Rendering Death And Forever

While I was Google image-searching for my favorite poem in the whole wide world, I came across this little gem, and while, admittedly, alot of those are a little Tuesdays With Morrie-ish, I really like “Send lots of valentine cards.  Sign them.”  I’m in that kind of mood.

All of the other images of my poem were like, scripty calligraphy pink writing with peonies in the background, which was frustrating because I imagined something carved in stone and black and…enduring, not fragile and delicate.  But I couldn’t find it.

General Update

Pros:

• dinner with my ex-roommate, in which we talked about salsa dancing, stutterers, and the Medieval Club
• also, when she hugged me goodbye, she paused while pulling away and said “Whoa.  You smell like a Cabbage Patch Kid!”
• no class on Fridays next semester, officially!
• our room smells like chili right now, which is one of my very favorite smells of the fall ever
• there was this commercial on TV just now with pipes speaking in crazy Eastern Bloc accents that cracked me up
• Bones reruns on TV right now
• shout out to my main man Glenn of Glenn’s Shoe Repair for fixing my brown flats, making them better than ever for a mere $8

Cons:

• it is hotter than the depths of hell in this room, JESUS GOD
• Bones might or might not be making me tear up a little right now; I blame the Christmas music, so shut up
• my intestines or something are revolting and attempting to scrabble their way out of my body

But really, my life isn’t even that bad right now.  Sometimes it helps to get that shit into perspective real quick.

You Tell Me

Is it ok to not understand why Donny Osmond is so famous?  I mean, what has he done?  Tell me his accomplishments, somebody.

Eve of Destruction

I just realized that I spend alot of time looking forward or backward in time increments.  Like, for example, counting down by ten minutes the time I have left in class, or by half hours the time I have left at work.  Last year, I counted how many weekends I had to survive between trips home.  And today, I remembered exactly what I was doing one year ago today.  I was going home.  I woke up, had my last Starbucks of the year, walked to the on-campus convenience store one last time, and then headed back to my dorm to play Mahjong and listen to music until my parents arrived.  I ended up packing and moving out at the same time as my ex-roommate, but I don’t remember saying goodbye to her.  I remember eating Wendy’s with my parents, and I remember driving home and having an immediate sense of calming down.  Things could finally settle back into place.  Like freshman year had been a hiccup in the space-time continuum and now my life could go back to the way it was always supposed to be.  I made no forward progress.  It was a lateral, a failed attempt at moving down the field.

And now I’m facing down the end of my second year here and…… all of that, the bad memories, the desperation and unhappiness, everrything has been washed away like dried dirt after a muddy game.  That girl of one year ago today is so foreign to me.  When I see people I knew last year, I’m me, not the girl they knew last year.  I wonder if they’re confused.  I use phrases and mannerisms learned from being around my best friends here, I laugh and question and react un-self-consciously, I talk more and differently.  I keep using the same adjective over and over again to describe how I feel, because sometimes it just overwhelms me; I’m just so lucky.  I’m right now sitting in the same chair I was curled up and crying into back in September, when I was terrified that I was once again making futile laterals in an attempt to get my life going.  The beginning of this year was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced, even moreso than the beginning of freshman year.  Freshman year, I was full of naive hope, completely unaware of how lonely things could get.  Coming  back this year, that’s all I could think about.  Knowing the negative possibilities is wayyyyyyy worse than blindly seeing only the positive possibilities.  However, luckily, I landed with a marvelous roommate, wonderful next-door and across-the-hall neighbors, and generally terrific floormates.  I morphed into a better form of me.  It’s stunning to me still; I’m not quite convinced that freshman year wasn’t just a bad movie I saw, or a three-week camp that went sour.  I can’t believe it was a year, an actual, whole 8-month school year, of my life. 

And now I’m counting in another increment: a week and a day.  That’s how much time I have left here, and it is, once again, scary as hell.  Because this year the sun rose, and I was living mostly in the light of day, but what if I leave this place and come back after almost four months and things have gone dark again?I know atleast that I will have anchors; the friends I have made here will still be here, we’ll just be more spread out, and we’ll have to work a little harder.  And hopefully there will be some wondeful new kids next year, not just nasty slutty people who smell overly-fragrant and puke in the hallways.  I’ve had my share of them.  So, after I live through this next round of time, this weekd and a day, I’ll be counting down again: just a little less than four months.  And then, I come back home.

Man I Gotta Get Out Of This Town

When I was home for Spring Break at the beginning of the month, I went through my notebooks and folders from last semester, and found a piece of writing I’d done in my Social Psych class back in October.  I remember the exact day I wrote it; it was the day I was going home for Fall Break, and I was in the most boring class I’ve ever had, at 4:30 in the afternoon.  I couldn’t sit still for the life of me because I was so excited to go home; it had been a while since I’d seen people in Dayton.  So instead of listening to lecture, I wrote this, and then just walked out of class.

5 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

• Sunday morning, 1996, Grandma’s house, sitting down to bacon and eggs with her and Lydia and Whitney
• Home, now, lounging in the green chair, chili cooking, football on TV
• May 2008, Brooklyn Bridge, with the beer and the wind and the lights
• In bed, under covers, in soft afternoon light, Ben Lee singing in my ear
• Whenever, wherever, driving my old, wrecked Honda, windows down, music up

And then, after I found it, I stuck it in the folder I use for my Shakespeare class now and forgot about it.  Until St. Patty’s day, sitting in class listening to a boring presentation, when I took it out, reread it, and added to it:

• About 15 hours less than a year ago today, drunk off my ass with my best friends, in the room of two trashy boys
• January of my senior year, driving home from work with a song in my head and the biggest crush
• August, my sister’s, with beach hair and a book
• Springtime at OLOM, 2002 or so, outside in the early morning cool, on the bike racks waiting for the bell to ring
• 4 hours from now, taking a walk around campus with coffee and my iPod

I think this might become a thing I do.

A Detour Is a Choice Between Two Tasks, Each With Its Own Pros And Cons

Well!  It’s February!  Would you look at that!  I feel like such a shithead for not writing here for the past three weeks.  Seriously, like I couldn’t sleep last night because my mind was racing with things I wanted to write about.  I know I’m not really accountable to anyone with regards to this blog because no one reads it, but the whole reason I started writing here wasn’t to become some famous-on-the-internet blogger.  It was more for my peace of mind than anything, because writing clears my head tremendously, and it’s actually something I’ve been doing mentally my whole life.  Seriosuly, when I was younger, I would just imagine how some writers would set down the most mundane daily events of my life in my head, narrating everyday shit to myself, like “As she exited her school building, Meredith scanned the mass of cars in the parking lot for her father’s distinguishable red [whatever kind of car that was].  She spotted it easily, strode over, and climbed in, pulling the door shut behind her.”  WHAT?  What is that, internet?  It’s so frightening that things like that happen in my head, but that’s something that happens all the time.  Only, uh, I think I’m a better writer now than I was when I would’ve thoguht something like that, which was 5th grade.  I mean, a better writer in my head.  And in real life too, I guess, but I ain’t tryin to give myself props here, people.  That’s your job.  Man, probably the only reason I have friends is because I’ve never told anyone about that habit, ever. 

Another reason I write is summed up in one of my favorite quotes: “Writing is opening up a crack just wide enough to let some light into you, and some you onto the page, so that the next person feels less alone”.  I hope someday someone stumbles across what I have written here and sees something they can relate to, apply to their life, or just laugh at because they’ve been there before.  That’s what I want.  And in the meantime, if it means that a little light is let into me in the process, so that I figure out something abut myself as well?  All the better, I say.  It’s why I keep this up and why I don’t really think I’ll ever be able to stop writing; it’ll always go on, I hope, in some capacity.  And that quote, by the way, was taken from one of these, believe it or not. 

So, ok, I sat down to write an update with some of the silly and, yes, mundane things that have been going on in my life, and ended up accidentally getting all philisophical on your ass.  It happens.  Next time, maybe, I can tell you all about dancing with creepers and my thoughts on Keira Knightley.  But for now, I have to go learn how to write a sentence using the phrase anstatt…zu for my German test tomorrow.  Auf Wiedersehen!

Trip Around The Sun, Part Two

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, apparently I have so much to say about last year that I ran out of room in one entry!  There’s a reason my father nicknamed me Gabriella von Flappingtongue when I was little.  So.  Here’s the second half of my year, in riveting detail:

July….man, the summer months run together in my head a little.  July brought my best friend to town unexpectedly, so you know it was good.  Honestly, most of the things I remember from June and July are things I already wrote about on here, which cemented them in my brain, so it feels kind of cheap to keep this up.  So let’s move onto August.  The Olympics happened, and I was in Florida with two of my sisters and several cats.  I spent my days at the beach, then reading, showering, napping, and snacking in various combinations, and my evenings out to dinner and then in my sister’s apartment watching the Olympics with some of the people I love most in the whole world.  It was pretty perfect.  It was exactly what vacation should feel like, that feeling of wet beachy hair and old armchair comfort while you just sit and listen to the people around you talk because you’re too golden to function at the moment.  In sad news, August brought the death of the best car known to man, and this death is on my hands.  I have still not dealt with it fully.  I miss that car so hard, all the time.  She was so… so stalwart.  And if I hadn’t totaled her, I know she would’ve stuck with me for at least the next three years.  I’m sorry I’m so serious about my car; I’m not sure how it happened, but I am sure I can’t stop.

August also brought my return here, to BG.  I was so panicked.  And then things turned out okay.  I don’t know how else to say it, because it really was that simple.  The world did not end, it only got better, and I know I am really one lucky bitch.  September flew by.  Really.  My sister got married and looked good doing it.  I got to see the Florida sister for the second time in as many months, which is so rare and so happy-making.  I threw up in the bushes outside of my house one night after a taxi ride home in which my driver may have popped some pills while stopped at a red light.  Incidentally, this was the night before the wedding.  Funny how these things happen!  I feel like mostly in September I just got to hang out with a bunch of cool people and get to know them better.  Did you know that I’m also at school?  You wouldn’t, from the way I would describe my September.  There’s nothing of note school-wise that happened in September, and that’s weird to me.  Anyways, September also brought a job that sort of tumbled into my lap, as all the jobs that I have ever had have.  Again, I am one lucky bitch.  October brought glorious fall weather.  It started to get cool and breezy and the leaves changed and it was gorgeous.  I love the change of seasons, so I was in bliss.  I think that in October I began to find every single boy around me attractive; there’s a lot of eye candy around here, man, and in October I took full advantage of it.  October also brought four migraines in eight days, so therefore, there was one week where basically all I did was go to bed early and lie around moaning and feeling nauseous.  But!  I also went to the doctor and got these magic pills that melt under your tongue and get rid of your headache.  I have never experienced anything that did that ever before, ever, besides an hour-and-a-half nap, and I have literally had migraines for my entire life.  Thank GOD for October, then.  I feel like October was more of the same socially, but that is the furthest thing from bad, because for once in my life “the same socially” is not crying and constantly worrying about what others think of me and wondering if I’ll ever have friends and if I’ll ever fit in and stop wanting to go home and why does nobody like meeeeeee?  Yeah.  No more of that.  As the clock changed from October to November, I cast my vote for change while listening to “Charlemagne in Sweatpants”.  And four days later, surrounded by the people that have been my saving grace this fall, I watched him give his acceptance speech and held back tears.  It was breathtaking.  I remember when the family walked onstage, smiling and waving to the adoring crowds, I freakin’ squealed with glee, “Awww, look how great they are!”  It was one of my favorite nights of the year.

I’m sorry, I know that this second part is sort of a copout on month-describing, but November too feels like it went by really fast.  I went to classes, had lazy weekends, ate lots of bacon, spent a disgusting amount of time dicking around on the internet, probably drank some beer, got new brown boots, ate turkey, called people and asked them for money.  You know.  Same old, same old.  December was a weird, patchwork month, because half was spent at school and half was spent here at home.  Exams were gross, but I attended a silent dance party (glowsticks included!) and ate Mexican food, and spent many a night staying up talking to and laughing with my adorable roommate.  And packing up to go home, I was actually sad.  I had people I loved and would miss over the next three and a half weeks, and I had trouble leaving them for home.  That was a new feeling.  And then I came home and was absolutely engulfed by family time.  I don’t see my sisters enough, but over break I got to spend a LOT of time with them, and I’m glad that happened.  There wasn’t a whole lot of time with friends because of all of the aforementioned family time, but there was just enough for me to be happy, and I know there’ll be some more here in the next few days, so it’s all good.

Aaaaaaand, that was my year.  The first four months? I’d like to keep the tags on and return ‘em, please.  But the last eight were amazing, better than I ever expected, and now I think 2009 will be absolutely magical, so anything less than the absolute best simply will not do.  Even though two hours into 2009 saw me vigorously scrubbing at carpet to get out the vomit stains, I still have high hopes for the next twelve months.  I’m wishing on an eyelash I won’t be disappointed.

Trip Around The Sun, Part One

Hello.  I just wanted to sit and reflect a little bit on the last year of my life.  Actually, this part of the entry is being written on September 11th, because my mind kept wandering to this topic during English class instead of actually paying attention to Wimsatt and New Criticism and all that boring bullshit.  I’m just so much happier than I was last year, so happy that things have changed for the better here, and I thought that instead of just marinating in the juicy sauces of joy (ETA on October 27: What the fuck is up with this imagery here?  What was I doing with that, exactly?), I thought I’d make myself a tiny little bit more miserable by revisiting parts of the past.  Let’s do the time warp (again?)!

It seems a little melodramatic to start with January, but it’s…the beginning, so I’ll just dive right in.  January was rough, y’all.  I remember very vividly one single night smack-dab in the middle of the month that involved desperate midnight crying, a momentary turn to Jesus, and alot of talking to myself, practicing breathing exercises.  Okay, so basically like every other day around here, come to think of it.  Moving on.  It was the start of a new semester, which offered some hope, but I think that by this point in the school year, I was resigned to a bitter, awful ride til the end.  I was not wrong.  February…uhhhh, I don’t remember alot about February.  Two years ago in February, I read Crime and Punishment, if that counts for anything.  Probably not, huh?  I do remember getting a box of Valentine’s candy from my mom, because I will never really be cool.  And I’m not ashamed to say that I can’t wait to get yet another Valentine’s box this year.  Best! tradition! ever!  March was my birthday month!  I was hungover.  Not for the whole month, just for my birthday.  My friends went to lunch with me and then left for Dayton, and I spent my birthday chilling in my room, watching other people I didn’t like get drunk, and editing other people’s English papers because they were too stupid to pass their class without me.  I am still a little bitter about this past birthday, but then again, I couldn’t even tell you what my best birthday was.  I think it may have involved Marian’s, which is not too shabby, but I am not a “let’s celebrate my birthday, because clearly the day I was born is monumental and epic!” kind of person.  I am not one who likes the limelight, although saying that makes me want to peer over my shoulder for someone pointing at me and shouting, “WRONG, you lying, attention-whoring princess!”  That person may or may not be one of my sisters.

Oh my God, anyways.  Do I remember anything else about March?  Nothing comes to mind.  Some things probably happened.  Was this the month I wrote a paper drunk and then had my professor call its prose “enviably beautiful”?  Oh no, that was April.  Whoa, maybe I am an attention whore…  Things seemed a bit more bearable in April, because I knew the end of the school year was coming.  However, there was the weekend where my ex-roommate’s little sister appeared on a Sunday night to stay and hang out that night and the next day because her spoiled sophomore-in-high-school ass had the Monday off.  Anyways, I had some sort of panic attack that night and took a walk around campus by myself at 1:30 in the morning, which in general is something I guess you’re not supposed to do.  I did not get raped.  I also distinctly remember the evening I wrote said drunken paper.  It was about 7:00, and I decided to walk to Starbucks, because I knew I had a long night ahead of me.  That walk may have been the happiest I was all school year.  Is that overly dramatic?  I just remember that the sun was setting and it was a beautiful day and there was this boy I liked, and I wasn’t worried about my paper and I knew the end of the year was coming soon so things would be alright.  I still remember that night alot, because it was one of precious few memories I enjoy from last school year.  Other than that, I think my favorite April day was my oldest sister’s birthday, April 29th.  I was sitting in my bed on the phone with her, taking down the things I had hung up on my wall to remind me of home, and I just remember this incredible feeling of happiness, of, of, of relief I guess, of a return to wholeness, like finally, I made it, things can go back to normal now.  Two days later it was May, and it rained and I moved out; I remember sitting on the unmade, unlofted bed of the girl across the hall from me, in her unfurnished room thinking to myself : “I’m going to remember this for a very long time”.  I suppose there were a lot of things that were ”un-” that day, but happy is not one of them.  And I remember very well the ride home because GOD I was overjoyed.  I’m sorry, I know I sound like a melodramatic baby with all the talk of the horrors of freshman year, like girl, why didn’t you just move your ass out of there at the first, second, or 75th sign of trouble?  And I can tell you that the reason is because I am a pussy.  Seriously, I am the biggest wuss about standing up for myself.  The first step, I hear, is admitting you have a problem. 

So, May.  In May, one of my close friends had a beautiful baby boy named Alan.  He only weighed four pounds when he was born, and the day he was born I didn’t even get to see him becuase he was in a special nursery, but now, he’s just fine.  He’s better than fine.  I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I also went to New York with my three best friends in May.  That’s one of the single most important highlights of the month, and probably of the year, but it’s only September right now, so maybe someone will surprise me with a 4.0 or a free pony or a home-cooked dinner or something.  I am ever hopeful.  But seriously, I think that’s basically all that happened in May, and I remember thinking that when I came back, things should probably start happening to me, like this is the point in the movie where I get swept off my feet or offered a life-changing internship or get hit by a train.  Come on, New York!  Spit me out something good!  June meant more minor traveling, like to Yellow Springs for a camping trip and Kentucky for a sister trip.  June was a pretty perfect representation of what summer should be like, all lemonade and heat.  I’m pretty into June. 

To be continued….

Saccharine-ing In The New Year

Things are about to get a little bit cloying.  You’ve been warned.

Right now, after such a mundane but amazing day, I feel so lucky.  I just…. I realize how freaking lucky I am.  I remember how shitty I felt just one year ago, hell, less than one year ago, and I look at the way things are now, and just smile.  And tonight, sitting in the backseat of my best friend’s car, I was just overwhelmed by this strange feeling.  I was hopeful, and I just realized, “You know, everything’s going to turn out all right.”  And then I came home and danced in the shower, and when I got out of the shower I put on two of the songs that make me feel the most hopeful and I danced some more.  And I couldn’t stop laughing, and I couldn’t stop smiling, and I can’t stop laughing and I can’t stop smiling.  I am one lucky bitch.  Last year was, I think, the unhappiest I have ever consistently been in my life.  I am not usually an unhappy person.  I have rough days, or even rough stretches of days, but things always look up, and last year, when they didn’t, it came as a serious shock to my system, and I just did not know how to deal.  Or I did, but I didn’t have the balls to.  I am not generally known as a ballsy person.  But I made a move (literally) to change things at the beginning of the school year, and change things it did, and for that I could not be any more grateful.  I just….wonder.  Things could have been so different this school year, and believe me, there were a few days in the beginning when I was terrified that nothing would change, but then…well it wasn’t even miraculous, or even a big thing.  I can’t pinpoint when or how it happened, but everything turned out fine.  Better than fine.  And again I say: I am lucky. 

Happy new year.  This one’s gonna be great.

Rough Sleddin’

Hello.  I feel like I’m reporting from a war zone or something, because things here?  They are rough.  I woke up yesterday already feeling like I had lived the longest week of my life, and it was only Tuesday.  Here are some things from the past few days that make me feel like my soul is slowly being sucked from my body and scattered on the four winds that blow across the frigid plains of BG all day long, right in your face, never ever ever stopping, no it doesn’t matter if you turn around, the wind will still be blowing DIRECTLY IN YOUR FACE.  Ahem.  Sorry.  The list:

• I have this cough, and it’s not like I’m even sick or anything, it’s just that I have this nagging cough, and it only chooses to be really horrendous when I go to lay down and make an attempt at sleep.
• My German teacher seems to think it’s totally cool to give us 30000 things to do, all to be turned in Friday, including: a take-home exam, a listening exam in class Friday, and three pages of homework.  Why does she seem to think this is at all an ok thing to do?  Dude, I don’t know.  Maybe that’s how they operate in Austria.
• I’m really just worried about a friend from home, and I got distressing news Monday that just reinforced the idea that , man, break cannot come soon enough.
• Along those same lines, my room has been the scene of an awful lot of tears recently.  Like, at least three people cried in here on Monday, and at least one of them was me.  We’re falling apart at the seams, all of us, and just trying like hell to not to go flying apart in all directions days before finals.
• So, Monday is called Pasta Monday around here, which is extremely inventive of us, because Monday’s the day they serve pasta at the Dial.  So anyway, this is usually a highlight of our otherwise crap-ass Mondays, but this week?  This week was sent straight from hell, so of course this is the week where a boy I rejected romantically ends up as the pasta server, thus leaving me with a measly one and a half stuffed shells to eat for dinner, because apparently this is prison camp junior high, where you torture those that heartlessly refuse to go out with you by withholding food from them, even though it’s your job to do exactly the OPPOSITE OF THAT. 
• Five hours of sleep the night before what will probably be the hardest exam you take this semester?  Not the best idea you’ll ever have.  And then, when I came back from classes and took a nap for an hour and a half, I woke up with a headache that morphed into a migraine while at work and ended up putting me to bed at 11:30 last night like soemone’s grandma.
• It poured all day long yesterday, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s rain when there ought to be snow.  Plus, I spent way too large a chunk of the day yesterday with soaked socks and frozen toes.
• I don’t care to discuss the details, but yesterday also saw me stick my hand in my own pee.
• And then today I come to find out that the bookstore doesn’t buy back lab books.  Motherfuckers, I spent over $100 on this fucking book to do eight experiments out of it?  We didn’t even get halfway through the damn thing!  Are you kidding me?  And you can’t even give me like $20 for it?  And really, the person I should want to cut right now is really my asshole professor who insisted we have the manual and not just make photocopies of the pages, for some unexplained reason which will remain forever locked inside his 87-year-old head.
• I also accidentally skipped ou mandatory floor meeting last night because items just flit in and out of my head at random, and it’s never a sure thing just what will stick in there and just what will go flying out my ear, never to be remembered again. 

I realize all of this is pretty depressing, or maybe just irritating, because I guess most of these are pretty white bread complaints.  I do find it important to note that whenever I yell “There is NOTHING good about this day!” my neighbor Cassie makes me name at least three good things about that day.  Some of them are pretty scant, like “I did not wake up dead” or “I like my socks” or something, but some of them end up being pretty legit.  Today is better than yesterday because I got to sleep in late, remembered that I had a check from work that I hadn’t opened, and realized that I can stay up late tonight because I don’t have class until one tomorrow.  So it looks like, against all odds, things might just be looking up.