Reasons Why I Hate Holidays July 3, 2009

I’m spending  a lot of energy trying to block from my mind that I will be alone tomorrow. 

Let’s recap the last five July 4ths:

2004:  Ok, I spent that one in France.  NM.

2005: Don’t even remember, that’s how sucky it was.  I was probably working at the country club, watching rich people pretend to be happy.  Also serving them food and alcohol which I could neither eat nor drink.  Then I probably got mad at my mom for deciding to stay home and watch the fireworks on TV instead of actually going out and watching them for real.

2006: I watched fireworks as I drove to the diner to work.

2007: In undergraduate town, enough said.

2008: In undergraduate town again with debaters because they were the only people in town.  I think we went out and I got a beer just because I could.

2009:  There is NO ONE in town.  So here I am.  I can’t even leave because my car is a piece of shit. 

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty bummed about this.  I mean, the summers for me are always awful because everyone is gone.  Also, I have to watch everyone with their boats and beach houses and plans.  Boo on them.

But hey, tomorrow, there’s plenty to do where I live now, so screw it, I’m gonna go downtown to the big thing they do there and see what I can do for free.  And then I’ll watch fireworks.

But seriously, world, can I have ONE SINGLE holiday that doesn’t completely suck?

I’m Not Sorry There’s Nothing to Save May 3, 2009

A lot of things seem surreal right now.  Grad school, a certain four months of my life, and just, well, life.

I remember having a moment when I was five years old when I felt like I was outside of my body.  It wasn’t like I was floating above my body looking down or anything weird like that, but I remember having the distinct feeling that I wasn’t really living my life.  That I was just an observer to someone else’s life, and that this five-year-old body that was getting out of the car and walking through the garage wasn’t really mine.  I can remember standing there thinking this.  What the fuck kind of five-year-old thinks things like that?  I remember having more moments like that and I still have them now.  Sometimes I feel like my current apartment really isn’t mine and I’m not really living in it.  Maybe it’s because I’m sort of living an in between life right now, but it’s really strange.

Grad school is starting to feel surreal.  It’s actually happening, but I can’t help but think that it’s not actually happening.  I have visions of getting a letter from the school saying that they changed their minds and they don’t want me to come anymore.  I know that’s stupid, but it doesn’t seem to be unique to me.  Another girl I met at the recruitment weekend has the same kinds of thoughts a lot.

I finally got my enrollment package in the mail yesterday.  I signed up for my email address and what not, and soon I’ll be able to enroll in classes.  I had a little trouble just because stupid Evangelical Institution screwed up my transcripts.  I had to send new copies.  That might be why I haven’t really heard from the department since I accepted its offer.  I’m not really sure how this is supposed to go.  I think I’m supposed to hear from them regarding the precise class list and my teaching assignment.  I’m just not sure when I’m supposed to hear from them.  The other girl that I know already got her assignment, but she’s Ph.D., so I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it.  It’s probably because of my transcripts.  This just makes me worry more about my terror of the department renigging on its offer.

It all feels really surreal.  Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to turn out this well.  I didn’t think I was going to get funding.  I’m too hard on myself.  At first, I didn’t really want to apply to this school because of its location, but the more I looked into their program, the more I liked it.  And it’s crazy how well I fit into it.  The Graduate Admissions Director, when I visited, rattled off at least three reasons why he thought I would be a great fit in the program.  It’s exciting.  After four years of feeling really illegit in my undergrad studies, for whatever reason, I finally feel legit, like I’m supposed to be a part of this world.  I’m confident but scared shitless at the same time.  It’s a lot of pressure, and I’m worried about being prepared enough.  Did Evangelical Institution prepare me for grad school?  I have a feeling probably not, which is why I really need to beef up on theory this summer.  I feel good about my research abilities, ok about my writing abilities, and fine about my ability to handle the workload.  Hello, debate.

Overall, I know that I’ll be glad to be doing something that feels purposeful and is something that I enjoy.  I’ll enjoy being around other people like me, who are ambitious and smart and literate.  I didn’t get much of that in undergrad, and god knows I’m not getting that now.  Med students are a different breed of smart.  Will it feel real when it actually starts happening?

The other thing that feels totally surreal is the four months I spent with The Lawyer.  When we broke up, we totally cut each other off.  I haven’t heard from him since then, save for the letters we exchanged afterwards.  I’ve seen him around the neighborhood ramdomly, twice I think.  Everytime I see a fucking black BMW I freak out.  But the four months I spent with him were really great and then all of the sudden they were gone.  I’ve never really had an experience like that, and I think it sucks.  In fact, I’ve never been broken up with.  I’ve always done the breaking up, so I was in control and wanted it to happen.  Not the case this time.  Mostly I really hate not being in control of things like that.

But the other night I had a really long and dramatic dream about him.  I hate dreaming about exes.  Hate hate.  It ended with me running into him and we tried talking.  He started yelling at me about something.  He wanted me to leave him alone.  I wanted to know why, and he finally admitted that he needed to get over me, and I wasn’t helping by showing up.  How fucking awful to have a dream like that.

It’s also really strange how you can be fine for a while and then all of the sudden the ex will start making sudden appearances in your thoughts and in real life.  I’ll start thinking about my ex and then all of a sudden he will show up in my life.  Nothing, and then everything happens all at once.  It happened with The Jerk all the time.  It was really uncanny how he could almost read my thoughts and contact me when I was feeling most vulnerable.  It freaked me out.  Well, I’ve been thinking about The Lawyer this weekend for whatever reason, and today I saw him.  I was walking to the grocery store, crossing the street, and it was him in his car which had to slow down for me as I was going across the crosswalk.  How does that happen?  And then my knees started getting weak and I couldn’t walk.  I was wandering through the grocery store trying to focus on what I wanted to get.  I think I made two circuits before I finally got it together.  I have weird physical reactions when things like that happen related to The Lawyer.  I literally start shaking if I see him around the area.  I puked the night we broke up.  I couldn’t eat for a month after that.  I lost 10 pounds.  I would start gagging everytime I would brush my teeth which coincided with the lack of appetite.  It pisses me off.  He was great, but he was so ultimately WRONG for me.  Why do I have these reactions?  This has never happened before in my life.  He made sure to say that he wants to know where I end up as far as grad school, so I guess I’ll email him and tell him.  I’m trying to decide if I want to meet him for coffee before I move.  I think mostly it would be weird, and who even knows if he would want to, but I think it would make things less surreal.  But then again I’d probably have weird physical reactions and start shaking or something.  I really don’t know.  There are times when I really enjoy being single.  I feel awesome and powerful and happy.  But every once in a while thinking about him makes it harder.  I had no clue when I started dating him that I would like him as much as I did.  Sometimes I just hate dating.  But there’s really no middle ground for me.  I just want to fucking move away already so I don’t have to walk around fearing that I’m going to run into him.  Seriously.  When will it end?

I guess what I really hate are my emotions.  I hate the fact that someone can do this to me.  That they can come into my life and ruin the illusions of autonomy that I have.  I hate that they make me physically ill.  What I really don’t understand is that I can know rationally that someone is wrong for me, and yet still be affected by him.  If we had the chance I would not go back to him, but I still think about him.  What really blows my mind is that I can have the excitement of grad school ahead of me and still wish that I was waking up next to him, feeling him wrap his arms around me as he woke up, pulling me closer to him and then kissing me before he got out of bed.  Why would I want to retrogress for physical affection?  IT MAKES NO SENSE.

I guess that’s why I’ve taken to demonizing him in my mind.  I try to think about that conversation we had about children and how he thought it’s important for the mom to stay home for the first few years.  That helps to allay the longing.  Picturing myself as a lawyer’s wife watching the kid at home while he goes off to try to become a judge and doesn’t get home til 8 pm really takes the romance out of it.  I guess I could just make up stories in my mind about how much he (doesn’t really) sucks.  I always reach this point where I want to sit the person down and just scream at them and let out my frusturation.  I’ve never been good at on-the-spot anger, and it’s something I really hate about myself.

And jeez, the motherfucking lyrics to this song.  My Spring playlist is actually really fucking depressing.  I just try not to listen too much to the lyrics.

Justifications, Introductions, General Rambling March 5, 2008

I think my life can be generally classified at this point as really, really, lame.  So I’m starting a blog that my friends have and I’m writing on it so that I can have some decent “human contact” for once in my life.

I used to write on xanga.  But I pretty much stopped, and no one reads it anymore, so I’m starting a new one.  There’s something about freshness and an actual audience that makes me want to write.  Plus, the old xanga one was being stalked by people I don’t want stalking me, I started in in high school and most of what I chose to write on it were lame, and I have a desire for internet anonymity.  The fact that one of my old friends came to visit over the past few days made me realize how much decent human contact I don’t get anymore.  Most of my days are spent hiding somewhere and reading  a book/studying, going to work at my part-time job at Corporate Crap while I finish my undergraduate education at Evangelical Institution, and sleeping/eating.  My phone conversations with my parents have consisted of “Well, nothing new going on except five new pages in my thesis” and generally I don’t talk on the phone at all with anyone else for reasons I am not sure of.  This leaves me with more than 3,000 rollover minutes and a sense that I am hopelessly and irretrievably socially retarded.  Thus the hopeless recluse.  I have come to believe that, actually, my life is really not that exciting and no one would really want to hear/read/know about it, but my old friends are on here and maybe they can help me out with some intelligent blog banter.  Thus the blog.

I live in Lameburg, and no one at Evangelical Institution is anyone that I can actually have a decent conversation with.  It’s really quite annoying, because I think that the perceptions that everyone has about me make it impossible for them to relate to me or want to hang out with me anymore.  I am several things which are not normal at my school: liberal, feminist, interested in doing well, intelligent (I think).  Additionally, I am socially retarded, which makes it hard to have friends.  Most of my attempts at socializing leave me feeling lame and out of the loop.  Hell, my idea of a good Friday night is sitting on my couch with a beer reading a book.  The other night I watched the New York Philharmonic’s North Korea concert on public television for fun.  I can only hope that at some point in my life I can meet other people like me and live in a world of fellow liberal reclusives.