You have no lack of confidence.

There's a text message in my inbox that I can't bring myself to delete. It's not like I've been saving it for years or anything. It's only about six hours old.

The reason I bring it up is because I keep picking up my phone and scrolling down to it, and every time I read it, the muscles in my lower back spasm and my teeth grit themselves.

It says, "I really wanted to kiss you last night."



I think about words a lot. A lot a lot. But I usually think about the things they mean and the way they are interpreted and misinterpreted. But I'm thinking about the word 'kiss' like it looks on the screen of my little samsung, the last word on the line.

From right here, this precarious social position I find myself straddling, it looks like such an exposed word, an open container, a box missing one wall.

I keep mulling this over.

okay, stop. step back. analyze. ask yourself:

this is what you do best, kid, what's the holdup?



there is no reason to be nervous.
there is no reason to self-sabotage.
there is no reason for all this bullshit that has been following you for whothefuckknowshowlong.
there is no reason.
can't you, just this once, be reasonable?

what do you tell yourself when you reach the point in your life where you're no longer afraid of the bad things that might happen, but the possibility of the good things wraps your stomach around itself? I've got a line for every time but I don't have a line for this.

my workload for the weekend is incredibly frustrating. i feel like I never sleep; I feel like I'm always sleeping. Break can't come soon enough--Florida will soothe my nerves.

I'm nineteen. Here is the (more or less) full list of things I have learned from my time on this earth:

• Tying your shoes probably isn't as important as people made it sound when you were learning it.
• Smiling makes you feel better even when it feels insincere. This isn't fair, but it's true.
• Tack an extra five minutes onto your commute time for every toll booth you have to go through. Get tied up at one of them, and you'll use all of it.
• Colors are cheerful but black is slimming.
• Memory is always in extremes. Nothing was really as terrible as you remember it; nothing was really as wonderful as you remember it. Plan for this and work around it.
• Always be extra kind to dogs in sweaters.
• You don't need shitty friends. You are better off alone in this world than you are associating with shitty people.
• Even if you get a little bit better every day, you'll never be perfect. that's okay. It's the struggle that's important.
• Once you say something in anger or frustration, you can't ever, ever, ever erase it.
• Stick to your convictions. Somebody's got to, and no one will do it for you.

"Revenge is bliss"?


I'll do you one better. "Living well is the best revenge."


Living well is the best revenge. The best revenge. The best revenge.


The best revenge is being untouchable. The best revenge is being indifferent. The best revenge is being politely sympathetic, finding you almost regrettably pathetic. The best revenge is not thinking about it, ever. (I'm not there, yet, but I can feel it coming, I swear I can.) The best revenge is being visibly happy, but an even better revenge is not choosing to be visibly happy---having it just happen. The best revenge is knowing you came out on top and not having to display it. The best revenge is being not just the bigger person but the better one. The best revenge is being me,  not you.



The best of them all is going to be seeing your face and feeling nothing at all.  Here's to almost a year; here's to nothing at all.

I went to the inauguration, motherfuckers. I haven't done a list post in a while, so:

Things I brought to Washington D.C.--

• change of clothes
• book
• makeup
• toothbrush
• gloves
• hand santizer

Things I forgot to bring to Washington D.C.---

• a change of socks
• a hat
• a scarf
• phone charger
• patience

Things I brought home from Washington D.C.--

• Two 'CHANGE' shot glasses, one for me and one for Laurie
• assorted newspapers
• a few posters we found around the city
• photos
• a tentative sense of legitimate patriotism

I realize now that I probably wasn't quite as slick as I thought while I was opening the gate, but the movement seemed flawless at the time. I felt smooth; it felt stylized and easy and clean. And, still holding my coat, he said, "Just so you know, I'm bad news."

I live for moments like this. Maybe that's bad. But I do.

I turned in the threshold, said, "Well, so am I. This--" hold the eye contact--"is going to get interesting."

fall semester in retrospect--

Here's the thing about a crisis: you find out everything important. You find out who's got your back, and I mean that in both senses. You learn about people who should have you, but don't, and you also learn about people who you would never dream of putting that kind of weight on who take it anyway, willingly. Fall 2008 was probably the hardest semester I've had thus far.

The first half was a crisis for me, in that highly personal way that I'll probably never get out of entirely. And my best friend failed me; not only failed me, but failed to try. And I finally came to the mantra that I'd then repeat a hundred thousand times, fatalistically, trying to sound decided: "If you're not there when I need you, I don't need you."

There's something to be said for fair-weather friends. Fair-weather friends are fun. You have fun together. You are casual friends. Acquaintances. You do not ask them to help you move. They do not ask you for help with the questions that keep them up in the middle of the night. You tell each other stories; you do not ask each other for advice. They are not your best friends.

And, hopefully, they are not your roommates. I am not writing this to talk shit. I am not writing this in the hopes that it stirs up controversy. I am merely writing it because it is important.

Living in a hostile situation has got to be one of the hardest things I've ever done. When you're not comfortable in your own room, especially in a college situation where that room is really your only option, it becomes near impossible to do anything. I found myself spending more time in the library, with Alex, with whoever, so long as I was out of there. And I was angry, resentful, like a neglected child. I needed you, I was thinking, I needed you and you fucking couldn't handle it. A fair-weather friend is to a real friend what a prostitute is to a relationship: almost the same if you squint, except emptier, and someone generally wakes up feeling used.

I got angry, resolved to spend as much damn time in that room as humanly possible. You're going to give me the silent treatment? You are going to presume to give me the silent treatment? If you want to play hardball, sugar, you came to the right place. I've never been very good at playing the victim, even when I really believe that I am. It's in my nature to strike back, and hard. So I did.

I'll cut out the tedious infighting: long story short, Brianne moved out. I won't say that I was completely mature in my handling of this. Taking a picture of someone's packed belongings while they sleep, and sending it out as a mass text, well, that's not mature. But I slept in that room alone on election night, feeling comfortable as hell. It was stellar.

I was lucky enough to have Laurie move in the next day, something I had been contemplating for a while. I couldn't live alone, I'd get antsy. And from day one, it was an awesome living situation. Even while the beginning of the semester was happening, and I was out of my own control and, bypassing Brianne, in Erin and Lauren's, Laurie came pretty much out of nowhere and pleaded my case, argued my side, and generally did everything a roommate should have done, months before we had any idea she'd be taking that place.

Quite apart from all the other things that went on this semester, this was my primary conflict--I hate to use that word but that's what it was. A conflict. And, fortunately, it was neatly resolved, ideally resolved. I thought a lot this semester about the idea of home, and what happens when you feel like you don't have one. I never hated my parents' house that much, not even when I was a young teenager and thought I'd never be happy so long as I lived with my mother. Never.

this is about a week old but I left it in its original, rather delirious form.

On finals week—

So I’m writing this at about 2:45 AM with no plans of sleep. I have a final at 11 tomorrow in Miguel. Studying was going well until about an hour ago, when Laurie looked across the room at me and said, “Pizza.”

The magic word, damn her.

Pizza was the obvious answer to everything. I wasn’t hungry, no, but pizza would solve all my problems. Pizza would keep me awake. Pizza would make perfect sense of all these meandering essays I was about to spend the next nine hours decoding. Pizza, the food of the gods, would fix everything. That, and cheesy bread.

The reasoning was flawless, the sort of thing that makes perfect sense in the night-morning hours while Nella Larsen is stomping through your mind with her damn semi-autobiographical prose. We logged giddily into our suite’s Dominos account (oh, you have one.) and were horrified to find that they were closed. No, god, no.

Okay, Broadway Joe’s? Closed. Don’t panic. Goodfellas? Closed, and, anyway, we’re somewhat afraid of the guy who’s always behind the counter and his intense, starey eyes. Shit. Shit. Now what? Google maps informed us that the nearest 24-hour pizza place was in Times Square. Not even an option during December: sleep-deprived, starry-eyed tourists get bloodthirsty after midnight. First Avenue? Not going to fly. Shit.

We were miserable. Crushed. A night of studying stretched out in front of us forever and, without pizza, it seemed unbearable. And then I remembered a drunken night at Tinker’s freshman year, sitting with friends in a booth at 4 AM with my cheesy prize. Fordham was the answer.

Called Pugsley’s. No dice; the woman laughed as she told me they didn’t deliver to Manhattan. (Well, fuck you too.)

Carmine’s. A brief glimmer of hope; I explained, very patiently, to the guy who answered the phone, exactly where the dorm was, half-certain that he was going to pull up to some sleeping dorm in Fordham with my goddamn pizza. He wrote down everything I said, repeating it back veryyyyy slowly. We were overjoyed. We reveled in our victory. It was 2:15 AM and the world was ours. Finals had nothing on us; we had bested the Pizza Quest.

Five minutes later, Carmine’s called back. The man let out a gargle of half-English, half-Spanish, all of which was incomprehensible. “Sure,” I replied, and he hung up the phone. Um…

We now find ourselves uncertain, waiting on a pizza that may or may not be coming. There’s a metaphor for life in here somewhere.

i have no idea how I'm supposed to go home.

Classes are over, finals week is in full swing, Manhattan is cold then warm then cold again, frenzied engineering majors have decided to start existing on main campus again, the library is full to bursting and I'm on livejournal for the first time in ages in the interests of doing anything anything anything but studying any more for my Theories of Composition exam tomorrow.

I have half a mind to jump on the train and wander around South Ferry until the test at eleven.

But, all this frantic absurdity aside, holy mother of god I'm supposed to leave? I can't leave. And, I mean, to leave and go back to Rockland County? No, no, not happening. Unacceptable. My last final is in Piano. On a Saturday. Cruel twists of fate, 400.

Going to miss the twins, mostly. =]

I voted for Barack Obama this morning.  I went home last night and, at five forty-five this morning, I was standing outside my town hall with my father. Unsurprisingly, Rockland County managed to find the oldest known living women to work the polling station, and it took them roughly ten minutes to find my name. I was nervous when I signed, that credit-card anxiety where you wonder if your signature looks enough like the one on record and what will happen to you if it doesn’t.  Regardless, I passed the test.

I found myself on line, antsy and tired and trying not to look too interested in other people’s ins-and-outs of the voting booth, mock-studying the floor and walls until my turn. And I walked into the clinical lighting of the voting booth and tried to pull the handle too early. Wouldn’t close.

“Just a second, dear, I need to set it.” The woman had to be eighty.

“I’m sorry, I’m, uh, a little new at this.” At her wave, I pulled the handle again. The curtains closed with a snap, and suddenly, it was me and the booth. The too-bright lights and the sickly, hospital-blue paint of the interior seemed blinding. It was a refreshing burst of color when I pushed the switches down, exposing the bright red.

 

 I’m sitting on my former roommate’s bed, tonight, sick with joy. As of my writing this, Barack Obama has 207 projected electoral votes. And I am sick and inspired and breathless. I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can’t believe we’ve gotten this far.

 This election has been incredible. I never thought I’d fully support a candidate like this. I never thought I’d actually find myself so involved in the system. I can remember tonight, four years ago, feeling sick at the prospect of another Bush term, sick knowing that even the guy with the sympathies closest to my own was miserably far off. I never thought I’d be here today.

 I am amazed to be here today.

 

And he’s won. So, you know what? I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to have seen it. I don’t fully believe it quite yet, but I know that it will hit me. And I can’t wait.

 

God bless America.

They say, that kid, he's got soul.

This is where I am: an upswing from a bad spell, unmentioned but acknowledged. Taken care of. Studied, broken down, clinical in a poorly-lit room. I am my own upswing. I am nervous as hell.

It's scary, this thing that I do. Hairpin turns from elation to that-other-thing. I'm sick and tired of being dragged out of a well. I'm sick of wells. I hate the dark.


On the bright side, an Obama victory is pretty much a given. Hope springs eternal.

this is my weekend.

columbus day weekend, four days off, four days home. Four days that I don't wake up at 6:45, four days that aren't a blur of passing faces on the quad, four days of no work, no class, no stress. Four days to decompress.

I am decompressing.

I've had an incredibly tumultuous semester: a frenzied start, a busy beginning, and one of the sharpest downslides in contemporary memory. I really found out that a lot of my friends have got my back, no matter what. I also found out that one didn't. And now, I am getting back on track. Tonight was the first in the old familiar struggle, the push-slide of a childproof cap. Tonight was the first return to submitting to the thing I hate most.

Wednesday morning I was walking to breakfast, smoking a cigarette, and when I got to the dining hall, I looked at the empty cardboard pack and thought, "I'm going to be nineteen next week." I'm going to be nineteen next week. What would I have thought, at fifteen, of myself with an empty pack of cigarettes in my hand? So I quit smoking. Just like that. A year's bad habit, anxiety treated with a nicotine-fueled reminder of home. Enough is enough. So I'm through with that.

Walked down the stairs, walked into locke's, and thought, "I'm going to be nineteen next week." When I was a kid, it was a constant battle with my parents: I wanted to be a vegetarian. I didn't want to eat meat. They always said, while you live in this house, you will eat what we tell you to eat. Periodically throughout middle and high school, I would secretly eat vegetarian, or, once I found out what it was, vegan, but, eventually, I would always get caught: "While you live in this house, you will eat what we tell you to eat." I don't live in that house anymore. So I've been eating vegetarian since then. It's not a huge departure for me: the only real change is trading off my turkey bacon wraps for vegetable paninis. It's a little inconvenient, especially since I'm a rather picky eater. But, again, what would I have thought, at fifteen, if I knew that I was brushing off something that I believed in because it was inconvenient? Belief isn't meant to be convenient.

Maybe 7:30 AM isn't the best time to make decisions, but it does allow for a degree of defenseless clarity. I am trying to be the person that my (even more) idealistic younger self would have wanted me to be.


So, I guess what you're asking is, can I still hear the songs you sang me? And, yeah, when I close my eyes at night, if I try, I can still hear them. But, you know what? I don't try. Put me out of your mind.

oh, hey, internets, i kinda forgot about you.

today is the end of the fourth week of the semester. a whole new kind of bizarre. it's going far too fast.



my new friday ritual is going downtown by myself. i have no classes, so i get up late (a far cry from the 6:45 i pull monday-thursday) and eat breakfast before getting on the train. Last week I went to the new museum and the feast of san gennaro before catching lunch meeting my american lit class at the whitney museum. Today I wandered around the east village for hours, in and out of stores, taking it in.

There's something infinitely relaxing about being downtown with nothing to do; the week is always so tense that a day with no goals in mind shifts my thoughts from schedules and assignments to the sort of place where I can actually think over all my thoughts. (if that makes sense)

I'm not a person who can sit around all day--doing nothing grates on my nerves and makes me terribly anxious. But something about the potential for adventure makes aimless days of exploring seem a bit more constructive. Also, it's fun. =]]]

this is the sort of recurring discomfort that never fully depletes.


i don't do regrets. because i know myself. i'm a creature of impulse, and the choices that I make are always ones that I know, in the same place, I'd make again. i've never been much of one for self-denial.

but that old anxiousness does rear its head at the worst of times. the sudden lack of full control is nerve-wracking, to say the least. The degree of uncertaintly that seemed so thrilling at the time wrenches my stomach in full daylight, exposed.



...but sometimes, what you thought might destroy you turns out too easy, the same fluidity of motion and words that seemed so compelling at the time. One down. I'm sold on sentimentality. It's sweetness that catches in my throat.




all that being said, being back at school feels like coming off an oxygen tank.

Dear internet, this may be my last correspondence.


I am deep in the heart of the foreign land known as New Jersey. I may not make it out.

Perhaps I'm being dramatic. The beach is lovely, my lifeguard tan is nearly gone, and as long as I'm near the water, I feel peaceful and relaxed and Thoreau-esque. But the second I venture off that clean sand, I start to think about killing people. I biked to Seaside this afternoon to pick up zeppoles (the delicious crown jewels of NJ,  to be sure) and the second I set foot on the boardwalk, my head started to spin. I chalked it up as a biological weakness to hair gel (oh, so much hair gel) and continued, but as I waited for my lovely snacks, I started to feel dizzy. A girl who had bleached not only her hair but her eyebrows with a voice like an air raid siren was speaking nonsense to the counter girls, who had a second-grade reading level between them as a frat boy checked me out and the arcade next door played Cher, apparently unironically, and the absurdity of the entire episode welled up in me and I could feel it, oh, I could feel hysteria in my veins until, suddenly, by way of reprieve, a girl walked up in three-inch platform flip-flops and I laughed, concluded that I must be in a nightmare. Nowhere in the waking world is any footwear that impractical.

I was wrong, of course, but at least the police didn't have to come this time.


If this is a good-bye, internet, so be it. You've been good to me.

When I was a kid, I passive-aggressively collected rocks.


That is to say, one weekend, my parents came home from a vacation and presented me with three rocks and a box. The box was divided into fifteen or so smaller compartments, each with a photo and description of a specific sort of rock on the bottom. And each time my parents went away, once or twice a year, they came home with a different variety of rock. And, through no effort of my own, I was suddenly a rock collector. I never really identified with it, and, aside from a two-week period in the fourth grade when I was suddenly thrust in the spotlight due to a science class study of just that topic, I rarely gave rocks much thought. I didn't dislike them. They were just a thing that I had. And that was pretty much it. As far as I could tell, that was what collectors did: got things, and then forgot about them.


I now have a significantly more interesting collection, I realized. I seem to collect quirky friends. I know artists, neurotics, victims, literati, phobics, lovers, addicts, fighters, philosophers, cognoscenti, gossips, poets, the angst-ridden, the light-hearted, the miserable, and the celebrators. I know fascinating people. I have friends that I honestly can not listen to enough. I have friends who say everything I think about far more eloquently than I could, and I have friends with whom I disagree about just about everything. A lot of people in the world are boring, but I've somehow managed to sift through and stumble across turquoise and onyx, crystals and gold.

And that's awesome. =]

I feel like a hero tonight.

Tonight I took back every song a boy ever took from me. Every three-chord refrain and arching note that I ever let become about anyone else, every verse that I ever turned into someone else's anthem, I played them tonight and felt nothing at all. It wasn't the practiced nonemotion or the measured distance that chemicals induce. It was just...dry memory. It wasn't storybook and I couldn't have written a poem about it. It was just, oh, I remember.

((someday i'll see your awful paintings and feel nothing at all))

Because today is mine, just like yesterday was mine, just like you can be damn sure every day that's coming will be. I have a pretty bad habit of forgetting that. But these songs? I know now that they are mine. They're about me, not about you, and certainly not about me-and-you. I'm too young and too clever to relinquish a damn word.



I suppose I'm tired of self-victimizing. How bad could self-aggrandizing be?

I remember having a conversation, about this time last year, about real lives. More specifically, someone told me she couldn't wait to finish college and start hers.

And that's a tough subject. I mean, yeah, I look forward to being out of school, and to having my own classroom and my own life. But, the idea that your real life hasn't started yet? I mean, this is my real life. Twelve-hour days at the pool are my real life, and throwing plastic eels around with a group of little girls is my real life, and sitting by the river with my best friends is my real life. I resent the idea that you need to be accomplishing something for it to count.

This is what I'm doing with myself, and I love every second of it. I'm living in vivid blues and greens; the too-vibrant colors of the crayons I keep at germonds have nothing on the backdrop to my universe, and even when it storms, I see the rainclouds in a brighter grey than you do. This is my real life, as real as it gets, and I wouldn't give it up for anything.

I don't have anything to prove. Sunglasses can't dim my enthusiasm and I don't need to make anything to mean anything: days like these are everything I live for.