Auditions!

Let me make this very VERY clear. I am a theatre and psychology double major. The theatre requires all of their majors, minors, and scholarship holders to audition for all of their shows. THEATRE IS NOT ALL ABOUT ACTING! Is that clear? IT ISN'T ALL ABOUT DANCE! Theatre is about making art, not matter how you do it. Yes, acting is an aspect of theatre. So is dance. But behind the scenes, there are designers. What is an actor without his stage? What is an actor without the lights to support his emotions? Powerful things can be conveyed through these things. And what about the director? He or she plays a key role in the production of a play.
I am what they call a technical student. I am a designer in training. I have REALLY bad stage fright, which is kind of funny since I was in several MCT plays as a child. That said, I cannot possibly begin to convey how much I hate auditions. I get there, nervous that I won't be able to remember the words of one of my monologues, and the more I practice, the more my hands shake. The more my hands shake, the more I forget. And then the production managers call my name and I'm sure that I'm going to pass out after I forget the beginning of my piece. The production manager would lead me upstairs, and I would stand outside the door briefly trying to calm myself, and take deep breaths, both attempts failing miserably. Resigning myself to fate, I would let myself into the acting lab, letting the door swing shut behind me, overly conscious of the clank of wood against metal, and thinking maybe I should have stood by the door and closed it slowly. Taking a deep breath, I would greet the panel of professors/directors for this season's shows, and they would ask me a few questions about myself, and I would give the answers awkwardly, maybe stuttering some. Then they would ask if I was ready, and I would shakily say yes, even though I am SO not ready, and I would turn around, take a couple deep breaths, and launch into my monologue after I remembered the starting words. Not three words in, I would forget the next phrase, turn to the panel, announce that I was starting over, and re-begin, even more shaky and nervous than last time. After making it through the two standard pieces, they might ask me a couple more questions, and I would finally escape, glad to be done and hoping against all hope not to be cast. And I would nervously check the call-backs list over the next few days and find that I wasn't called back, and be relieved that I never have to public speak again.
Now, since last night, I have been trying to get out of this hell that they call auditions. I've emailed the panel, and the production managers, and finally resorted to a made-up excuse that I had to fill in for someone who got sick at work until an hour before auditions ended. The excuse wasn't necessary. I got out of auditions through an email saying that I was excused an hour before auditions started. Thank God.

Fire Her Up!

I know, I know... this is something like the millionth time I've said I'm going to start this blog up again, and I just never get around to it after the fact, but this year is proving to be very difficult, and I suspect it will continue to be very difficult, and in the past, this has been a good steam blower for me, so it's here to stay for the next year at least.
Allow me to enlighten you on my life for the past five months (and some things from about a year ago). I started dating the love of my life a year ago on Sept. 10th, which makes this the longest relationship I have ever had. The poem that was entered here on Oct. 6th is about him. There's a few catches though. Even though I'm Truly Madly Deeply in love with him, he lives in California, exactly 632 miles (that's ten hours and twelve minutes of driving time) away from my house, with chronic bloodclots, and that makes him a little hard to see, because his parents (the other catch) are so controlling that they wont let him take anything but a plane to come and see me, and because I go to a private college where they take bits of my skin and muscle to pay for my tuition when I don't have the money (which is quite often, you would be surprised). And the logical thing would be for him to move here and go to school (he goes to a community college) his parents wont let him do that either. "Why do you stay with him? Distance is a big issue!" you say. Yeah, you're right. It is. But I stay with him because I love him, because he treats me right, because he's the first guy my mother has actually liked, because my father doesn't like him (because he's half-black, half-Iranian), because he knows more about me than my girlfriends, because he is my best friend, and because he got me through a deep bout of depression last spring.
Intro: my ex-best friends. Meet A.K. He's from LA. Sweet, smart, funny, I can always count on him for advice or for him to make me laugh. He was my first co-host for the radio show that I started and the rest of them commandeered. This isn't chronologically how I met these friends, but A.K. is a key player in the depression story. I worked with him in the theatre, and we always had fun making fun of each other, until it got to be too much for me. That's how it was with the whole group. We loved each other because we could joke with each other and make fun of everyone else's attributes. Before I get too far ahead of myself, there are some more names you need to know. I met M.Z. through my first calculus class in college. Multi-variable. I had passed the AP test with flying colors, so I was advanced, and I can't really tell you why she was there. All I know is that she proceeded to sit next to me on the first day, and then every day after that, and talk my ear off, day after day. I thought she was really weird at first, but then I warmed up to her because I didn't have anyone else to hang out with yet. I guess you could call her my first close friend. We went to a concert at Riverfront Park together, and then after that, I guess you could say we were attached at the hip. I invited her to eat dinner with me and A.H. once, and that's how our group was unofficially formed. A.H. I met in Opening Days. He was the only person in my group I felt somewhat connected with. He actually talked to me without looking at me like I was weird. We had things in common, we made each other laugh. He's extremely smart, and studies hard. I met A.K. through him. They were roommates during first year (lucky that they got along so well) and have been for every subsequent year after. In fact, they're going to be roommates in the apartment that they all just rented together (without me, I might add, but that part comes later). L.B. was in A.K.'s OD group, and they are really good friends. I don't see how though because in my opinion, she has a worse character than I do. She complains ALL THE TIME, whines and lies to get her way, she's somewhat of a hypochondriac, and she only talks about herself and her sisters. You guessed it, folks! She joined a sorority during freshmen year! So we don't see much of her anymore. It's ironic with a capital I that she's the first person I turned to after The Incedent. And finally J.B.: J.B. lived across the hall from A.K. and A.H. who we politely nicknamed the A's because they have the same first name, and do practically everything else the same way. The parts that aren't alike about them compliment the attributes in the other. Anyways, J.B. is really sweet. She's never mean, unless she's joking, she MAKES (hand draws, sketches, cuts out, glues, ect, ect) her own cards for every birthday she has in her datebook, and personalizes every gift. She agrees with everything you say, and if she disagrees, she disagrees passively. If anyone could kill you with kindness, it's this blonde-haired, blue-eyed, innocent who couldn't kill a fly, and had to catch and release all the spiders in our room (second year) instead of just squash them with a shoe (I would have done it, but I'm terrified of spiders). We all lived in different halls during our freshmen year (except the A's and J.B.) and all hung out in each other's halls depending on the night. In sophomore year, we had this brilliant plan to all live in the same hall. That worked out well. Stress + PMS = J (that's me) becomes a bear, and my "friends" couldn't take it. I found out about all this through a phone conversation that J.B. was having just before I walked into the room. I stopped and listened and what I heard did not please me. Apparently, they had been talking about me behind my back. They didn't want me to live with them because of "the way [I am]". "All the kindness that [A.K.] had shown to me was purely fake at this point". They didn't like me anymore. My best friends were kicking me out of our group. Well, maybe that's a little dramatic because when I found out, I was so hurt that I chose to leave. J.B. felt sorry for me because she knew that they were the only friends I had at school, and the only reason she sided with them is because there were more of them, but she didn't want to tell me what was going on because she didn't want it to be awkward. I cried myself to sleep on the phone with A.S., the long distance lover, for three nights in a row before J.B. said anything. When I told her I knew everything, she denied that she knew what I was talking about, and that it wasn't true, and how could I think that, ect, ect. I stopped going to dinner at the usual time, and when I got hungry, I would go out. I couldn't stand eating by myself in the crowded cafeteria, so I found alternatives. When asked why I wasn't eating, and why I seemed so down by M.Z. I confronted her. I told her everything I knew, but not how I got the information. The look on her face confirmed it, and needless to say, I'm no longer with them. As a result of having no friends, I had so much time on my hands, but I spent so much of it sleeping, and very little of it doing actual work. I started skipping my independant study class, and I rarely went into the theatre building at all, unless I had J.C.'s class, in which my grade dropped because I wouldn't talk. I was ashamed, because I had stopped going to work and I didn't want my boss to confront me about it. In retrospect, she should have fired me. A.S. got me through that time. When he came for Spring Break, she thought that the reason I had been slacking was because I was so happy. Then I confessed what had happened to my advisor, and I think he told her. They're pretty close, you see. I think everyone in the theatre department is close, except for me because now that Anya has graduated, I'm the only design student left.
Anyway, this fall out has led me to the place where I am now. When I found out that my "friends" perjurers of everything good and wonderful in this world, the most of these friendship, I started looking for a new place to live on the campus ad boards, and on craigslist, where I had previously found many apartments that would have worked for the five of us (Lily was living in her sorority house). It took a few weeks of searching, but I finally found an ad that applied to me. "Wanted: a single woman to receive free room and board in exchange for taking care of an elderly woman during the evenings. You get the loft, and share the kitchen and bathrooms. Schedules are flexible." This sounded like a REALLY sweet deal, so I emailed the woman who had posted the ad, and set up an interview. When I met with the two women, they seemed pretty down-to-earth, laid back kind of people. The elder is 86 and the younger is her daughter. Nice people, really nice people. The problem was that K.S. couldn't live with/take care of her mother because it was interfering with her work and her home life, and the last person quit, I was told, because her brother had some sort of cancer. So they checked my references and offered me a job. I made the decision to go home and stay with my parents over the summer, but that turned sour really fast because my mom and I only get along when we aren't living together, and it took the numerous fights for me to see that. I decided to move back to Salem and take the job earlier than expected, and moved back on July sixth. So much better than living with my mom, right? Wrong! Out of everything that has happened so far (the "adjustment" period, my mother calls it), this old woman has made me cry four times since I've been here, and I've only been here for a month and a half. The latest happening? Well, first of all, everything MUST be done her way. If it isn't done her way? It's wrong, of course. I challenged this this morning when I served her breakfast. I accidentally set the polished spoon on the right side of the plate instead of the left, and put the fork where the spoon was supposed to go. I was in a rush to get it done. When she reminded me (like she ALWAYS does) that I did it wrong, and that I better get used to the way that she does things because the world does it like that, I said (nicely, jokingly, like an observation) "The world is kind of silly then because most people eat with their right hand." But no. Once again my employer is right because she went to high school with Jesus and I'm not quite that old. You want to know what her great comeback was? "Some people eat with their left hands." Very true, you're highness, I'll keep doing it your way because it's your house, and I will just disregard the fact that left-handedness is a recessive gene. That means that only 13% of the world population is left-handed, according to http://www.lefthandersday.com/.
Before this next anecdote, please understand that I do not cope well with being yelled at. M.S. (the old woman) and I have some communication problems. Many times, I don't understand exactly what she wants, and when I don't understand what she wants, she treats me like I'm stupid and raises her voice to me. Not. Cool. I was making her lunch today, and it wasn't done the way she wanted it, so she raised her voice. "No no no, I don't want it done that way, I want it just like this!" Commence ten minutes of unclear instructions.
What I hear: "I want one piece of bread with cheese on it, put into the microwave until it melts, with another piece of bread on top."
What she said (allegedly): "I want one piece of bread with cheese on top, put into the microwave until the cheese melts, and that's it."
It's really hard to believe her when she repeats what she said when I heard something different, because she says thank you for the fork that I put next to her plate, and then ten minutes later asks for a fork and then says that I snuck it in when she wasn't watching. Hmmm... something wrong with this picture? So she proceeds to yell at me, making me more flustered, so I cut the single piece of bread in half and make it into a sandwich. That still isn't what she wants, so she yells at me more exasperated and louder than before. When I finally get the "sandwich" in front of her, I'm on the verge of tears.
I can't do this job. I can't. But I have to stay until next year at least. I have no place else to live, and tuition is higher than I thought it would be. Not only that, but I would have had the money for a place of my own and for tuition if I had just stayed home and worked my butt off, as was my original plan. This is the part where I curse my ability to make the wrong kind of friends, but I suppose I'll spare you, and keep that bit to myself. If you're still awake, or even made it to the end, thanks for paying attention.

Excuse me, Asshole.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I bump into you with my fat ass? I didn't mean to.. Oh, right, yes I did~ I forgot, Fuckers like you always get their comeupance. Look, asshole, I know I might not be as pretty as the other theatre girls, I know you think I'm the stereotypical blonde girl with no brains, but I am a human being, and I deserve respect, whether or not you think I'm drop-dead gorgeous. The way you have treated me since I entered the department has been has been unacceptable, and your behavior needs to change. You treat me like I'm not a member of society, like I'm lower than a dog. Let me inform you of something: I am human. I have feelings. And though you think I'm incapable of a lot of things, and I don't always do what you think I should, or what you would do in that situation, I need you, as light shop manager, to teach me what you know, because I will be in your place next year as supervisor and the shit you think I'm too stupid for I will be teaching next year. SO FUCKING TEACH ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW, AND TREAT ME WITH THE RESPECT I DESERVE. Asshole.

If I Had The Guts: facebook statuses I can't bring myself to publish.

J can see through you. You're a bitch. Get away, stay away.
J is smirking. Smirking loudly. Oh, and she just might have a knife at your back.
J thinks you're really stupid.
J says, "Back the fuck off, he's mine."
J is laughing. She's going to get back at you...
J hates certain people, and the shit they say.

This list will probably get longer.. I just cant think of any more bitter ones at the moment.

Feel Bad, Bitch

This, I'm hoping, will be a quick post, as I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now, and I don't currently have anything done on it.
Today, let me just say right now, has just not been my day. Little things going wrong, tired as hell, and it all culminates in THIS SHIT. My friends and I went to dinner tonight. And like usual, we were fucking around. Very beginning of dinner. My roommate takes my drink, making a sort of joke (guess you had to be there) and then on her way to giving it back, putting it on my tray, the glass catches the edge of the tray and falls out of her hand.
No big deal, right?
Oh, I forgot to mention its contents fell. All. Over. Me.
Okay. Still, no big deal, right?
WRONG. I'm wearing my favorite jeans and t-shirt.
No worries. You can wash them.
Grape juice stains. Before the accident, I had two pairs of jeans that I could wear that weren't stained, that were relatively nice. Currently? I have one pair.
Okay, so I go back to my room, change out of my clothes, realize I have no money to replace them, soak them in the bathtub, and proceed to start freaking out about where I'm going to get the money for new jeans, crying and everything. So I call my mom. See if she would be willing to contribute. Luckily, she gets paid Friday, so I bought jeans at Eddie Bauer in B. over the phone and they're shipping them to me. Great. Taken care of.
When I got back to my room after my meeting, J. wasn't around, so I asked K. where she went. "M.'s room." Cool. I didn't go down there, I figured she was fine, whatever. I made it clear when I left after not getting any dinner that I didn't want them to bring me any food, and that it wasn't her fault.
Now, J. isn't the type of person to immediately take things the way you mean them to be taken. She feels bad for EVERYTHING. Dear God, this girl can't let anything go without feeling bad. So apparently she starts crying. And she's been crying in M.'s room. I found this out when I tried to get M. to tell her that I'm sorry, as I won't be in my room until late tonight, or so I am anticipating. But not only did I get absolutely no help, I got a cold response from M. like I did something wrong.
Excuse me. I had to leave the table at that point, because not only was I dripping with grape juice, but I was fairly upset, and getting more upset as I got to my room. I fucking started crying, which I suppose isn't unusual for me lately, and I'm pretty much on the verge right now. I'm not supposed to be the one feeling like I've done someone wrong, because according to A.K., I didn't do anything. Yet, I'm still really upset, and I feel like I should be the one apologizing.
Well you know what? I hope you feel bad, J. You can't just let someone be fucking upset without ruining that as well as their clothes. I would have fucking gotten over it fast if you hadn't gotten the whole group on your side by feeling so bad you cry, by feeling so bad that they look at me like the bad guy. You know what? I got out of there so fast because I didn't want you to feel worse than you already did, but now? I HOPE you feel bad!

Okay. I am finished ranting. I apologize for my words if they are harmful. But know, I won't apologize. I did nothing wrong.

This is your life....

Are you who you want to be?
~Switchfoot

Just to start out the night of studying with a little raw philosophy. Has anyone ever noticed that unwise choices come out of anticipation of a looming test? I just remembered that I have one tomorrow, and what am I doing, my dear, but typing out a message for you. Despite the recent slump in posts, I'm trying to make a comeback with this thing, and that would mean chatting with you, my dear, on a semi-regular basis.

So I start again with this simple question: This is your life, are you who you want to be?

Do you wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and tell yourself that you think you're awesome? Of course not. That would indicate either insanity issues, because you're talking to yourself, or narcissistic issues, because you think you're so God-damned amazing. Truth is, children, if you don't like who you are today, if you can't look in the mirror and say "I'm proud of who I am, what I do, how I feel, my opinions," what can you say? What can you say for yourself, for your life? How do you deal with the husk of life that you have become?

You change.

That's all that needs to happen. A lot of time it happens naturally, sometimes you try to force it, sometimes you just need a brand new car to drive your middle-aged wife around in. But you change, and so do the people around you. We adapt to our new environments.

But, dear readers, if you can't see yourself changing, and my words of unconscious change shock you, frighten you, make you want to hide under your bed, scare you, fret not. We keep the basics as a base.

You will continue to fear. You will continue to be happy on occasion, sad on occasion, angry on occasion.

You will continue to love, dear readers, and that's all that matters in this world.

To Tell the Truth

In my psychology classes, we are discussing repressed and recovered, including false, memories. Basically, in the '90's there was a craze about sexual abuse in women who had any sort of emotional disorder. Kind of like, "if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". It's really weird, because all these women, and sometimes men, were going to these psychiatrists looking for a solution to their problems, and whether they knew it or not, these psychiatrists involuntarily and unknowingly implanted false memories into their patients head through hypnosis, Freud's idea of psychic energy, and age regression.
On the converse, there was a man once who had been sexually abused by his camp counselor when he was in choir. The man repressed this memory for twenty-five years, and then one day, his sister called him up, telling him that her son had joined the choir. The man began to get headaches, and he was depressed, and all of a sudden, the memory became clear. He did some research on the counselor and later confronted him about it. The counselor confessed over the phone, and the man pressed charges.
Once, due to certain cues of sexual abuse, my mother asked me point-blank if I ever had been. I told her no, because at the time, I couldn't ever remember anything about it. So she took me to see psychologists, thinking that maybe, I would feel the "secrets" were safer if I told them to the psychologist instead of her, not that there were any secrets, because nothing was really happening. To this day, I do not remember anything about any sexual abuse what-so-ever. I do remember some somewhat disturbing things from my childhood that got close to it, but nothing really dark. My father would sit me on his lap while he was going to the bathroom. I never saw anything, but it made me uncomfortable all the same. My mom never knew about it, and it went on until I was eight, at least. He did it once in my now-step-mom's house, which is how I'm tracing this, but I never once saw a penis. Not until I lost my virginity. I almost even walked in on him once when he was peeing.. and he stopped me.
To my credit, this memory has been with me for my whole life. I don't feel that it was ever repressed. But it makes me question if I have repressed things in the past, like having actually been sexually abused, or even if my memory of sitting on my dad's lap is valid, or complete. It makes me wonder if my memories of his emotional abuse are real, or if I'm just crazy. I hate listening to the stories of the people with false memories because some you can tell are very clearly made up, and I don't like feeling like I made something up when my story is totally different. I think what bothers me most is my lack of evidence, since psychological abuse is so hard to prove. With a lack of evidence, my memories are just as valid as the woman who had a memory of getting stuck in a fallopian tube as an egg. So, how am I supposed to know?

Chapter One

My father had a hand that could stop a clock. No, literally stop a clock. He got angry one Saturday and made shards out of the face of the grandfather clock that stood at the end of the hall, bending the hands into the unsuspecting roman numerals, freezing the time at 9:26 in the morning. I watched him load it into the back of his pickup around lunchtime, and before dinner, he approached me. "Jenny, you are to never speak of the argument we had this morning. When your mother asks what happened to the clock, you knocked it over in the hall while playing with your friends. If you stray from this story, I will lock you in the basement, and you will not eat tomorrow." After dinner, my mother noticed the clock in the hallway, was gone, and asked my father what happened to it. My father nodded to me, and I launched into the story that I had prepared when he told me what I was supposed to say. "Kaylee was over, and we were playing tag in the hall." This was something I knew was against the rules. " I accidentally slipped when she was chasing me, and I slid into the clock. It fell over, and the glass broke. Daddy helped me pick up the big pieces, and made me vacuum up the rest." My father chipped in the rest: "I called the manufacturer to see if there was any way we could simply replace the glass, and we can't afford their prices, so I took it to the dump." Dad had beat me silly that day for making him mad enough to punch the clock in more than a metaphorical sense, but by that age, my mother no longer bathed me, so she didn't see the bruises he left all over my back and arms. I was seven years old at the time, and I have never forgotten it.
"Jennifer Willoughbe, you get your ass out here immediately and do the fucking dishes and if I have to ask you again, we will cancel your birthday party this week!"
I rush out to the kitchen, knowing full well that I will get a lashing if I don't make it quick. I have no idea what's made him so angry today, but it isn't the first time. The door slams as he leaves for God knows where, and I watch his truck disappear around the corner as I fill the sink with water and soap. I notice he's left a list again as I'm walking back to my room for my Ode to Doing the Dishes CD, given to me by Amber, my good friend from school. Amber, though she often doesn't look it, with her bright orange spiked pixie cut, cold grey eyes, and squared-off chin, is really sweet. I met her during my eighth grade year at the middle school in the town my parents moved us to the last time the people in the hospital started recognizing the bruises and broken bones as my father's doing. She sat down next to me once at lunch, resting her fingers in the exact places my father's had been the night before when he was drunk, and somehow, I think she drew from the finger-shaped bruises that it was his doing. From that day forward, she and I have been best friends, sharing everything about our lives with the other. At the end of this month, August, we'll be starting high school together, if my parents don't move again, that is.
The opening chords of Goodbye Earl, the infamous Dixie Chicks song, fill the kitchen as I wash the first dish, and the second. My brother Michael, the elder and moved out of the two of us, barges through the front door, just as the Dixie Chicks burst into the chorus, and with his explosive entry, he joins in: "Cause Earl had to DIE!" Coming up to me, he wraps me in a bear hug, knowing that I hate this place, and careful to mind any new injuries. When he still lived at home, and his girlfriend wasn't over, I would sneak into his room at night and complain about how Dad always picked on me, and hurt me so much. He would hug me, and tell me eventually, everything would be alright. He's gone now, so I have to deal with my father on my own now. Lucky for me, Michael still stops by, and takes me out every once in awhile, even though he's married and has a couple of kids.
"Guess who I brought with me, little sister!"
"Who?" I ask.
Almost as soon as the word is out of my mouth, Amber comes barging through the door. I shriek as I meet her, arms open for a hug. We all crowd into the kitchen. They both know they came during dishes time. Amber is the one who made me the CD for God's sake. Amber sees the list and turns to me.
"He really left all this for you to do today? What does he think you are, his little maid?" Amber, who has been here on his little escapades, who's seen all his lists, and who's watched me complete the lists, heads straight for the broom closet. She pulls down the cleaning supplies, and hands my brother a broom. "Here Michael," she says. "Let's help Cinderella complete her chores for the big bad asshole so we can get her out of here."
"Ummm, not happening," I reply, knowing full well my father wouldn't approve of my friend and brother being here, and knowing even more that he would approve less of it if they were helping me so they could kidnap me for a pre-birthday celebration before he could get home. "The kidnapping part, I mean," I revise as they start to put the supplies away. "I would love the help."
Amber kisses my cheek, beginning to clean the windows as we all sing along to Breakaway, the strong girl song, as Amber calls it. To tell the truth, it's always funny to hear my brother sing along to songs like that, especially in a falsetto. Michael joins me at the sink, tickling me as he grabs a towel to dry with. Aaron, our father, is so anal retentive about not letting the dishes air dry because "the germs dry onto them, making them dirty again" not to mention the fact that they're going into a cupboard that has germs all over it. Though, I suppose he makes up for that by making me clean the cupboards once a week.

New Things

I'm... I'm fine.
Overload of reading,
Overload of theatre,
Overload of life,
Overload of love.
Reading shit,
Writin' shit,
Studyin' shit,
Designin' shit.
Been confronted about my honesty,
Been confronted about my beliefs,
Been confronted about my strength.
I don't understand anymore,
I can't comprehend anymore,
I can't apprehend anymore,
Life.
Who am I kidding to be a theatre major?
Who was I kidding to think I can do this?
I am kidding myself with the idea that I
Can do a long distance thing.
I can't talk to my family because they're so far away,
Can't talk to myself cause I'm never alone,
Can't talk to my friends
Because I'm losing ground,
Losing touch,
Losing credibility,
Driving them away,
Moving on.
And I'm scared.
Scared of being put on the spot,
Scared of failing,
Scared of being let go,
Of being lost,
Of being hated and excluded.
And at the same time,
Oh, it's so strange.
She's happy all the time,
But gets depressed on a dime.
I can see her in the morning, happy as a clam
And then again in the evening, so down in mood.
I dont understand the shift.
So I'm going to call her crazy,
It an emotional roller-coaster,
Tell her to see a psychiatrist instead of listening to her,
Block off her moods.
That's part of the reason I don't talk to him anymore.
Oh yeah, and I hate my parents.
I started crying.. on the phone,
With a man I love, BECAUSE OF THEM.
And he couldn't be here to fix things.
And the distance is killing me.
But I'm going to wait,
Even though I hate this.
Because right now,
Maybe because it's one in the morning,
He's the only thing that makes me smile.

Remnants

Sweet things leave sugar on your lips.
I wish you wouldn't say things like that,
Because it only makes me fall
More in love with you
And I don't know,
Can't be sure that you'll be there
To catch me,
To save me from the pavement.
"I'll take you to friendship,
To the point of forgiveness,
And then I'll let you go."
I never wrote about the mistake you made
So many months ago.
You wronged me by pushing me away
Caused me to feel more pain
Instead of explaining.
We've gotten to the point.
Your responsibilities need you.
But I need you just as much.
Never mind the fact
That I can't look into your eyes,
Look into your soul,
Without hurting,
Without mourning what was destroyed.
Your voice makes me happy,
And when your face lights up with joy,
I smile.
You haven't let go.
I'm still calling.
And we're both terrified of the future.
I want someone who cares:
You.
You want to find someone worthy of courtesy:
This can't be me.
You say you've tried to hate me
Convince yourself that you never cared.
But I put the same spell on you.
You left a void in my heart
One now occupied by the cold,
Hard, snow-covered rock that weighs it down.
I talk to you every now and again
And the sun shines
Melting the bricks of ice that make up my boundaries.
I let you in once more.
I open the wounds again,
Rip off the bandages,
And coat them with salt.
But I forgive you...
And again...


The funny thing is that this still kind of applies, even though it happened over 2 years ago. C.R. cheated on me, after I had wasted 3 months writing him letters at boot camp, and after he had fed me full of crap, told me what I wanted to hear, as if I wouldn't find out about him sleeping with his ex-girlfriend. As I type this up today, my heart fills with bitterness, but not for what he did to me. Instead, for what he did to everyone else. When he stuck his head under that train, I don't think he realized how many people he would be hurting in the process. Family, friends, girlfriend... son. The boy he fathered will grow up without knowing his daddy, and the mother will be bitter because of his suicide. C.R's mother will never be able to look at trains again without imagining exactly what happened to make her boy do such a thing, and all of his friends will, like me, wonder why he did it, try to make sense of it, and sooner or later, give up on trying. Yeah, we could blame him. But what's the use? He can't hear or see us blaming him. He can't see or know what exactly he left behind. He can't see the remnants of his life.

You know what I hate? I hate that this has affected me so dramatically. Like I said, he cheated on me. We stayed friends for a year or two after, and I finally terminated our friendship about six months before because he had treated my boyfriend of the time like he was a better person. We stopped talking, and three weeks after the actual event, when I was going through my freshman year of college, and a bad breakup, someone who I hadn't talked to in the longest time tells me over the phone that C.R. committed suicide. I suppose it took awhile to really hit me. I told people around me like it was nothing, because it wasn't at the time. My friends and professors, and even my boss said I might want to see a shrink about it. It finally hit me, and I cried. I didn't understand why, I mean, I wasn't even talking to him. I could barely consider him a friend. And now, that I'm back home, it's hitting me harder than ever. I realized upon talking with his friends, that more people missed him than could be comprehended. And then someone told me how he did it. Train. Creative, that one. Train. And all she would tell me is that it involved decapitation. When she told me this, I thought about it for awhile, then I freaked. What was he thinking, sticking his head under the wheel of a train? How do you get that lonely without people noticing? I was all of a sudden angry with him, not just for committing suicide and hurting those around him, but for being selfish and doing it in such a way that someone else had to see his nasty, headless remains. The engineer had to have felt it. He might have even caused a train accident. The nerve.

I was watching The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants today (I know, early high school-ish) and I saw what Tibby and Bridget went through when Bridget's mom committed suicide, and when Bailey died. I realized through a blank look at a camera that that's how I feel inside. I've lost two people in two years, and I feel empty. I feel like I want to stay in bed all day and sleep, because that's what happens when you're empty.. you're also tired. And when Carmen walked into Tibby's room saying, "I am mad at my dad," I realized how hard it was to empathize with her when your own problems are so much greater, how hard it is to listen to your friends bitch about their own lives and their own problems when you're having a hard time dealing with yours. Everything else seems like small potatoes.

A.K. once told me he was sick of the emotional roller coaster. Well, just for you, A.K, I'm not confiding my problems. I saw someone to try and help me with it, as per your advice. I won't be telling you my problems anymore. I won't call you in the middle of the night next semester and ask you to come talk to me. Instead, I'll huddle in my bed, crying. You know what my mom said when I told her that I went to go get help? She told me that nothing that I've been through compares with what she's been through, that we've been through way worse together. She started thinking that maybe she didn't raise me right. She thinks I'm weak, thinks she didn't teach me to handle death. But how do you prepare someone for two deaths to people you were close to in one year? When she started telling me that we had been through harder times, do you know what I did? I yelled at her, A.K. I yelled at her, and told her that I hadn't been through worse, and if I had, I was too young, and mom had made it okay, and that this was the worst year of my life, the year where all the hard stuff had happened. The only good part of this year was you. You, my friends.