warm up.

it has been a while. my apologies to those who care haha. the past week and a half have been absolutely insane. my mom came up and helped me move out and we were gone on the 13th. came home, had a party on Saturday, spent a few days trying to move all my furniture around and all my junk out of the way, did some last minute Christmas shoppping, went to a job interview, did some photography, went back to knox on friday, moved all my furniture out, came back friday night, spent saturday trying to get it in the house, left sunday morning for alabama, came back monday evening went directly to jordans and hit the bed monday night wanting to sleep forever.

christmas was great, a sigh of relief if you will. my house is still a wreck. every time i try to go anywhere i cant find any of my stuff. but i loved just being home and not having to go anywhere and relaxing and not thinking about my lack of job or my worries about school and the future and school in the future. i just forgot about that all and ate the food and didnt count the calories and laughed about stupid memories and home videos and promenade movies. i got everything i could have wanted (adobe creative suite, some converse all stars some lovely clothes and ironically two umbrellas haha) my dad surprised jordan with a taylor guitar. and after all the stress and all the worrying and the million trips up and down the stairs of my house and apartment, i just got to chill with my four favorite people (+ one dog) in the world. that's a christmas.

now im left once again concerned about what's next. today i suppose i will begin to clean up the mess of furniture and books and magazines and clothes and art i have left all over our house and begin to reorganize my life in a different place.

ive packed a change of clothes cause its time to move on.

crossing slowly such a big bridge. we'll all make mistakes along the way. so just hold your breath and take a step into, into whatever comes after. if you think this could be what you want, you just gotta try.

it seems as though caitlyn had the perfect aim away message for me today so i put it here haha.

its my last full day in the knox. fittingly, its rainy and dreary, but oddly warm for december. we signed the subleases this morning, but im still not sure i feel this is really real. i have to say that if my time here at ut could have been anything remotely like what the past few weeks here have been like for me, there's no doubt i would have stayed. formal, christmas parties, watching movies with ebeth and sam, finishing up school, jordan visiting and going to gatlinburg, random trips out for ice cream and of course monday night dinners have made the past few weeks truly good ones. i guess its nice to be able to say that i went out on a good note. i have no grudge about ut. i think its a wonderful school and will continue to rise in its standings in the years to come. my bad experiences here were frankly self-induced. the people im close to here have been wonderful and i will still cheer for tennessee because i was born and raised a volunteer. i will still uphold that this area of the country (not so much the ut campus or the city of knoxville aka mini detroit as belton likes to call it) is much more beautiful than middle georgia with its rolling hills and the smokey mountains in the distance. i have seen some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets of my life over the tennessee river.

perhaps if i gave all this one more semester to pan out, things would be fine. sometimes when i think about it logically, its quite stupid of me to go anywhere else. im already established here, ive already made headway in my program here. now i get to go erase all that to start over. at least if i dont get into my major here i have a backup plan, at georgia there is no plan. i guess panic is the plan. everyone else seems to think that me going to georgia is the easy way out, like im going to have this paradise of a life sitting before me on a silver platter as soon as i get there. maybe im just being stupid but i dont think its that way at all. im going into a harder program at a campus i dont know with a lot of odds stacked against me. im walking into people's lives who used to be a part of mine, but now have new lives of their own. i dont fit into that new picture. so no, its not all cherry pies and chocolate cake, its going to be hard, and its going to hurt. its going to make me doubt whether ive done the right thing, but i dont know what else im supposed to do.

i dont feel like analyzing it anymore, why things happened the way they did. why i changed my mind. what may or may not happen next. im too tired to deal with it all anymore. the plans are set and i doubt theyll change. ive got to remember to take this all one day at a time. its too early to be worrying about what happens in nine months. i cant do that to myself.

when i apologized to my dad about wasting a lot of his money on out of state tuition for, in the end no reason. he rejected my apology. he said he was paying for an experience, and he was right. even though im coming home i feel like i did do something here. if i had to stick it out here, if there was no way out, i could find a way. i can go to a city knowing no one and somehow find my way around and find the best grocery store and make a small appearance on the scene and stay alive. at the age of twenty i know i am capable of doing all of these things. and maybe thats what he payed for. and thats what i have that some people dont. its not right or wrong its just part of the experience.

this is all been an exercise in learning who i am. when you disconnect yourself from all the people who've known you forever and know you so well you find out a lot about yourself. im a loner. im an only child independent loner who only lives for herself. im selfish and reserved and feel insecure in broad social situations. being out alone after dark makes me uncomfortable as does not having any cash on my person. i cant stand the smell of sauted mushrooms and i dont think its a good idea for me to live with other virgos. i can create a grilled cheese via four different cooking methods and though i cant read a map, i can figure out where roads go. i dont like sleeping alone anymore and i am slightly dyslexic.

i have a lot to learn and it starts with me. the next thing i need to learn is how to be in a relationship, how to truly become unselfish and understanding. how to compromise and how to care. ive got a lot of work to do, but first i have a lot of packing to go.

it feels like this is the day ive waited for since i got here a year and a half ago; im going home.

I'm staring out into the night
Trying to hide the pain
I'm going to the place where love
And feeling good don't ever cost a thing
And the pain you feel's a different kind of pain

The miles are getting longer, it seems
The closer I get to you
I've not always been the best man or friend for you
But your love, it makes true
And I don't know why
You always seem to give me another try

So I'm going home
Back to the place where I belong
And where your love has always been enough for me
I'm not running from
No, I think you got me all wrong
I don't regret this life I chose for me
But these places and these faces are getting old
So I'm going home
I'm going home


Balls to the walls eyes faced forward headstrong not looking back.

kinkos? no dude, f*** kinkos!

it's official: the end of the semester is kicking my ass. i have an exam in art history in about three hours and i have just lost all desire to look at another one of albrecht durers representations of Christ carrying the cross. theres so much going on right now: studying, finishing projects, a shit ton of really bad writing, packing, trying to get these mofos to sign my sublease, getting all contraband items out of my apartment, getting ready for orientation at my new school (my head is spinning after the spanish qualifying exam i just took, its been way too long). so like ive been saying, i have had a lot on my mind. then i went to kinkos...

i had to get some stuff printed for my gd final. i went to kinkos the night before it was due, i suppose a mistake on my part, but it wasnt due until four the next day so i had time. i walk in the store and the guy freaks out and says they are super busy and they cant take the two seconds it would take for them to print my six 8.5x11 color pages so i have to do this self service thing.

now ill pref this by saying that im not much of a self service kind of person. i enjoy the self checkout at kroger when i only have a few items and everyone else has 34809, and theres no need to pay extra for gas just to have a dude in a jumpsuit come pump it for you anymore. but i feel these days the idea of self service may have gotten a little out of hand. im not a business person, but i do understand that self service improves efficiency and frees up employee time to be running more important aspects of the business, but we also have to think of customer satisfaction here. and i am an unsatisfied customer. here is why.

so im like i dont really want to do this whole self service thing because the whole reason i go to kinkos rather than just printing it on my perfectly good printer here is because they have a good supply of nice paper and printers that do a better job than mine can. at only a little over a dollar a sheet, i think its worth it. im looking at this inkjet business theyve got going on in the self area with an eye of suspicion, so i ask the guy if the print quality will be good, he says yes. i ask if i can see some of the paper. its not as good as what i usually get, but its not see through and that was all that mattered to me. the guy asks for my credit card and shoves it into this slot at the computer. i am now being charged twenty cents a minute just for breathing in this room. i frantically rush to the computer, precious dollars ticking out of my account with every passing moment, to try to print my documents with as little fiscal harm as possible.

i print the first document. it is completely cropped off and ironically turned sideways. i know im a student, but im not an idiot, the document was set up just fine. i call homeboy over to help me and have to wait for five minutes as he helps a disoriented lady work the copy machine. again i hear "cha-ching" ringing in my ears as the minutes rack up on my credit card. homeboy comes and does something to the computer and i print the rest of my documents just fine.

i note that the colors are quite off on two of the prints, what should be bright purple is now a dull burgundy and what should be a soft golden is now a violent piss color. i remove my credit card which has now been charged over 14 dollars. i go to the counter to be reimbursed for the first two prints that got shot to hell. homeboy #2 helps me. i ask him why my purple now looks like the color of airplane seats and my yellow looks like someones bladder exploded all over my project. he takes my credit card and tells me it's probably because the machine is getting low on ink.

thats it.

why do you think i came here in the first place? to use a failing machine? YES! That is why i came! I wanted to make sure, that instead of looking like the brilliant masterpiece I spent hours creating on the computer, that my project looks like absolute shit! Thank you homeboy #2!

He gives me my card back. I wait for a receipt. He tells me I have to go to this machine to get a receipt. I sigh with defeat. The machines have taken over. I go up to the kiosk it tells me to put my card in. I swear, I've been shopping all day at the mall and not used my credit card this much. i stick my card in the machine, it wont take it. i consider breaking my card by forcing it into the machine in protest of this dumbassery, but decide that will only hurt myself. i march out of the store into the rain (they didnt give me a bag to protect my prints) having paid 12 dollars for something that should have cost me six, and thats with the nice paper.

in summation, even though the people at kinkos are complete dumbasses, they are nice. you cannot replace dumbassed-niceness with a machine of any kind. and i never did get my receipt.

i would like to write, but i dont have anything nice to say. maybe later i will.

on empty.

i think i may have officially run out of gas. i mean my sleep patterns have been normal, im not experiencing a lack of rest any moreso than usual, but what i mean is i cant really take this anymore. ive got pressure on me on all sides right now. its finals time, i know everyones under a lot of stress, but in addition to tons of work and test anxiety ive got added fun stuff: a room mate who gets on my case on an hourly basis about my lack of room mate situation as if i have complete control over the universe, im going back and forth with my next school making sure i have everything ready for next semester, im starting to think about packing up my things here, and im ending a whole chapter of my life which though im happy about the whole situation, its still emotional.i dont know why i cry anymore. i cant tell if its because im stressed out or because im relieved this will all be over soon or if its because im scared of whats next. honestly i think its a combination of the three.

i blame myself for ever wanting to leave here. at the end of the day its going to take so much effort and waste so much money and possibly even be hurtful to other people. sometimes i wonder why i couldnt just suck it up so i might not have caused so much damage.

type a.

Type A Personality Test

According to the scientific literature, the Type A Personality construct describes someone who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time. The defining characteristics of the Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP) are a strong drive to succeed, hostility, competitiveness, perfectionism, a desire for recognition, wealth and advancement, difficulty talking about feelings, and a sense of urgency and impatience.

Snapshot Report

Impatience/Irritability
40 out of 100

Your interactions with others, while characterized by warmth and tolerance the majority of the time, may occasionally be tinged with impatience and hostility. When you’re stressed or frustrated, you may lash out at others or end up stewing in anger or frustration, but this is very rare. Since you generally trust others, you are usually willing to open up emotionally and value relationships for the sake of the people involved, instead of what they can do for you. This is fortunate because a high amount of this aspect of the Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP) can not only be extremely harmful to relationships, it is also very damaging to your health. While originally it was thought that global TABP was the culprit in coronary heart disease, research now shows that hostility, impatience, and other related traits are the real source of the problem. Based on your results here, you are likely not at a very elevated risk of heart disease, but keep in mind that there are other causes unrelated to the TABP, such as poor diet, lack of exercise, and smoking, among other things.


ok i know i know its my second entry of the day. but its raining and im feeling kinda down and i have nothing else better to do but im not quite ready for sleep just yet. i started wondering about type a and type b personalities this afternoon, and it made me wonder where i fell on the spectrum. so i took a few tests and they all came out relatively the same, the results being shown above.

ive run across a few very much so type a people in recent times. one being a girl who is in several of my classes (an art major, imagine that, not exactly where youd think to find a type a person). she craves structure, her work must be technically perfect. she doesnt understand when she doesnt get a's in a class and complains to the teacher about it.

my room mate is another excellent example of a type a. (im not trying to say that its such a horrible thing, although research has shown that those who bend more toward the type b direction are a little more socially balanced and healthier because of their calmer demeanor.) i feel like some days from the second she gets out of bed shes running. running to do her homework running to get things checked off her checklist running to, well, go running. she eats the healthiest meals all the time, she studies weeks before her exams, she exercises daily, she takes care of problems the second they arise. it all seems like a part of a really healthy lifestyle, but honestly witnessing it firsthand as i do just wears me out. it seems like a healthy lifestyle, but i dont think it is. all the calorie counting, academic stress and self criticism seem to take their toll over time.

as i sat in my room able to hear her sobbing on the phone tonight about how horribly guilty she felt for going out and drinking last night i wanted to go to her and shake her and tell her that its ok to live and to feel and get your heart broken and be stupid and not plan out every little detail and not be in total control and not worry all the time. why do you do this to yourself? if all you ever want to be is perfect, youll be constantly disappointed.

dont get me wrong, ive got type a tendencies too. i know what it feels like to hit the floor in pain knowing youll never be good enough. i still feel like in some respects im letting my parents down by leaving here. in some ways i feel like im letting myself down by not sticking to my plans.

im thoroughly convinced life can be done in a very orderly and organized fashion. it can be done in a way that will never catch you off guard and never leave you hurt or lonely. it can be done cleanly with good hygiene and perfect morals. at can be alphabetized and categorized by name.

but when the shit goes down thats where you grow. thats where you pick yourself up out of the dust and mold and mildew and grime and you shake it off and you understand the world just a little bit better. thats where you see who you really are and what you can really do when youre pushed to the limits. no teacher or rulebook or computer program can do that for you. youll never be graded on it on a 4.0 scale, but who the hell really cares? the grades dont matter, its what you know that does. and some of the most unplanned, unconventional, bizarre, random, inexcusable, and incontrollable things that ive encountered in my life have been the ones that taught me the most.

its raining and its sunday and its almost time for finals. as i sit alone in my bed in my room in my apartment in tennessee once again, and watch the rain do beautiful things on my window in the light of that skanky orange streetlight, i encourage you all to live a little, and taking my own advice i hope everything will be alright.

rollercoaster.

damn what a weekend. im tired, sore and recovering from a mild wine headache from last night. this weekend encompassed many things. discovery health channel documentaries about sex (very interesting, btw you should check it out), discussing classy christmas parties, sex stores, funnel cakes, rednecks, ravioli, hairdressing, hauling my drunk room mate around and not quite enough sleep. it was great.

this weekend was formal and it was a lot of fun. my room mate tagged along and it was at a bank of all places. she kissed jordan on the bus on the way home and almost drove both of us insane haha.

as my friends said goodbye to jordan, they said goodbye to him for good. he's not coming back for another visit and i wont be back next semester. i think when they were saying bye to jordan it really hit me. damn, in a week and a half this is all over. over for real. for so long i felt like i was on a rollercoaster. like i had gotten on a ride i didnt want to be on, and there was no hope of stopping until it was over in its right time. no emergency breaks, no emergency exits, you stay strapped into your seat until its done. its the worst feeling in the world. but i got lucky, someone gave me a free pass to tell the driver to pull over and let me off. what a glorious thing, but where do i go after i get off? what will become of me? i look to the future with optimism, but everything is so unclear and mainly comprised of spur of the moment decisions that i can make no assumptions of what the picture of my future will be like.

are we ever really free?

Dog eared.

"1968: Do not resent her. Think about the situation, for instance, when you take the trash bag from its box: you must throw out the box by putting it in that very trash bag. What was once contained, now must contain. The container, then, becomes the contained, the enveloped, the held. Fine more and more that you like to muse over things like this." -How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes) by Lorrie Moore

I usually dont mark or mar my books up, i figure the abuse they suffer in my backpack everyday is far enough, but i did dog ear this page in my 30/30 book for my writing class because i thought it was super interesting. "What was once contained, now must contain." How beautiful is that? It reminds me of how in life our scenarios and roles and outlooks and feelings are constantly changing. Perhaps in one relationship you are the caregiver and when you are hurt by that person the next relationship you find, you are the one being cared for. or maybe its just about growing up and getting over yourself. as things in life change, we adapt, we move on.we figure it out and we become better (or in some cases worse i suppose haha) for it. i remember in the 8th grade the theme of that school year that we did projects on over and over and over again until our heads were bleeding was the human condition. but i am amazed by the strength of the human condition.

i dont really know why im rambling on all philosophically like i know shit. haha. well counting today ive got 6 more days of classes! then on into the great abyss. maybe everyone reading this can cheer me up from my outlooks of gloom and doom by getting me a Christmas present. Or, if youre just looking for a present for someone special, I suggest you go to etsy.com (buy american motherfuckers!) everything on this sight is handmade (or antique). They have a fabulous selection of really unique jewelry all of which i love haha i even found a necklace that looks quite similar to the one that belonged to Andrew Largeman's mother in Garden State. Anyways, just thought id do a little plug for that little treasure i found haha.

i got slammed in critique this morning. but whatever, six more days...

and we sang heerree we gooo again.

as an artist i find that you have to obsessed with something before you can make the magic happen. art comes out of your inability to put an idea or thing or person down. you work it in your head till your head cant handle it anymore and it comes out on paper or film or music or canvas.

and damn its beautiful.

i would say that at times over the past year and a half (or more) certain areas may or may not have been a mess, but now its time to make something beautiful of it.

as an artist i find i am fascinated by the weirdest things because i know the weirdest things will be what inspire me the best. one of these days im going to vomit a bunch of ideas out of my brain. im just waiting on my vomit.

here are things/people/shit im obsessed with right now, if i were you id just go with it and not ask questions:

_the studio 54 era
_resurrection ferns
_housewives (as always)
_chicago
_jordans cousin inglish
_chantal (nothing new there either)
_nighttime at sketch motels
_marta
_charleston
_kitsch fashion design
_screen printing
_and now aunt jemima

your wheels just turn down the road ahead.

well i made it through another thanksgiving alive. no one was too mean this year. every time i leave the state of alabama i long more than ever to be everything ive always wanted to be. i know its horrible, but many of my relatives represent the things i dont want to be (bored, stuck, ignorant, stuck in their ways, uninteresting, geez im an awful person) but it just motivates me to become their target even more. i like to think they are jealous of me and that is why they pick on me so much. it may or may not be true, but either way me being successful will only benefit me.

its official, ive been accepted to kennesaw after only 2.8 million phone calls. the plan is being set forth in motion and this is the real thing. so so scary. im already apartment hunting in athens and wondering how my new life will be and how everything is going to pan out long term. there are going to be plenty of bumps along the road just like any other road i could have taken, but i feel like this is a fresh start, like im starting college all over again in a new situation and as a different person.

perhaps when youre 18, confused and emotionally bruised you arent in a place to make life changing decisions. but as i send the emails and write the checks i pray that at 20, i am.

"Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go."

i just saw some guy out the window take a complete nose dive into a flower bed full of bark trying to catch his dog. im actually quite jealous of this guy because although he just made a complete ass of himself, he looks like he is having the time of his life. today i went through my itunes throwing out old stuff, organizing some things and making a cd for my trip home. 1979 came on and it was like it was foreign to me. i still knew the words and the different musical components of the whole thing, but that is a song associated with a different time and a different me than the one that resides today. some may say i listen to it out of nostalgia and longing for days gone by, but i see it more as a marker of how far ive come. moving away from the shame and the fear and the belittling of myself and seeking out the things i deserve and the things i want out of life. im not a source of entertainment, im a human. i dont want to be quiet anymore. i dont want to be locked up anymore and i will never be anyone's toy again.

each time you move on from something else you take all the other things youve moved on from in the past with you. i guess thats what they call baggage. but its all a learning experience, you never forget anything, you cant afford to. otherwise we'd all make the same mistakes over and over. and then we'd just be idiots. when i go home the same things that have been around will still be there, but i will not be there. at least the girl i once was will not be there.

ive got places to go.
shit to do.
and someone to love.
that is all : )

in other news every time i think i have seen every episode of americas next top model, it continues to surprise me. i get sucked in to another 378 hours of it. as much as i love the photography i really dont know how much more of that show i can stand right now. i can hear it coming from downstairs. maybe ill watch a dvd and work on Christmas presents instead.

im seriously considering taking an early leave of absence to gtfo of here.

lets talk about "on edge"

so ive surpassed the point of being a little concerned or anxiously anticipating, im at the point of worried sick right now. this is not going to be another check the mailbox entry, this is about my apartment. my room mate has decided to move out and now shes breathing down my neck about why we dont have someone to live here yet. i mean come on, yesterday you were living here and now today you decided youre not going to. i cant make it happen overnight. now shes talking about attorneys and contracts and money and logistics, and its just like i just want to get out of here.

thats it!

and ill do what i need to do to make that happen, but i cant work miracles. i cant get everything organized on index cards within the next hour. sometimes you have to wait. i should have never come here in the first place. to tennessee or to this apartment. i should have known better.

but honestly im at peace about whats happened. in truth i dont feel the way i just described. obviously it would make a lot of things easier, but sometimes in life you have to make "mistakes" to get to where you need to be. so like i said, im at peace with what ive done. i just wish she wouldnt make me feel like shit for it, no one else has.

i suppose i need to be a little more understanding. ive put her in a tough spot.

off to another weekend in absolute solitude.

mellon collie and the infinite madness.

this is what comes up every time i go to check on the status of my applications. really. you guys are just so cute i just cant even stand it. i might even piss my pants in my exultation of exactly how cute you all are. i know i know, its only been two weeks and not even a week for kennesaw. give them some time, you say.

to you i say stfu.

because i know exactly how this is all gonna go down. and now, you are at a great privilege because im going to tell you exactly in great detail how its going to go down.

the people at perimeter are most likely alum of perimeter, since after graduation the students realized they had no hopes or ambitions which i why they went there in the first place. now they have settled into an office job at the school since they were already going there everyday (suuuweeeeeeet), but dont really know what theyre doing. they spend most days covering themselves with sticky notes and making paper clip necklaces. when i call to yell at them every day about how they havent sent my transcript to kennesaw, they dont pick up the phone. they may not know what they are supposed to do when a phone rings. perhaps they think the phone ringing is some kind of bird chirping out the window. a bird native only to the georgia perimeter campus. they admire the lovely sounds of gpc fauna and then continue in their efforts to make the longest paper clip chain ever. meanwhile i record another bitchy voicemail which will never be heard because, lets face it, if they dont know how to pick up the phone we're not even going to get into their voicemail abilities, or more likely inabilities.

as far as kennesaw is concerned, since ive never attended there, i have exactly 283,982,583,127 documents to send them before they will even consider looking at my application. these documents include things like: college transcripts, sat scores, shot records, birth certificate, complete physical exam including a full out colonoscopy and std screening (cant have gonorrhea on this campus, no sir), a digital photograph of my most prized possession so they can take it away from me, my first born that i dont have yet, all my credit card numbers so identity theft will be quicker and easier, my left kidney sealed in a 10x13" manila envelope, a gift certificate to tgi fridays for their efforts and of course my soul.

so i send them all this shit, and of course they dont get it. im gonna blame problem numero uno on gpc for not sending my transcript from there (see paragraph one of my ranting argument. in case you forgot heres a synopsis: they dont know how to send things in the mail, so they dont). aside from that im not quite sure what the problem is. i paid to have everything sent and the amount of time given was ample for everything to arrive in time. i called ut bursars office to make sure they had sent the transcript from here to there. the lady was oh so helpful, once again the kind of helpful you might just piss you pants over. she divulged a brilliant piece of information to me. when i asked why the transcripts from ut hadnt arrived at ksu, she said that remarkably, when the transcripts arrive at ksu, they do not just fall on someones desk, they in fact are placed in a mailbox which some unfortunate soul must walk to to get the mail everyday. said mailbox could be miles away from the office. it might even be an uphill climb to get there. in the snow! holy shit lady, i had no idea people had to go to such taxing efforts to receive mail. i even feel sorry for them, that every day someone has to check the mailbox, ive never heard of such cruel occurrences. i can only hope that at least some of my $50 application fee will go towards physical therapy for the unfortunate individual who has to walk probably ten feet from their desk to retrieve my lost paperwork. maybe im the selfish one here.

this entry will get me nowhere. it will not get me into college and it will not make anyone pick up the phone or check the mail. in fact it will probably give me bad karma for saying such bad things about the colleges. bad karma will hunt me down like one of the dudes that have been mugging everyone on campus at night. in fact before the bad karma finds me i probably will be mugged on campus. then after i am mugged bad karma will come say hello. i will end up finding someone to sublease here just before i get all the letters with frowny faces all over them saying "sorry we didnt get the mail the day you sent your shit!" or "oops, whats a college application?" so then i will be not only schoolless but homeless. there are plenty of homeless people here in knoxville, i am sure i can join them. at this point even if kennesaw did visit the mailbox or perimeter realized they had a class of zero because they forgot to accept anyone, i would never know. with no mailing address its hard to receive acceptance letters.

and even if i had a mailbox, theres that whole issue of having to walk to it.

holy shit!

its the magic bullet!

its eight in the morning and i dont feel like leaving for class yet so this is what i am doing: watching the magic bullet commercial. Im sorry but why do we as americans feel the need to buy a device that is supposed to cook any and everything? something about an appliance that can make chicken salad, cake batter and a strawberry daiquiri in the same container is a little troubling to me personally.

fourteen more days of classes. i know its really going to speed up after this weekend, and after that ill wish i had never wished all that work on myself, but im just ready to get this thing rolling. i cant believe all the christmas stuff is already going on. i turned on the radio the other day and since i dont know any of the stations here it was already on this station playing christmas music. im sure if i step foot in the mall there will be red and green everywhere. i love the christmas season, especially the decorations and all the get togethers and getting people gifts and such, but its all become so commercial. i watch every thanksgiving as my aunts corner me in my grandmother's living room and accost me about what id like for christmas. im toast until i give what color size and edition i want and even then they still bother me for more answers. they make organized lists of what everyone wants and where you can get it for the cheapest price and then they divvy up whos going to get what for whom. i just feel like thats not how christmas should be. i suppose by obligation and heredity your relatives have to get you something, but my relatives see me maybe twice a year if that. they have no concept of who i am. i feel like the whole holiday gift giving thing has lost most of its purpose; the gift giving has become an obligation, not a gift in and of itself.

besides, half the time they dont even get me what i ask for. geez at least give a gift card then.

ugh im kinda tired of writing, between three peer reviews a revision of a short story a graphic design article about a giraffe getting lost at new york fashion week and beginning my longer story.

with two stories set in nyc ive probably looked at a map of new york city more than an eager tourist hoping to see times square.

well i have all weekend to get it done. at this point im cutting my losses on my social life. ill spend this weekend by myself in my apartment doing homework. all of my real friends will be gone to a wedding this weekend and its too late to start trying for friends now.

home sounds good.

moving on.

with 16 more days of class left to go, this is all becoming a real possibility. This weekend as I roamed the streets of downtown athens arm in arm with robyn it hit me that this could be my town someday in the not so distant future. i know its stupid because i have no reason to be scared, but its like the further i get into college the more impact my decisions will have. the stakes just get higher. what if i mess it up. ughh dont do the whole what if thing, theres a million of those out there. this weekend was wonderful, being reunited with all of my friends and realizing that we can still joke about the exact same things still and laugh just as hard, it was a good feeling. laughing in general was a good feeling.

this weekend was great, but its all just so surreal.

18.5 more...

...days of classes.

i dont know how much longer i can take this. my brain has been stretched creatively beyond its maximum capacity. all of my classes except for art history require me to be constantly thinking and developing my ideas. this can wear on you after awhile. i feel like i never really get rest or sleep from it all because im always having to think about something and somehow its never any fun.

meanwhile i sit on my college websites on an almost hourly basis checking my admission status as if somehow its going to magically change right before my very eyes. im so scared somethings going to happen and i wont get in and ill be stuck here and be right back in that hole that for the past month ive finally felt like there might be a way out of it. its a big gamble and im not a gambler.

continuing on with the random topics for today, i spent last evening in katies living room with the few pbp girls that i like. i felt like i was really connected to them for the first time last night, like for once i was apart of their universe. we talked about something other than whats prim and proper and whats surface skimming. we talked about sex and everyones first time. it reminded me of this book one of the gd students did last year at the design competition that included various stories of different womens first experiences, it was interesting and i plan on copying it someday. its funny how so many people can connect by how stupid they were or how hurt theyve been. its so easy for girls to be pushovers, to put improper blame on themselves, to try to fix things in ways they shouldnt. sometimes it works ok and sometimes it doesnt.

before i head off to art history i would like to thank drew from Ithaca for his kind words on the last entry. ive noticed your comings and goings over the past year, but assumed as i usually do that it was some scary internet person. im glad you've randomly found yourself here and not on one of the many blogger blogs in espanol, which is what happens to me every time i click view random blog. though it is sketchy in some respects, it is nice to know that some strangers do find what i say entertaining enough to continue reading.

if anyone gets bored this afternoon you should read the short story "the ones who walk away from omelas" it is only a few pages long in print and though the first part is a little wordy and spastic it is absolutely delicious. it can be found here: http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt

im off to shove more information up my ass.toodles.

daylight savings time.

this weekend, we went back in time. it was only for a small hour, but for that small hour time stopped and took a step back for us. it gave us just enough time. we were little kids tromping through the forest, little kids making a mess in the kitchen baking cookies, little kids in the party room at mr. gatti's, little kids wide-eyed in amazement at all the hillbilly sites of gaitlinburg, little kids perusing the clearance halloween candy, little kids tromping through a field and sundown. for a small hour i forgot about the status of my college applications, the wrinkles around my eyes, my rent check due tomorrow, my art history test on thursday, the wax that now covers my dresser front, my fears about being successful in the future. for a small hour time went back for us.

just what i needed.

im supposed to be doing anything else right now...

...including writing something for english, though im not sure what.

i cant lift my arm up from my flu shot and ive been eating the chocolate chips i bought to go in cookies all afternoon because dammit its halloween and i want to. this week has beyond stressful with my printmaking project and homecoming which involved spending five straight hours on monday and six straight hours on tuesday at a fraternity house, which you all know is exactly where i want to be every day all the time. but the weight is surely being lifted (only to be put back on on sunday afternoon for sure), but i can be blinded for a few days and pretend like everything's easy peezy.

this weekend should be awesome. i really need a break. and i dont just mean a few days sans school work, i mean a real break. because for me the typical weekend here consists of me attending an awkward party or otherwise social gathering where i make friends with the wall and then the rest of the time is spent crying in sporadic boughts of depression and doing homework. this weekend will actually be relaxing. the little sleep i do get will be guaranteed to be good and i will have company to enjoy everything with. we are going on a motherfucking picnic.

photos to come later.

check...mate

i think if nothing else friends serve to keep you from: a. believing you are crazy b. going through with crazy/destructive plans of action.

i might be crazy.
like maybe i should see a doctor or something.
i might be crazy or i might be female.
its hard to tell the difference.
or maybe im like a crazy female squared or something like that.

i dont know who this person is, he sounds quite uneducated, but he is a noted fashion photographer and im a believer:


"these are everything i did for the last 8years, and i realized its a long(*)road( not so hard and painful if you are passionate about photography and have some nice pictures sometime) .

make sure you have enough to pay your rent and food, or get your frineds and families to pay for it …. just for a while and dont piss them off, they are a life saver…

and keep on shooting and no retirement plans. ”

said not so eloquently, but i appreciate it nonetheless. i think theres something to be said about being ambitious and seeking what you are after. i think its a great idea to learn all you can and get connected all you can, but maybe im overlooking the biggest point, maybe in our haste to get the best college education we can we've all overlooked the biggest point: sometimes it takes a dose of life to learn anything.

i could have attended a pretentious art school. i could run off to new york and work with haughty snotty bitchy fashion people. i could. maybe one day i will. but i dont think it has to be so black and white. maybe if i got my ass out of this apartment and into a life that doesnt involve books and deadlines and resumes and interviews and anxiety, maybe i might actually learn something from my college experience.

perhaps if you expend all of your energy climbing up the ladder, if and if you make it, its quite possible you will have no idea what the hell youre doing when you get to the top.

in my small file of greatest compliments ever received there is one from an alcoholic russian man given to me in a buckhead life restaurant this summer, "i picked you because you have drive, i can see it in your eyes."

no company or internship or trip or other person can give that to me. no company or internship or trip or other person can take that away from me. its one of the few things that truly belongs to me and only me and i get to do with it what i want to.

here we are at the brink of another weekend. another weekend in which i will surely face boughts of depression due to boredom and aforementioned mild insanity which i am currently learning to cope with. i hope that this weekend, no matter where in the world you are, my friends, that you will take a deep breath and breathe it all in.

this is life.
the view is not always pretty.
but theres always something to see.

theres a blog id love to write here, but dealing with cleanup afterward makes it not even worth it. its pointless and useless and stupid. these things shouldnt even matter. i need to give up.

ugh just stop before you say the wrong thing.

im so angry right now.

excuse me.

wish you were here (or even moreso that i wasnt)

Q: Which is worse, feeling trapped somewhere with no way out, or being somewhere you dont like and know you will be able to get out but noooootttt quiiiiteee yet?

A: They're both pretty damn bad.


No im stretching it. my situation is a million times better now than it was even a few weeks ago. but now i am facing yet another weekend here by myself with practically nothing to do.

thats not true, i have plenty to do.

damn, im even boring myself with this blog.

its just hard living a life with one foot out the door.

ebeth and i got to talking tonight about college and life and all that good shit. we agreed that when you get out of high school you think youre the shit and youre going to take over the world in all your excellence and achieve dreams unimaginable to anyone else. you think youre going to be better, that youre going to be different. but the world humbles you. youre really not that different. theres a reason your parents and everyone else arent famous or supermillionaires. and here i am all this time thinking its just because they didnt try as hard as im going to, maybe its because this is life. life is hard. sound simple but its true. in our narrow little high school minds we believed we were invincible. now two years later i think we're seeing the reality of things.

elizabeth asked me i if thought that i had gotten anything out of my time in tennessee (well thats not really how she phrased it, but no matter), and i didnt even have to think about the answer to that question. of course i got something out of it, i got a lot out of it. first of all, i had to know what it would be like to go away. i needed to prove to myself that i could go off on my own and start again and i dont think, even now, that ive failed in that. i went off on my own and i did everything i could do. in truth it could have been great. i could have made tons of new friends and taken off in this new place and forgotten about everyone at home. all the ingredients were there but, it just wasnt the right mix for me. i can say with confidence now that i tried and it just didnt work right here and right now, but i know im capable in the right place and time. so now i dont have to wonder.

aside from that tennessee has served as that humbling experience to me. i didnt feel sheltered here. i had to find an almost extreme form of independence, spending a lot of time by myself and relying on myself to make it through. i feel like im a stronger person for it and i feel like im better prepared than others for the future because of my experiences.

so i refuse to regret or feel bad about my decision. i dont have to explain anything to anyone else. i owe it to myself to move forward. now, i dont have to wonder what it would be like to go away, but i cant stand the thought of living the next two years wondering what it would be like to be close.


its almost the weekend. yuck.

in the waiting line

well, i really cant complain, things seem to be working out great. if i could find someone to live in this apartment next semester that would be even better. my mom told me once that whenever she has car trouble she wants to get rid of that car asap. once it betrays her she wants to have nothing more to do with it. i guess thats how i feel about ut. now that leaving is a reality im ready to go right now, today. honestly if thats what i could do, i would, and i wouldnt look back.

jordan is right, the coming weeks will go by quickly. i have a wedding and pbp shit next weekend, then homecoming week, then jordan coming to visit, then going to uga, then thanksgiving, then formal, then finals, then moving out! it leaves only one or two more weekends spent here alone wallowing in my self loathing and other shit.

its just like now that i realize i dont have to be here forever and that, God willing, im not going to be here much longer, everything about this place pisses me off. ebeth is getting on my nerves with her constant pursuits for perfection in everything and her criticism of what i eat and do and say and how much i work out (or dont). the town is ugly, theres not much productive to do here unless you count drinking as productive.

knoxville may be the car that broke down. it let me down and now i want out of it.

i finally got an a in something : )

(my latest short story for english 364)

Empty Sky

After high school we followed our childhood dreams and moved there. We were so in love, running around the busy streets and dropping into little dives on the corners that had better Chinese than my mom could have ever prepared. I loved the energy of the place, the buildings stretching into the clouds, the taxis reverberating through the canals of streets. Best of all I loved our apartment, a little studio in the meatpacking district. At first it appeared cold, but you and I we made it sensual and cozy. We covered the brick walls with the tapestries you brought me back from your senior trip to Italy. I bought the softest linens I could find for our bed. Many a lazy Saturday afternoon we spent tangled up in those sheets cuddling away the world and school and work and forgetting about it all in each other’s eyes.
I spent late afternoons and evenings up on the roof in my deteriorating lawn chair reading about Gestalt psychology for my classes. As night fell, I would light those Catholic Jesus candles you got me at the market and look at the whole wide world stretched out before me. The taxis pulsed down the streets like soldiers in an army of ants on a voyage. If you looked far enough you could see the water, and beyond that, Lady Liberty. On a night like this you came up with a bottle of wine you had procured from the liquor store down the street we both knew never ID’d, and as night flowed down over all the towers and the taxis and the airplanes in the sky you promised me that one day you would marry me. This was city life.
On Tuesday you left for your morning class and I began my usual routine of reading over the paper as the TV news hummed in the background. But today the news didn’t hum; it screamed. It screamed in bright shades of bold red text and uncertain news anchors and panicked citizens and clouds of smoke and falling debris. I took my coffee to the rooftop and watched in horror as it all fell down in the distance. I spent the rest of the day feeding off a steady diet of CNN and astonishment. I watched as people in sheer desperation jumped from windows to their eminent death. I had never witnessed anything like this before. You came home unharmed but very shaken and told me I needed to take a break from the television. We went up to the rooftop with a bottle of wine and tried to discuss other things, but the other departments of my mind were closed. It was in my mind and it was in my face. To the west, it was much easier to see the water now. The traffic had stopped, and the once bustling city streets filled with agitated taxis now contained only a few confused stragglers who must have been wondering where the world goes from here.
I looked up at the sky. There was nothing. Any other night there would have been airplanes and satellites and spaceships and maybe Donald Trump in one of his ridiculous gold helicopters, but tonight there was nothing but an empty sky. The President had imposed a grounding of all aircraft for at least the next day. The sky was empty and it scared the shit out of me. On this day, everything had fallen out of the sky: people, buildings and airplanes. The sky had nothing more to give, and now it was empty like I’d never seen it before.
The city began its mourning process. American flags adorned every surface, and the President began using words like “freedom”, “justice” and “terrorism”. You told me it was all going to be alright, that we would make it through all this eventually, but I couldn’t shake my fears. The faces of the missing on hand made posters haunted me at the subway. I could not get used to the gap to the west, I didn’t like the better view of the water. I eventually stopped going up to the rooftop. You tried to distract me. We spent afternoons in bed, but I couldn’t help but fear that the building was going to come crashing down on me, destroyed by evil.
When we took a trip back home for Thanksgiving I told you I couldn’t come back there with you. You were crushed, but you knew why I couldn’t stay there anymore. You promised me when you finished school you would come back for me. I hoped you were telling the truth. I loved you and I loved the city, but the city had shown me everything I never wanted to know about the world. It showed me all the things I had turned my head away from for the past nineteen years, and it showed me that ignorance is bliss.

you got put down in class today, again. you know why? you suck.
yeah, i said it.
you do.
and tonight you will go home and get in your bed and dream of a time in the not so distant future when everything will be better.
when you will have friends again.
when you will feel like youre actually getting somewhere.
when you will succeed in your major.

but you will do none of those things.
because you cant.
you cant
you wont
you never will.

i dont know why you think that running away is going to make everything better, but it wont because no matter what you cant run away from yourself.

you have the best of intentions, you really do, everyday, but you cant follow through with a single one of them.

you will go nowhere.

just give up on everything youve ever dreamed of.

you feel trapped now.

leaving wont make it better.

i applaud your efforts i really do, but your game is over.

wanderlust

this apartment makes me claustrophobic. im sure at this point ive made right decision to leave. i cant imagine things being like this another semester.im fine as long as i have a ton of work to do, but as soon as that slows down i get all bored and sad.

anybody want to go to the beach sometime soon?

these small hours

let it go,
let it roll right off your shoulder
don’t you know
the hardest part is over
let it in,
let your clarity define you
in the end
we will only just remember how it feels

our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
in these small hours,
these small hours still remain



i think im growing up.
its a scary place to be, but i see it now. i see myself realizing that your life and your friends and your views are not quite what they used to be. family and your true friends slowly become more important and you begin relying on yourself above all. your work is your satisfaction, how people see you isnt. your friends become the people you work alongside, the people you live with. you isolate yourself to a degree and youre ok with it.

this is growing up.

recognizing that this is how it is.
recognizing your parents are how they are for a reason.
and youll probably be just like them.

i dont think it matters where i go, school will always suck. its school. my parents are paying a lot of money for me to go get my ego beaten to a pulp by some grad student wannabe professor.

but thats school for ya.

when i came home a few weeks ago as a curved the bend in 75 S into the city i realized happily that i could finally listen to good radio stations. i switched to the radio and turned it to Dave and the song at the beginning of this entry was playing. im sure its been out forever or something like that, but you have to understand in tennessee they dont have pop culture, and even if they did id probably still be out of the loop.

what ive learned for being here is that happiness is not a given. happiness doesnt sit on every street corner waiting for you to pass by so you can walk and skip and giggle hand in hand until you reach the next street corner where your next jolly escort awaits.

sometimes happiness has to be sought out.

and its in these small hours when you find the good stuff. the stuff thats worth getting out of bed in the morning for. the feelings and the moments and youll never forget.

its great to have a really fun time, but the times that are really the best are the ones that you wont remember what happened as vividly as youll remember how you felt.

sitting in the basement in huge sweats eating chocolate cake and not watching ms doubtfire.

driving south away from here with the heat and sufjan stevens blasting.

roaming the streets of charleston in heels way too drunk off one glass of wine.

dancing to my favorite songs with my favorite people and the worst seats ever.

wreaking havoc in room 305.

standing on cliff overlooking the ocean with my best friend.

laying in the middle of the road with heather and alex at 2 am in the freezing cold.

sitting amongst cigar smoke and a bunch of really smart people playing trivia.

watching fireworks just barely over the treetops on the fourth of july.

i think about the things in the small hours and it makes me see what a wonderful life ive led. its not about what i didnt do or what i messed up on or what i made on my last graphic design project or what anyone thinks of me. its those things that happen in the small hours, nothing else matters. those things are it. they're so small and short in the grand scheme of things, but in their short fleeting moments they are so wonderful and leave such a lasting impression that they make it all worth while.

damn, i wasnt expecting to cry during this one.


its time to be alive again.

welcome to the real world.

i came home hoping for a relaxing fall break and i got something much different. instead my world and perceptions of my world have been turned upside down. its everything i could have asked for basically falling into my lap, but im still not sure how i feel about it. it scares me to think that im depending on so many outside things to succeed in order to get where i need/want to be, things that are beyond my control. this is not me. i need to be in control of everything. i need to know exactly whats going on at all times. i need to have a plan.

everythings so jumbled up now. ive made decisions, but what if i made the wrong ones. what if the decisions ive made cost me my relationship? what if i get there and have no friends there either?

im putting a lot of faith in things i cant touch.

im not so sure i like it.

fuck it and come home.

Where are we now?
I've got to let you know
A house still doesn't make a home
Don't leave me here alone...


And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes you can't make it on your own
Sometimes you can't make it
The best you can do is to fake it
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

thursday i gave up.
im done pretending for other peoples' benefits while i suffer in ways that no one else could understand.

i am leaving here.

it seems as though lately things have been coming to a head. i am literally physically exhausted from crying and worrying and being upset about everything. jordan, who has always been very supportive of me staying here and completing the goals i had set for myself finally told me that i could not stay here. he said you just cant stay there, you just cant.

robyn pushed me over the edge. she summed it up in a few simple words: fuck it and come home.

so simple. why didnt i think of that before.

i think that i have gotten over the whole giving up=losing thing. i know now that me leaving here doesnt mean i failed or that i cant handle here. the truth is this is just not the right place for me. i find comfort in the fact that this time next year only one of the six girls from our graduating class at rhs who came here for school will still be here. its not me its this place. i have come to terms with that.

and anyone who says this wasnt a hard decision to make is lying. if i were to stay here i could graduate quickly and easily, but going somewhere else is going to require a lot of starting over again. im very scared about the whole thing. i have a lot more work ahead of me because of the decisions i have made. in essence i have fucked myself over.

im not sure where i want to go to school. i am looking at my options. uga is my top pick though. its the best school out of the ones im looking at and one of the big problems with ut was a lack of social life. i know ill have a social life at uga. its scary to think about how behind in school ill be and how extra hard ill have to work to make up for lost time, potentially being in school for an extra year and certainly working my ass off during the summer, but as kelley, jordan and robyn all said, no matter what i can bet on things wherever i go and whatever i do and however it works out to be better than they are here.

my concerns are far from over, but honestly if my concerns were over i would be a little worried about that too.

i need to clean the kitchen

somethings missing.

im not alone
i wish i was
cause then id know
i was down because
i couldnt find
a friend around
to love me like
they do right now
they do right now


i dont really know how to feel anymore. the future no longer excites me it just scares me and gives me anxiety. in one aspect of my life, i am happier than i could have ever expected and things are turning out better than i ever could have hoped, but it feels like in all other aspects, things are just crashing down.

i am 100% stuck.

i cant see a way that i can move forward and be happy with my situation.

if i stay im not happy.

if i go im not happy either.

maybe im just living too much in the past. remembering the golden years of days gone by and expecting the future to be this happy go lucky good time with amazing memories and fun times.

i just feel like sometimes i dont have anything anymore.

i know thats selfish and wrong to think, I have to many things to be thankful for. its stupid of me to keep dwelling on the bad. i guess im just jealous of those people who dont cry themselves to sleep most nights.

ive become aware that all my blog entries sound the same. everyday just me moaning and groaning about my situation and plausible options. but the truth is im not going to pretend im fine when im not. try as i may to be fine i think im realizing that it is not normal to feel this way and it might not be ok to feel this way. i spend enough time trying to save face with everyone else. my friends, my family, peers at school. wearing sunglasses inside and pretending like nothings wrong when inside it feels like everything is. i refuse to deny my emotions to a computer screen that cant get mad at me for having them.

im just so scared that this is how it is for me now.

i feel like my life is over.

i just hope it isnt.

a case of the mondays.

before i say anything id like to bring to anyone reading this's attention a really cool website that blogger just started: http://play.blogger.com

the website is a continuous slideshow of all the blogholders' photographs as they are uploaded. you get to see peoples random snapshots from all over the world flash before you. i was enthralled. i stared for ten solid minutes.

i decided to go home this weekend, much to the dismay of any rationale i have. i have a lot of work to do this week, but i didnt care. i missed my family so much i just wanted to get out of here.

i never thought there would be a day when i said i missed my family.

as i snuck into the atlanta city limits i turned the curve on 75 south where the whole city stretches out before you. it may have been the most beautiful site i have seen all year. i cried. on friday evening, as i tore up 400 north on the way to my parents lake house i cried. i cried because i knew that this is what i had to do. this was the only thing i could do. in other words, the only way i could feel like someone who is loved by anyone is to go home. thats the only place anyone loves me. thats the only place where i feel like myself. thats the only place where the permanent furrow in my brow relaxes and i feel like i can really breathe. thats the only place where i can be me and have that be ok.

something in me tells me thats not right. something in me tells me thats not the way it should be. no one should have to drive across state lines to feel alive.

im sure this is all my fault.

so now im back here on the fucking computer as usual living my cyber life. im setting up my classes for next semester, or at least trying to in vain.

when your heart and your body are in two different places it makes academia difficult.

whats even worse is when you cant find your heart at all.

perhaps mine has been pulled in too many different directions.

i have to set up classes right now and pretend like everything is ok and i want to be here so bad and so forth and such and so on. but i dont know what i will do.

last semester 18 out of 60 people passed the review. and to be honest, if today i wasnt one of the 18, i might not be so sad after all. im sure i would regret wasting two years of my life in a place i did not enjoy, but at least it would be an easy ticket out.

or is it a ticket out?

besides i cant purposefully fail the review. if i fail it has to be because i suck. if i suck fairly then thats a-ok, but only if i suck fairly.

i dont know what to do. i kinda just want to lay down for awhile.

lay down at home of course.

i think this might be the beginning of me giving up.

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.