both of us

All the way across the country. 3000 miles away, and still a picture can ruin a whole night. Still, one person's inconsiderate nature affects me no matter how hard I try to deny or fight against it. I can't help but feel weak, with these ways that you affect me.

When will you see that?

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i wonder if things could get any worse.

oh wait, of course they can.  they already did.

usher - bad girl
t.i. - dead and gone
mariah carey - touch my body
50 cent - just a lil bit
jamie foxx - blame it
timbaland - apologize

These are the songs I am listening to while I attempt to write my conference papers.  It is 92 degrees in new york today.  Which, while exciting, reminds me of last summer's heatwave and my lack of AC.  I am feeling the pressure of time, caving in on me, threatening to smother me entirely.  I'm hoping graduation will be worth all of this ridiculous stress and bullshit.  I'm in the library, sweating like a pig, trying to focus when my mind keeps wandering to entirely inappropriate subjects.

My newest guilty pleasure is downloading radio hits for free online.  I never knew about the secret world of searching on google for 'free mp3's' but it has quickly changed my entire life.

I wrote a piece for one of my classes, about the Laramie Project, my senior year of high school, and my tragic inability to think ahead when I submitted a very personal piece about leaving a man to be with a woman I loved for the GSA literary journal, which was then disseminated to every audience member on opening night.  Kiah is all over it.  Her smile from across the stage, looking out at me from the rows of seats, smiling me and remembering together how we took on the whole world to fall in love.  How beautiful it was, how unprecedented.  My professor really liked my prose style.  It was so infused with Kiah- it made me so proud.  I was proud.  That's a pretty nice feeling.  yeah, it's pretty nice.

The F train smelled like complete shit this morning.

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well there are always things to say right?
the last time i wrote in this it was the end of july.  my legal aid internship was over and i was done dating nicole.  i had one month left at 116 lincoln place and my senior year to begin.  it continues to near the end.  i am in my dorm room, perhaps the last dorm room i will ever call home.  and i miss shar terribly, wish i didn't have to go through this part without her.

i have been printing excessively in order to avoid my feelings surrounding this coming month of february.  i hate time.  the way it passes so nonchalantly.  like it doesn't even think of us.  all of us on all of these different points around the earth; with things changing that may hinge upon a month. 

february

i'm not ready.  i've never been ready to say goodbye.  i've never been ready to grieve.  i wasn't ready to let go of her coffin and accept or understand that i was allowing her face to fade from view forever.  what happened between us haunts me.  and it was such a basic and natural part of such an epic friendship.  but our timing was all off, much like the rest of my life, and now such a simple thing has changed everything and has made coping with this so much more difficult.  so painful and some part of me will always feel guilty.  i should've been there and i wasn't.  however will i come to terms with that?  how will i ever be ready to accept this?

There are of course moments when the pain is unbearable.  
When there is just nothing you can do to manage the ache of your heart.  
You have to allow the sobs to rack your body and you have to remain true to what you feel.  
Coming out of the wave of denial is probably the hardest.  
Everything was okay, and now it’s not.  
It is literally that abrupt.  
There are no signs, there are no warnings, grief comes about as randomly as death.  
And it’s like experiencing the whole thing over again.

                
I don’t know what to do with myself.  
I have so much stored up inside of me, so much inside of my heart that it’s almost ready to rip the seams.  
You can’t always get what you want, huh?  
As I sink deeper into this hole of sadness and anger, the more I realize I’m losing myself, the less I recognize the person I am when I look into the mirror.  
I have lost half of myself and it tells on my face.  
You can read it in my dreams.  
My dreams that are full of such fantasy.  
Fantasies that will never be reality, dreams that can never be true.

it is much easier to continue to love the people you already love.  you know how they will dissapoint you and falling in love is really scary.  even just going outside in the world and trying to be a human is scary.  trying to make the jump to connect with someone else is painful and uncomfortable and if you already have someone to love why try it all over again?  even if they do really very seriously treat you like shit- at least then you don't have to get hurt all fresh and new.

"prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.  i think prime numbers are like life.  they are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

today is michael everhart's birthday.  how strange.  i wonder what he is doing.  i wonder if he is as different today as i am.

i have more mosquito bites than i can possibly scratch- tonight i must sleep with clothes on.

can something really be only and all one person's fault? is that placing blame or being realistic?

i like taking the Q train.  it goes above ground to cross the river.  sometimes it's really nice to be reminded there is "above ground" and that we don't have to live our lives always in the darkness of tunnels.

i start stories and i stop stories.  and often i never even finish stories.  they meander at the back of my mind waiting for answers my life probably won't ever know.

i digress.  at night, the train leaves the tunnel and still it is engulfed in darkness.  but i believe it is a different darkness because the train enters into it and rides along not on it's own terms.  the darkness of the tunnels is made to keep light out, in the tunnel the trains make the rules.  they glide along tracks that have never seen the sun.

i really love books that force you to think different.  you put it down and you may forget about it for the moment, but somehow without your noticing the narrator, the author, has snuck in.  and all of their idiosyncrasies for a while become your own.  and often it can be a wholly out of body experience.  almost as if you are living and breathing as someone else momentarily.  your own words fumble and fall and fit into place on the page much the same way their words did.  how strange.  what a bizarre intimacy it is, with such a far off stranger- either someone who doesn't exist in this world or someone you most likely will never meet, let alone be intimate with. 

bizarre.

    i'm somewhat nostalgic.  just passing the time.  i can feel time closing in upon my chest.  about to crash through my ligaments, tendons, through my bones and heart.  boom boom boom.  bam.  crash crash crash.
    cracking along these beautiful edges.  crack crack crack.  i'm cracking apart.  it's another gloomy day and i have too much work and i don't care the way that i should.  i feel permanently damaged.  i am damaged.  i have been damaged and i have damaged myself.  and i don't know what it means to heal.  do you know how to heal yourself?  because i do not and i am trying to learn but i am clumsy and i can't make it work.  it won't work for me.  nothing can work right now. 
    i don't know what i'm doing or what any of these metaphors mean.  i think i'm just making them up, grasping for something stronger than my weak mind to hold on to reality with.  because i feel myself cracking up and slipping away.  away away away.  where are you going?  maybe to the same place i'm headed.  i really hope not.  i don't even know who you are yet.  and what i want looked so simple at the beginning of my life.  and now it has changed shape and size so many times i don't recognize what i want from the things i hate or the things i don't need.  i don't recognize myself from someone else anymore.  i hurt and wish i could tell you i had it together enough to explain to you why.

    Maybe certain pieces of a person's life aren't meant to fall in place.  Maybe half the point is that this is a puzzle that cannot be put together.  And maybe you're lucky enough to only have a couple of pieces damaged by the ring of water from your glass, sitting on the table.  Maybe one piece fell under a couch somewhere when your cat pushed it off the table looking for something to play with.  Maybe you'll never even know you've lost anything. I don't really know what to hope for.  Maybe it's more, I don't know where to put my hope.
    It could be about driving over the same bridge four times.  Feeling complicated and confused.  Twisted up inside.  It could be that.  It could be about love.  About the way those syrupy words sound, falling from your mouth like snow- muffling the world, making everything soft and quiet and numb.  Peaceful, if you think about it.  What a ridiculous concept.
    Hell, I'm probably just insecure.  In fact, I know that I am.  And I know that I am self-destructive and I know that I always like to have socks on.  I know that I have made mistakes.  I know that I am loved and that I am loving others.  I know that fake sugar tastes so fucking good.  I know that my friends are my whole world.  I know that the small space I inhabit in this infinity is perfectly fine with me.  I know that we die.  I know how to stare death in the eye, now.  I know that I can face an empty space that threatens to take over who I am.  I know that I am happy, while simultaneously asking so many questions, that perhaps take away from that.  I know what I value.  I'm learning what I'm worth.

everyday it will feel like she died yesterday

it's been so long.

it's been so long.

    something about this journal makes me feel connected when i feel disconnected.  i feel disconnected.  one thing i've never been is indecisive.  but this past week has found me completely perplexed.  what are you really supposed to do when your heart and your head actually speak two different languages?  i know that was possibly one of the most cliche things i've ever written, but i do feel like it's one of those cliche's that never actually gets answered.  and it needs an answer. 
    i found a way, to communicate between the furthest parts of myself.  but it is a constant strain.  it means that you are constantly bracing yourself for the moment when you can't connect them anymore.  i to be honest i don't know if i just found a way to do that or if my moment just came and i am now broken.  but i know that i am alone, in ways i have not had to be for a very long and i know that i am scared.

i know that i am scared.

she just might get you lost
and she just might leave you torn
but she just might save your soul
if she gets you
when she gets you
any closer.

Well, november is almost over.  and everyone out there in that country that i usually inhabit must be home for the holidays.  I don't mind missing thanksgiving at all, needless to say it's hardly my holiday.

My time here is dwindling and this fact hasn't been helping my panic attacks at all.  Reading Gut Symmetries again hasn't really been helping either.  It really plunges into you in a pretty painful way and forces you to struggle through it all.  I feel like that is what's been happening to me recently; being forced to struggle my way through my own gut, my own blood.  I went to Barcelona and none of my shit got stolen.  I was really proud.  I went and met Andre there.  it was so much fun, absolutely unbelievable.  Nice to be around someone who loves me and knows me beyond the here and now.  Even with all the impermanence in the world it's nice to remember that there was a time before this one, that there was indeed a past before now.

I've been blocked with writing recently.... i don't know what else i have to say. 

if only words were so easy for me to grapple with these days.  i find myself mute in a world of language.  tomorrow i am flying to spain.  to seville to be exact.  i'm excited and nervous and sad to be gone from florence for the second weekend in a row.  but i know that it will be worth it.  milan was absolutely amazing- so much fun- like a mixture between boston and new york.  the people were beautiful and dressed so well but in a genuine way.  it was a gay breath of fresh air for me.  i even bought a pair of diesel jeans i definitely couldn't afford.

otherwise things are complicated- i've been sleeping more and more, mostly because i'm taking these intense drugs to get rid of my never-ending cold.  i wake up, get on the bus, go to class, get back on the bus, go home, sleep, eat dinner, sleep and then wake up again.  that's pretty much been the schedule of this week.

i've been perpetually trying to think of the secret i want to send in to postsecret.  i know i have one, but none of my postcards have seemed right yet.  i guess i just have to keep waiting.

there are so many tourists and it's hard for me to keep my wits about me.  i hope it's easier for everyone else out there to remember who they are, because i seem to always be forgetting.

I didn't go to school today.
I'm going to tell everyone that I wasn't feeling well.
It's a total cop out.
I mean maybe I'm still drunk and it's almost one in the afternoon, but I just couldn't bring myself to go to school and sit through italian class for three fucking hours.  It's just too much.  and every time I leave the house I risk getting entirely lost in a way you can only possibly get lost in Italy.
But I'm learning... i think.  And each day that I get lost, it's a little bit easier to find my way.
I've been listening to so much fucking Bright Eyes and Elliott Smith and Maria Taylor.  I think it may be one of the strangest musical combinations ever.  But they never fail in knowing my mood and the look I must have on my face.
Apparently I give everything away with my eyes.
Did you know that?  Because I didn't know that until quite recently.
I've only been here a week and a half and I feel like I've been here forever.
It seems quite impossible that it hasn't been a lifetime yet.
But in this seemingly eternal week, I have learned more about myself than I have in years.
The best thing that could've ever happened to me was being betrayed.
It's set so many important things into perspective.  Important important things.
"Endless Love" what bullshit.
I need to get American US weekly's.... I'm dying over here without fucking gossip.
Sometimes I think about Sarah Lawrence and what might be going on in New York and then I remember that it's better to never think about the possibilities, or the situations you left behind.  It will only drive you crazy.
Sono patzo.
I've been collecting little cards from restaurants and hotels.  It's like having a piece of you in my pocket.
Maybe I'll go get back into bed.

i've been having serious sleep issues.  staying up for hours in the dark.  staring up, staring around.  trying to close my eyes, push my eyelids over my eyes, but it hurts to keep them closed.  how poetic- if i were a poet.  it hurts to lie in the dark alone, on a mattress that isn't the one i grew up on.

maybe it's better, to be sleeping on something harder.

the sky looks like it's going to open up and devour the world.  today is one of those days when i don't care anything at all about camp or the kids or myself.  it's one of those days when the confusion of my heart sets in too deeply to see past anything else.  i don't think my medicine is working.

THE DRUGS DON'T WORK.  god fucking damn it.

where am i and more importantly where are you?  why do i need you so badly when you're not here?  i hope you're not dead.

fuck it, i can't think at all.  i'm homesick homesick homesick.

i'm leaving another place, again.  it's getting tiring and i have to do it so many more times.  living out of a suitcase can wear a person down.  it's wearing me down.

i'm so homesick for new york.  even just talking to my friends there drives me crazy with missing them and the city and the sounds and the tastes, all of it.  i crave it all.

john and i take off for camp tomorrow- i'm nervous and excited and ready to go but also sad that i have to be away from the people i love all summer (except john and car).  i'm interested to see how this summer turns out.  i wonder what it will be like to experience the mountain in such an entirely different way.  i'm ready to get a new perspective, maybe see things clearly for the first time, up on that mountain top.  i will face closed doors and i won't run.

and best of all i think i'm ready.

this time in durham has been scattered and strange and i'm really just tired of such overstimulation all the time.  it makes me want to cry for no reason and give people a hard time who really don't deserve it.  i've seen the people most important to me, and that's about it.  it's been clean and clear cut, but that almost makes it so un-durham like.  perhaps my life is finally uncomplicating a bit.  that would be a surprising but welcome turn.  although perhaps i speak to soon?

wow.