from that day was peering out the front porch window with fox news blaring from my living room, seeing the clear empty night sky and being scared to death. there was always something in the sky, some kind of plane or helicopter or fuck, even a blimp or something. but today there was nothing in the sky, and even though i knew that if something were to be in the sky it would be a bad thing, i think i would have found comfort in seeing something up there. it was the first time i realized that the world is not safe and that things can change so much in such a short moment.

so now its six years later. im not fourteen, im twenty now. i worry now. i worry so much now. i worry about my future and the world and where i might find myself six years from now. but if something as big as what happened six years ago can happen in a matter of minutes, im thinking that its not worth it to worry.

so today i vow to seek happiness where i can find it. life is simply too short. its time to get my head on straight again and move on.

now im standing facing west
tracin my fingers round a silhouette
i haven't gotten used to yet
but its the brightest thing ive got
when im covered in rain

might be a quarter life crisis or just a stirring in my soul

so this what twenty looks like on me. ugh i dont like this feeling. two decades sounds so ancient. i think its hard to move on once you get to college from your high school perception of what a birthday should be like. you get up in the morning and your moms got the chocolate chip muffins cooking downstairs. then you get to school to find ten of your friends huddled around your wrapped locker with flowers and candy (but never balloons, those are illegal) and then you walk around all day and every who you know doesnt really care about you tells you happy birthday and maybe if youre lucky one of your teachers will embarrass you about it.

college is different. most are drunk the entire day, but me i wake up in my apartment and eat toast. that is how my birthday goes.

im just kidding, my mom is coming to visit which i couldnt be happier about. i talk to my mom abouot a lot of stuff (yeah im one of those girls) but when it comes to the things that really bother me i dont bring those things up. im not sure why, but i just have always had a really hard time telling her how i really feel. i guess i left the heavy stuff up to my friends. but its gotten to the point now where people i can really talk to are few and far between. most of my friends from high school have moved on and have new friends and even if they hadnt they still have a hard time empathizing with my situation. so perhaps im just desperate enough to let it all out with my mom. that probably sounded wrong.

twenty is a scary number, but i think im so caught up in everything else im feeling right now i really cant be upset about anything else. the strong realization that im growing up with surely hit me eventually. twenty is scary but twenty one is fun. i hope that twenty one treats me a little better. but until then all I can hope for another wonderful year on Gods green earth.

life is a delicate balance between holding on and letting go.

it has indeed been a rough week for me, and i wouldn't hesitate to say it has by far been one of the roughest. i cant say ive ever felt quite that way before. i was just sad. sad with no hope. thats an horrible feeling by the way. all leading up to my birthday, which we won't talk about right now. partially because it isn't my birthday yet and partially because im not quite ready to admit that i am actually twenty years old. we'll deal with that tomorrow.

ive always been told that doing things like making mind maps and lists and venn diagrams were good for helping sort out your thoughts and make decisions. the above is my attempt.

i think the long and short of it is that i never wanted to go to college in the first place. i couldnt really see it any other way because thats what everyone does except those who are dropouts or losers who waste their lives away into nothingness. but ive always known that i dont have to have college to do what i want to do, im sure that it is invaluably helpful to have a degree, but just the fact that its not totally required always makes me think about the other options i have in front of me. theres always the option of attending a smaller two year tech school, but a part of me would feel like im missing out on what are supposed to be the best two years of my life. i suppose the problem with all this is that these havent been the best years of my life, and the outlook is not optimistic for them becoming such.

the whole thing just makes me sad and depressed.

my entire experience at ut has made me question everything about myself. i feel like i have learned very little here and when people ask me why i came here i dont have a good answer for them. its not because of the program because as i am currently finding out (just a little bit too late) the program here is actually very bad. its not because im in state because im not. its not because i have connections or friends or family here because i dont. its not because i love knoxville because i actually now long for the city. its not because i needed to go here because i didn't.

so i dont know why i came here, and thats what i tell everyone. i dont know why i just came here because i didnt want to go to uga. but maybe i did want to go to uga i just didnt know it yet. or maybe i came here just for the sake of not going to uga.

or maybe my purpose for coming here was to question why and how i am doing anything. maybe my purpose for coming here was to help me realize i have a right to change my mind.

you have a right to change your mind, some lady said to me at debra's party. that is something someone told me when i graduated and they are absolutely right she said. nothing is too permanent to not change.

you cannot depend on anyone else for happiness. its not fair to them and its not fair to you.

i told jordan this several weeks ago. maybe i should take my own advice.

i talked to belton last night. he is doing well. he spends much of his time alone as he does not have any friends in california, but he is ok with that. he is beginning to make a name for himself and he is doing what he went out there to do, and i could not be more proud of him for that.

when i graduated from high school i wanted to go to school go to new york learn italian and work for vogue.

who was i kidding? i cant even make it in knoxville tennessee.

prophecy.

Look into the sun and see
your soul is dying.

Used to feel the faith,
but now you¹re tired of trying.

Should have left alone
what you have stolen from everyone.

How you feeling?

You seem a little sick to me now.



today i have settled into a bland paradise of sad. after feeling emotional distress im just tired. i mean theres not really anything i can do about things. i just have to feel this way or get over it or something. i dont really know the right answers at this time and im not sure what to do. looking into the future is what has made me feel as bad as i do, so maybe i should stop doing that. i just wish i could snap out of it, but i suppose i went long enough kidding myself, trying to make myself believe that my situation is ok. my situation is not ok because try as i may to make it sound good on paper i dont really have friends and my classes are hard and i dont have a life outside of school here.this is fine most of the time. most of the time i can pretend things are different or just not think about it at all and things are fine, but the second i have a moment to stop and think about things i remember how it isnt like that at all. and then it just hurts because i see no way out and no solution. i feel bad about whining and crying everyday to this blog but seeing as to how this is all i think about its kind of all i have to write about. i dont have any fun stories about things that have happened to me, fun memories with friends, i dont have those things anymore, and maybe im wrong but i just feel like i deserve to be able to have those things.

i think im just being overdramatic. like maybe none of these things actually exist and that maybe if i would just open my eyes a bit wider and stop loathing all the time id be fine.

so for now ill go to class and go to kroger and glance over the tabloids and come home to ebeths yammering about some kind of campus injustice and come up to my room and light my candle and do my homework and water my cactus and go to bed and do it again.

i can be numb if i need to but when this happens again, and i remember everything i dont have once again i will hit the ground just as hard and it will hurt just as bad. like the bird that keeps smacking itself into the window im not sure where it ends.

covered in rain

i should probably be working on my paper.


or not eating all this food.

but instead i use my two hour stint on the sixth floor of the library to stare at facebook and gorge myself on my sack lunch plus the snack i was supposed to save for later. i spent some time catching up on caitlyn and heather's blogs. heathers was a little harder to get through because shes just started college and though im a year behind her and should be over all that shit, i must admit i find myself feeling much the same way she does still.

i felt like i really accomplished something this summer. by the end of things i felt really good. i felt grown up mature as if i could handle anything even things my friends might never traverse. i felt like i was more professionally accomplished than many people my age and i felt like i had accomplished something by coming up here and being off on my own like this.

sound conceited?

of course it is.

and the best part is none of its true.

it seems as though within the past week or so i have become this fragile doll. it takes almost nothing to have me in an emotional frazzle. tears sobs you name it.

and i dont know what to do.


somethings missing and i dont know how to fix it.

its like everything i rely on up here just falls. i get my hopes up on friendships activities things to keep me busy. and its just like time after time i ended feeling let down and once again alone. if i had to make a list of things i do up here for pure enjoyment it would consist of sitting in the library and looking at photography books and going back to georgia.

excuse me if my idea of fun doesnt involve the lambda chi house.

so then i try to find some kind of alternative. i find a youth group. i get excited. these people are nothing but kind they will make wonderful friends.

only to find that i constantly feel judged. insecure for every part of me.

sorry im not a saint.

seems like in betweens dont exist up here. i suppose if you dont fall into one of the extreme categories you get to entertain yourself for the next three years. im not so sure its better anywhere else.

im so afraid that im that girl.

that girl who died in high school.

im so scared that rhs was my peak and now i get to turn into the girl that went crazy or completely changed for the worst or lost herself along the way.

i feel like im out of options.

i felt optimistic at the beginning of the year. but it seems so far this year isnt shaping up any different than the last. the only difference is that everyone else is getting over it. now im the only one left behind.



And now I’m standing facing west
Tracing my fingers round a silhouette
I haven’t gotten used to yet,
But it’s the brightest thing I’ve got

When I’m covered in rain

its not easy.

its so easy
to find yourself right back in that place.
its so easy
to feel its just like it was.
its so easy
to love what you love to love.
its so easy to feel comfortable again.
its so easy
to go home.

but whats not easy
is coming back
to an apartment full of wonderful things.
every amenity under the sun
and know
that in a city of 173,890 people
not a single one
loves you.
its not easy.


my head aches from crying and its too tough to tell anymore if im just feeling sorry for myself or being too emotional or if my emotions are justified. i had an amazing weekend with my family and jordan. i was reunited with the wonderful feeling of coming home. but i have to wonder if the awesomeness of this weekend is outweighed by the hard crashing down i feel now. being home makes me feel great, but it just reminds me of everything i dont have the rest of the time. i feel myself breaking and i dont know what happens after this.

i try to breathe but its just interrupted by gasps of air. failed attempts to regain my composure over and over again.

why cant i just get a grip?

everyone else has.

its not like i moved to another country. its fucking tennessee. i dont understand why this seems so hard to handle.

im here to do what i came to do. become a better artist. but each and every day here makes me doubt if i can even do that.

if even that goes away then im not sure of what i have here anymore.

i need to delete this and pretend it never happened. i need to chill the fuck out because everythings going to be fine.