wouldn't it be entirely ridiculous
if this one guy could be perfect for me

except for the fact
that we dated in high school
and he dumped me.


I don't think that's the case.
I just like to conjecture.

meh

I'm not witty enough to keep this blog up. Also, it has become a place for me to whine about my personal life, and honestly, that is a purpose better served by a journal...not a website.

So basically, I think I'm going to make a new blog and actually have a direction in mind this time, so that the new blog doesn't become Pity Party Blog Numero Dos.

But what to write about?

today's thought

If we were really serious about reducing illegal immigration numbers, perhaps we could stop referring to ourselves as "the best country in the world." Fewer people would give up their homes and families (and sometimes their lives) to move to the United States if we would just admit that it's not that great here, especially for foreigners.

why home sucks.

I just did something incredibly rude without meaning to at ALL. Mom's boyfriend is now really angry at me. Great.

It's so much harder to deal with people who don't love you being angry with you. There is no guarantee that he doesn't hate me. He has no incentive to forgive me for being an ass. He can just be a jack ass to me forever if he wants, since he's not actually my family.

Mom told me that I did what I did because I honestly think my opinion is the only one that matters. I find that really hard to believe, but I can't find any other way around it. I don't think I'm that selfish and stupid, but my actions seem to be telling a different story. She goes, "Why don't you just learn to stop and take a breath before you do things?"

Because by the time I realize I need to take a breath, I'm already in trouble.

This is fucking ridiculous. I'm almost 20 years old. You would think I would be able to interact with people in a manner befitting a young adult instead of like a petulant, poorly-disciplined child.

Needless to say, this has sealed the deal on my decision to stay in Chapel Hill next summer and never live at home again. I would much rather have a great relationship with my family some of the time than a stressful, often shitty one all the time.

just had a thought.

People who deny the existence of global warming are often very religious. These people are willing to give up pleasure in their earthly lives for the promise of a better afterlife, a better future for themselves.

People who are not religious tend to be more liberal, more environmentally conscious. These people are willing to give up material possessions like gas-guzzling cars for the promise of a healthier planet, a better future for everyone else.

There are some very interesting conclusions one could draw from this.
Mine is that religion blows.

YES.

"No matter what economists tell us abut getting the credit industry moving again, papering over debt with more debt will not pollinate our food crops when the last honeybee is dead. I suggest that we put the economists out there in the fields, hand-pollinating crops like they do in China. They seem to know all about the subject, and have placed a monetary value of $12 billion on the pollination accomplished by bees in the US. Can you imagine the fucking arrogance? All bees do is make our fruit and vegetable supply possible. Anyway, if we cannot use the economists for pollinators (odds are they are too damned whacked to do that job), we could also stuff them down the blowhole of the Deepwater Horizon spill. For the first time in history, economists would be visibly useful."

Joe Bageant

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/07/waltzing.html

ahh, the single life.

I love how old flings are now creeping out of the woodwork. And not like, actual ex-boyfriends or anything. Oh no. Older guys who wanted me when I was 16. And now I don't have the excuse of age. But it's okay. It's actually kind of fun.

I am enjoying myself. I understand this casual dating thing now. I can flirt with them now without getting stressed about what it all means.

july is going to be a good month.

I am so happy.

My job gives me immense personal satisfaction. They love me and are constantly surprised at the quality of my work and the quickness with which I get it done. I am always learning. Yesterday, I learned about Esther Duflo, the second woman ever to win the extremely prestigious Clark Medal in Economics, because we're thinking about inviting her to speak in a seminar series this fall and I needed to find her contact information. Two weeks ago, I learned how to use Dreamweaver, and I totally get it. Our web designer is really impressed with how quickly I'm picking it up. Next week, I'm decorating a bulletin board with a world map and push pins to indicate where we have students currently doing fieldwork.

I feel so good about myself. I'm sleeping better and eating fairly healthy and drinking water (but still not exercising...oh well). I get dressed up every day to go to work, and I feel beautiful. I am moving the hell on with my life! And it feels great.

Mom advised me the other day that I need to find Transition Man. That made me giggle. I asked if Transition Man was anything like Rebound Man. She tried to look serious, and said, "yeah, sort of." Apparently, Transition Man is hot and stupid and fun, and once I find him, he can take me out a couple times and then I don't have to call him again.

Sounds like Rebound Man. Sounds good to me. I'm interesting and witty and hot, and I need some fun in my life.

ew.

This blog has become nothing more than me bitching about my love life. Who really wants to read a bitter teenager's journal? No one, that's who.

So let's talk about something else.

I crashed a bicycle last week and now I have enormous Franken-scars forming on my forearm, knee and ankle. They're pretty amazing.

no no no.

Today I thought I was ok.

But every time I smile and tell someone I'm ok, everything floods over me and I can't breathe or speak or see any light. Just darkness every direction, and suffocating pressure on all sides.

And I realize I'm not ok.

Not even close.




All of the music I love seems to have been written to me. Songs I sang along with before, never realizing the weight of the words coming from my lips, suddenly stop my breath. My voice chokes when I sing, pierced by sorrow coming so quickly I can't brace myself against the onslaught. So I don't sing.

I honestly thought it was getting better. I thought I was overdramatizing the situation. I told myself that everyone has their first big heartbreak, almost no one ends up in the long run with their first love, there are so many important lessons to be learned from this, blah blah blah. I tell everyone. I repeat all these things like a mantra, warding off the sadness, but then I pause to think and the floodgates are destroyed. Facts, unfortunately, have failed me.

This is not the type of healing that happens in a matter of weeks. Not for me. I thought a month would be significant. A month has done almost nothing for me. What about three months? Six months? A year? Two? How long will it be before I feel whole again? Like someone I trusted hasn't reached inside me and set fire to everything I held dear?

I'm trying so hard to be rational and positive and understand that you're going to move on, but I'm angry. I'm so angry and hurt. If it takes me a year to get over you, it should take you that long to get over me. That's how it should work. But it doesn't, apparently.

I am just destined to be the one who loves more and gets nothing for it but never-ending pain.

rules.

Here are my new standards:

1. I am a feminist. If you believe men are inherently superior to women, I don't want you in my life.
2. I am staunchly anti-religious. If you are super religious, I'm not interested.
3. I am liberal and I get pissed off and rant about politics. If you don't like that, go away.

I'm just not dealing with it. I get to choose who I involve in my life, both with friendships and romantic relationships. I spent a lot of time compromising and smothering my strongly-held beliefs for the sake of a relationship, and I refuse to do it anymore, since apparently that doesn't work. It's an important lesson. Compromise in a relationship is important, but not as important as knowing who you are, fundamentally, as an individual and protecting that identity. And who I am is an outspoken liberal feminist with a vendetta against all organized religion. You don't like it? Don't bother me.

so strange.

It's been two weeks.

I'm okay, I think. I cried a couple nights ago, but I went a few days before that without crying at all. It doesn't hurt constantly anymore. But it still makes me so sad when I think about it.

I was looking for my can opener earlier and found the picture of us from Gondoliers last year--the one I framed and kept in my dorm room all year. My stomach lurched. It's pretty apparent I still love him. And who's surprised? I honestly thought we were going to get married. I had a vague list floating around in my mind of possible honeymoon locations, the flowers for the wedding, the beverages for the reception (you always have to be careful; we both have alcoholics in the family). I wasn't naive to think it was possible. I know that.

Anyway. Now that the intensity of missing him is starting to fade, I'm realizing that I fell in love at a really inopportune time. I have grown and changed so much since the fall of 2008, and almost all of that change had to do with him or was caused by my relationship. So instead of my transition from high school to college being about me, it was about my relationship. And now, I'm not really sure who I am. I can't be the girl I was when I was with him--that's over. And I refuse to go back to who I was before him, because that girl is not a happy person. Who am I? Do I have the capacity to flirt anymore, or have I gotten so used to being predictable and stable that I don't know how to have fun? Could I even convince myself to have a fling, like everyone else my age does? I can't continue to act like I have a boyfriend. I am single.

I want to go out and flirt and have fun and make stupid mistakes, because that's what you do when you're single in college. I just don't know if I can. I've been safe inside this little bubble for a year and a half, inside a bubble where nothing is dangerous or challenging, and I've become a person that would rather just not flirt than risk a relationship that isn't perfect. I've been ruined by a guy who TOLD me he wanted to marry me, and now I can't imagine having sex without love, or flirting without genuine interest, or even casual dating. These are things I'm expected to do! Things I want to have in my life as I am becoming an adult! Things that are fun and fulfilling for the moment, and not necessarily forever. I've been taught to expect forever.

I love(d) him, and I'm glad in a lot of ways that I had this experience, but right now I just feel like a ruined woman. Like a future cat lady. Like someone who is going to end up jaded and pissed off, someone who solves problems with alcohol and denial. I know I'm better than that, but right now I can't seem to find that strong, intelligent, independent woman I thought I was. Maybe because she was just an illusion. Maybe I have to start all over.

I still can't quite believe this is real, despite the fact that I've been crying for the past 21 hours.

It doesn't feel like he left me. I'm not angry. I couldn't possibly be angry. I'm just sad. It feels like he's dead. He's dead and I'll never see him again, except for every time I close my eyes.

All I can think about are the nevers: I will never fall asleep next to him again with his hand resting on my waist. I will never ride with him in his car again, holding his hand and singing together loudly some obnoxious pop song. He will never teach me how to drive stick in his dad's truck. I'll never visit with his parents or his sweet cats again. I will never go to Texas and meet his best friend. I will never go to a Savoyards party with him and stand proudly and quietly at his side again. I will never kiss him again, or play with the scruff on his face, or fix his shirt collar, or get to tell him how much I love him.

Because I still love him--so much I can't even contemplate ever meeting someone new. I can't imagine some other guy making me laugh like he did, or hugging me quite like he did, or kissing me tenderly like he did. I don't want to.

I'm trying to be rational, to remember every reason he gave and know that I had worried about those exact same things for months. But it isn't working. So many things were obstacles to our relationship, but I wanted to work through them. I wanted to try to keep going. We may have almost nothing in common, but if we fell so deeply in love with one another, doesn't that count for anything?

It was one year, six months, two weeks, and one day. I'm watching our relationship flicker through my mind like a movie on fast-forward. Certain things keep standing out: the first time I met his family, Thanksgiving 2008, and his brother making fun of my age; that time I made him so angry at me last summer when I went to see the Harry Potter movie without him; the Greensboro Grasshoppers game a couple weeks ago when I thought everything was wonderful; the first and last times we ever had sex; our first Christmas together, which was magical and romantic; him meeting my extended family last August, I meeting his last June; sitting in his car in the Brightleaf Square parking lot on one of our very first dates, November 10 2008, and telling each other everything we could think of about our lives; the first time we said we loved each other and he drew the smiley face in the fogged-up glass of my car's rear window; the big fight we had earlier this semester when he said he believed I would go to hell; dinner dates when I felt so special and he smiled at me like I was perfect; him playing video games with my brothers; snuggling on the couch at Amelie's; going to his a capella group's concerts even though I hate being in that kind of church; everything, running back and forth and blending together.

I don't ever want to forget this. But it has to fade eventually if I ever want the pain to stop. How can I tell people about him? He can't be reduced to one sentence: "My ex was super Christian, brown hair, brown eyes, 5'7" or so, we were together a year and a half." I can't do that. They'll never know what I know--that he loved animals more than people most of the time, that he bought these really goofy Heelys and I teased him about it, that he has ichthyosis, which is a skin disorder, that he cries in sad movies but not in real life (usually).

I almost wish he had died, because then I would be allowed to still love him. I would be the grieving widow of sorts, but now I'm just the girl that got dumped and can't get over him. I feel like the heroine in a movie about ill-fated lovers, but a movie that no one would watch because the ending isn't happy.

He said he still loves me. We hugged for a long time and cried into each other's shirts, and I said I didn't want this to be the last time I hugged him. He said it wouldn't be. I don't believe that. I don't think we can be friends. Being friends with someone I love so fiercely would be like constantly ripping open the scars of losing him and rubbing acid into them. I want him to be happy, but I don't want to meet his new girlfriends and see him get married to someone else. It would tear me apart to see her standing where I should be standing at the altar.

So.

I guess it's really over. I wanted to spend my whole life with him, but now I can't even spend another day in his company.

I loved you then, I love you now, and I will love you always, Ben.

I should probably go drink some water now. This took me an hour to write and I sobbed the whole way through it. 

girls

who think they are models just because "photographers" take pictures of them

are so gross.

ke$ha

is retarded. I'm pretty sure I mean that literally. She definitely had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or something.

gosh darn it,

why can't I have two birthdays a year? Can we please celebrate my half birthday?!

I really NEED iTunes gift cards so that I can buy all of Regina Spektor's albums and listen to them constantly. Also, money for ModCloth so that I can buy big clunky stylish wedges and gorgeous dresses from independent designers.

I swear, this isn't a phase of materialism and snobbishness. I think I'm trying to reinvent myself. And a large part of that is fashion and music.

 By the way...my half birthday is May 9.

pretty German poem.

Zögernd leise
in des Dunkels nächtger Stille
sind wir hier
und den Finger sanft gekrümmt,
leise, leise,
pochen wir andes Liebchens Kammerthür,
doch nun steigend,
schwellend, schwellend, hebend,
mit vereinter Stimme,
laut, rufen aus wir hoch-vertraut
Schlaf du nicht,
wenn der Neigung Stimme spricht

Sucht' ein Weiser nah und ferne
Menschen einst mit der Laterne
Wie viel seltner dann als Gold
Menschen uns geneigt und hold.
Drum wenn Freundschaft spricht,
Liebe spricht
Freundin Liebchen, schlaf du nicht.

Aber was in allen reichen,
wär dem Schlummer zu vergleichen?
Drum statt Worten und statt Gaben,
sollst du nun auch Ruhe haben,
noch ein Grüsschen,
noch ein Wort,
es verstummt die frohe Weise,
leise, leise,
schleichen wir, schleichen wir uns wieder fort.

--Franz Grillparzer

desires.

A list of ten things I would spend money on right now, if only I weren't in the throes of oncoming financial distress caused by a probable lack of student aid for the fall semester and/or not having a job:

1. Big, pretty wedges and sandals with lots of straps.
2. Regina Spektor albums on iTunes.
3. Dresses, stylish shorts, and skirts for summer.
4. Long strand necklaces.
5. My e.e. cummings tattoo.
6. A book of e.e. cummings poetry.
7. A new tote bag since the one I use now is stained.
8. Haircut to even up ends and layer properly.
9. "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer.
10. New cellphone since my screen is cracked and I can't see my text messages as I am typing them, which makes it really difficult for me to make sure all the words are spelled and spaced correctly, and then I die on the inside if it turns out I spelled something wrong.

UNC needs to tell me that they want me to go to their school. And then immediately say that they're giving me plenty of money so that I can stop stressing about how the hell I'm going to LIVE next year. And then Duke Global Health needs to call me and be like, "hey, come be a secretary person and get paid lots of money to dress up cute and answer phones." Then I will have a reason to buy dress up clothes and get a haircut. And my list will be shorter.

I'm getting a tattoo.

Yes. I am.

I've always wanted to--just 'cause!--but I hate all those tattoos that mean nothing. Like the tribal ones. Ugh.

A tattoo should either be beautiful art or have deep personal meaning, in my opinion. It is not a decision to be made lightly or on a whim or, god forbid, when one is drunk.

I need to decide where it will be, but I've decided WHAT it is:

"for life's not a paragraph
and death i think is no parenthesis"

These are the last two lines from an e.e. cummings poem that has rooted itself in my heart. I posted it on this blog a long time ago. This is how I want to live my life. I want to remember that the effects of my life can be endless; they are not limited to only me and this time; death cannot stop my living.

Thinking about that makes me really happy. I can change others' lives with mine. I CAN. And when I die, it is not the end for me. I will go on in some way. I don't know if I believe in an afterlife, but as long as those who love me live, I will live also.

I think that seems like a good reason to get it permanently inked on my body.

naming my nonexistent children.

Girl:

• Liese/Liesel/Liesa. Very German and adaptable. 
• Marie. My mom's middle name.
• Elana/Elena. Appealing. 
• Margaret. Elegant. Only a middle name.

Combinations I like:
Liesel Marie, Annaliese Margaret, Marie Elena

Boys:

• Ryan. I actually kind of like this more for a girl, but we'll see.
• Julian. Sexy.

Boys don't have a lot of nice names. Hm.