writing, i suppose?

it’s bizarre how different things can feel after only a few weeks. i just read that last post and i was so happy and optimistic. now i’m just feeling this huge weight of anxious pressure, in my muscles, in my head, in my bones. i still have two midterms to take before the end of the semester, even though there’s only about two weeks of class left. things with the mystery subway boy have evolved and become strange suddenly – literally, one day i was thinking how great it all was and the next i was quietly avoiding his attempts to kiss me, wondering what i was doing and how it had gotten to that point. it reminds me of a time in high school that, luckily, i wrote a short story about, so i’m going to post part of that instead of talking about me right now. actually two pieces, because i just realized they’re both applicable to how i’m feeling.

 

I find myself more and more at the friendboy’s dorm. Sometimes his house. His mom is very nice, even when he says horrible things about me to her.

“It’s just a game we have.” He is walking towards his laptop and opening his music library. “I see how far I can push her.”

We are eating fast food burritos in his dorm on a Wednesday. I don’t know how this happened. I am doing my damnedest to not like him but here we are. When you’re eating in, listening to music, on a Wednesday? You are screwed.

“Fear is the heart of love,” says the sad techno voice from the speakers. This is our favorite song. It is not my favorite song and it is not his favorite song. It is our favorite song. This is another thing that concerns me.

“I don’t see why this is a problem. You like each other. Why can’t you?” I literally hate the voice in my ear that whispers this as our eyes meet over cheap TexMex. 

“What about the Goddess?”

“Let’s be realistic here. Yes, she is a Goddess, and yes, we would both give anything for just a glance. But he’s here. He’s been here. He may stop being here if you don’t do something.”

I know the voice is not lying but I can’t help thinking it is wrong. It has no scope for romance.

Although I must admit, I never thought I could enjoy music and bad food so much as I am. 

It is very troubling how much my friendboy is beginning – or even it is just occurring to me that it has always been this way – to feel more like my boyfriend.

I don’t want this. I can’t want this. I want the Goddess. I am loyal.

“Loyal to a ghost.”

“She is very much alive. I see her every day.”

“She’s a ghost, for you. She may be flesh and bone but she’ll never be what you want.”

“She is exactly what I want. You are wrong.” I shut off the protestations of the voice and click the back button so our favorite song will play again. 

He falls asleep and I climb on to the internet. Hey, this is the age of the information superhighway. I am not above digital stalking.

I spend ages searching from profile to profile when finally I think I have found her. It’s tough to tell from her pictures, even if I have been seeing her in my mind’s eye for weeks.

I read all of her blogs, her interests, her favorite bands. I look at her pictures and her friends. I pore over her layout and notice she probably coded it herself. I am impressed. The mouse hovers over the add-to-friends link.

There is a small rustling noise as the friendboy rolls over in his sleep. 

I can’t help but feel a little guilty as I verify that yes, I would like to add the Goddess as one of my friends. I close the laptop and kiss his forehead. He starts and sits up.

“What time is it?”
“9:30.”

“Let’s go, then. I don’t want you to get home late.”

“He cares about you, you know.”

I wish I knew what to glare at when I hear the voice. The friendboy hands me my phone from the desk and takes my hand. We walk into a harsh February evening completely unlike the warmth of fake Mexican food and a song that won’t leave my head.

“I will follow you into the dark…”

 

 

Do you ever just feel so trapped? Like you walk outside on an exceptionally beautiful spring day, when life is exploding from the ground and all you can see is that the sky is pressing down on you, that no matter how far you go, you’ll never get away? No, I can see you don’t. You’ve never sat alone, wondering if there’s really anything to look forward to, really worth living for. Not because you’re depressed and the world is oh so bleak, but because you know what you’re going to spend the next fifty years working for, just like your parents did, and their parents, and did any of them ever really find it? You can’t call that crazy. That’s logic.

But you’re logicking yourself to death.

But what real purpose do I serve? In a spiritual context, I suppose you could say that I serve God in all I do – but what does God need me messing around here for?

Maybe I need you around here.

I’ve told you before, baby. If you get into it with me, you’ll get burned. Playing with me is like throwing yourself on a landmine.

I knew going in that I’d hurt him. Boys always pretend that they’re so strong and there’s no way you could do a thing to them, but I knew from that first night that he was going to get his heart broken, whether I wanted to or not. At the same time, I don’t think he was a masochist. You can tell someone a thousand times that a bomb’s gonna drop, and they’ll still look shocked as the flames fall from the sky, like they didn’t know it was coming.

So, this is your house.

Yeah.

Oh.

It’s funny how thick some moments can get with things that haven’t even happened. They way you can feel fireworks in the way the crowd looks just before the first one goes off. You can be a few feet away, not even looking in his direction, and still feel his eyes following you.

Where did you say they were?

Are you sure you want to do this?

Yes.

And then sometimes, it’s not even in your eyes or anything you’d call a feeling but you can still almost taste it, smell it, and the moments before it happens feel like your entire life, twice. And you stand there, waiting, because you know you should be because that’s how it always looks in the movies but the girl never looks just how you feel. She always looks afraid – just afraid – and you feel – god, what do you even feel? It’s somewhere between when you had your first grown-up party and the instant you knew your leg was broken and you can’t pinpoint it any closer than that. And you don’t know when you started to cry.

Oh my god, what’s wrong?

Nothing.

But you’re crying.

So?

Why?

Why aren’t you?

And the moment between laughter and tears is so indistinguishable, isn’t it? Probably because they’re so close, they’re practically the same action, and if you do either long enough you won’t be able to tell which you started out with. But at least it was exactly the thing to take the strangeness out of his touch.

I just realized! I don’t know what your favorite color is. 

It’s green.

I should have known that.

How? You’ve never asked.

But I should have known anyways.

Silly girl, how do you think the world works?

Just how I want it to.

And I kissed him. The first time is the only time you really remember, unless you have a kiss that you tell everyone about, but even then, it doesn’t have the maybe feeling of a first kiss. Like even though you know he likes you you still feel like you could be just so off-base on this one, just so wrong, but you kiss him anyways. And it’s worth whatever happens after that. Even when you knew going in that it wasn’t going to end well.

I’ve told you before, baby. Playing with me is like throwing yourself on a landmine.

movie montage activate!

this weekend was bizarre, yet awesome.

friday night was spent drunkenly being angry at a boy with a girlfriend and hitting on all available parties ever. literally, all available parties. and then some. saturday involved an acapella concert that was club-rat themed, a strange sketch-comedy group, a sleepover, incredibly reminscent of junior high, with movies and pillow fights galore (though i can’t actually remember having had pillow fights at junior high sleepovers). 

then sunday i spent from 11-7 with prospective students, shepherding them around the city and telling them how great barnard is and dispensing my sage junior-year wisdom. i seem to be quite popular with the prefrosh crowd! i’m glad. they are really cool girls and i hope to see them next year (though, obviously, that is not going to be the case for ALL of them, since, you know, despite what i think there ARE schools that are excellent other than barnard). i got absolutely no homework done.

BUT so the highlight of the weekend was none of these things. well i mean the like highest lightest part. so, between the sleepover and the prefrosh there was a subway ride uptown. on the train, there was a cute boy standing next to me, so i pulled my whole oh, i am so cute, and yet so shy, look at me being shy deal. he had a guitar on his back and a duffel bag with a tag from a greyhound. this was no ordinary amount of flirting-eye-contact-on-the-subway, though. it occurred every like 30 seconds for a 50-block ride. it even included some of the looking at the reflection in the door so you can pretend you’re not looking at the other person but we both noticed each other doing it so the point of that was moot. so then he sort of turns so that i can’t actually see exactly what he’s doing, and he starts rummaging through the top of his duffel. i am of course watching intently, so i see that he pulls out a pen and what looks like paper and spends several minutes tentatively holding the pen and thinking. i get excited. lo and behold, when i get up to get off the subway, he hands me his card – with nothing written on it (an excellent choice, i do believe) – and smiles. i would have you note that absolutely no words were exchanged this entire time. 

according to his card, he is a musician, and i spent the day with the prospies enjoying the subway flirtation but thinking, well, yeah, based on the guitar and the duffel and the coming from port authority, i’m going to say he’s probably just some guy with bad-to-middling music trying to make it in new york. oh ho ho, children, but i underestimate how much life can be like movies! after the prospie adventure, i went home and checked out his website to listen to some songs – i actually really like them. and his pictures and videos all confirm that yes he is very cute (sometimes i am not the best judge of this). 

but, to keep with the movie-montageness of it all, i am not calling or emailing him (perish the thought – sorry, i’m feeling really like shakespearean right now i guess? what i don’t know) but instead going to his show next sunday. i have this picture in my head of us not speaking at all but just having some ridiculous chemistry.

 

in any event, i think this will be awesome, and man thank goodness for this movie montage happening, because as recently as thursday i was thinking that in the novel of my life, i’d be the passive narrator relating what adventures and misadventures happened to my friends. i was thinking of myself as the narrator of this book, but i can’t remember what it’s called – it’s about boys at boarding school, and the exciting protagonist breaks a bone and part of his marrow gets into his bloodstream and kills him. i can’t remember what book this is and if anyone can think of the name they should definitely tell me. but my point is that the narrator of that book doesn’t see himself as a part of the action until it’s too late and the consequences are already set. but things are looking up again so i need to stop being crazy.

now i need a shower because i’m meeting some of the prospectives for lunch (they love me!) and this weekend shall be the greatest weekend possibly of all time, if only for the seeing of distant friends and hiking and subway dates.

visionary!

by that i mean i have no glasses and therefore have to squint at everything.

bah.

 

there is a band in my house right now but they don’t sound good. i think i should probably leave.

ugh.

apparently the way to stay high on life and on top of the world lookin’ down on creation is to NOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT. because now i’m getting sick, and have spent the last day and a half sleeping. because, as it turns out, if you try to do everything ever, you get really, really tired, even if everything ever is enjoyable. i think i’m going to have to drop something, but i can’t stand dropping things, so, i don’t really know what i’m going to do. blehhhh.

 

in good news, i got an unexpected good grade, so, awesome. now if i could just make it to class…

wunderbar!

my weekend has been fantastic.

highlights include:
dinner with my best friend and her mother, who is more or less my surrogate mom, at an absolutely incredible restaurant;
scandinavia house and its wonderful architecture, reminiscent of ikea sample rooms;
a gift from MIT that was both awesome and handmade;
a plaid party, featuring whiskey and hits of the 90s;
a community garden and a probably rabid squirrel and blow pops;
and to top it all off, an everything bagel and hummus.

thank you, universe! you’re a real mensch.

graghghgh.

i’ve always had this … problem, of falling really quickly for certain people and then kind of realizing, hey! this is a bad idea! however the realization usually comes retroactively, after i have already dated and broken up with them. or, in certain, somewhat more problematic cases, when they are at some sort of distance from me (say, seattle when i was in salt lake, or connecticut or massachusetts to my new york), and i decide that they are really great anyway, and that if i could be dating someone, it would totally be that person. 

 

BUT I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DATE ANYONE. i have realized that my problem is in fact that i pick the wrong people and so i am no longer allowed to date. well, more accurately, i am not allowed to be in a relationship. i’ve actually been on more dates and had more date-like activity so far this semester than most other semesters without it diving into being relationshippy. but, the only reason for my not getting into a relationship (or, rather, attempting to) has been a very active drive against it. 

 

now, once again, as it was in days of yore, i have fallen a little bit, but still too much, for someone out of reach. maybe this is a good thing! maybe my vehement hatred of distance relationships mixed with my desire for the ones distal to me will result in exactly what i’m going for! but, that sounds like a much more upsetting way of maintaining singledom than i had hoped to achieve. 

 

overall, my point is mainly that i am 20, and i don’t know what’s good for me, or what’s bad for me, and what do i need to be dating someone for anyway? i’m twenty! my biological clock is nowhere near countdown times, i’m not exactly concerned about dying alone. and i am happy to not be With Someone, but i almost wish i hadn’t met/started talking to/re-started talking to these distance folk that i start to think “if it weren’t for the distance…” about… 

 

in other news, all of my pajama-type clothes smell like everything bagels. delicious!

excitement afoot (in theory)

huzzah, huzzah, my sister is planning a visit! i love seeing my sister and in a really weird way, i really relish the times when our positions are reversed and – and i know this will be a weird thing for most people who know me at all to hear – she’s the one who’s being kind of awkward and shy and i’m the one who knows everybody. growing up, i was always dependent on my sister in social situations in a sort of supply/demand kind of fashion – when she was in supply (i.e., there), my demand of her exponentially increased. my sister is one of my favorite people, and so i really love it when she can see me in a state of normalcy and awesome, rather than as a shy little girl who holds onto the edge of her sister’s skirt at family functions. it’s a little silly, i know, and i tend to be a little more awkward when my sister’s around with my friends, because i kind of feel like i need to prove something about my life? i don’t know. in any event, i am SO glad she’s planning a visit, even if it’s over a month away.

in the realm of excitement that was afoot before and is now a weird, weird memory, i went to a house party last night in the bronx. we played flip cup and the guys made gay jokes. i found it oddly refreshing. i mean, if i had gone to the u, i’d probably have gotten a lot of this and not found it quite so nice, but in the context of an every-so-often break from conversations about palin or the e.u. or the green movement and instead like actual just hanging out. there’s something weird about getting big groups of incredibly book-smart, somewhat street-retarded people together – when they “relax,” as in go to parties or bars, they get RIDICULOUS. when you have people who are maybe a little less book-smart but significantly more real-world-savvy, they don’t seem to find having fun to be as much of a pressure-cooker-type situation. it’s not some bizarre competition as to who can do the most ridiculous things – it’s just people, you know, hanging out on a balcony, playing a little flip cup, some never have i ever, listening to music like the clash and van halen. there’s not this feeling of like OH MY GOD WE HAVE TO KEEP GOING AND IF I DON’T GET SOME I AM GOING TO GO CRAZY. you get the feeling that these kids, you know, they have a much more balanced, sane life, and they just want to chill out on the weekends, have some fun in a laid-back way. i love it. however i also always feel like i make an ass of myself in laid-back situations, so i’m hoping they didn’t actually think that i was an ass so that i can hopefully return there some wonderful day.

now i need to stop procrastinating and study. aughghgh.

more things i love

taking cat naps in the afternoon curled up with somebody warm

actually listening to the beatles – i had never heard for the benefit of mr. kite before like this summer and that is a huge travesty

explaining topics in genetics to people and realizing that i love science

the sight of my clothes hanging up to dry on my fire sprinkler pipe thing

watching the cat play with a nylon sock thing that looks like a mouse when it’s all balled up like that

prolonging the joy of cereal by eating it dry by itself so i can imagine how delicious drinking milk will be afterwards

writing down everything i have to do so i can feel accomplished when i get to erase something from the list

public speaking and the thought of being president next year, because nobody can imagine anyone else doing it but me, even though there are other people who would do a good job i think

stretching luxuriously

not wearing pants

nails like claws

i am incredibly unused to having nails of any sort of length on my hands; having lost my nail clippers has put me in a very weird place. i honestly somewhat feel like i have lost full use of my hands, and my nails are not even to the top of my fingers. it is weird, but also it is much weirder to make like twice the clicky noises when i type unless i make sure my fingers are flat on the keys.

i decided to go to the gym today, but upon another search of my room for nail clippers and finding none, i became disheartened and am now writing a blog post while eating cereal. DO YOU SEE HOW NAILS RUIN LIVES BECAUSE I SURE DO.

i have a very strong desire to be sitting on a stationary bike and watching rocko’s modern life while biking to nowhere, but i also have a strong desire to rip my nails right off my hands. i don’t know what to do! and nobody apparently has nail clippers because it seems that a lot of people just get manicures? i was unaware. 

in a less neurotic vein, a bunch of my friends and i are going to start having a “maison francais” in which we sit around with wine and cheese and speak french. i think it is awesome and am all about it. it will also be useful for my friend who is currently taking french and gets really nervous on tests when i think he actually knows a lot more than he thinks he does. 

but i have to go now and gnaw off my fingertips. gahhhh nails.

 

[embarrassing edit]: um so it turns out my nail clippers were in the same little bag thing they’ve always been in. they just fell to the bottom. i am an idiot.

irony

last night i was writing about death and god; this morning my dog was put to sleep.

thanks a lot, universe.

 

about blue – an obituary of sorts;

i got blue when i was 8 (thus the name blue – his eyes were an icy blue, almost white, the kind of eye color you really only see in huskies) and he was the smallest thing in the world then. he was just this little fluffy ball with dark circles around his eyes. to be more concise: he was goddamn adorable. 

when i was in junior high and all friendless and lame, i told all my secrets to blue. when i was in high school and had lots of friends and boyfriends and whatever, blue was still the one i went to when i felt like i needed advice but what i really needed was just to talk through my problems. he was a very good listener, in that he would stare at you or let you use him as a pillow for ages.

we used to hook him, his brother, and my mom’s dog up to a dogsled when i was little enough for them to pull me and my sister on it. that was pretty cool. we took the three of them camping and to this gully where i adopted a dead tree, by which i mean i carried it out and it still is sitting in my room to this day.

i wasn’t a great dog owner, i’ve gotta say that much. i hated walking the dogs because my parents would never let me just go walking by myself, and sometimes you just want to wander around your neighborhood and sit on someone else’s curb for a while, and you don’t want to have to hold onto the leash of an animal that is far stronger than you and a bag of his poo while you do it. i also tried to pick blue up sometimes, which my very large dog did not understand or particularly like. he did like to shake hands, though, because with me it usually meant a paw massage – the one thing i remembered to do from dog training school. you’re actually supposed to massage your dog all over, to check for lumps or cuts or whatever, but i never got past his paws because he would be so demanding over it. 

blue was a great dog, though. even with all his neuroses and his irrational fear of garbage trucks and vacuums and blenders and basically anything that makes a loud noise, and with his barking at the tv sometimes when there was a dog on it. he also loved to sit directly in your eyeline at the most important moments of things, such as when my parents were watching whatever sports they watch and something important was about to happen, like someone was going to score or something – that was the moment blue would choose to sit in front of the tv and be majestically tall, all up in your face. 

overall, blue was a baller. he never really played catch so much as he would play i’ll run and get that and then i will sit down right where i picked it up and chew on it and ignore you for a while, and he wasn’t really big on listening when you asked him to sit, lie down, or roll over unless you were holding or eating food at the time. 

i left for college and still every time i came home he would be all excited to see me. and then i was here when he got sick, very quickly, too. it was just one morning my dad went outside and blue was extremely weak and couldn’t hardly move. then, he looked like he was getting better for a few weeks, and then, well. today. i’m really going to miss my dog. i think i’ll probably go through the whole grieving process all over again when i go home at thanksgiving and he’s not there. it’s just his brother, the lone wolf now. 

this sucks balls.