Swing Swing

It's not going away. It's taking a lifetime.

Dear lovely one person who reads this that I know about,

I started a new blog. fakehopeandlove.wordpress.com. Go there.

Anyways, what's happened since April 2014? Dee left. I stopped seeing Ryan. I went to Botswana. I became too reasonable. I met someone who is an incredibly good person to know. That's the only way I could describe Isaiah. I meet people who are so shut off, so hard to talk to, so normal. The first time we met, smoking cigarettes outside, I knew he was different. Then he invited me over the next time. He visited me at work with his friend. I'll tell you: I see lots of people. This place is big. I don't talk to a lot of them because I'm shy and nervous but mostly quiet, but Isaiah is different and better than most of them. He's got too much love in his frame. I'm lucky to have met the kid.

Last night I went swing dancing with Steven. It was so lovely. First of all, although Steven can be very infuriating (especially when I'm trying to give him directions to pick me up and I'm waiting in the cold IN A FUCKING DRESS AND DANCE SHOES), he is a brilliant dancer. He's a gentleman for sure, opens doors and insists that boys should always ask girls to dance. He's pretty traditional. I thought there was going to be more people there, like Val and Carlo, but it ended up being me and him. I was worried at first but my god he's a good dancer! He can to the spins and the dips and it's awesome as fuck. Guys that can dance: you are twice as sexy as guys who can't dance. Guys with confidence: you are sexy as fuck. Guys with manners: marry me. Guys who can play guitar and sing: I will have your child. Ohmygod. I'm too fucking straight. Ugh.

I woke up sweating at 6 am. It was weird. I kept dreaming I was back at the Fed dancing with Steven and other guys I met. 

Weird Girls Who Make Your Coffee

Rose was born, child actress, on the fifth day of the snow.

It's so easy to compare myself to everyone around me. Does everyone feel like that at one time or another? I see girls who know how to talk to guys, who walk around in groups with short-sleeve shirts like they don't have a care in the world. But I noticed that the people who really smile back at you or ask you questions are the ones who are a bit odd, a bit over- or under-dressed either way. The ones who are shy and a little scared to show who they are. The ones who stand out a bit. I spend most of my days alone, which I don't mind since I value alone time. But when I start to feel like there's something wrong with me, I remember the people I really look up to. They're not conventional, nor did they worry what other people thought to get to where they are. They had faith in themselves, faith that they could be who they wanted despite society's reactions. I don't want to change myself to fit into a world I don't really like anyways. I'll keep to myself when I must, making myself the best I can be for me, and then see if the world takes the bait. Maybe (surely) there are other steps involved, but right now, that's where I am. Whenever I feel down or like a freak, I remember this idea. I'm not like most girls here on campus or in my age/societal status group. Sometimes I speak with accents by accident. Accidental accents. Sometimes I like to sit and stare at the water or the sky or a bird and think about it, from all sides. I like falling asleep to astrophysics documentaries and biology tutorials. I crave knowledge yet am weighed down by procrastination. I worry that my life is passing me by, so I try to cheat it. I try to make it more complicated, only to end up in dumb situations and revert to the past. I'm beyond awkward. I almost never laugh. I find small triumphs in having a normal conversation with a stranger. Yeah, so maybe I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I'm still growing and learning. Every day. So I'm not gonna say that I'm right just how I am now. But I'm good. I should start feeling more comfortable with letting people know me. It's hard. I'm not focused on finding a boyfriend or whatever. I just want to learn as much as I can about what interests me and what's important, hone my skills to become a dangerous, free-thinking weapon to society and standards, and show genuine kindness to people when I can. If people want to be my friend or fall for me, okay. If not, okay. I just need to be me.

FAIL

Don't go cryin' to your mama, 'cause you're on your own in the real world.

I failed a class. Again. My GPA will suck. I am not working this many hours next semester. Also, I feel better about things. I just want to spend this whole summer on Khan Academy and taking the ALEKS test and getting a phresh start. I'm not showing up for my test tomorrow. Or am I? I don't see why I should. I don't understand any of it. I want to understand it. So I will. Fuck this shit. I will fail. I will do better. I'm not scared. And if they try to get me down, I'll keep at it. I'm not scared. I have literally no time, so it's impossible to even remember my roommate's birthday. My mind is dying, I feel like I'm 40, and I just want to relax sometimes. I forget how to take care of myself. So fuck that. I want to do the right things. Get shit done. And psych can suck my dick. If I decide to be a biology major, then I will have to take calculus. Ew. So it's either Psych stats or Calc 2 next semester. They both sound horrible. But it's taking me some time. I'm OK. Im ok. Im ok. I will just continue to watch educational videos and hope one day I get smarter. What happened to my intellect? Or did I ever really have it? There's still so much to do. Maybe I had to do a little roundabout way of doing things to get to where I need to be. Maybe people will think I'm weird or unmotivated, but no matter what, I need to believe in me. Who cares what anyone else thinks? At this time in my life, I am my concern. No one can take away my dreams or brain. That's the key to success: telling yourself that you can do it. I refuse to pull all nighters or be unhealthy. My body can't handle it. SSo. 

Here we go. 

Dying Man's Eulogy

The gravedigger's getting stuck in the machine again.

Good moves break your heart and put it back together.
Great movies break your heart and make you put it back together yourself.
The same goes for people.
The same goes for everything.
The same goes for the jaws of life when they rip your body out the car
Flames looking good on your suit and tie
Pinch your lip until it bleeds, downstream tributaries of the heart
That awful terrible ugly
pulsing beast, locked away by capillary keys under the rib cage
At night your lover touches your body and gropes and gropes and gropes and then she asks
Where's the off switch
You tell her you've been searching for years, but it's in your medicine cabinet
or on the front end of a train going 80 while you're going 65
and drunk
Let's look ahead to you on the hospital bed
The heat just always made you cold, so now you freeze
and they mourn, thinking you're frozen,
when you're just going sideways.
They keep going forward.
Sideways, variations on a theme of one singular moment in time,
and that has become your life.
Still sequential, but it was steered off course. How odd.
Now you can see there is nothing to turn it off
Because even when you think it's dark or the flames out or the TV's gone black
you're wrong.
In the room next door, a baby just came out of some junkie slut's uterus
Over in Amsterdam, a mother just lit up a joint
You know where the smoke is going
It's going up and out of the burning tip, bits of fiery feral weeds mixed in, all chasing down to the stub
then to the ashtray
crushed in with the others
tossed away
giving a bit of life to a new seed of grass in 6 years.
Your big moment is half of what you thought, all turned perpendicular to itself.
The off switch, nonexistent,
your arms, nonexistent,
your reach, nonexistent,
so you cry out in a voice from a vacuum, to a space where stars void all things of sound,
your words are swallowed up in someone else's mind's makings
When you beg for mercy, it shall not come.
You are worse than alone, worse than forgotten.
You are not.

They Build Buildings

Time is not given and time is not taken; it just sifts through its sift.

It's about hope. Driving the woman home in the morning and still loving her. I can't hear my thoughts over the found of a beautiful siren shrill. I hear you turning your thoughts off.

Qui qui qui

Okay time to concentrate. It's hard to with this beautiful noise. Oh my god. Oh my. Oh. Oh.

Pavlov's Daughter woke up in the morning, heard the bell ring.

So she lay there, the sun skimming her skin. Drooling on her pillow. FUCKING GENIUS.

Now I  remember why I felt so hopeful when I was 14. I just listened to Regina Spektor all day. Her music is like an ever turning shower, warm and encompassing every goosebump. You step in, naked, chill on the arms, but the water is your goddess. You feel okay. Your mind will be stretched, fuck, to the limit of conception. You'll feel a terrible sting in your heart that time is sequential, not parallel. One at a time, a line. I wish I could kiss all my lovers at once. All my lips kissing them all in a perfect parallel wired circuit. The formulas are there. Simple homemade science books and dirty hands. But the sun streams in through a patch of web, spiders long gone, who knows where they've run off to or if they're even alive. It's all just a flow of perfection. Nothing can touch you, every moment is a baptism. It's not like the other music, where you can remember the beginning at the end. This is where you are stuck, always in that singular present moment. It's the only time I feel full. She is my god. I realized how much I never agreed with modesty or religion. I do not want to be hateful, but I'm in an odd place right now. Also, this is the first moment I've relaxed in a long time so I feel like I'm in heaven. I am. In. Heaven. A heathen sneaking through the Berlin Wall. East, West, Central, but I just want to be home. I've been practicing my rapping lately. I'm getting better. I'd like to rap and box and do all these things that you three letters like (sex?). Sneaky innuendos right here. OH MY GOD SNOW IN SAINT LOUIS. My ears hurting. You buying earrings for Julie, a scarf for me. I got blush on it and I didn't like it either because it wasn't colorful like Cella's. You were the first person to think I was special and should be treated right. You told me how much you liked me, and I really ignored you. I wish I had payed more attention but I was immature. I don't even know what I'm saying. I just know I feel okay. I want words to describe my mind, but that wouldn't make me a writer. You see, I think everything I write sounds horrible. I hear my inner audiological loop play it in my working memory, and all I hear is bumbling, awkwardness, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Can't phrase anything right. When I try, my hands start shaking and my mind drifts to Zack proposing or Stevie and his size 15 shoes. The circuits are messy. Solder it, God. If you're there, you'll solder it. Click click. And the lady says, she laughs, "Trust me, the world isn't like this." She was weird and wanted too badly to be nice, so I was drawn to her. I'm drawn the the beautiful men but also to the good ones. Zach. Thailandia. Fucking down time, leaning against a counter, tall and nice. I will not fall for anyone. I am about myself and that's it. I me my mine just me so fuck off world.

Am I serious?

Reading time with pickle.

Precisely 4:15

When he stopped existing, the world should have ended.
How could it go on when I don't exist?

I realize once again, here I am, and I'm all I have. The power of an idea, it can speak like a mountain, spread like anthrax. Lick the seal and send it off. Words. It's like once you know this game, you can do what you want. I'm mesmerized by the thought of improving myself. It's dangerous, though. The further you get towards perfection, the closer you get towards insanity. It's just impossible to keep up with. And lord knows I want to be everything, do everything, feel everything at least once or 10 times before I die. It's not enough. I soak it in, the dumb hybrids circling around the parking lot, caught in a vicious cycle just for a place to park their ass, grab an Americano, and head off to shave my assistant manager's beard... All of those people, circling endlessly. Caught in a little stage between not busy enough to feel secure yet not slow enough to feel relaxed. Two wrongs certainly aren't going to make a right. I am a vessel, moving through this fucked up beauty, and I am in control. It's crazy, kids, so say it with me: I am in control. Why do I belittle myself? Dumb myself down? Disallow opinionated rhetoric to flow from my mouth? I keep my head down, I keep to myself a lot. But I have no idea how to stand up for myself. I mean, several times I have. But other times it's a lot harder. Like at work. Or at school. Why am I so weak? I wish I could utilize my body and words and thoughts best. I wish I could have the knowledge to defend myself against stupidity and injustice. I deal with small scale stuff, work, school, home, friends, sometimes strangers. But it's a bad mindset to have. But how do I get stronger? I need to scare myself. Insecurity is just hiccups.

Chords Save, Nooses Hang

Daniel Cowman.

Sometimes writing is my only comfort. Writing, and the dim future ahead. Those before us tackle our time right now, in their hands they make it so short and busy. We are made to worry through our youth, regret through our adulthood. The only fleeting goodness is found when we are too innocent to understand. Terrible, sour paradox. Childhood is drunkenness. It's heroin, optimal dosages flowing eternally through a brand new heart. It's sweet like cocaine dripping down the back of your nasal passage, you never need uppers to not fall asleep, and even if you did, there wouldn't be a need. The world treats you well, strangers smile at you just because you are small and good. Growing up has been a solitary experience. No one can save or help you. No one can ease your pain. You are alone, parallel to everyone else on the planet but nonetheless never to touch.

Huddling under a desk with my dog. She's shaking. She's small and not full of cancer yet. I'm small and always quiet, always careful to speak because I know what happens when sounds fly. Doors break, anger bubbles just below the surface of every action the three of them do. Me, I'm my own island. An only child, an orphan. Oddly forgotten in the haze. I was forgotten. I was dragged to different states, shoved into a school I didn't want to go to, lectured, prayed to, because of someone else's choices. I'm getting better at coming to terms with it, but it was pretty lame. I feel much, much better these days. For the first time in my entire life, I feel stable. But even stability feels shaky. I'm always worried about the next morning: who will I wake up as? I've been okay for a while now, but I am unconsciously caught in a cycle of insanity. I need nights spent yelling at passing strangers, I need flowing blood on the carpet, I need dizziness and visions of nothing, leading nowhere. I need dead end weeks. Then something pulls me up, reminds me of what I have to do. Nonetheless, I am so alone. When I cry out for companionship, I yearn for solitude. I can rarely spent more than an hour with someone until they bore me. With the exception of my close friends.

But who gives a shit? While the world moves about and finds its pretty passions and callings, I'm just sitting here, hacking away at my cracked keyboard, replaying the same songs I listened to the day before all to create something hideous that I can be proud of. My life, my childhood. All mediocre. Nothing interesting. But I wrap it in these dumb, no-thought languages so maybe it can appeal to me. Who am I kidding? I am stably fucked up, comfortably insane. You can all kiss my well-put-together ass. I am a piece of blank, a blank shot in your temple, trigger pulled by your own mother. That's me. The "just kidding." I wake up, load myself into the chamber. I'm ready to be shoved into your parietal lobes, frontal cortex, that grey matter that makes you human. I'll tear that to confetti, spill it on the floor at your soon-useless feet. Rigor mortis. Betrayal when you see who holds me. I can look as threatening as I want, make you sweat and count blessings until the last second, but in the end I'm a farce.

I'm tired of learning and I'm tired of sitting. I need something completely new to devote my life to. But that happens every few months. Go to college, Run away. Do drugs. Get straight A's. Join a band. Live in your car. Get a job. Dye your hair. I can never choose anything, so I choose everything.

Highway Walk

Leaving UP Mall, walking in the snow, ending up back at the bus and eating at North Dining Hall.

I am so sleepy. I don't know why but I just love sleeping. On weekends, I don't get enough of it, so during the week I crave it. Sleeeep. I'm ruled by my body! I wish I could just be a bald skinny little person who didn't sleep but ate all the time. That'd be cool.

Dark and Gone

Remember that time I called you at 1 in the morning and told you how much I hated you and how much you didn't care? And then your friend let me come over to hang out, and I wandered around the apartment complex in the cold, smoking my last cigarettes, in my PJs and slippers, until I sat down by the pool and called you? You two came and found me and saved my half smoked cigarette and my world was spinning from the drugs and the pain. I slept in your bed that night, but it was different. That's when things started changing and we were both on a path to get better. Now look at us. Imagine where we're going.

I hope that there's a heaven for the good who suffer, and a hell for the evil that prosper. As for me, I could be a speck of eternal nothingness after death and I would not mind. I deserve nothing special; my circumstances are not yet extreme enough to deserve redemption or damnation. Maybe your Bibles tell you something about me, but I will get what I deserve, even if that is dark and peaceful emptiness.

Once I wrote a suicide note. It was 50 pages long and it took 2 years to write. Eventually I burned it, along with the letters and pictures from the first boy I ever thought I loved. I burned that out in my backyard, in a big pot my dad used to use for making popcorn or soup. I took some matches and watched 2 years of important memories flash away. I used matches from Pappadeux's where I used to celebrate my birthday dinners. When all the papers and photos became black ashes, I poured water in the pot and looked at the filthy, pukish liquid. It stunk and was so vile. I poured it around my yard, buried it under a tree in my backyard. After that, I felt a little meaner. I like to think I'm a somewhat educated lady, but I have my rituals. My humanity remains intact, in all its cowardice and purity.

I've forgotten a lot of the ugly stuff from growing up. Maybe it wasn't even bad; perhaps terribly unremarkable. Sinkholes, red ears, cookie dough. I remember that. Crying at first confession because of my sins. Disrespecting my parents, never loving my brother. Nothing about me is terribly special, but Lord knows I milk my story for all it is worth. I want to make a person be better than me. Pitseleh, if I ever call you pretty, it is not because that's important. It's only important to be intelligent and good. Both, never just one. Just one is lethal. Neither is apathy. Both, please be both. You'll cry about not getting what you want, saying you'll do this or that, and someone bigger than you will have a perpetual frown and always tell you that you're wrong. It's okay if they're stern. Sometimes you listen, and sometimes you know that you're right. So you still listen. But you answer back then, and better. I saw a hideous man make my mother cry for years of pain, senseless and stupid, absolutely unnecessary tears. More tears, more evil. He made her cry for hours, no remorse. He was an ugly man. Right now he's probably in bed sleeping. Does he think about my mom? About that glass room with children and their fathers in grey playing basketball in a small patch of sunlight? About my silent dad, about that eerily still, empty 15-year-old girl whose heart was being drowned in sin right then and there? I fed off of that hate, because I was angry. Hate fueled me for many years. It still does. It is my biggest motivator, to work harder, drive faster, be smarter, but it will never make me better. I was sick inside from a suburban dose of atrocity. While that is nothing, it was still a virus. I'm getting better. I don't want my story to happen. I want the good to be happy. My darkness slips out, but I need strength right now.

Call Me Catholic, But

Remember when you were recovering from molly and we spent a day in bed and I said, "Listening to this song is like taking a sleeping pill"? I miss that day... and night.

Porn doesn't do much for me. It really doesn't turn me on. What's hot about a dick getting shoved into a butthole or whatever? Sorry but no. What does turn me on is romance and nice guys haha. If a guy is respectful and treats me nicely I'm like "FUCK ME DOWN DA STAIRS!!!! NOW!!!" or if he's wearing a button-down shirt and looks casually nice OR if he's got a guitar or something or if he's intelligent and can keep up a good conversation. Omg makin me wet thinkin' about it. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but seriously. Hot guys are okay, but if a guy is caring, smart, mature, and just a good person, I will seriously consider opening my legs. If not, bye bye. Okay done ranting about sex and other stuff seriously time to sleep.

It Was Nearly Midnight in Honolulu

Get the fuck away from me.
Why don't you ever shut up?

There was a weird bug on my bed. I tried to puff some air on him as a warning to fly away, y'know, because I'm a human and we kill things, but he just kinda curled up more. I tried to scooch him away, but he curled up even tighter. I starting pushing his little body off my bed onto the floor and he didn't fight. So in the end, he was so self-deprecating I just shoved him off to the floor. Fuck the feeble.

I'm very open to cultures. Deaf, African, Mexican, valley girl, stoner, I can join them all and be okay. It's because I don't know what the fuck I am so I have this horrible desire to latch on to everything around me that is artificial. It's all a distraction from the monster in the mirror.

Fuck the feeble.

Fuck depression.

I am finishing what I couldn't earlier. I sat in bed, munchies, dragging my sorry sweaty ass to lecture and naptime. I'm sick of that. The pendulum is ever-swinging, though slowly. Defies the laws of physics, what I learned from a nun a few years ago. As a child, I'm sheltered to believe all will be okay. And maybe it will. But dammit I want to be self-sufficient, enough for there to be risk with no nets. It's hard when you don't know how, but it's getting better. I don't want to sit around and complain how I don't know how to be. Now that I've started taking a minute drop of responsibility, I feel more and more peaceful with everyday. I don't want to chase boys, or stupid distractions. I am my world. So make it a peaceful and prosperous one.

Carissa

Benji.

Tomorrow (today), I want to dress nicely. I want to look nice and like I take myself seriously. I want to go to all my classes and learn some stuff. I want to spend my breaks studying or reading, because, you know, that's what I pay to do. I want to have a good, relaxing day. No anxiety. I want to finish Diary and start Invisible Monsters. I want to read again. I always go back to that, reading. I wish I had a chunk of time to head on down to the Austin History Center this weekend. Maybe I do. So I will do all this. Do my linguistics reading throughout the day, read some Palahnuik, watch medicinal chemistry videos. I realize that I once was pretty bright and ahead of the curve. Not anymore. Now I'm just average at best, and it's starting to get embarrassing, this fall from academic grace. I compete with myself, and I'm losing. So fuck depression and feeling bad about yourself. Fuck that. Just do your fucking work.

Keep Your Secret Safe

I will speak your language.

I like playing with my hair too much. My legs are kinda chubby. I'm really awkward. I drop stuff a lot, and imagine that everyone is in love with me, and never talk to anyone, and walk about half with head held high, half with slumped shoulders. I can't decide what I want to do or be. I change my mind pretty much every hour. If anyone in this world can understand me or love me, I give them credit. It's probably not easy. I've got a bit of a wandering eye, a free spirit, all topped with massive anxiety. I have pragmatism, empathy, everything on this planet. I'm not even all that pretty or spectacular or intelligent or significant. But for some reason the universe stuffed these traits into my soul, as if I deserved it. I think I need food. I think I need a nap. Nap? Nap? Or homework?

Tonight, I need to do my Resource Guide Analysis. It just needs to be formulated and typed out. Then I need to ONCE AND FOR ALL finish my thorough reading of Sutton-Spence's article and complete the outline. You can do this! You're intelligent!

X

You walked into the light, pulled up your pants to show me your calf, I touched it, then you covered that up and started telling me more silly stuff. You are a brief moment in time, lost if it's not acknowledged or appreciated. You spill your thoughts out when you show me what's in every drawer. The contents of your history, the drugs, the drinking, the pain, the bad decisions and used up moments. You keep talking, talking, against what I say, you are stuck on that train and you don't know how to see yourself how I and your other friends see you. If you start talking about it, you go on and go for a while, the same stream of consciousness every time, and I don't know if you want me to give you an answer or worry for you or just accept you. I just accept you and try to love you best. You are a sweet person when you rest your head against mine, when you offer me food, when you say "okay", when your head is resting on my chest and I can hold it and feel your hair and we can be quiet and okay. I want you to feel love and goodness, and I know that you do. I'm here for you to talk to. I will get annoyed after a bit because I am human, but keep going. You give good comforting advice when you know how. When you don't, you try and say sorry. I like you sober, or tipsy, or drunk. I don't like you high. I also don't like you when I'm high. Your whip is in my drawer and I wanna look hot like Lights, so thanks. You're funny so I don't care if you bite my arm or touch my armpit or flick my butt or give me a butterfly kiss. You're hilarious, so yeah, I'm gonna tickle you and bully you and steal your stuff and put it back and never tell you if I like subtitles and ask for your addies. I'm glad we're friends, and I'll miss you if you move away to college in the fall. But more than missing you, I'll worry about you. I worry about you sometimes, when I'm not there. I was worried when you went away during Christmas; remember when I told you to be safe and not get into too much trouble? I was serious. People like you are hard to find, so keep yourself safe and relatively healthy. We'll find out where you go soon, and life will move on always, but I hope I get to spend a bit more time with you in my life.

I Will Tell Gary

There is no God, and all of this is meaningless.
But today, there is a God. And he had a plan for him.

Talking shit, drinking wine, eating good food, laughing about other people's flaws and silly things we see on TV, sharing information about ourselves, wearing tank tops and slippers and hair down, cussing, speaking freely, all in a small, neat, artsy apartment in Cedar Park. I am so different from:

Sitting on the edge of the seat, never saying a word, taking shit from people who used to be my friends, gazing across the pavement at a circle of friends who I'm too scared to say hi to, staring down at my Triscuits and apple slices and milk boxes, picking up my ugly lunchbox when the bell rings, dragging myself to Theology or Physics or Coach L's English class, back before what happened. So different from:

Skipping lunch to spend an hour with a nun, working on homework, crunching numbers with the school freaks, avoiding eye contact in halls, too scared to heat up popcorn, sitting in silence with two new friends and a boy who does nothing but read, him asking you to prom in the hallway, and you ask him why.

I'm never the same person. My body decays every year, but my personality is growing up. As it grows, it doesn't decay like the flesh. It flourishes. It chips away at small parts that fear rejection and acceptance, it clumps on bits of humor and assurance. I feel okay more often than I did when I was young. I don't remember growing up very well because I was very anxious or okay I think. I was either so okay that it is unmemorable, or I was hurt so I forgot. It bothers me to not know which is the case. But the problem with where I was a few years ago:

You were staying in your bubble. Going to a foreign land and seeing devastation with those people doesn't help. I want you to feel uncomfortable, to crawl out of your skin and scream and cry and tear your hair to pieces in anxiety and loss of security. I want your heart to give out for a minute, your feet to free fall down a path, and I want you to stop where life takes you. You want so badly to change the world, but I fear you never will. The world, first of all, doesn't like change. The first obstacle. The second is that your idea for change is painful. I do not want to listen to your books, to your fantasies, to your arbitrary morality. Here is what I want to do: try some X, go to a rave, trip my tits off, and sleep til 5pm. Tell me why I shouldn't, once. Tell me why it's a sin, who I'm hurting. And what happens next? I do what I want. You're right at my ear to whisper sweet somethings, how I'll be forgiven. I don't want mercy. If I have done wrong by some Almighty power, then I am responsible for it. I knowingly do what I do. I drink, I smoke, I take drugs, I fool around with guys, I cuss, I do what I want, come home at 3 am, and I know that I do it. So don't tell me your God will forgive me. I never asked, and I don't want it. I am not sorry for living my life. What an odd concept to tell people, that they'll be forgiven. To tell people that they can love, but this way or that way only? I tried for 9 years to be holy. I guess I'm just a natural born sinner. I'm not cut out for religion. It doesn't bother me now that I've stepped outside the one-way window. So I want to change the world. I want to raise some people to be good, to not hurt others if they can help it, to survive and thrive and continue the lineage to make the world a nicer place. I won't make them pray, but I'll teach them how. I won't get mad if they don't want to go to church, but I'll take them to anywhere they wanna go. I'm going to change the world in this way. It's called hope, blank slates, magna carta, simple soft heads with plates unattached. But what are you going to do? Dress them up on Sundays, make them be like you? You're assuming that you are right and that you have the truth. You want to truth? First, you need to let go of that desire. Truth comes to the clean-hearted, not those with contracted hearts. Let that go, and you can get closer. Your God won't help, and your religion REALLY won't. But these are my current beliefs.

So the world is highly fucked up and constantly complicated. Every moment in a catch 22. Put your belief in predestination, and you will not think so. But now I am a part of the world, for the first time. I kept myself locked away. Now, I'm here. I love it, with its horrid gossip and ruthless bloodlust and the tears and the medicines and the mistakes. I love it more than religion, more than God, more than my past. I'm done with that. I'm free now, for the first time in my life. It is lovely.

All Singing All Dancing Crap

I can't stay awake for long.

Caffeine, Nicotine, and Adderall

Bitter dancer, ever turning.

That combo should help me study. Just took 1/4 an Addy and drank half a Trenta cup of iced coffee. I'm feelin' it now. A bit jittery but nothing too bad. Pretty good actually. I gotta shower then study!!! I don't know if my nostril can handle the rest of the Addy. I'm an amateur. Just gotta stay focused. Don't worry. Take a shower, snort the rest, and study time! :-) Shall be fuuuuun.

I WILL Teach Your Dog Physics

I am a sinner.

I miss Eric.

Social Skills

I had a chat last night with Ryan and I noticed how good he is with people. I mean really, everywhere we go, he seems to have friends. He said it truly took practice, and that he used to be very shy until he was about 16. So I need to make an effort. This has been an ongoing problem since I can remember, and I really want to open up to people. I generally like people. I like their stories, their opinions, their lives. I want to hear it and learn from it. The obstacle I have is myself. I am ridiculously individualistic and private. I'm extremely shy and quiet, and it takes serious effort for me to be talking in a social situation of over 3 people. I'm going to college in January and I need to start practicing my social skills. I feel so shitty because for 5 years, I drowned myself in an unhealthy friendship, so I have a lot of learning to do. But I can do it. I'm determined.

Epiphany addiction. Yes, I have that. I need to put in more hard work, more effort. It's going to be hard as hell. And work is going to be hard as hell... But you can do it.

Vague advice. One day you'll "be yourself" but it's not helpful for now. Seriously. Specifics.

Fake it til you make it. Works differently for different people.

Honestly, I tell myself a million times a day, "There's nothing wrong with you. You have the right to be yourself." Does that really help? I mean I think it does in the short term, but I have skills, just like learning an instrument, I need to hone. I'm ready to fucking try something new. Something's gotta work. I'll tell Alison this.

ARTICLE 1: ASKING QUESTIONS AND SEEMING INTERESTED AS A "KEY" TO CONVERSATION

Yeah it really doesn't work for groups. You need to know how to contribute. Even for one-on-one I feel people will start to think you're boring because you're not really sharing anything. In the past, I always let people talk and talk and now I realize it's really annoying because while I like hearing about people, I WANT TO TALK TOO!! I HAVE COOL STORIES!!! And I totally agree with the bit about people who want to monopolize a conversation and take advantage: CAT!!! And sometimes Ryan haha. He will start to go on about how people love him so much until I say, "Dude stop that's so fucking annoying." At which point he'll smile a desperate little smile and say, "I'm not trying to be, it's just the truth" at which point I'll feel like kicking him in the nuts. Ahh friends. But seriously Bianca, don't let people take advantage of your quietness. That's evil and enabling. Ew. You need to learn to interrupt when necessary. I feel like with my dad I can converse pretty well. I did well last night with Mike and Ryan, because 1) they're both chill and 2) it was a small group setting. I don't do well when I'm in a group and I'm the only new person, like when Ryan and I go to Starbucks or something. Also, I really like talking..........about myself........so I want to.

Article 2: Main concepts

Experience experience experience. You're not going to become a social butterfly by reading self help books OR this new website you found. Get out there. Do shit. (HOW?...) I see lots of opportunities: UNIVERSITY. And a new job.

Take initiative with making friends. It's not creepy. Don't be so passive (practice this....somehow).

Article 3: Factors that seems to contribute to shyness, etc.

Copying behaviors of people you were friends with that weren't good behaviors. Jenna. Jenna. Jenna. Her style works for her life and what she wants, but not at ALL for who I am. Unfortunately, I spent many years trying to hone HER skills and be like her, but this was only shooting myself in the foot: I have a choice between suffering and learning in my own way, in the life I want, or being good at interacting in a life I don't want, a life for somebody else. I choose the former.

Notes: Pushing people away. When I'm starting to get to know a group of people, I'm very happy to and want to get to know them more. I want to know a lot more. I especially take interest in a few specific people (usually a guy... ugh why) and want to know everything about them, I want to help them, etc etc. But then after a certain point I try to push them away (especially if the relationship is really intense and I feel like I'm getting too close). Getting really close to people scares me. I tell people to run, that I'm no good, that they're better off without me, that I deserve bad things and deserve to be hated. It's weird because the people who see me the most clearly tell me these thoughts are so wrong. They ask, "What have you ever done so wrong that you deserve this hatred?" All I can do at that point is cry and not know, but know that I do. Same reasons I (used to?) hit myself, because I want someone to do it for me. To hurt me, hit all the bad out of me. I have all these negative thoughts, this depression, sometimes even manic, all this absolutely insane, fucked up stuff inside of my head, and it really draws me away from other people. I need to know how to filter that and still feel connection, and I also need to know how to open up to the people I trust. I've opened up a bit to RJ, more to Ryan, a bit to Taylor, some to my dad, and that might be it.

Oh God, Where'd You Go?

God?
God?

It's so weird to think of God now, after all that's happened.

I remember when I was a little girl, how some things just didn't make sense. Like when people would say, "Just say when." I thought that was the silliest thing ever, because to me, "when" was just a concept. I didn't understand how that could be the magic word to mark the end of someone pouring milk or something. I like child me. I was very rational, I couldn't be fooled. I mean, I had a big imagination. But I knew what was what. I try to be that way at work sometimes. Just hold myself high, as a person deserving respect and fear. I'm kidding about the fear part. Or am I? I do sometimes wish I could be that girl that makes men scared, makes them sweat and very nervous to ask on a date. Unattainable, beautiful, proud, mature, lovely. Since I am the center of my own universe (literally speaking), I document myself. I fascinate myself. It's so bad, but not really. I'm in a relationship of sorts with myself, before I can expect to love others. I'm always waiting. I need to work through hard times, but I do owe myself the goodness of being happy. I don't deserve self-harm or depression. I have worth, just as much worth as I put on the people I love, respect, and admire the most. I am equal with them. That's an interesting way to look at things. If I could see myself the way I saw other people. How am I any different? At the end of the day, of our lives, I am no better or worse.

Darling, I don't care so let me go. To mama, arms open wide, I'll go.

I deserve a good man. I deserve to laugh. I love that scene from Breaking Bad where Jesse says, "I deserve this. I deserve everything that happens to me."

My arms are cold and I don't like that one bit.