Silver lions in my head

On Lauren Fairweather, community, and math class.

2012-02-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

She told me she didn't want to go to a stupid school for freaks
Thank god they're sending us away
Cause she'd never want to be
A freak like me

These are the words. This is the rhythm that whispers into my ears as I sit stuffed against my pillowcase with the hardwood jutting through it. The second the opening guitar fills my dorm room, an aura of calm settles around the furniture, from the window to the door. Suddenly it doesn't matter how much I wanted to burst into tears during MA 100 fifteen minutes ago. Those mortgage and installment loans are in the distant past.

There's something to be said about the way Lauren's music soothes me no matter what's going on. Her songs were inspiring before I really knew much about her (I had fangirlish pictures of her around my room in 2007), but now that I've spoken to her and we're planning a tour together, I am even more comforted every time I press the play button next to her name. She simply gets it. She knows where I've been, and through her words, I feel like she knows. When I suddenly burst into tears or want so desperately to give up or am so excited I can't hold back my squeals, she's been there.

Yeah, it's a little ridiculous the amount of times I've been compared to Lauren Fairweather or even assumed that I am her. But it's less annoying than it used to be, because I realize how similar we really are. I look up to her in a big-sister kind of way. She's the same age as my actual sister who moved out years and years ago and never spoke to me again. It's a huge reason why I look up to her so much, and something I don't think I ever told her.

The other day Lauren posted an article about the Mike Lombardo scenario and while I agreed with her when I read it, her meaning didn't really hit me until today. She spoke of how cohesive the Harry Potter/online nerd community is, and how every time she plays a show or is around wizard rock people, she feels immediately at home. And I couldn't relate more. As great as college is, and as awesome the friends are that I've made here, wizard rock people are so different. Yet so similar, comfortingly so. As awful as the whole Mike thing is, it's not the end of our community, and it reminds me, and reminds us, how nothing can ever really break it or tear it down. For me, it seems like regardless of the people who get up and leave, there are always two more who remain (or newly join).

Sometimes when I tell people how I've screwed up in the past and made people hate me, they go, "No one could hate you. How could they? You're so sweet." I shake my head or shrug, knowing that it's possible even though they may never see why. One glance at me in math class, and you might get it. I can be stubborn to the point of relentless arm crossing, unfounded glaring, and harsh words that I may or may not mean. Sometimes I say such horrible things (usually to the people who are closest to me) that I try to repair them within seconds. But it's done no matter how I try to fix it.

This was supposed to be the best day of my life
And now she hates me

Yeah, it might be just a lyric, but it's so much more to me. It's Lauren standing up and saying, "I get it." No matter how many times people tell you they understand what you're going through, or how hard it is, or how much it will 'get' better, I knew before I ever talked to this woman that she really gave a shit.

Sometimes when I let people listen to my wizard rock, they go, "You listen to this crap?" and my answer is yes, yes, I do. None of them are perfect. Lauren is not perfect. She's a human who sings her pain and has the ability to be disliked just like I do. (Not like anyone should. ;))

And that's what this community is about.

And math class is irrelevant.

I can't believe I haven't written about this before.

P.S. The song is called "Freak" and it's on the album "The Prince's Tale".

i will, i will, i will

2012-02-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

i will.

i will wrap my arms around you, pencil and all, samsung and all. i will breathe in your daisies, lost petals and all, forgotten seeds and all. and i will make sure you wake up tomorrow, and not just wake up, but get a good night's sleep. i will make sure you keep calm and not worry about carrying on.

i will kiss your face in the morning, maybe push you off the bed, and swear i didn't mean to. but you won't remember it, and even if you did, we'd keep laughing. i will wear your clothes and cry at the sight of your fuzzy shoes on my hairy floor without ever being able to explain. i will giggle at the noises that escape you when you're happy or impressed.

i will shake my head with you in defiance at the turds of the world. i will run down your hallway, lungs full of greetings, on the path to accepting a night of honesty, dancing, or death. i will confuse you with my words, but only because i get a kick out of the look on your face. i will share my hunger and harmonies.

i will walk with you, stare and think what a good portrait you'd make. i will convince you to eat, poke you to smile, push you to believe, and admire when you fight back. i will cover our faces in inside jokes, burst our funny bubble, fill our ears with stories, and float into the sky like pooh bear.

i will sit across from you and share a meal - in more ways than one. i will say "what if?" and challenge your idea of cute. i will be scared if you ever show up at my house with one of those rabbits, but i will let you in anyway. i will raise an eyebrow and focus the eye underneath on the frying pan.

i will, because i have to.

if i'm honest

2012-01-15T00:19:00.000-08:00

i still need you. i always will.
i can't remember what it's like to wake up with you, and that saddens me more than anything.
but competing for the sadness is how i forget just what your voice sounds like.
and i forget your smell.
i forget your touch, your clammy fingers.
but i know your taste, your arms.
i know your hand in mine, embarrassed sometimes, public love.
how paranoid i got when you didn't tell me.
how worried i got when you did.
how much i want to tell someone, anyone, how much i care for you.
how much i tried not to.
how much i can't see the screen through my feelings.
how much i'd like to collapse in your arms when it's rough.
how it hurts that i can't.
how i don't know how much you like me because you never told me.
how it hurts.
how it hurts.

unhappy

2012-01-04T17:03:00.000-08:00

2012 has been horrible to me so far.
and i've been horrible to myself.
it's insane the amount of people who tell themselves and others that they can do better and then they never strive to achieve that.
they never try because they just wait for it to come to them.
but what if you already have the something better?
how can you know if you have the something better if you don't try to make the something better something better?
the past 4 days have just been a whirlwind of confusion and buried attitude.

So move, yeah move so move, yeah move
I've got nowhere to go, I've got nowhere to go
So move, don't move so slow, don't move so slow
I can't take it, I can whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa

i guess i'm just thankful for tegan and sara, charcoal pencils, and good books. and these are concrete things that enter my soul and might just make me happy again. or at least content i can only hope, because i'm in the horrifying state of petrified panic where i can not go in public as i am.

i'm hungry and i can't eat.

tolerant snails

2011-12-27T21:28:00.001-08:00

no matter how hard you try, or how much time passes, there are some people that you will not be able to stand. or tolerate, if you will.

this does not make you a bad person. it simply means that you don’t have enough in common to be able to be around them or hear news about them.

it doesn’t make them a bad person either. it just means they’re annoying. and that’s fine. you might be annoying to someone. you probably are. life goes on, though. we wake up, we try not to focus on the bad, and we indulge in things we are passionate about, no matter how ridiculous those passions might be.

for me, it’s tacos, wizard rock, good fanfiction, poetry, good books, and drawing pictures of sexy women or my friends. those are all simple things that can take my mind so far from one annoying person that i’m clear for the rest of the night. and that’s all i really ever need. just to be okay for the night. because tomorrow, regardless of chores and things i have to do, i force room for past time activities. i am a snail.

sometimes i’ve felt bad about my snail-like existence. not everyone gets the chance to do their favorite past time activities, so stress piles up on them and before they know it they’re tossing themselves off mount doom. but i know how important these past times are for me. some call it lazy, but i call it taking my mind off of the people and things i can’t stand.

and it’s working.

snail-like, but it is.

Family Photos

2011-12-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

“nans, i went to both ladies
at target
you’re saving the photos to the
camera, not the card.”

“hm.”

mom adds her 2 cents.
“she can put the card
in her computer
and tell you more than they did.”

i dash away, beckon the internet -
oh look,
all 18 shining photos
i never wanted to see
hello, sister.

“it’s a close-up! doesn’t she look nice?”
no, she doesn’t.
she’s just a big-toothed stranger.
and there you are, dad,

smiling next to her like there’s no tomorrow.
but when you’re shoved into my vicinity,
the camera melts. you are plastic.

i wonder what someone would say
if they ever tied us down long enough
to see our family photo.

"the christmas thing" warning: sad

2011-12-23T23:01:00.000-08:00

my mom noted the other day, "i don't think tianna's much into the christmas thing."

and i'm really not. for me, christmas is 50% about the snow, 35% about food, 5% about family time, and 10% about sleeping. i really hope that added up.

the whole thing just makes me so sad. buying presents, expecting a lot, giving more than you need to, feeling like your gifts and money are inadequate, people giving and getting shitty gifts, people ignoring their families on the holidays, it just comes back to haunt me every year. the rushing last-minute crowds, the screaming children, the pleading parents - it makes me want to break down and cry.

i like thanksgiving a lot more. i can't put my finger on it, but i think it's mostly because there's no pressure. in my house, thanksgiving has always equaled food, fatness, and football. and absolutely nothing else. christmas is different. it's things like christmas where gifts are a tradition - expected - that makes me miss people (or more accurately, the way they used to be) - my sister, my dad, my family as a whole, myself. this holiday makes me feel like i need to be perfect. it makes me feel like i should be richer. its consumerism makes me feel like i am stuck in an age of cheesy commercials and if-you-don't-have-a-normal-family-at-least-a-normal-holiday-dinner-then-you-dont-know-what-christmas-is. and that consumerist state is where i'm living. and every christmas, there's no way out.

so i'm sorry, mom, if i don't seem too into the christmas thing. i guess 2 hours in a car to wait for a crappy ten minute light show in the pouring rain is not my thing. i'm sorry you get so excited to the point of squealing and i look like a deadbeat in the backseat. i'm truly, truly sorry, because i know it's your thing. i know your parents told you you wouldn't get presents if you didn't believe in santa clause. i know they were different. and i know you're the only one in the family i have left, and i'm sorry we can't even connect on this level while i'm home from school.

The Square Root of Facebook and my Ex

2011-12-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

The tips of my hair breach the icy water as I bend over the sink, back throbbing. Toothpaste (zahnpasta) slugs toward the drain. I shuffle back to my cave, clenching my hands around your curly hair fresh out of the shower. My laptop glows, greeting me like a lover.
First picture. Look, it’s us as strangers. It won’t be until months later that I scrape my knees – and my elbows and my calves – falling for you. Each morning is the kinetic energy of a looping rollercoaster, halving me over the toilet with a twisted grin.
Next picture. Look, it’s you immersed with your laptop. The way you concentrate on the screen, eyes wide (as opposed to the familiar squint) – I know your whole being is focused on it. I still wish you could’ve saved some of that energy for me.
Next picture. Look, there’s your family. Arms enveloping. Eyes sparkling. Smiles glittering. So unlike my clump of relatives. The two of us left surround the dining room table set for Thanksgiving, stabbing at our segregated foods – somewhere between the fake turkey and the real turkey is your Sprite and bacon.
Damn it, you’re in my dining room too.
And here’s this Word document, sinking under the adolescence anchor. And I’m done with your photo albums, done with your sapiosexuality, so my brain crawls through the plain white hallways back to senior year. Ten sweaty fingers grasped my Samsung Reality, attempting to spell out my seizing heart.
None of the frantic Forensics class texts sent under the Green River Killer’s watchful gaze from the TV ever mattered. My thoughts jogged laps around themselves – empty calories. Mr. Zoldak wasn’t stupid, he knew my cell phone was propped up against my bag with the lowest light setting just like everyone else’s.
“We’re on lockdown. There was some campus shooting. How appropriate that we’re learning about this shit.” My immaculate anti chat speak messages were bred from your politically correct tongue, while my mind was a slur of “will you just get in my bed already?” and “oh, my mom’s gonna love you”.
You didn’t buzz my Samsung back until late that night.
You gravitated toward my love, but I never saw the red creeping up your cheekbones.
That was the last time I’ll ever look through your tagged photos, I swear.

City Girl

2011-12-15T20:42:00.000-08:00

A gust of oven-like July air whips my face, gathering my pink dress behind one knee. I step into the Monongahela Incline station with my mother and Danny. Around us, potential passengers await the chariot that will take them down the hill. Hills – one of the most comforting aspects about growing up in Pittsburgh. Ever since I was pea-sized my dad would remind me that the chances of a tornado rolling through our city were slim to none: there were so many big, bad hills to scare the measly storm away.

The Monongahela (“Mon”) Incline, the nation’s oldest cable car, brings travelers from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill. Since 1870, it has transported twenty-three people at a time at six miles per hour up and down the hill. A decade earlier, the city’s industrialization was booming, magnetizing mainly German immigrants. The crowded industry pushed them to the top of “Coal Hill” (Mt. Washington). Transportation up and down the hill was difficult, so the Germans instinctively decided to bring their seilbahns (cable cars) to the city.

Taking a step back from the outlook binoculars, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the City of [446] Bridges, the Steel City, and home of the Steelers. We bleed black and yellow, the hues blending together to form the dirty brown gunk that settles at the bottom of the three rivers: the Monongahela and the Allegheny, which merge into the Ohio.

Above the Allegheny, the Three Sisters were the first self-anchored suspension bridges in the United States. Their top cables attach to the actual road as opposed to in the ground. Built during the Great Depression, these bridges loom over Pittsburghers, filling them with a strong sense of pride. The steel Three Sisters are the only trio of identical bridges, unusual for being built with cantilever methods, or having a beam of support at only one end. In other places, you might have to choose either precarious or sturdy to describe a structure: in Pittsburgh, we want – and get – the best of both worlds. Danny sees the Incline as dangerous, but I think of it as extremely durable, and maybe that’s the beauty of the contraption as well as the city. It’s spontaneous and unexpected, yet wholesome. Every glimpse of the Pittsburgh skyline is somehow different from the glance stolen previously.

Because the Incline gives such a great view of downtown as it snakes down the hill, it’s often the first place that pops into my mind along with a mental Post-It note of “you need to see this!” when my Internet friends tell me they’re coming to visit my city.

This is the nature of my meeting Danny: I accepted his MySpace friend request – he was a fellow Harry Potter fan and musician – and shortly after learned he was dating a mutual friend of ours, Liz. After that, we both attended Terminus, a Harry Potter convention in Chicago. After returning to the online world and joining a yearlong YouTube collaboration channel together, we decided a reunion was in order.

***

While we reunite we wait for a pink jumper clad child to crawl into an Incline seat and then we settle for the upmost bench. I’m squished between my mom and Danny.
Danny’s knuckles whiten around the wooden bench beneath us. A lumpy graffiti heart reads “A&L Forever!” The skyscrapers beyond the musty glass panes of the Incline barely catch my eye; the sights have become like next-door neighbors. My mother giggles at the way Danny wildly cranes his neck out the window to spot the Carnegie Science Center, the PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company) Building, which has a 60-foot Christmas tree in the center of its ice skating rink, and Heinz Field, the Steelers’ playground.

In the distance, the yellow Three Sisters bridges arch and bend under the humidity. I think of how sturdy they are, how they’ve been stretched across the Allegheny for almost a century. It reminds me of how my best friend Bobby has always been ever-present in my life.

***

I frantically stuffed clothes into a suitcase the night before I left for college. I put off most of my packing until several hours before I left to distract myself from how much I’d miss home. My mom and I planned to leave at six a.m. On top of the hole that would be left in my heart from the lack of familiar cats to greet me at the college entrance, I knew my bones would be aching with exhaustion once I got there.

Blinking back tears, trying to attach myself to numbness, I stumbled down the darkened stairwell to my kitchen, hoping to find solace somewhere in the empty cabinets. I wasn’t searching long through stale Triscuits before I got a text from Bobby saying, “I’m on my way with Taco Bell.” It’s something we’d always joked about, since neither of us could drive, that one day he would randomly show up at my house and together we would rid our problems with guacamole and mild sauce.

I didn’t reply, just awaited his arrival with anticipation: to eat, but more importantly to wrap my arms around my best friend one last time before separating for three months. We chowed down on our burritos, laughing at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the TV and acting like nothing was about to change.
I can’t help but draw connections between the Three Sisters bridges and the people I associate with this city. It would take a lot to crush their impulsive spirits.

***

“What if this thing falls off the tracks?” Danny panics, his voice rising with fear. The women across from us look at him affectionately, as if he’s a child who’s lost his mother.
Danny is nineteen. He’s from Buffalo, New York, where the plains stretch for miles and the hills hide under a cloak of invisibility. They have grass; we have strong, square-grounded buildings. They grow shaky people like Danny, who can’t even picture the bottom of the hill; we grow sturdy and comforting people like my mother, who knows exactly where to look when I misplace my glasses. To Danny, this fit-for-the-elderly Incline ride is just as scary as the Phantom’s Revenge, Kennywood’s most dangerously thrilling rollercoaster. In actuality, we’re moving along at turtle speed.

“We won’t fall off, sweetheart. This thing has been running for hundreds of years,” my mom tells him, and one of the women nods in agreement.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Danny grabs around for my hand as we roll down the hill. His big brown doe eyes are focused on the clouds, far, far away.

I let him latch onto me. Glossy buildings ahead reflect the setting sun, whose rays bounce off my glasses and back onto the Incline’s windows. The Monongahela River glistens, every few feet of her segmented by golden lights. Every Internet friend that comes to visit me makes my perspective on this city shift.

Pittsburgh has been voted “America’s Most Livable City” numerous times by business leaders like Forbes.com and The Economist. The “Livability” flows from a diverse cultural community, the fact that job opportunities aren’t completely invisible, highly available education, affordable housing, and accessible transportation. The language of Pittsburghese is an eccentric one, featuring words such as chipped ham and hoagies, yinz and jaggerbushes. “Keep a babushka around your little head to keep ahht the cold!” my father would warn before I’d head off to school in the mornings. “Hun, will you help me warsh the car when you get home?”

But the memories I have of the ‘Burgh go deeper than dialect.

***

It was my eighth birthday – August 7th, so hot that the skin on my arms could’ve peeled over my fingernails and ended up a boneless puddle on the concrete.

“I hope you know I’m gonna splash you with water, birthday girl!” my friend Jessica teased. I frowned and refrained from giggling: I wasn’t a girly girl.

Our floral Target bathing suits hugged our bellies, scrunchies clasped our ponytails tight, and excitement prodded us in the back, urging us into the backseat. When we arrived at the wave pool, however, a large brown sign announced its closure because of storms earlier in the day.
“I want to go in!” I grumbled, crossing my arms. That stupid sign wasn’t holding me back from my cool, beloved waves – not on my birthday!

“We’ll figure something out, sweetheart,” my mom took me by the shoulder and spun me in the direction of our Subaru.

When we got home, there was no need to take our bathing suits off – my sister and brother were already ready with a full bucket of water balloons to pelt us with! Within five minutes of having launched I had forgotten all about the wave pool’s closure: all that mattered was seeing how many of my friends I could get soaking wet. There was something about that day, something I found at home that I couldn’t find at my favorite place to swim, and that something planted an impulsive instinct within me.

***

“Thanks so much for helping us out, Tianna.”

As a high school senior I volunteered at the East End Food Co-Op (“Open to everyone, everyday”), home of local produce and sustainable groceries. The aroma of Jambalaya rice and curried tofu wriggled their way through the air into my nostrils. I checked in on my last day before an employee grabbed me by the arm and led me to the storage room for a secret vegetarian Thanksgiving feast. And I thought my last day volunteering would be just another day of stocking beans!

I sat on a plastic bench and stuffed my face full of Tofurky and potatoes before venturing back out into the organic chaos.

“Aisle five for the vegan lip balm,” I told the pretty white-haired girl with plugs in her ears who approached me while I stocked boxes of chai tea. At the end of my third hour, I would hurry back to the “Produce Pit” and take peppers and potatoes that were perfectly fine but deemed too damaged to be sold. With the unprocessed, natural food came an unprocessed, natural atmosphere where everyone spoke in a tone that left me feeling warm despite the winter winds.

Across the neighboring Liberty Bridge and east down 71B, you’ll find the Cathedral of Learning, which is the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh. This forty-two-floor building has served as a hang out for my friends and I on numerous occasions. Sometimes we’ll film Harry Potter-themed music videos; other times we’ll just stroll around the old, pictorial building.
During the making of the Cathedral in 1926, the Great Depression-struck builders found themselves in debt. An international fundraiser was created where various countries sent money to fund this Gothic Revival building. As a result, there are twenty-seven nationality rooms dedicated to each contributor. In the words of the tenth University of Pittsburgh Chancellor John Gabbert Bowman, “The building was to be more than a schoolhouse; it was to be a symbol of the life that Pittsburgh through the years had wanted to live.” This rings very true, and I can’t help but agree that Pittsburgh has its own wants: the high arches and Indiana limestone under my feet makes me feel as if I’m in a postcard. Each time I visit, it’s hard not to dig for my digital camera and capture the aged nooks and crannies, sure that so many before me have done the same.

In times such as these, I feel like a tourist in my own city. From the “Mon” Incline to this magnificent education palace, Pittsburgh houses my every whimsical want. If I were to say, “Let’s go look at dead birds with their eyes stuffed full of cotton!” the sentence wouldn’t have to be fully out of my mouth before we’d be in the car on our way to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Other times, such as when my online friends visit my city, it feels as if I am sucked into the city itself, as if the city built me and parts of my heritage are ground into the steel mills.

Since the months leading up to the Harry Potter convention Terminus in 2008, I’ve made connections with people who, before the convention, were only Internet friends – friends I had strong relationships with, yet only existed online. A select few came to Pittsburgh to visit me, however. They slept on my bedroom floor, let me cook vegan food for them, and whipped out their cameras at all the ‘Burgh sights.

Ivy, a girl from southwest Virginia with a triangular smile, was my first Internet friend. We bonded on MySpace over our mutual Harry Potter addiction, and she visited me for the whole month of July before Terminus. We decided to make this happen spur-of-the-online-moment a couple weeks before she showed up at my house on the hill with a hug tight enough to crack my back.
I ended up taking her to Mt. Washington, where she held back squeals of fear on the Incline, but the skyline wasn’t as memorable as she was. She had a southern way of speaking that tugged at the corners of my lips, daring them to curve into a smile.

“Do you want to go to the pool sometime?” I asked Ivy in an attempt at taking her mind off the apparently horrid screeching of the Incline’s breaks down the 370-foot hill.

Her blonde brows knitted together. “What’s that?”

“Like, a swimming pool?” I clarified, not sure what I said wrong.

“Ohhh, the po-ell!”

I erupted in laughter, wondering if maybe my accent was the confusing one.

In the midst of dying each other’s hair red one night, we decided to make a quick Wal-Mart trip to pick up iron-on letters for the T-shirts we wanted to make in celebration of Ivy’s first wizard rock concert in the ‘Burgh.

“This is ridiculous. When are we going back?” Ivy groaned with a blue plastic bag on her head, retaining heat while her hair turned a deep burgundy color.

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “When we find the right letters!” my mouth ached from smiling as I arched off the dirty Wal-Mart floor, lunging for a “G” or a “Y” – how many people wanted to spell “Ginny”, really?

When Ivy left Pittsburgh, she took a piece of me with her, but she gave me something as well. She revived within me an unstructured courage to say whatever I wanted, how I wanted it, whenever I wanted to – after all, everyone has different accents.

***

After a Paramore and No Doubt concert in the summer of 2009 I got lost in Squirrel Hill at two a.m. with another Internet friend, Alex, and his Cinderella license – we were out three hours past the underage drivers’ curfew limitation.

“Guys, where do I turn?” Alex steered away from a swerving car.

“Up here… No, here. No, maybe try right there.” Bobby tried his best not to sound clueless from the backseat. I chewed on my chocolate chip cookie from the East End Food Co-Op and tried to summon the homey smells that would drag reassuring comfort along with them.

“Yeah, that’s Boulevard of the Allies!” I, for once, felt totally in control of my navigational skills. And then… “It’s not? Shit...”

As we flew around the curbs I felt weightless, like I was running for my life while still sitting shotgun. The heated night air tangled my hair in its claws, tempting me, whistling and chanting, “why aren’t you worried, child?” I didn’t know the answer, and I didn’t care for it. Freedom is as freedom does.

Beechwood Boulevard had us buried in its tentacles, yet I felt no discomfort at becoming its prey. Take me for what I am, we belted carelessly during a miserably off-key RENT sing along. The blackened street could’ve swallowed up the Jeep right then and we would have kept singing.

***

Pittsburgh is where I attended my first wizard rock concert, twenty-eight minutes from my bedroom walls plastered left and right with beloved Harry Potter actors. I logged onto MySpace one day, found out The Remus Lupins were coming to town on July 31st, and did everything I could to find myself a ride down to Schenley Park. Eventually, Bobby and I were piled in a car on the road to pure bliss.

Bobby and I had always talked about how we wanted out so bad: out of our bedrooms, out of our high school, out of our circle of friends, out of our families, out of our relationships, out of our lives, but most of all, out of our city. Pittsburgh never really provided much for us, and for years we would stroll past magnificent skyscrapers and not bat an eyelash. Then came handfuls of wizard rock shows where we clasped our sweaty hands together whilst belting out lyrics that showcased our love for the boy who lived. After socializing with the bands that produced the songs we held so dear (“I freaking love your music. Can I give you a hug?” “Of course! I love you!”), our connection to the music pinned us against our city, leaving us unable to fly free even if we wanted to.

***

“Pittsburgh is one of my favorite places to play,” Matt of The Whomping Willows admits in the middle of one of his local sets, “because we don’t have to tell you to dance. You just feel it in your souls and you act upon it.”

Matt got it spot on, and it’s shocking to discover that not every city he stops to play at on his States-wide tours is this energetic. Does this make us better fans? Probably not. More memorable ones, however? Possibly. And if that’s all we can muster, I’ll be satisfied. We Pittsburghers don’t have to try hard to be remembered, and that knowledge seeps into my bloodstream and injects me with a woozy feeling that hardens into strength.

At Matt’s appreciative words there is a loud applause from the audience of twenty. It is this that makes every other concert's crowds seem abnormally lifeless. In mainstream mosh pits, it doesn’t feel as if there are hearts beating as one - or even two.

“Dude, stop fuckin’ spazzin out!” a tall burly guy in plaid yelled from behind me at The Used’s Pittsburgh show in 2009. The guy took a swig of beer and calmly surveyed the mosh pit a few feet away.

“Aight, lumberjack…” I muttered, jumping to the beat. My short stature meant a wide array of heads, hats, and hands obscured my favorite mainstream band. I was spazzing out? Did he see that flock of preteen girls fleeing the mosh pit screaming at the top of their lungs seconds ago?
I’m not sure whether it was him or not, but by the end of the night I was bruised in places I wasn’t used to feeling. Lazy trails of sweat slithered from my ponytail down the back of my shirt as I tried to ignore the craze of fans slapping each other’s faces to get closest to the stage.

“Just ignore him…” Bobby rolled his eyes, grabbing my hand and jumping alongside me. I recognized the playful opening chords of “All That I’ve Got” immediately and was thrust into the present, focusing on what really mattered – the music. That is, until a guy spilled beer all over his girlfriend outside the bathroom and laughed about it.

This wasn’t normal concert behavior. It couldn’t be. After so many wizard rock shows where love was preached and hugs were given out like elbows in the side in a mosh pit, I wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t right. This was normality, and I was hooked on the sturdy spontaneity of introducing myself to anyone at wizard rock shows just because I knew we automatically had a love for books in common. At The Used’s show, something didn’t settle right. I left empty – dazzled by their talent, but empty.

After seeing wizard rock bands play and being the catalyst for dance lines in so many audiences, I was inspired to start my own band, I Speak Tree.

Between my city’s bridges and its impressive glassy skyline lies the strength to make a stranger smile. And through my music, I wanted to be sturdy enough to be a cause, no matter how small, of that smile.

Freya, from the local Harry Potter group, and I will go months without communication, yet she handed me the opportunity to play my first show.

Tianna! Her email read one day. You need to do this!

Underneath was a forwarded message from Steph, the girl from Tonks and the Aurors, requesting an opening act at her Pittsburgh show. My cheeks flushed at the thought of Freya’s mind connecting that searching email with my amateur songs on MySpace.

At that first performance on the South Side, people clapped along and waved their cell phones high above their heads. Although the audience didn’t recognize the lyrics, the music was central to Harry Potter. As they clapped along to the beat, I saw the ‘Burgh truly acting without precedence.

A tweet from Freya after the show read, “I Speak Tree is amazing.”

Maybe I did cause a smile or two.

***

It is a few months back and I am standing atop the Carnegie Science Center’s lookout tower. I gaze through a telescope and spot Venus. Night air wraps around my waist, a sash concealing my fear of heights. I am in the “Most Livable City”. The “Mon” Incline across the river beams its fluorescent lights toward me. As they reflect through my glasses, I am pulled back in the moment with my Internet-friend-made-real-best-friend.

We reach “dahntahn” and the incline’s wheels judder and halt. Danny lets loose his breath. Station Square rattles my restless mind awake: the clinking of cutlery and wine glasses from the Hard Rock Café surrounds me on one side, set against the square Bar Louie with a consistently out-of-order photo booth separating the two.

The sun has set by the time we reach the Square. A fountain glows with colors, the water tails whipping and cascading toward the Hard Rock patio seats, spraying the bricks beneath. They go off every twenty minutes, soaring forty feet in the air to different musical themes several times a day.

The fountain sways along to everything from Disney to Christina Aguilera (who hails from the ‘Burgh itself). Danny, Mom, and I have arrived just in time for the Elvis Presley selection. It’s August in the city, and the thought of dancing in the damp breeze is devilishly tempting.

“You look like an angel…” From the loudspeakers, Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise” lassoes my hips toward the flamboyant fountain. I am momentarily airborne, my feet propelling toward the lights. Regardless of the fact that there are families, elderly couples, and tiny children watching, I dance. Without looking twice at the camera my giggling mother switched to record mode, I flail my arms to the beat. There is nothing more important than living this, here, now.
Whatever you call it – the City of Bridges, the Smoky City, or Steeler Country – is irrelevant.

To me, it will remain the place where I can gaze at the skyscraper neighbors, saying, “That’s the pavilion where I went to my first wizard rock show!” and “I used to be terrified of the Omnimax at that Science Center!” In one Incline ride, the three rivers below swallow my pride whole. From there it’ll flow out again, wiggling through the water cycle. A part of nature. Something I should have but didn’t see coming.

The rush of a train rumbles in my chest like a bass, just like the train that runs directly behind my house. I am home with Danny, whose mouth spreads wide with joy. His chipped front tooth is flawless and his fear is still seated on the Incline. His Buffalo heart has been claimed by the sturdy Steel City.

A few feet behind the fountain, I grip the gate lining the Monongahela. Mist drifts languidly up around the cool metal bars. I arch backward, relishing an upside down view of Station Square, and shimmy, clasping the gate with one hand – totally gracefully, too – until I topple toward the concrete.

Danny’s arms latch onto my shoulders. “Tianna!” he gives a huge open-mouthed laugh.

“Shut up!” I push him off, spin around, and gyrate my butt against the bars, swinging my hips to my heart’s content. I will look good dancing even if it means a near-fatal accident in the midst of it.

Date whoever the fuck you want.

2011-12-08T14:50:00.001-08:00

This is my response to the ever so popular “Date a girl who reads”/”Date an illiterate girl” articles.

Date whoever the fuck you want. You can find them anywhere. They will either be sipping from a wide range of beverages, or not drinking at all. Find them in the nightclub, in the library, at school, at your next door neighbor’s house. Realize that even if she doesn’t know who the hell James Joyce is, it doesn’t make her stupid. And if she does pretend, it doesn’t make her pretentious.

Date whoever the fuck you want, because chances are, they’re not going to call you out on having a type. Search for him or her in the low shadow of the concert hall or in the fluorescent lighting backstage. Understand that just because someone doesn’t read regularly doesn’t mean they’re illiterate. Whoever the fuck you choose will be grateful, because you, my friend, are a paragon of integrity. Don’t know what that means? Well, clearly, you aren’t a girl who reads.

Whoever the fuck you choose will not have a type to comply with, because they will be their own person. They will not be filed under any superficial category, for contrary to popular belief, there is a plethora of people out there who do not strictly fit under either “bookworm” or “partygoer.” She or he might be wearing a short skirt or a full tuxedo. They might be a stripper. They might be a librarian. They might be both.

You will propose to them by doing whatever the fuck you want. Whenever the fuck you want. However the fuck you want. But don’t do it over Skype. (What the fuck? Why would a girl who reads want to be proposed to over Skype? No.) Also, if your girl is reciting Keats under her breath like some sort of psycho I’m worried.

Understand that if you choose a girl who reads, it doesn’t mean that she automatically understands people. If you find whoever the fuck you want, keep them close. Hopefully, they will cherish the fact that you chose them for who they are and not what they do. Whoever the fuck you choose will understand that people develop, as well, and they will be proud of you for getting past the utterly judgmental state of “I’m solely looking for someone who does/does not read.”

Date whoever the fuck you want, because you deserve it. After all this time of reading all these blogs about what kind of attitude the girl you date should possess, you get a break. Go choose on your own. Don’t subscribe to bullshit. Date whoever the fuck you want, because your mind wants what it fucking wants.

Or better yet, don’t date anyone at all.

STRESSBLOG

2011-12-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

Now that my first true college finals (as opposed to the fake college finals I took at community college?) are approaching, my writing proficiency portfolio is due by Saturday, the DC Yule Ball is Friday, my last art class is tomorrow and I'll be putting that portfolio all night, and this is a run on sentence...

Well, NOW I've decided that amidst the procrastination, it is a good time to STRESSBLOG. STRESSBLOG is in ALL CAPS because STRESSBLOG insinuates that I am stressed and blogging. Which I am. I know I need to stop this instant. My memoir for nonfiction class is calling my name. This girl in the library needs to stop talking so loud. I got very excited at the idea of the "quiet zone" when finals time came along, but this is not a quiet zone. It is a war zone. It is a STRESSBLOG war zone of little soldiers at their carbon copy computers, shoved in their carbon copy carrels (is that how you spell the computer desk object thing that traps you inside like a cell?)

The soldiers who are marching on the thesis line are hunched over their keyboards, tapping away bullshit to store for later use. It could help them become a doctor. It could help them become a publisher. Or it could just help them graduate and therefore be in debt. Then there's the c.) all of the above option, but no one thinks of that come crunch time.

The lazier fighters, the ones who will probably get executed by the time they stomp forward to the thesis line, are too busy on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, refreshing their mail accounts, and STRESSBLOGing. People want to know about their lives SO much that they curl into little balls in their faded, mysteriously dirty orange womb chairs and try to escape the pressure. Why do work when they can focus on their own life and talk about the things that have been affecting them as if they're #1 on everyone's list?

Since my last blog post, I've been elected co-president of Prism, the gay club here, with my friend Carina. I'm pretty excited, but also kind of nervous. Prism presidents lead the discussion each week with the group, and once the actual president was absent so Carina and I did it. And it was kind of scary cause people have opinions and opinions are scary. Especially when they're WRONG. Just kidding. Kind of. We're submitting our club budget soon (yeah, yeah, we're late as hell), and gearing up for a Drag Ball in Gaypril. Yaaay!

Here I am, comfortably situated in middle of the soldiers, not quite to the thesis line but not at the stumbling end. I know where I'm going, I've just got to get there. And I guess that's a lot better than a lot of people come finals time. Before I end this blog I also need to stress how proud I am of my college for having four Twitters dedicated to 3 buildings and a road on campus.

I'm living the awesome life.

This turned out to be less of a STRESSBLOG than a MAYBEIMNOTSOSTRESSEDIMJUSTCOMPLAINING blog. But I hope you liked it anyway.

Metal smiles and Hagrid hugs,
Tianna

giving thanks and tofurky, and being content

2011-11-23T18:38:00.000-08:00

hello friends! or just empty virtual air space. it is thanksgiving eve and i haven't updated in a while. honestly, i think the title of this blog is quite redundant. tofurky should just be a synonym for "giving thanks". because that's how i feel when i eat it. it feels like a deep, fresh breath of thanks.

lately i've been very content. i still speak and think stubbornly, which i'm working on - okay not really, maybe, sort of - but i'm not upset 24/7 anymore. i don't know if "leveling" is the right word to use, but i guess i've come to terms with the inexplicable sadness in my life. and there are little things, little dreams i have had for years that have recently come true, or started to blossom and turn into truths. like how i know i'm awesome, like how i know i'm talented, and creative, and worth something. and i've come to terms with more difficult things too, like how i may never speak to my sister again, like how i have a crummy relationship with my dad and brother, like how my cat insists on lying on my printer and violently swishing her tail through the blue plastic beads hanging nearby.

as much as i don't like to admit it for the cheesiness factor alone, this time of year makes me very sentimental. not that i'm not always sort of sentimental, but this time of year especially makes me reflect on the past year more than christmas or the actual new year does. and this year, i'm very content. maybe it's the fact that i have overcome so many things that i never thought i could: go to college, live with a roommate, get a job, get a girlfriend, be happy for an extended period of time, etc. i'm not even sure where these things all came from. it seems as if i was dropped into some weird crater of adulthood and i came out morphed as a human being worth the "being".

i often think like this, and then the negatives all hit me at once: thousands of my nonexistant dollars are still due in january for next semester, i need to get on things like internships and volunteer work, i need to stop being so awkward, i need to stop being so ugly/incompetent/stupid. and then something happens, and i straighten my spine and say "fuck it". and i think the something that happens is i think of someone. and that someone i think is really two people. and those two people are the women who led my early immersion program at college, cynthia and yona.

sitting at my squeaky cloth computer chair four or so months back, i groaned at the idea of an early immersion program. they all sounded so lame. i wasn't that interested in baltimore city, i didn't really have an urge to do community service, and i wasn't religious enough for the one called "inspire".. although yes, it had a cool name, i had to admit. plus, the fee of $75 made my bank card, my mother, and my mind shrink in fear. anything over $15 pushed our buttons regardless of the value. but to my mother (and it's catching on to me), knowledge is priceless. that's why we'll struggle with the thousands of dollars due each year for school. and it's paid off already. in inspire and after, yona and cynthia taught me that i'm good enough, and that my best doesn't always need to be exerted, as long as i try. and for that, i couldn't thank them enough. they are two of the most calming people i have ever, ever met.

another one of those calming people is mrs. krett, who was my senior english teacher. i would end up crying to her in the chair next to hers behind her desk about the various mundane aspects of my life, such as "he won't take me to prom" or "i feel so overwhelmed..." "by what?" "nothing. no seriously, nothing." after she handed me the tissue box, she would give me this motherly look with her brow raised. it wasn't a pitying look, but it could have passed for one.

i know mrs. krett just wanted me to be brave. earlier in the year she had commented on how i really had my "shit together" and how she wished she could've done so when she was my age. she saw me get rejected from my top 9 (out of 10) colleges within a 2 week span. she hugged me after each one and let me attempt to disguise my tears of disgust with myself.

i think i'll always remember one thing she told me during a cry session. "you don't have to be happy. it's enough to just be content." and i don't know if she knew how much she impacted me when she told me that. it's my goal to let her know someday, without her laughing, without my voice breaking, and without seeming insincere. i want her to know how much she's changed me, to this day, for me to be able to sit down and extensively blog - something i never ever got the motivation to do - about my life, and about being content. because that's what i am. and i've been working to get to this point ever since she told me that. and i will never stop working.

"how's the 4.0 coming?"

2011-11-13T22:39:00.000-08:00

well, at first it slipped and slid way up the junior year slope,
took some tumbles, twists, and turns of a senior,
got stowed away in my suitcases,
all packed up for college,
tucked away soundly in between cotton,
pink, gray, yellow, blue, fabric far from new,
stuffed in the trunk along with my guitar and other junk,
propelled forward with the air from thin, pursed lips,
set free into the air, wings flapping inside a chilly dorm room,
bouncing off walls of a mind aspiring to be a mind,
stuck in the sometimes scalding, sometimes soothing showers,
lazing in the dining hall, its fork dripping from its bottom lip,
and now
at a standstill
safe along my mattress
so mom, when you ask how my 4.0 is coming
i'll tell you
"i'm not sure,
but i'm enjoying myself."
it's got to be up there somewhere, hasn't it?
just a quick cry and the ring of a dinner bell
it'll run through the forest,
up the back yard,
and scale the walls to the kitchen in no time.

Without poems and deep thoughts...

2011-11-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

I find myself being unsure what to write about. I see people blogging about Halloween and candy, how their day went and their new hair color. Meanwhile I'm sitting over here on the fence with my notepad watching the game play out, wondering where to start with each entry. It's sort of the same problem I have with vlogging. There seems to be no point to it, like I'm not getting anywhere and no one really wants to watch me ramble about my mundane life anyway. But there are hundreds of subscribers on my YouTube channel and only 25 followers here who probably haven't stuck around since I created this thing however many years ago. So... here goes nothing. I'm gonna dive right in and blog about my life.

So I've been in college in Maryland for two and a half months now. It feels incredible typing that, almost unreal. It honestly feels like it's been so much longer, like I've been here for half my life or something. It just feels like home. Which is why my financial situation is so frustrating: I want to stay here, I need to be with the people I love, but I don't know if my bank account can handle it.

I love that I can talk about love so freely here. I can tell people I love them and mean it. I don't have to worry about it or think twice. I was very lucky for the harsh experiences I had leading up to college because it prepared me to be honest and brave and say what's on my mind. I don't know where I would be without those qualities.

So each semester we get 500 printer points. For both my English and Creative Nonfiction classes we have to print drafts of everyone's work and give them feedback, as well as printing out letters to the author. For english the minimum page number is 3, for Nonfiction it's 5. There's 15 people in one class, 17 in the other. I'm just gonna let you do the math on the amount of printer points that is. I'm at 230 right now and I'm about to have to steal some from someone else. Honestly, it's mostly frustrating because it's such a waste of friggin trees. Jeez.

My German teacher seems to think I'm some kind of language prodigy because I've taken three years of German and know more than most people in my class. Which isn't really saying much because I'm in the first level of German and if you've taken three years of it you should probably be more advanced.... just sayin'. She keeps cornering me and telling me that I need to go to Berlin this summer. and I'm like teach, my bank account don't bend that way. She seems to think otherwise. And lets me know often that my girlfriend is thinking about going. Which I know she's not because she's my girlfriend. Which is another improvement in my life. I'm not letting fear of relationships get to me. I'm far from home, and I've neatly shoved the past into a mason jar. It's not going to find me here.

I'm going to a wizard rock show this Wednesday in Springfield, Virginia with my friend Alex. This whole time I've been at college I've been yearning to attend a wizard rock show and take my mind off things. Even when I'm happy, extra weight gets lifted off my shoulders when I sit in a circle up front and listen to music about the Boy Who Lived. It's more than refreshing, it's more exciting than the most accurate metaphor, and I'm simply bouncing in my comfy blue library chair. I love the fact that I've been going to wizard rock shows since 2007 and each one feels as fresh and brand new as the one before. It just gets my bones so jumpy and happy and nothing else matters.

Last Friday, a girl named Mal Blum came to play in Baltimore. I found this adorable musician through my friend Liz who knew of my love of "Ampersand" by Amanda Palmer and sent me a link to Mal's cover of the song. I then found her other videos and became just a little bit infatuated with her. This was over a year ago. A month or so ago I shared her "Baltimore" music video with my college friends and they fell in love with her too. That's why we were all freaking out (okay, it was mainly just me freaking out) when we found out she was playing so close to us.

The collegetown shuttle ended up never coming and so we took Jimmy's taxi-van-thing down to the 2640 Space, where I hid from Mal's gorgeousness until after she and an amazingly talented Zoe Boekbinder sang their gorgeous melodies into the mic. I Hagrid-hugged Mal and explained the concept of Hagrid hugs, my friend Elisabeth's earthworm face, and told her of Liz's obsession with her, to which she replied, "I'm obsessed with her too!" and then wrote her a note. She was just so freaking nice and friendly and she gave me her contact info to book her at our school and eeeeee I freaked out forever because she's just such a sweetheart and I'm so glad I got to see her and got the lady balls to talk to her. It was such a nice intimate venue and I'd love to go back sometime soon.

Well, my hands are aching now and I need to go back to revising English papers. This talking about my life thing is kind of nice. Maybe I'll do it more often and eventually vlogging might even come naturally.

Metal smiles and Hagrid hugs,
Tianna

clean

2011-11-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

fuchsia and lime.
wrap me up and take your time.
until morning, we walk the quad.
arm in arm, golden silence.
you won't ask me how i'm doing.
it's ingrained in your brain:
"okay."
our ghosts are with us everywhere we go.
we strangle them, fight with death.
we're not as weak as we thought.

Sleep is calling me

2011-10-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

and I'm sitting awake, learning King of Anything on my ukulele that is far too out of tune. Just had a minor panic attack because I thought I left my laptop charger in the library and I am in no fit state to go and get it. But alas, it's in my bag. Okay. Anyway. It's hot. I've noticed that I get irrationally cold or hot depending on my mood. But most of the time I'm hot. If I'm not sweating, I'm about to. (Exhibit A that there's something wrong with Tianna.)

Classes have been stressing me out this past week. What jumps to mind first is my literary journalism assignment for Creative Nonfiction class. I usually enjoy going to this class but I'm honestly dreading going this Wednesday. This is going to sound horrible, but I'm really not that interested in most people. My topic is broad. My interviewees are nonexistent. My people skills are horrible. The fucks I give for this class are dwindling. I still haven't revised the piece I wrote to get published 3 weeks ago. I'm just kind of slacking and making up for it by making closer friendships. I need to find the healthy balance between the two again soon.

But now I need Katie's blanket that feels like a cloud, my Hogwarts blanket that feels like my cat Cheshire, and an empty mind. Okay, maybe thoughts of the cinnamon apple candle in my living room back home are welcome. It's gonna be okay, I'm registering for next semester, and I'm applying for more jobs. I'm gonna get better even if this one essay sucks Buckbeak balls. My excitement to let the bed swallow me whole is even more enticing than the anticipation to eat. Which, knowing me, is saying something, cause I really like food.

eating while alone

2011-10-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

One of the saddest things I witness is people eating alone.

Young, old... okay, especially old... but really, anyone eating alone just tears my heart right out and allows me to bid adieu to my appetite. I feel so bad that I want to stroll right up and sit across from the person, but I won't because society tells me that's creepy.

I might ask about the wispy haired man in the corner's favorite grandchild and hear how she got top marks on her latest Economics exam. But this would be wishful thinking on his part: in actuality, he won't have spoken to his granddaughter in years because of a fault line in the family tree that had nothing to do with him.

Maybe Grandpa missed her so much he started fabricating stories about her, like I am right now about a man I've never met. But I'm sure I've seen him. He's one of the souls that eats alone, appearing genuine and kind yet with the potential to be a sociopath or some other form of deviant. For me, eating alone sets my nerves on fire and injects angry bubbles into my tummy. I get so worked up wondering what people think of me that I can't really enjoy my food. Oh my god, she's adorable. Look at her cute friends. I better stare at my food or else she'll think I'm a creeper. There's no way I can speak.

And even when I'm not by myself, I find myself tuning out of the conversation of my table-mates so I can observe what others are up to. What are they eating? Do they look happy? Why did they choose this school? Where are they going after they're done with dinner?

In a way I suppose these questions are exciting. It's wondrous knowing that I could actually ask these things and not be looked at as a total weirdo - or at least that's what I think. I tell some people I think this and they go, "You're such a writer!" but I think it just makes me a thinker. I think, I think, I think. Sometimes too much. Take, for instance, this blog. I started out my entry yesterday about kettle chips and ended up talking about the time I drove eight hours to meet someone off Myspace.

But that's what I love about blogs, college, and life. It's so spontaneous. Sometimes it's only that way if we make it so, but the ability is fleeting. When we catch it, maybe we won't all end up eating alone.

The toothpaste was disgusting

2011-10-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

I just opened blogger.com with a few cloudy ideas of what I was going to write about, and then I clicked the link to my profile. What did I spy in my Interests section? Kettle chips.

I used to have a bit of an infatuation with kettle chips. It was partially because they tasted so fabulously salty, but mostly because my friend Ivy and I used to have a certain fascination with "Oh! Christmas Tree" by The Whomping Willows. Back in our fangirl days of 2008, we used to rap this song in public like it was our national anthem.

"Dumbledore just got here and he brought some appetizers
He's got kettle chips, some onion dip, and a plate of cocktail wieners"

Ivy and I would peruse the aisles of Giant Eagle on a safari hunt, sniffing out just these ingredients. Well, besides the plate of cocktail wieners because I'm a vegan and Ivy was vegetarian. We're too cool for that, obviously. There's even a picture of this exciting event somewhere on my Myspace... ah, and yes, I have found it.

To be honest, I forgot how much something as simple as kettle chips meant to me. I think they were more of a symbol of my friendship with Ivy than anything. Yeah, they're super tasty, but a girl with braces that got tightened once a month and sore three times as often isn't too prone to snacking on kettle chips when she's bored. So what's so great about them besides our partiality to that wizard rap?

Out of the blue one day in 2007, Ivy and I started talking about Harry Potter on Myspace. The first conversation we held in each other's Comments section was about how unrighteous Hot Topic was for not stocking Remus Lupin T-shirts. A year later I drove 7 hours and 42 minutes to her house in Middle of Nowhere, Virginia, where "Food Shitty"s are abundant, Ma and Pa's serves the best ice cream, and it's not a "pool", it's a "poe-ell."

Sometimes we'd mention the miracle of how I drove to southwest Virginia for the first time to meet a girl I'd befriended off Myspace. But what we'd truly focus on was how I jumped out of the white rental Nissan before my mom pulled it to a complete stop, how I jumped into Ivy's arms that smelled rich and floral, and how we peed in the Walmart bathroom with the creepy cold drains below our feet.

"Silly strawberry or mint?" my mom asked, pointing to the shelves of organic toothpaste without peeling her attention from Ivy's mom Debra. Who knows what they were talking about: what time their daughters usually go to bed? Where the nearest store with vegan options was?

"Strawberry," I shrugged, deciding to be spontaneous. I always chose mint. Maybe my time in Virginia would be punctuated with happy and delicious memories of Silly Strawberry toothpaste.

I think Ivy was the one who taught me that the little things like this matter. These memories do make an impact on my life. And they definitely, definitely prove that I changed while I was so close to her... even if the Silly Strawberry ended up disgusting.

"Is that Golden Girls?" Ivy's brother Isaac, who was my age, would interrogate from the computer room.

"Yep," I'd reply, a grin twisting my thin mouth. I was waiting for Ivy to get out of the shower, what else would I occupy my time with than old bickering women on a new flat screen?

Ivy and I fell out of touch for a little while, maybe six months or so. But she's one of those people that I've been confident since day one of our friendship. She'll always be hidden behind the cupboard door, maybe even under the stairs with the Dursley's spiders crawling around her Harry Potter DVDs. Wait, who am I kidding? She would never let those get anything with more than four legs near them.

Just looking at the words "kettle chips", a whole scrapbook seems to have knocked into my head like a meteor. Along with kettle chips comes this whole anthology of a rusty friendship. And now I'm hungry.

Of Wagner and Beacons

2011-10-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

Three washers, sisters of the trade, hum against one another. A few feet down the hallway, I snuggle up to a turquoise washboard of a chair and carpet that reminds me of the brown shag from my childhood basement. Since then my basement has been remodeled, but something tells me this room won't change anytime soon. Maybe the flip flops, sneakers, and Converse strewn across the floor will make a few invisible steps. Maybe the swirling wall art will unstick from the cinder blocks. Maybe they will cascade to the ground and swallow the soft Febreze scent. Maybe they already have, for today it smells of pumpkin pie and cinnamon apple.

It is fall and my friends are raving. Spice has snuck its way into every imaginable nook and cranny. For the first hour it smells intoxicating, but soon it leaves a sick feeling in my stomach. I close my woozy eyes as Alison Sudol coos sweet words through my earbuds. I focus on breathing in and out, my raincoat crinkling against my ribcage. This room, where my head laid on her warm lap, where I extracted my soul onto the table, has no remnants of the beetle we caught in here weeks ago. It's clean despite the open boxes, tossed blankets, and forgotten, fuzzy pink socks under the bed. It's empty: the box of kitchen appliances I'm using as an elbow rest is irrelevant.

They say there's a first for everything, and that's no exception in here.

"How was school?" "Okay." "What did you learn?" "Nothing."

"How are you?" "Good." "What do you want for dinner?" "I don't care."

"You look tired." "Yep."

These pathetic excuses for conversation from my Monroeville life creep up on me sometimes, brushing against the thin hair on my arms just enough to tickle. I swat at them, telling myself that I've improved. I've gotten past small talk just like I told myself I would, or at least I'm getting at it. I never thought about cutting more than a slice or two of my soul out at a time. There wasn't anyone who had enough of an appetite for it, anyway.

Now, the I regurgitate the whole pie. All of me is out there, every piece, no matter how fragile or intricate. I've shrugged the snow and dandruff from last year from my shoulders, and it's bare. It's cold. It's fall, and you're ready.

I can be too. I sit and wait for the warm to embrace me, but it won't do any good. I need the cold, the whipping winter winds of Mother Nature. Maybe the beacons of a distant white mountain will dial me, leave me a flickering voicemail. Maybe this heartache is for good - maybe I only miss home for my eager to please mother and my furry, purry cats - but where's the fault in that?

As I rise to pass the washers, I will be pulled forth by their synchronization. My legs will do high kicks in my mind and I won't have to watch her hurt anymore. Everything will turn cold and dry soon, and I won't hide my arms inside my polyester.

liar, liar

2011-07-25T17:49:00.001-07:00

both of us, caught in the act,

one of noble deceit, thinly veiled honesty -

where were you when my stomach

ate itself

from the inside out?

your gaze, so shallow, so shy,

your grin, so rare, so earned,

so secretive, lax, controlled, punish me.

a game of empty threats, a house of wax.

one blow from the hunt,

I spilled; and when you listened, crumbled.

“good job, I’m proud of you, you can do better.”

but could you ever know, how can you, you never will,

the speed with which my fingers,

the feelers of a bookworm,

ached to shake your knees, reach for the wheel,

wave in your face, I’m right here.

breathless, as you hit me through his eyes,

full force, to your gaze I bid adieu

a dozen times a day.

baby, bliss wasn’t cut out for liars.

July 13th: A.M. Ramblings.

2011-07-13T01:35:00.000-07:00

Well, it's 4:36 a.m. It's any old Wednesday. It's another sleepless night. It's nothing new.

Except I'm seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tomorrow at midnight.
Except this is the second time this summer I've pulled an all nighter whilst awaiting the arrival of a friend.
Except I wouldn't do this for anyone else, and so I can't take this for granted.
Except this is my last summer here before I'm college bound.

My pile of emotions is stacked so precariously high that if one more feeling was added on top, the tower would crumble and my brain would become mush. I can actually already feel it leaking. Okay, that's gross.

I can't imagine what my life would be without Harry Potter. Not even that though - just the revisiting of my love for the series. I heard it read to me and I read it myself countless times, but I became slightly disenchanted when I began hanging out with a friend who didn't really "get it." Because our friendship ended and because I got into the fandom, my life is a completely different story than it would have been.

I'm trying to prepare myself not to be disappointed, and also not to be too utterly depressed after the movie is over. It's hard. I remember when the Deathly Hallows book came out, people were saying "Don't worry! We still have the movies!" and now we don't have those. It seems our resources are dwindling, but in reality, I believe our creative outlets in which to showcase our love for this series are only growing.

All I have to say is that 1.) My tissues are already packed, 2.) My friends had better be ready to be groped when I need a hand during the movie, and 3.) My Winky the House Elf costume better win first prize at the Barnes & Noble party. Boo yah.

In other news, I just signed my best friend Bobby and I up to be extras in The Dark Knight Rises which they're filming in Pittsburgh this summer. BTW, that's where I live. They apparently need to fill a stadium with the fervor of Steeler pride. Which I don't have. But whatever. I mean, it's cool that we get to be in the same general vicinity as Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard, I guess. But like, all day free food? Come on. You know I'm there! Also, it's the day before my eighteenth birthday. What more could I want? (Well, a lot, but shut up.)

So, now that my emotions are in danger of teetering over the edge with copious amounts of anxiety, excitement, and a dash of nausea, I must embark for the retrieval of my friend Daniel who has experienced yet another trauma in his life this morning. In case you're curious, his bus driver got arrested at the airport and then the bus broke down about an hour later. Also, I feel terrible for recommending the MegaBus to him. Somehow, it was a lot classier when I rode it in New York last summer.

Weasley girl, out.
PS: Yes, it's possible to be a Weasley and a Slytherin.

The Sociology of Internet Haters

2011-06-23T18:36:00.001-07:00

From the moment I copied the definition for “tabula rasa” into my notebook for my Psych class, I knew it was what I believed about the way humankind is born. According to Wikipedia, tabula rasa is “the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.” Or, in other words, nurture influences us far greater than nature. Our experiences make us who we are.

I can definitely make the claim that this is true for me. There are many factors that influence who I am today: my dad walking out on my family when I was ten years old, my sister making bad decisions that has led to years of excommunication, and my best friend of five years declaring I simply wasn’t good enough one day. My brain tells me that I would never have become the person I am today if it weren’t for those situations. The level of trauma they induced, the amount of tampering they did with my feeling of self worth, the flooding memories that accompany even the ringing of an alarm clock - those things prove that occurrences in my life shaped who I am.

Who I am is strong. I am a young woman who values perseverance above all other things. Ambition, creativity, and passion are three characteristics that I would say define me. But there’s no way the intensity of those traits would exist or that I’d be as proud of them as I am if it were not for the negative events that have happened to me or that I have witnessed.

I am aware that not everyone is like me. There are those who would disagree that nurture has the biggest impact on us, and to them, I say: how is living a delusional life treating you? Honestly, I can’t think of one person who hasn’t been affected by their experiences. Which is why it troubles me so much to write about what I’m about to share with you.
When I started writing this, I was extremely infuriated. It was five in the morning. My blood was boiling and there was no comprehension in my mind regarding the logic of this specific human being’s statements. And yes, they’re human. They’re not just “Internet trolls.” Yeah, they’re total assholes. But they’re people just like us, and they are how they are for a reason. By now, 6 pm the next day, I am more contemplative about how this even happened and why something I can’t change angers me so much. I don’t believe that things happen for a reason, and maybe that’s why I’m a bit more on the pessimist side most of the time - and what bothers me is that clearly, haters don’t think that way either.

Since 2007, I have been making “fandom friends.” These people live anywhere from four hours away to across the country – and sometimes, not even within the USA. It’s become clearer to me now that they are just average people like the rest of us. However, back when I first started making close friends with people who lived as far as they do, I didn’t think that anyone who lived close could compare. Not a single soul. There would never be anyone who understood me and my passion for Harry Potter like these fantastic “foreigners” did.

Little did I know, there were people just like that in my own city. In July 2010, I was introduced to a very close friend of mine, Erika. I had to think for a while about when we actually met, because it seems like it’s been so much longer than it has. When I talk to her, I feel as if she has known me since birth – since toddlerhood, at least. The first time we hung out was with a mutual friend at her house about fifteen minutes away. We had a Lord of the Rings marathon and sat in her basement from 10am until almostmidnight, watching all three extended editions of the films, making jokes, and generally having a great time.

At the time, I had literally forgotten it was possible to be that happy. Erika taught me that not everything that happens to us must be taken seriously – and sometimes, it works out in our favor to not care too much. That way, we don’t worry. From that movie marathon on, whenever I hung out with Erika, I felt carefree, like nothing else mattered. Maybe it’s because she’s a Hufflepuff – she has this light in her eyes that doesn’t really go out, ever. This is why it was so shocking to learn, several months later, that she was a suicide survivor. I could not imagine Erika having any relation with depression; she was just a big ball of light that never stopped giggling or pointing out things that appealed to my sense of humor like no one else could.

Only a month later, Erika was headed to college downtown and I was a senior in high school thirty minutes away. We only managed to see each other a couple times while on break, and times were stressful. I got wrapped up in drama and I gave my heart away too easily. It hurt. I can still feel it hurting. Sometimes I couldn’t even find a reason to get out of bed. I skipped school because I felt too worthless to carry on. I confided in her when I needed someone, and she would share with me personal stories that made my jaw drop. How anyone could think of her as anything but an angel was far beyond my comprehension. She’s just too sweet to ever have been hurting the way I was hurting. But still, it gave me strength to persevere – if she could move past dark times, maybe, just maybe I could as well.

Yesterday, one of my favorite YouTubers, Tyler Oakley, reblogged a post from another Tumblr user. The topic was how much this guy hated Pride parades. Apparently he’s gay as well, because he stated something along the lines of “I am the only good gay.” I would return to his page and retrieve the exact quotation, but simply thinking about the amount of hatred on his blog makes me sick. It fills my veins with venom. Not only does this statement breed misrepresentation toward the entire gay community, but this guy was completely unopened to discussion. He would not accept any of the rebuttals he got, which made me wonder – why post it in the first place? Is the point of a blog not to share your ideas? Why, then, would you block others’ out in the process if you simultaneously want your voice heard?

Erika, being her funny, opinionated self, went to go write in this jerk’s ask box. Granted, I wouldn’t have done this, but I admire her courage, or as some would say, ~lady balls~. She didn’t explode and definitely didn’t waste her time on a three page rant about how wrong this guy was for hating pride parades. She simply wrote a parody of Cee Lo Green and said “I see you postin’ dumb shit / Bout the gay pride parades / And I’m like / Fuck youuuu.”

Within minutes I believe, she got a response in the form of a graphic that told her to go kill herself, calling her “a giant faggot to some intellegent gays” – exact spelling. Minutes later, another graphic was produced reading “Suicide – you’re doing it wrong.” Of course, this was meant to enrage not only Erika, but her close friends and the rest of the Internet in possession of a functioning brain that feels rational emotions. Whether the likes and reblogs were mostly people who agreed or disagreed with this sentiment, it still made me sick to my stomach. How could anyone, anyone, think that they had the right to tell someone so sweet, so dear, someone who had helped light the truth for me over and over again, to kill herself? After all she’d been through? Just because she is a suicide surviver doesn’t mean that it’s all peachy now. She carries those scars like the rest of us carry our past, and it’s simply not humane to humiliate and degrade what once hurt us beyond reason, or what still may continue to haunt us.

You never know how someone may be affected by what you said.

As John Green stated, “What a treacherous thing to believe a person is more than a person.” Sure, Erika is strong, and that’s what I admire about her – but she’s not a Superwoman. She’s not a goddess. She is just a girl, who feels and reacts and loves and hurts just like the rest of us. And the same goes for everyone else who is a victim of cyber bullying. Whether they’re strong and mighty is irrelevant.

My close friends – and even those not so close – can attest to the fact that I am rather fierce, fiery, and sometimes mean when I get angry and riled up. But even someone like me, who has a complete lack of regard for others’ feelings at times, would never order someone to end their own life. It’s sick. It’s wrong. It’s not something that would even pop into my mind. And it gets me to wondering…

What has happened to this tortured soul, this random blogger, this member of the gay community, thishuman, to make them so hostile? How detached, how disenchanted do you have to be before you begin making demands on the Internet for a total stranger to end their life? It happens every day. How can you be so pompous, so arrogant, that you take pride in being a total asshole? Does it make you feel important? Do you think you have a badass “dark sense of humor”? Is there power in dehumanizing someone just because they exist on a blog and not in front of your face? Would you say that to someone in real life?Because if you would, man, let me tell you something. You’re the one who will end up forever alone.

Throughout this blog entry, I have written and backspaced on the following question: “What if she did?” What if Erika wasn’t here for me, for her family, for her friends, for the Internet to appreciate and laugh with, but most importantly, for herself? All the time I see her sticking up for suicide survivors and people struggling with depression – myself being one of them. There is no one alive today and no one who ever lived who deserved to be told to end their lives. No matter how rich, poor, evil, horrible, or cruel of a person they are or were – everyone alive deserves a shot at life. Life is for the alive, and I’ll be damned if during that time I’m going to sit here and watch my very best friend be ridiculed by someone who’s never even laid eyes on her shining face.

What was this person thinking? Did he grow up in an abusive childhood? Did he have bullies in elementary school? Did he get sharp objects thrown at him one too many times in a past relationship? Really, who broke his heart? I’d like to know. I’ve been harassed online too – from hateful anonymous messages to spam on my Dailybooth pictures telling me I resembled a man. From Myspace and Youtube comments telling me I was ugly and a slut to Facebook messages telling me my chin was too big. It’s degrading, no matter how much we like to claim otherwise, but it’s even worse when it’s directed at friends we truly care about and hate, hate, to see upset.

In retrospect, I realize that some people may look at this post and think “What the hell? Internet hate is not that serious. Who cares if some random jerk said that? Shrug it the hell off.” And yeah, maybe that’s the argument that pops into your head first. But sometimes, I find it fascinating to crawl inside the demented head of Internet villains and just wonder what they were thinking. Because cyber bullying is not something to shrug off, it’s a serious issue, I’m going to keep wondering. And keep making people aware that yes, it is happening to innocent people, to children, to adults, and to my best friend and I.

In August, I’ll be headed to college four hours away and Erika will still be here. Thinking about how much I’ll miss her hurts too much, so I normally don’t do it. But when my mind strays to thoughts of the future, I know that she’ll always have a place with me. For her courage, her never-ending, fantastic sense of humor, and her strength, I thank her for showing me that you can make life what you want to make it. As much as it feels like it, I was not born with this girl in my contact list or my address book. Because I was introduced to Erika, I know that nature is important, but nurture wins out in the end.

Something that utterly confuses me

2011-05-08T18:55:00.000-07:00

is people that are scared of love. They refuse to let themselves care about another person so strongly. They think that if they make themselves vulnerable to another human being, then they’ll get hurt. It just makes me wonder what “risk” means to them. If we consult Webster, “love” is “to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for.” Obviously, love cannot be summed up as a simple definition in a book of countless words, but if it had to be, this would be the closest thing to it.

What buries itself inside your mind that makes you afraid to be passionate about something? If you can love books, music, fashion, and sports, why can’t you love people? What makes it so difficult or different about them? Is it because they can have a reaction? Because “music can’t let you down”, or “books will always be there”? Personally I’d rather rely on a real living being. Even though so often my refuge lies in smelly old pages or my iTunes or whatnot, my immediate stress relievers are my friends.

Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t rely so much on people who a) live far away, b) have realistic human tempers, and c) have hurt me in the past. But I know I can’t control where the people who care about me live, I accept that people get a little feisty with their words sometimes, and on occasion, my heart tells me to forgive even though it may be an irrational decision.

Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do. There’s always going to be the question of “should I?”. Because when you love someone, you give them your whole heart. That’s what love is, it’s not a whimsical feeling that strolls by hand in hand with a compliment every now and then. To quote Paramore, “Maybe I know somewhere deep in my soul that love never lasts.” It’s ridiculous to believe in everlasting love or love at first sight or ~ever ever after~, as Carrie Underwood would have you believe. Seriously, it’s not realistic at all. Of course your mom might have a story of how your neighbor’s grandmother married her high school sweetheart. But it doesn’t happen for everyone, and that’s what’s so fantastic about love.

Love prepares you for the worst. Some may scoff at this and say that it only is licensed to bring you joy and happiness or else it’s not real, but that’s not the case. If you don’t want to be afraid of love, then you need to treat it like an overly opinionated yet relentlessly passionate friend. It’s always going to be there for you, not always visible, but if you don’t believe in it then it’ll never jump out at you.

It’s like Santa Clause. Every Christmas my mom reminds me that when she was a kid, her parents wouldn’t buy her anything if she said she didn’t believe in Santa Clause. It’s something so simple, but if you don’t allow yourself to have faith in anything else but material items like books, music, sports, religion, or fashion, then you’re going to end up even more depressed than I am. And then I would pity you more than I pity myself. So don’t do that, guys.

Like Sara Quin called herself, I am an “emotional slut”. I fall very easily for all kinds of people and it doesn’t take very much for me to form an attachment to them. In no way, shape, or form would I ever suggest that everyone be accustomed to this. However, I take pride in knowing that even though I’ve been hurt in the past, I’m still open to love. If my mother, friends, and endless novels have taught me anything, it’s that love cradles you. Oh, and the Beatles. Thanks guys.

It’s just really astounding that so many of my friends admit to being terrified of something so many people chase. It makes them appear to be the bad guys because they’ll begin relationships with people and then suddenly bring them to a halt because of their fears. It makes me scratch my head, because so many of these people are involved in the Harry Potter Alliance or are just generally intense about geekdom or putting your whole heart into something… but they can’t put that much effort into caring for a person.

Stop being scared of love. Don’t be a Voldemort, be a Lily Potter.

Television.

2011-03-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

It's getting worse and worse. Why does my mom think it's even appropriate to yell at me to come watch Dancing With the Stars with her while I'm doing homework? Whaaat? I told her I got wait listed at Mount Holyoke and she was like "okay, come watch this with me." It's just kind of disappointing because she used to be so different. I remember an almost word for word quote of hers years ago, "Television rots your soul." She always stuck up for me when I argued with my friends and tried to convince them that books were better than TV. Even as a kid my mom influenced me to believe that, and now she's totally backwards and it's just weird. Because she's unemployed and doing less and watching more television, it sort of makes me lazy in turn. I have stacks of books that need read but I glue myself to the computer instead, which can't be much healthier than TV. But the fact that I'm not watching people with Cheez Nip colored skin sort of comforts me. I think now I'll just shut my door, stick my face in a book, and read about Atticus Finch. I really don't need the real world anyway.

Incoherent and Pointless

2011-03-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

But I figured I'd share this anyway.

I feel like one of the scariest things I've dealt with over the course of my existence (which obviously isn't that long of a time, so bear with me) is realizing everything you do is pointless. Whether it be an epiphany or just a short term idea that gets you down in the doldrums, feeling like your actions amount to nothing is one of the most depressing things ever. It could just be because I've been ruthlessly accepting classmates' friend requests on Facebook that I deleted a while ago, but more and more often I'm seeing people complain about how every move they make seems to go nowhere.

I'm surely empathetic with these people, but it just makes me so sad. Why can't they see that a change will come? Granted, it won't get here very quickly if they don't put some effort into making their dreams come true, but it'll come in the end. Things will change. Maybe the most we can do as human beings is just to fill ourselves with an overwhelming sense of hope.

There's no surefire way of going about not only creating hope, but keeping it for yourself as well. At least not one that I can think of. But there's steps that everyone can take to make it that way. This is coming from someone whose entire purpose in making this blog is to give herself hope, so listen to me. For the better part of my life I've avoided social situations and anything that could have potentially made me happy because of a few bad experiences. I've always been one of those people who will go out of her way to make herself miserable without even realizing it. That's when it's most difficult to recognize and stop - when you don't even notice you're doing it.

Even though all of these people on Facebook have people commenting and saying "I like you!", "You're gorgeous!", or "Of course your life is worth something!" they're just saying it because they were attracted to the reel of pity. Sometimes it's hard to decide whether the person is just fishing for compliments or if they just need someone to talk to, because oftentimes it's the same thing and then others the line is ridiculously fine.

I think the first step we can take in giving ourselves hope is to open ourselves up to people and not only complain about what we need to complain about, but let them vent back to you. Without that basic foundation of trust, you'll continually reach out to people who won't listen to you twice if you don't give them a shred of respect.

I'm really just rambling here. Maybe hope is what we make of it and our actions are only meaningful if we twist our minds into thinking they are. I guess that's what I'll have to start doing. Brain transplant, maybe?

it's all in your mind

2011-03-05T09:37:00.001-08:00

forgiveness. it's something i've never been able to accomplish very well. and while i can't tell myself that adding someone back on facebook or responding to their texts every once in a while is forgiveness, it's starting to hold a different meaning for me. i'm starting to accept the fact that it sometimes takes months to be able to say "it's okay." sometimes the things people do are so horrid and hurtful that we may never understand why they chose to do something so crappy. in the end, though, if we keep our anger inside it will only destroy us. as a teen, i've begun to realize i don't want that to be my future. at the same time, however, it's tremendously difficult to just make up your mind on something so trivial. you really have to walk the walk and not just say, "i forgive you." because if you do that and you still kind of hate the person, it's even worse than it was before. i'd rather get the cold shoulder for ten years than have to deal with someone who i hated.

it's extremely difficult to be ignored, but it's harder to not even understand why. sometimes, though, you need to keep in mind that it might not be your fault. and while this may seem like a cop out, it's proven to be true more often than not in my life. my dad leaving wasn't my fault. my sister walking out wasn't either. the boy i like ignoring me isn't my fault. sometimes people have mental blocks that keep them from doing things that they really want to do. maybe my dad and my sister want to ask for forgiveness, but don't because they're worried it may be futile (and it is). maybe the boy who's ignoring me wants to ask me out and he's too scared of commitment to do so. everyone has boundaries whether they choose to see them or not, and you do too.

so the next time someone says something mean to you, ignores you for a ridiculous period of time, or you just keep thinking of someone who you don't think is thinking of you back, just keep in mind that they're going through struggles too. even if you can't see them, even if they live very far away, even if you see them every day, even if they're your family. struggles can be internal, and those are the worst kind. as far as forgiveness goes, i'm still learning. but i feel like this could be the first great step toward it.

Our Truth Is Not Better

2011-02-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

For some reason, even though I only have two acquaintances who are vegan, I hear one argument cropping up a lot - online and in the real world. Stereotypically, people who are vegan are thought of as thinking they're superior to every vegetarian and meat eater out there. This isn't entirely true, and I'm living proof of it. But I'm not just that, I'm also living confusion as to why anyone DOES think that way.

Why would eating meat make you a lesser person? Why would the fact that I abstain from consuming flesh make me a goddess? It wouldn't, and it doesn't. I am not more evolved than anyone just because I don't consume meat or dairy. Before I became vegan, I thought that this kind of person never got off their high horse. But trust me, after the first year or so of being a vegetarian or vegan, it starts to hit you that you're not really a superhero after all.

There's nothing wrong with having pride in yourself for being a vegan. I have lots of it. But there's no reason to place people below you on the chain of cool or right/wrong. You can eat my friends, you can vote against my right to marry, and you can chop my trees down, but I'm not going to think I'm a stronger human being than you are. I have weaknesses and faults as well as you do, and I have made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. It is inevitable.

Even if you don't eat meat, even if you recycle, even if you're a model student - you're still a human being. To say that any one member of our species is better than another is blasphemy. I'm not going to stand for something like that just because I'm a vegan. I think that's ridiculous, and I hope more of my fellow vegans will be able to see that.

I'm not taking your last name if you can't take my independence seriously.

2011-01-18T12:37:00.000-08:00

In Poetry class, my fellow students always manage to pry into my teacher's life in the lulls between assignments - because yes, my school has those, be jealous. He handles it with good humor and they never really ask anything too rude, but sometimes I can't help but feel as if he should be doing some of the questioning.

Today, the topic was his wife - as it oftentimes is since she's the mother of the allegedly cutest three-year-old on the planet. My teacher mentioned that his wife kept her last name when she married him, and for some reason this set my class alight with indignation. "That's messed up." "...Why?" "I'm sorry, that just goes against tradition." "But a woman is her husband's once she's married."

My teacher looked equally as enraged as I did at the last comment, which was unnecessarily provocative and weirdly specific and just uncalled for. In the past I may have sat there and simply shaken my head at this boy's prejudice, but today I said something. "That's irrelevant and offensive and not even true, so keep your big mouth shut." My class was shocked since I almost never open my mouth unless I'm called upon.

Eventually this guy left the classroom because he became infuriated that someone with a vagina tried to prove him wrong. I walked out thirty minutes later, unscathed, but overall disappointed in humanity. The same girl that said a woman changing her last name when she got married was tradition also claimed that "the 1800s would have been my thing! I would have loved to do anything my husband asked me to." Oh, right, like to back off while he pulls a Henry VIII and slaps you around. You like turkey sandwiches? Good thing I coincidentally just started making ten of them just a few minutes ago!

I had no idea people in my school, not to mention the elective of Poetry class, thought such ridiculous things like this. I don't even understand them. But I know one thing: I don't care who you are, I'm not taking your last name and your skewed prejudices if you can't accept my independence. It's not gonna happen.

my definition of friendship

2011-01-15T08:16:00.001-08:00

is, somehow, quite different from most people's who i interact with. to some people i know, a "friend" is anyone who will listen to them. i think this is rather ridiculous, yet somehow admirable. it means you're willing to let anyone know what's going on with you and what might be bothering you, but on the other hand, what happens when you're not upset and don't want to speak to this person? personally, i wouldn't want a near stranger labelled as my friend just so i could complain to them - i do that to people who aren't even my friends on a daily basis and feel no emotional connection with them.

then there are the people who think that because it's long distance and you've met once, you are friends. maybe it was a harry potter convention, a journey abroad, or a concert downtown, but no matter where, people are everywhere. it's really great when you meet someone randomly and you have this great connection, but if you can't tell that the other person is as pleased as you to be momentarily hanging out, then... you're not really friends. granted, the person who isn't enjoying it should probably let you know, but sometimes they just wait until you go away. and if you don't, holy gods, you should be able to realize you're not friends.

there are people who sort of like your talents, your blog, your hair, your style, or think you're funny. they might go to your school, be on tumblr, even talk to you on skype occasionally, but they're just not friends to me. i don't know what it is with me and my extreme hardcore view on what friendship be. but one thing i know that it's not is silent. this sort of thing happens a lot in the harry potter fandom. even if i've hung out with said person more than once IRL, if we only speak to each other after the fact every few months or so, i'm not going to consider them friends. we could have been in a musical together, we could have met in 2008 and resolved some of the worst drama ever together, but ...they're not my friend.

a friend, to me, is definitely not someone who doesn't make the effort to visit you at all over a break. it's not someone who every once in a while facebook IMs you and it's definitely not the creeper from school blowing up your phone. it's not someone who doesn't reply to your texts and it's definitely not someone who doesn't text you at all. i need constant communication if we're going to be friends, and if that means you have to live near me, i guess that's my own problem. i do have long distance friends, but they just tend to not understand what it truly means to live 7 hours away and not see a person day to day. it means that you're probably not going to be on their mind constantly, and should therefore make more of an effort to speak to them. how hard is it, really?

people often act like i'm gonna crack down on people who say we're friends when we're not - i won't. it doesn't affect me, so if you honestly believe we're friends, go ahead. eventually, your 365+ days of not speaking to me while erase me from your brain and we'll be equal. sometimes, it feels like i have no friends at all because no one fits this criteria. no one is that willing to keep in touch with me in more than a youtube comment. i used to be an intense best friend person, like, i needed as close as you could get to a romantic relationship without dating. that hasn't happened since early 2009, and i've dealt accordingly. now, it seems more and more like i don't get or require human interaction hardly at all.

i really hope my picky requirements for friendship don't follow me to college, because i'm hoping to not be a loner there, and one of the important things about the schools i've applied to is that they'll all be people that i want to take initiative and introduce myself to. it's easier said than done. but around here, with my only "friends" living 34908 hours away and not truly being there at all, i get sort of hopeless. rant, over.

to the non vegans

2010-12-23T16:13:00.001-08:00

if you don't want to get preached to, don't read this. i'm not really trying to sound preachy, but just to explain a vegan's standpoint. i don't really know how to do so without preaching. i'm just explaining my views, though.

when you say "i would like for animals not to be tortured, too, but we can't control that" i laugh. that is so far from being the only reason why people are vegan or vegetarian. it's also an ethical reason. for some people, it has to do with health issues and whether they like the taste or not. but a lot of the time, it's ethical.

people don't want to place things that were once living into their mouths, and under no circumstances would they consider a fried piece of flesh "food." it's just disgusting and repulsive to them. and when it comes to veganism, the same thing applies. we just don't think it's morally correct to consume things that rightfully belong to an animal. the cow produces milk for its calves, the chicken lays eggs for the same reason we pop babies out of our vaginas.

the fact that free range eggs and milk exist is comforting to some vegans, but on others like me it has no effect. it's still a part of an animal, and whether there was an inkling of torture during the process or not, we just don't believe it should be put in our mouths. it's 2010, and there are other ways to get protein, iron, calcium, and b12 than to have to force livestock to eat dogs and wheat and grain in order to get fed back to us. there are plenty of children and families in poverty that grain could do good for, and yet we're forcing animals to eat it because we're laboring under the delusion that it is necessary.

it's not.

Holidays? Whateva.

2010-12-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

I would say that the majority of my friends and acquaintances are holiday people. In other words, they are somewhat obsessed with decoration, family time, and unnecessarily cheesy holiday cards. Not once in my life have I been able to understand this. I've never fully accepted Christianity or baskets full of calories, so I find no joy in Easter. I have always been single on Valentine's Day, so it doesn't affect me at all. I don't eat very much candy and children scare me, so Halloween is just another night in. I dislike champagne and loud noise, and staying up till midnight is almost a nightly occurrence, so New Year's isn't that big of a blast. I'm a vegan, so "Turkey Day" isn't all that appealing to me. Also, the winter weather is horrid, and how anyone could celebrate by maxing out their credit cards and calling it love is beyond me.

For example, I'm always up to helping out my mother whether she calls for it or not, but laboring over plastic lights to decorate the house just exhausts my mental stability. I can't fathom how the ideas of cutting down pine trees and shoving them in the corner of your living room or hunting down a flock of turkeys for the dinner table is culturally acceptable. Posting thankful blogs, tweets, and facebook statuses seems so incredibly shallow to me. Why not do this any time it feels appropriate? It's sure fine and dandy that there's a holiday dedicated to stuffing your face with a wild animal, but why is this accompanied with false well-wishings and compliments? If someone's been there for you your whole life, you better damn well thank them all the time. It's so much more logical to thank someone for saving your life, cooking you dinner, or loving you unconditionally than just because it's the end of November and oh gosh, what if you never get to thank them again?

Don't even get me started on Christmas. If I wanted to have a [real or fake] tree in the area of my house that I utilize the least, I would, and there's nothing wrong with not having the motivation to put one there. Just because I feel that there are worthier things to spend money on than gifts for people who probably won't appreciate them in the long run anyway doesn't mean I'm shallow or lack the ability to have fun. If that was true, I wouldn't invite my friends over around the holidays. I wouldn't want to see anyone, and I'm definitely not a total Grinch.

My lack of enthusiasm for the holidays only worries me a bit when I think about my potential children's happiness. What if I just sit around every holiday like I do now and don't give a crap about decorations or pretty things around the house or holiday light shows or family time? Assuming I have a legitimate family in the future, unlike now, of course. One of the most magical things about being a child is looking forward to Santa Clause, school breaks for the holidays, and Valentines in the classroom - at least for me it was. I enjoyed festivities at one point even if I think they're ridiculous now. Should I feign excitement about the holidays when I'm older, is that parents do when they lose heart?

My mother, for one, always acts as wholeheartedly excited about the holidays as ever. Every December she's quick to let me know how her parents would never buy her anything if she downright claimed that Santa Clause didn't exist. This is all fine and well, but why does an abundance of electricity need to accompany this belief - along with annual arguments about whose turn it is to scrub the walls and the banister so that the fake Christmas wreaths don't collect even more dust than they already have? It really doesn't make sense. Neither does the overlarge, stuffed santa in the living room or the holiday bows tacked to the walls or the thirty dollar penguin that waves at whoever walks in the room - which is a 50/50 chance considering only two people occupy my house.

Really, though. Who do we decorate for? We don't invite the neighbors over and they've stopped barging in. My friends couldn't care less if I deck the halls or dress up like an elf, not at all. And splurging on holiday gifts is as ridiculous as paying $160 to get into a college. It's not necessary and won't ever be. I always leave the table early on Thanksgiving, and I've always forgotten that Christmas stockings even existed. There's no more excitement, and while I can attribute some of my lack of fun to my grandma's death, most of it is just my general mopiness.

There's my cold-hearted rant. Bye now.

why

2010-12-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

don't my friends talk to me when i'm sad?
why is it that they only will listen when i'm happy?
why is it that i could be bawling my eyes out for hours, but if someone calls i immediately must regain mental metal?
why is this the norm, when i should be spilling my feelings?
why am i one of those people who know that release of emotions of good, yet no one will let her do it?
why, you dumb bitches, whYYY?

jealousy

2010-11-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

i have a little problem with the green monster. i relentlessly try to ignore him, but he's always there when i least expect it. i don't know what i've done to deserve his company so often, but every corner i turn, every dilemma i solve, there he is waiting for me at the finish line. it's almost as if i can't have friends without having jealousy too. i'm the ron weasley of all of my friendships with everyone - before long i begin to imagine a pedestal underneath their feet, their arm outstretched with a gold medal clutched in their hand.

not only is this a daily reminder to myself that i'm not as witty or skillful or humorous as i think i am, but it's something that takes a toll on all aspects of my life. social, mental, and physical. i'll stay in bed for days hoping that the longing will go away, but when i stand up dizzy there's just another reminder of why i didn't want to end up there in the first place.

all i can ask for is that this envy does not drive me to insane measures. i don't want anything more than a normal life.

go with the flow

2010-11-27T01:11:00.000-08:00

some people just never know when they can expect better, you know?

like, they'll break up with someone because they either feel like they need to or their friends talked them into it or maybe they were broken up with. but they float in space, convincing themselves that they can't find better after months and months of looking. and i think this is so sad because it's so understandable.

you never, ever know what's coming next or what to expect. yet your mind places these images of what should be in the back of your brain and when it isn't real, all is chaos. is it so much to ask that our minds would just be put to rest and let spontaneity roll off the wind and divide itself where it may?

i just think there is too much thought placed upon where, when, how, and why things happen. if we just went with the flow, there would be no worries like these. they're just that - worrisome, pointless, silly. pushing them far away would do humankind in general a lot of good

i think this is why people tell me i should get high with them.

Look before you leap.

2010-11-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

I found myself with the urge to blog, and so here I am, Blogger. I thought it'd be pretty silly to ignore the avalanche of words in my head, so here they come, spilling out one by one as if they have an out box.

For reasons that I'm not going to go into detail about on here, not like anyone really reads it anyway, I started once again pondering my decision on attending LeakyCon 2011. Yeah, it's just a Harry freaking Potter convention. It's really not that big of a deal. You go or you don't. You spend the money or you save up for college. You act out your favorite character on stage or you sit at home and mope.

But over the last three years, my emotions have gotten mixed into the blur that were the three conventions I've attended. This has happened so much so that when asked what I thought of each individual conference, I usually don't even know where to begin with a reply. Therefore, I'll tell exaggerated stories of what happened based on what I know I felt like. These things could have easily been changed, and every year pre-convention it seems they'll be smoothed out. But somehow, some way, I end up letting petty things get to me.

The fact that I feel guilty a lot of the time is probably a very prevalent factor in my less than satisfactory enjoyment of Harry Potter conventions. You would think, after nine years of loving a book series, that that's what the main focus would be at a location where hundreds and thousands of fans have congregated. Close friends and relatives have always congratulated me on my admirable utilization of the phrase "look before you leap."

When aforementioned information was found out, I began to roll my eyes and then giggle to myself at the stupidity of some of the people I used to find some of my closest friends - and in some cases, more than that. I just can't fathom in my mind how I didn't turn over the consequences in my mind before I acted on impulse. It used to be such an important, valued step for me to take before I made any decision in my life. Maybe that's just what happens when you start dating, who knows.

My mind flitted from the conductor's emotional trainwreck that was Infinitus to the passenger's emotional trainwreck that was Azkatraz. Before I attended these cons, I made lists of things I needed to both accomplish and avoid at them. Did I end up completing the things on my list? Did I even give the lists a second thought once I'd arrived? Hell no I didn't, and it's because I'm always too bothered by what my friends think, or making sure my friends are happy.

I wouldn't argue that the latter is a genuinely good thing, but when it gets in the way of my own well-being, it becomes a problem. And when hundreds of dollars are being forked over only for this to happen, it's an even bigger problem. So really, although there might be people who actually want me to go to LeakyCon, I'm crazy for going. But if I have any wits about me, I'll be single this time.

Right... already failing at that one.

i wrote this 2 mays ago but i still like it.

2010-11-14T07:53:00.000-08:00

it's about a friend who gets more attention than me.

strands of grass arch in your direction
bristle at your presence
come to say hello
precipitation pitter patters on your frozen windows
but that’s just plan b

the heavens above no know god
unless they are admiring you
kneeling in the pews
singing their hymns
musty church fumes getting to their head

nature envies you
forest green with spite
though the oak will never admit to this
their blooms got the memo
you were coming to visit

even the insects buzz after you furiously
my brow knits together and I look down
upon my own brightly patterned socks
even the wasps shake your hand
that’s alright with me

a tabby cat sniffs after your shoes
its dusty odor will copy your every move
her whiskers flex and form to fit your glass of fragility
and the frosted sweetness of your mother opening your eyes
in her dreams

diamonds yield serpentine warnings
whispering to you, take my exit
once you reach the fork in the road
yet I could drive right by
tumbleweed would even dodge my tires

your ears save miraculous ideas
when they begin the fall to the sewer
sounds I cannot approach give way to you
the hands I know so well,
crushing the hibiscus plant on my windowsill

in a heartbeat

insufferable

2010-11-13T12:50:00.001-08:00

one of the worst things is the encountering of someone who is absolutely insufferable. no matter how much you try to console them, they will bounce your help right off of you. despite your legitimate concern and genuine longing for them to get better, they refuse to accept any kind of guidance. and this, i think, is what i'm scared of the most. if not the most, it's definitely near the peak of the list.

i think this feeling is most commonly associated with teenage angst, which is extremely truthful. most of time, teenagers want to solve problems on their own, which never really works out how they'd thought it would. some of them are really so insatiable that this attitude carries out through adulthood, and that's what i'm trying my best to avoid. i never want to be so closed up that i bounce opinions off my steel armor.

if this is all i ever accomplish with my life, then i'll die knowing i tried as hard as i could to attain happiness. even if i never achieve any other goals, i'll know that i'll have had my doors open for newcomers. not slamming opportunities closed is something we all need to work on, but especially budding adults, because whether you choose to shed your light on others or not, your own soul should be well acquainted with it.

hipster appreciation

2010-11-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

this is just going to be a pretty random and jumbled blog because i have a lot on my mind at once. disclaimer.

so i haven't posted in a little while. i have no excuses and don't really feel like any are necessary. but uhmmm. i'm pretty much giving up on nanowrimo. i thought i had a good idea, but it was just ripped off a movie and i don't feel like writing out shit that's not mine or restarting six days in. plus, this weekend has been kinda strange. i haven't written in a while about anything, really. my friend caleb who i met in july randomly texted me yesterday and told me he was beginning his two week trek to move back to california and wanted to spend the night with me. so he did, and he left several hours ago only to break down an hour ago. so he's getting towed to here around midnight. joy joy joy joy staying up late. good thing i love this kid.

so last night we watched the final battle and made fun of the things that went wrong with it while still appreciating the musical as a whole, planned some evil plans, and ate. when i say ate i mean we almost didn't stop shoving food in our mouths, hahaha. it really felt like the burrow. it's really cheesy, mostly because my mom says it every time, but my whole house honestly feels like a different place when we have someone staying over. it just warms it up and makes my mom and i really happy and genuinely kind. not that we aren't like that at heart all the time, but stress makes us forget a lot of the time. and when we have one of my long distance friends come to stay for a day or so, it changes my mom's and my outlook on everything we've come to know as habitual each day.

and this is, i think, is the main reason why i want to move away so badly. the want is so intense that it drives me to tears and makes me feel as if i'm missing out on something so much bigger. i wake up and my muscles are tired from recognizing everything i see. it's not that i'm unappreciative, i'm really glad i grew up in a room i could make my own and have people's faces that i love all over my walls and look up and see my favorite quote from dumbledore dangling over me. it's just that i want this bedroom in a larger scale. i don't want to only be able to be myself in a flourescent ten by six area for the rest of my life.

i just want a whole city where i can call myself myself. from the time i wake up to the time my head hits the pillow at night and i laugh or cry or think myself to sleep, i don't want to fluctuate personalities. never again do i wish to spend a summer as a bitter, coldhearted bitch and then soften up in the fall. i want to always be like this. i want to have love pouring out of my fingertips at a second's call.

it's honestly amusing how often i tell people i have no reason to be here. i really don't know how many other people feel this way. i like to assume that there's a fair amount, but then there's a large part of me that is very aware of the fact that several of my friends are really genuinely proud of where they hail from. i always wished i could have pride like that within me, but it's just not come around. i used to be absolutely terrified of moving when i had a best friend. when would i ever see her again? but i haven't seen her in five years, even though i found a note from her from fifth grade in one of my old coat pockets. err..anyway.

it's because when i spend long periods of just texting my friends and not really feeling much, i'm usually in this perpetually morose mood. i'll talk to people and act really happy, act, even if i really do love them. it's just that over the years i've become some kind of person i don't recognize when i'm alone. but when i'm with friends and that smile is real, i realize what i've been missing out on. and that, blogger, is why it's so hard to leave long distance friends. you never know when you're going to be happy again. it could take nothing more than a skype call.

i would literally rather be anywhere. i'd rather be in iowa with mallory, i'd rather be in lebanon with steph and monica, i'd rather be in ann arbor with sarah, i'd rather be in grand rapids with eva, i'd rather be in canada with patrick, i'd rather be in new jersey with cole and anna, i'd rather be in nyc with my ex boyfriend who hates me now, and i'd rather be in virginia with ivy. i'd rather be in new england with tom and bella. i'd rather be in florida with thomas and amber. i'd rather be in baltimore with alex. i'd rather be in california with zach. i'd rather be anywhere but here. how is that even possible?

so my friend jesse just wrote a really sweet blog about me and i'm returning the favor. i think out of any of my friends, i think jesse feels like this the most. he's a lot like me in general, but i get that sense that he wants to escape a lot. and i don't even think it's because the place he's in is genuinely crappy. i think it's mostly because he's experienced so much of the same shit each day and eventually you just want more. and unlike anything we've experienced in the past, i think jesse and i both really feel like we deserve something new, something more now. at least if he doesn't, he should.

what i appreciate the most about jesse is that we can talk about absolutely anything. and also the fact that it was always that way. there wasn't ever a time when i really wanted to tell him something and didn't feel like i could. and i think that's the most important thing about any kind of relationship with any kind of person. if you can't say what you want, the point of the friendship kind of ceases to exist for me.

another really refreshing thing about this boy is that he's just not someone who's in everyone. there's this aspect of humor that we can always link with each other and it brings a smile to my face every time. i'm more than grateful that he hates the same people i do and has the same favorite wizard rock band that i do. he's just always there. and he makes me want to be a better person. he showed me the definition of forgiveness, and that it doesn't always have to make you feel like shit.

i know if we were to drop everything and hang out right now, we'd have the time of our lives. we could have totally unprecedented, unplanned fun and not worry about when we'd have to leave each other. because he's one of those people who once you leave, you don't worry about the steadiness of the friendship. it's always going to be there whether you like it or not.

so thank you, jesse. for teaching me how to love someone unconditionally. for teaching me to say no when i need to say no. for teaching me to stand up for myself, and for giving me an endless supply of laughter that wouldn't be contagious if it weren't for people like you.

and start dating that blonde girl.

also, he's giving up on nanowrimo with me. feels nice to have a buddy to go "fuck that" with.

To Be Inspiration

2010-10-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

So many people want things. And not enough people need them. Some of those wants could very well be needs, and some of those needs wants. People, myself included, get the two mixed up all the time. This is very apparent when you find yourself really starting to admire someone and notice the little things about them such as the arch of their eyebrows or their awkward nervous habits.

How can you separate want from need in this situation? Is want limited to receiving love, or can it be that you really do harbor a desire to give someone your undivided attention and affection? Can this be borderline need, or is there some other specific criteria that allows it to be defined?

When I want to be in a relationship with someone, I find myself focusing more on ways that I could ease the pain in their life and devote myself to them rather than ways I could catch their attention and convince them to adore me. So do I need their affection in return, or am I just wanting to feel it? I could never make up my mind on this, but I think I've just begun to figure it out.

You can't honestly, totally love someone if they're not in the core of you. Not to say that you must do everything for them or revolve your world around one person, but you should feel like you're tied to them in the most pleasant of ways. It shouldn't be a "oh, I'm your wife, let me make you a sandwich," but more of a "I feel like we could really make genuine positive impacts on each other's lives, so let's try this."

Trying to convey this to people when asking them out is nearly impossible, and how can you ever know whose intentions are real and honest? I believe that's one of the reasons why most people seem to automatically jump to the conclusion that long distance relationships are doomed. They're tricky, but they shouldn't seem impossible because of trust issues. Hell, I have too many of those and I'm always throwing myself forward into the unknown.

I am sometimes told that I'm in need of a cool down session and that my friends walk on eggshells around me. Which is amusing because my attitude (which my mom always blames on me being a Leo) certainly does crop up uncontrollably. In a setting with more strangers, I'll hold it in or maybe say some snarly comment, but if I lose my temper around a close friend I'm not holding any anger back. I think this is because I assume that no matter how upset we become with each other, we'll always be there for each other because of the connection we'd already built up.

I wish I didn't have this mindset sometimes, but on the other hand it makes me very proud that I do. If everyone thought this of their friends, there would be lots of arguing and not a lot of making up. At the same time, though, there wouldn't be as much distrust and suspicion between close friends. I guess I got fed up with that and just assumed that if someone can't deal with the fact that I may disagree with them, then they don't deserve my friendship.

I've developed some pretty intense opinions about things in the past couple of years without really attempting to, but I've never really formed a whole one on the want vs. need topic relating to relationships. Honestly, I think it's what you're out there looking for. When you relate the need of love to the need of oxygen, food, and shelter, it's nothing. But when you relate it to every day life, it's absolutely everything. And I live in a world that I learn to overcome day by day, so I'm going to say that it's a legitimate need. Wanting to love someone is not just want. Some people, like those that need to feel love, need just as strongly, if not more, to give their all to one person and make them believe that they are cared for. Because they would be.

If only I could rant like this to someone specific and not Blogspot, I'd be good. ;)

long distance relationships

2010-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

one thing i've noticed throughout my several attempts at these things is that you have to have almost a personal checklist of traits in order for it to work. of course, there's the expected: you must be loyal, dedicated, passionate, trustworthy, honest, and entertaining. with a good internet connection most of the time. most of these things are kind of obvious. also, you should actually really like the person you're dating otherwise it's absolutely pointless. the distance is supposed to build you up, not be there as a cushion.

and also, you have to have strengths that are within both individuals that have little to do with the relationship itself, but end up having effect on it. i feel like if you're a generally awkward person in real life, a long distance relationship is even more difficult than it is for the outgoing person. which is how it is for me. i'm so shy in real life and i really only blossom around my close friends. who are also very far away. so how can i not let fear get in the way when there are so many hours doing the same thing?

i don't know. the whole thing is so confusing. i'm either too obvious or an ice queen and there is no middle ground.

what bothers me.

2010-10-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

because clearly, that's what keeping a blog is for. am i right? who cares, that's what mine is for at this point in time so deal or don't read. love you all. this blog has no structure at all. i'm just ranting. next time i'll focus on a more specific topic i'm hoping.

first of all, i just want to take a couple minutes and think about what kind of person i've become over the past couple of years. it is literally so confusing to me that if three different people asked me who i am and what has happened recently, my answers would probably all vary. it's not that i would be lying to any of them, it's just that the way i see it constantly changes. when i say constantly, i mean by the minute sometimes. by the hour, by the week. one thing i'm bitter about one day may be something i wake up the next day and feel terrible about. i'm an extremely indecisive person, and i don't think anyone hates it more than i do.

i thought i came to terms with the fact that i am not perfect a while ago, but evidence would suggest otherwise. for example, i constantly blame myself for things that happen when in fact, it's nowhere near my fault. and i know it isn't. it's just easier to blame yourself sometimes because people will accept it and assume you're truthful about it. at least my friends do, i don't know if yours are any better.

a little over a year ago, i was extremely proud of who i was and who i had become. i was proud of the fact that i never had to cuss anyone out, i was proud of being a huge nerd and having wonderful friends both in the area and across the country. i was extremely happy, and it showed in everything i did. i wrote, painted, danced, drew, listened, learned, spoke, did my hair, wore my clothes, and just lived in an enthusiastic manner. and maybe the thing that is bugging me the most is how i don't know where and when that all disappeared. not all of it, i'm sure. i know most of that is just buried under this disgusting layer of whatever hatred i possess.

i always used to preach to my friends how there was not enough room inside of us for hatred and that we needed to fill our every thought and action with love and respect and kindness. but that is totally unrealistic. people, and society in general, are bred to believe that depression is normal. feeling bad about yourself is the norm. it is rare to come across a human being with a constantly positive attitude shining on the outside. it would be ridiculous and impossible to firmly believe that someone out there is happy all the time, but there are some people out there who really go to all limits to make people believe that they are just so they can shed light on others. and that is the kind of person i admire.

i've always wanted to be the kind of person that someone really, truly likes. and i'm not singling out the romantic aspect of it, although sure, that's sweet and nice. it's just an overwhelming feeling to know that someone actually wants to talk to you. they want to know what you're up to, what you've been up to, what you're planning on being up to, and how you are. anyone who actually gives this much of a shit (which actually isn't that much in most people i know's standards) is really admirable to me. and i admire a couple of my friends very much so, just like this. i just never believe often enough that i could be that person.

i'm beginning to realize that i'm actually really sarcastic and even hurtful to people who i don't believe legitimately want to speak with me. i'm not sure when this started happening, but it was sometime in 2010. which, like i've bitched about before, was a generally bad year. just bad. i'm really crossing my fingers that i will have the guts to do all it takes to forcefully make 2011 a better place. i mean, i have high school graduation to look forward to. huzzah. i guess.

but really, there's no need for me to be like this. i'm spiteful to people, but i'm constantly looking for a way to better myself, and sometimes it just comes out wrong. and one thing i never do is apologize. i told myself to only say sorry when i either really meant it or it was really necessary, or both. but more of the former. there's no point in saying sorry if you don't mean it. you're not doing yourself any good, so just don't.

people just need to relax and chill out. you don't always need to think about what you're saying before you say it, but you should have some general idea of what you mean. if you don't say what you mean, that's a problem. and if you don't know what you mean, that's when you should put the thought process into it.

and can i just offer you some advice, blogger? watch out for cute people. cute people who know they're cute, make sure the whole world knows that they know it, and use it to their advantage may be bad. however, cute people who know they're cute and act like they don't know it are even worse. i don't even have a word to describe them. i've met so many of them that it's overwhelming. it's not just the shy person that thinks they're pretty at times but a mess at others. it's the cynical hoebags who think they can get their way with anyone just because they act humble.

nope. not gonna happen. gtfo, cuties.

and now, resume my pride. unless that's what got me here.

one very long hallway

2010-10-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

this blog is going to be about my friend situation. or, lack thereof. if you actually read this whole thing, i'll blush from head to toe.

let me just start by saying that i was, if such a thing exists, bred to be a best friend. i care without regret, i give up my own worries for a friend, and i will always be there faster than you can say quidditch. however, some people in my life have thrown these qualities aside, maybe with good reason and maybe without.

it all really started when i was in fourth grade. sure, i'd had friends up until that point and we would have sleepovers every other weekend like most girls our age. i even had what was very close to a best friend, if playing barbies and laughing over the cuteness factors of each other's brothers is considered best friendship. and i guess it is when you're little like that. but it wasn't until fourth grade that i found myself with a real and honest best friend, danielle.

danielle and i spent all of our time together. if i was exagerrating at all, that 'all' wouldn't be in italics. i really mean all when i say it. we literally begged the principals of the three schools we passed through together (middle school, junior high, high school) to place us in the same homeroom before the new year started. granted, this never happened, but danielle and i still managed to find time to make our friendship blossom. we'd pretend to take notes in class, even classes we really enjoyed, and actually scribble lengthy notes to each other that we'd exchange in between periods.

just seeing her handwriting address me would make my day, make me smile and be able to survive the school day without seeing her at lunch. she slept over my house every single weekend, and i'm not sure if you could even call them sleepovers. she would literally ride my bus home every friday and stay until sunday night because her mother didn't want her home. it was an escape for her, which was probably why it hurt so much when she told me she'd basically lied about that.

i guess what hit me the hardest was how in our five years of friendship, i grew to really admire danielle. this wasn't the first time i'd crushed on a girl, but it was the most serious i suppose. i literally was like a clueless puppet of a boy while we were friends, and i didn't interpret my feelings to be overly relevant to anything. so when our differences clashed and she told me she needed space, i never did talk to her again. we were freshmen then and now we're seniors and she's in cyber school, and i haven't seen her a day since. i can't believe it's been four years since i always assumed we'd be best friends until the day we hit the manor home, but that's just life i guess.

right after danielle and i ceased to be friends, about a month or two after actually, when we still avoided eye contact at all possible times in the homeroom we were finally and ironically placed together in in ninth grade, i got a friend request on myspace. at the time, myspace was still really popular and i just assumed it was some other girl who found humor in the fact that i adored a book series enough to convince all of my 500 phony social networking friends that weasley was my real last name.

this girl's name was ivy. she and i began posting on each other's comment sections back and forth, talking about harry potter and our lives in general. we then took our conversation to AIM, another internet facet that's also pretty much dead now. from november until the next june, ivy and i waited desperately to be able to meet each other in person. she lives in southwest virginia and me in southwest pennsylvania, approximately seven hours apart. the amount of traits and interests i had in common with ivy verged on absurdity. we could finish each other's sentences and mention almost any miniscule detail of the harry potter series and know exactly what the other spoke of.

we were supposed to meet in march of 2008 but our plans collapsed, leaving us moping in tears for a week after we'd counted down the days for so long in excitement for our long awaited tackle hug. eventually, though, on the last day of my freshman year of high school, my mom drove me the seven hours and i got to meet ivy in the middle of a deserted virginian walmart parking lot at one in the morning.

i lived with that girl until august. we went to our first harry potter convention together, and no words could ever do justice the feeling of missing that place. we were like sisters, joined at the hip, and it was all our mothers could do not to start to believe that they had gained another daughter. eventually, ivy had to go back home and i didn't see her until the october after that. and i still haven't seen her since that october. it's been twenty four months since i've seen her, and obviously we aren't close like we used to be. we can't even really hold a conversation without getting sidetracked and shutting up.

then came several collab channels i was on on youtube, where the members and i were supposed to be friends. right now i'm on http://www.youtube.com/generationofawesome, where i haven't even been a day of their cycle of over 14 members for a month or so. within a couple weeks i felt like the bane of the existence of the channel and all because i fell in crush like. which is a totally stupid reason, but now it seems i'm never allowing myself happiness again because of it. literally, i'm too bitter to accept that anyone else on the channel is happy or good spirited or any of that jazz.

sure, we're all supposed to be friends. but we're not, and there's no way you can make fourteen strangers be best friends over the internet unless they have the will to. which they obviously don't. i'm desperately in need of a best friend, and i was getting close there for a while until shit fell down on me. i don't know what i did to deserve that, but now i can't talk to anyone about anything remotely serious. my friends will literally not respond to me if i'm upset. i could be five seconds away from suicide and they'd close their phones and roll their eyes.

it just seems like i've gone too long without someone close like a best friend. it's like that saying that when one door closes, another opens. and one door closed. so i'm waiting for the other one to open. but i'm walking down this huge ass hallway that never ends because there is no other door. i refuse to settle for loneliness. i am no luna. i need friends to thrive. college, hurry the hell up. and make sure i'm not like this when i attend you.

honestly, i'm not even best friendless right now. i'm just plain old friendless. i used to at least have friends that i could pretend really liked me, but now all i have is a book i've read a million times through and a bunch of DVDs that reduce me to tears. i'm not even cool enough for the sweatpants and pint of ice cream. who am i, anyway? my friend had a lady gaga party the other day. i am one of the world's biggest gaga enthusiasts. why wasn't i invited? because i'm nameless. okay! cool. enough bitching for today.

one less

2010-10-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

one less worry, one less regret
one less friend i've never met
two more fears and a thousand more tears
a hundred more miles and no more smiles
the telephone rings off the hook
you water wilted flowers,
ignore the dead dogwood
enchanted gardens fall to negligence,
dug under the dirt of two thousand and eight

until you put the turn signal of happiness on
you say you've got to have the will
but when will is exchanged for won't
will you live up to what you push?
a voice tells me you'll be one less
one less beacon of light,
when so many down the hall have flickered out
but i hope you end up considering the wilted hydrangea
since you never took the time for trees like me

because i have the time

2010-10-21T17:55:00.001-07:00

and the negativity needs to flow out in some other way than what i had planned.

i hate your boyfriend. i hate how he stole you from me without even trying. i hate not knowing whether he tried or not. i hate the way you're so self centered anymore. you're not yourself. i hate how all you can focus on is who we used to be and not what we could amount to. i hate those stupid metal bands that i paid to hear, worthless. i hate your obsessions. i hate your "real" friends. i hate that you move in with someone i can't stand. i hate that all of my friends are closer with each other than i am to any of them. i hate that no matter how long i talk for it seems that i am making no difference or impression upon my listener. i hate that i need to resort to blogging to get my feelings out because no one else will listen to me. i haet angst. i hate being a teenager. i hate hate. i hate the cheesy nutcracker collection that line the shelves above this computer in my brother's room. i hate the facebook messages. i hate the way my friends get idolized for having talent. i hate the way i'm jealous. i hate how you still hang out with your ex girlfriend and pay me no mind. i hate that you don't realize that i like girls. i hate that i like girls. i hate that i hate that. i hate that i've made myself get over all the girls i've fallen for, without hardly trying. i hate never having found one that changed my mind. i hate having to wait 11 more months for anything to change. i hate the fact that i might not even get accepted. i hate that you'll do long distance for anyone that's not me. i hate that you stole from me, lied to me. i hate that you broke my heart. i hate that i told so many people and assumed they'd care. i hate when i'm in a good mood and gush about it and then regret it later because i knew your lack of enthusiasm stemmed from your anticpation of my next heated rant. i hate being a leo. i hate being feisty. i hate being unappreciate, selfish, uncouth. i hate being shy, outspoken, the underdog. i hate being me and i hate being you, i hate that you try to be me. i hate that you moved on to bigger and better things when that is me. i hate that you won't listen to me when you're all i have left here. i hate that i felt the need to write this. i hate that none of my friends really know me. i hate that my thighs ache with soreness, my heart with longing, my head with the cold, and my fingers from writing. i hate that i'm sitting where you sat.

2010...

2010-10-21T13:47:00.001-07:00

...has been pretty crappy. i'm really crossing my fingers in hopes that 2011 will get better. i know i have to do something about it for this to happen; good times just don't voluntarily spring up in fields of daisies, however i'm finding less and less will to do so. it seems every time i reach out to grasp a miracle it's slipped out of my touch. regrettably i have fallen into the mindset of rejection being the only possible outcome. like so many deadbeat office workers, i have succumbed to the societal norm of depression and would rather lie in bed with my thoughts than speak with a happy and healthy human being. it's not just a question of "what's wrong with me?", but "what the hell is wrong with the world?"

i really just despise people. everywhere i turn human beings are constantly relying on themselves and folding under pressure of a society that doesn't look twice upon its prey. if only we had ground and reason to trust more, we would be happier people. i wouldn't have to be jealous of my friends just for being close with each other. no one would have to go out of their way to slight anyone because envy wouldn't exist. more than love, envy makes you do crazy things. great, maybe, but terrible.

it's seemed for a while now that it is not possible for me to voice my opinions without either a) coming off as a huge bitch, b) being ignored by close friends, c) getting into arguments, or d) coming off as a huge bitch. did i already mention that? i'm so sorry. i know people say they hate high school, but i'm terrified of being stuck in this rut during college too. it literally feels like my brain was drowned, wrung out, and hung on the line to dry. except it's not drying. it's a waterlogged room of insanity.

i never know what to say, and sometimes this is the scariest thing in the world. i say more things than others do occasionally, more honest things, but that's because they spill out of my mouth or my keyboard before i have the chance to stop them. i don't mean to tell the truth sometimes, but the atmosphere that my friends have surrounded me with seems like it gives me the chance to be myself. but what happens when that goes on too much, gets carried too far? i didn't even think that was possible. apparently i was missing out on a huge clue. whoopsy.

maybe it's just because i'm stuck where i'm living and i'm not kelly rowland's wife, but really, the world is so much more melancholy than it needs to be. you shouldn't have to be on the internet 24/7 to know that the world is beautiful. there should be an instinct in humans that lets them know that they're free to roam the world where they want to for whatever personal gain they seek. no one is restricted to their country, their city, their home, their school, and especially not their mind.

think outside the box and don't assume anyone's an insufferable bitch for having opinions. you don't always know where they come from, period.

Lilacs.

2010-10-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

At first I was going to blog about tattoos, and then I was going to blog about self-appreciation, but I settled on something far less important - scents. Literally, how things smell.

But before I begin, I just want to say that my hands are already numb from writing multiple college and scholarship essays today. Actually, I've written more in the past two hours than I have in quite a while. And there's so much more writing to go. For my second top choice in schools there's about three sections of writing due and I swear my brain is going to explode.

Right now I blog as shades of white, blue, and orange color the pixels on my desktop screen, the webcam faced away from everything because I'm terrified of Internet intruders, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone waiting dog-eared on the soft fleece blanket behind me. From the hallway my eight year old calico purrs like a lawnmower, settling into her favorite spot beneath the avalanche of laundry. Alright, so it's not that big yet, but avalanche seemed like a pretty intense word. I would say it's almost eighty degrees in my room - it's usually a sauna, but it's past the certain time of year where no matter how hot it gets my fleece blanket is always a necessity. So.. why does it feel like Christmas?

A strong scent of peppermint is drifting up the stairwell from the living room. I usually have some idea of what my mother is doing down there by the smells that rise upstairs, but I honestly have no idea what she's up to. It reminds me of the holidays when we just relax and suck on those swirly red-and-white mints and listen to Christmas music from when she was growing up. The plastic box is out right now full of Halloween decorations, but it might as well be full of candy canes and Santa hats instead of bats and grotesque masks.

These illusions are so interesting to me, when a certain smell possesses an almost magnetic force and pulls you right back to where you first breathed it in. Every time you inhale, the memories, no matter how dull they are, become fresh again, surface into the sticky pool of thought that is your brain. There has to be a reason why ever y time I smell a certain cologne I think of an ex, or every time I smell the summer rain I'm reflecting back on the time Alex and I danced in the downpour while our brownies in the oven got soggy.

A few minutes ago I was in my brother's room attempting to scout a new (old) coat since the temperature outside is dropping [and my arms get cold in October air]. I routed through bags and bags of plastic before I realized I was digging through summer things, not winter. Quick to catch on, I know. One bag was full of nothing but bathing suits, and leaning down close the beach from summers past still lingered in the strings that tied it together. Who knows how many years those swimsuits have been in there? It could have been only a few months and it could have been five years, but the scent was overpowering: sand could have been stuffed in that bag for all I knew.

My train of thoughts has been interrupted quite a lot since I started this blog, so I'm going to just start wrapping up before it becomes horrible. I want to remember a time before I had the friends I do now more vividly. I want there to be a smell that pulls me back to not just a certain time of year, not only a certain weather, but a carefree time. And carefree should smell like lilacs. Only more exotic. I've just decided.

Surprise!

2010-10-19T18:11:00.001-07:00

I'm gonna blog a little bit about - you guessed it! - Harry Potter before I get to bed. I started rereading Sorcerer's Stone a couple days ago. I'm only a hundred pages in, and already it's a totally magical experience. It's so fun to pretend like you have no idea what happens, and it would be amazing if that could really be so and we could live through the experience again. However, just waiting years to reread your favorite book puts you in this position where you are forced to read the same exact words differently. It's possible to make different judgements about characters and situations than you did last time because from the last time you picked that book up and dusted it off, you've more than likely been through life experiences that have changed you just in the slightest.

That being said, it's such a beautiful read this time around - all over again, and totally differently. I don't think I've ever laughed so much at a Harry Potter book as I've laughed at this one, whether actually "lol"ing or just chuckling to myself. I'm going to hope that this is some sign that I've lightened up in the past five or six years or so. Yeah, okay, so it's been too long since I've read Sorcerer's Stone. I'm ashamed. However, I used to be the biggest hard ass in junior high and the beginning of high school and I brushed aside most of the humor Jo would put in her books. I did this less toward the end of the series because I suppose I related to the humor more, or maybe there was just less of it. But little things like Hagrid sitting on and breaking the spindly legged chair in Mr. Ollivander's, Uncle Vernon's futile attempts to force Hagrid to leave the hut, the fact that Uncle Vernon actually was stupidly ridiculous enough to take the time to search out the hut in the first place, and just the way Harry back talks his relatives is awesome to me now. Not that I didn't appreciate these things before, but now that I know how the plot will lay out, the little things become more precious to me.

Right now I'm reading the part in which Harry meets Ron for the first time and I'm already super excited for him to get to Hogwarts. I'm trying as hard as I can to see this as a first time reader. People who see me reading Harry Potter (which I haven't really done in a while) may scoff and go "the same thing is going to happen, you know", but if I knew that, I wouldn't reread it. Of course the major plot points are going to be the same, but the actual things that go on are always slightly different. I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Inevitably, there are some things that still make me wonder, some vocabulary I still don't quite feel the incentive to go grab a dictionary to understand, and some questions that still arise while I read. Where do you get a ticket for the Hogwarts Express? There can't be a special number you dial because wizards don't use telephones. Is there a box office or what? Hagrid got it in advance, so I'm assuming it's special delivery of some sort. And what if Uncle Vernon refused to drive Harry to King's Cross? I feel like that would've been a much bigger, at least a more dramatic, step in keeping Harry from attending Hogwarts. Also, WHY does Ron have dirt on his nose? Was he degnoming the garden right before his family left for King's Cross?

Also, the amount of foreshadowing is intensely enjoyable. Hagrid reminds Harry so many times that he'd be mad to rob Gringotts that I wonder how I didn't suspect something all those years ago. Oh yeah, because I was just enjoying the book for the moment and didn't think about the little things that might be important. Wooh. I love rereading. Also, I adore the Gringotts warning inscribed on the silver double doors when you enter for some reason. I'm just gonna copy it here because I feel like it. Enjoy the flashback!

"Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there."

Drifting.

2010-10-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

Recently I've come to realize that I'm absolutely terrified of drifting through life and not really living it. Between the college Philosophy class I took two years ago, the English course I took last year, the English and Poetry classes I'm currently enrolled in, and the reading I do day to day, I've done what seems like enough thinking for a lifetime about whether I will be truly fulfilled by what I'm gaining from life. Carpe diem, Mr. Keating says, seize the day and make sure nothing passes you by.

It's so much harder than it sounds, though. How do you go about making sure you don't miss anything out of life when your days are set in schedules that you're expected to follow in order to succeed? KLGJESKGSKLGELSK!

Urgh.

2010-10-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

Sitting in internship class gives me the will to write, although the idea that this torment could be inspiring is laughable. We were told to choose a career path we have interest in and then were supposed to be matched with a “professional location.” When I was filling out my expected list of three possible careers, I wrote “vegan cooking” as number one. My teacher assumed that I wanted to do nothing but cut meat and dairy out of my diet as an adult, and she is one to be insufferable. She actually looks quite like Miss Frizzle. Scary. Anyway, I figured if her mind couldn’t be changed then I might as well take the trip once a week and pretend to intern at my favorite vegan store downtown. I’m totally doing it for the wrong reason, but who knows? Maybe I’ll end up as an organic food expertise and help homeless children become vegan and their lives will forever be changed.

You know what, forget all this. I’m just gonna be the queen of Genovia.

i knew a girl.

2010-10-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

i knew a girl whose eyes were smudged with life; forget charcoal makeup. those eyes were lamps in my darkness, nightlights in the deafening hallway. i knew a girl with a lion's heart, with a brain unlike any i've ever encountered, brought down by no one and nothing, not even what tears apart most girls: other females. falling asleep next to her was better than having a full blanket of fleece on every winter's night worthy of my shivers. not once did she snore, kick me in the night, or complain about my thrashing nightmares. and i loved her like a sister, for mine was taken from me before i realized what was flashing before my eyes. she was eccentric and hot-tempered, young yet wise in the way only the elderly can be, as admonishing as a third grade teacher would be from the perspective of a wee eight year old.

with a bandana around her head and a 20th century cell phone, she stayed up with me for hours guessing what was wrong with me while i was too much of a wuss to confide in her. she made silly suggestions while i hid my watery smile in the blackness of north carolina. "are you scared that lena will wake up in the morning with hair dye all over the couch she doesn't own? clearly you're worried about cole and sunny meeting." i giggled and she held me, i cried and she wiped my tears, i made insufferable, annoying noises and she went and got me the tissue box without asking. she told stories of her father making jokes, of farming and being a fifth year college student. she was packed with amusing anecdotes and calming ways to solve issues no one would dare open the door for. she's the kind of sympathetic person one can easily take for granted, but i knew better than to do any such thing.

i do not write about this girl because i fell for her, i do not reminisce about her because of her strange impact on my life, or because she is an overwhelming symbol of heroism to me. i just need to explain to myself how one person can bring me so much enlightenment and sorrow at once, so much grief and guilt and yet a means of escape. i often used to question if i should cease my relationship with her and never speak another word to this girl. after all, her place of residence was over ten hours and five states away. how difficult could it be? just stop replying to text messages and facebook posts and i'd be good. but it was not going to happen. i had too much respect for this girl to just get over her like i'd gotten over so many before her. i have trashed friendships for good reasons and terrible ones, and without them i am forcing myself to live with no regrets. this is so much harder than it sounds, so much easier said than done, which is easily said about many things that could be done.

so i continued talking to this girl, and i'm very grateful that i made this decision. even if we don't talk every day, and she's very close with people that i very much disapprove of, i still admire her more than anyone. i'm not sure if she knows this, but she's one of the only people i can ask for advice from without worrying about sounding like a total jerk or anything at all negative. even if i handled a situation like a total bitch, she'd still be there holding my hand and telling me it'd be alright. and that she did. she comforted my heart in ways that no one ever cared enough to try.

she was like a mother figure as well as a big sister, walking me out of the harry potter theme park with her arms around me and another crying teenager. she didn't guide us straight from heartache to beauty, but from heartbreak to something of indifference. and after all, feeling nothing is better than wanting to kill everyone in sight.

she let me cry on her shoulder when 2,000 people in that theme park passed up a crying girl outside dervish & banges and rolled their eyes. she mailed a postcard for me that ended up worthless, she knew the consequences of my foolish actions before they happened and didn't bother to warn me. like a good mother would, she let me figure things out on my own no matter how far down it pulled me. she let me fall, crumble, sit on her lap, wrap my arms around her neck. she carried me around on her back, fell onto me in tears in my mother's bed, picked up the phone and called off a relationship as i held her hand. it felt so strange to be in the opposite position, comforting her, running my hands in circles on her back, but the next day you could never have tell that's what happened the night before. i miss her like no one does, like no one claims to, like no one ever will.

there's something about this girl that lets me open up automatically. it's almost a frightening feeling. if she asks me to spill the beans on what's upsetting me, i'll do so even if what's up isn't that bad. i just want her to be a part of my life and it's the weirdest thing. she is protection.

if i ever get the opportunity to live with mallory, i will.

UGH.

2010-10-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

i'm sitting in internship class. you have to pass it to graduate. it's kind of overwhelming. whelp. might as well start complaining!

it's only 9:22 in the morning and it's already been a pretty shitty day.
i woke up at 5:40 am and shoveled a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch and soymilk down my throat, chugged gingerale (ew? weird combination) and took a 3 minute shower. i never take morning showers. this was weird.

then i ran to the bus stop, stood there for about 10 minutes in the freezin' cold with wet hair, and watched my bus come. and then watched my bus pass me. and then listened as the kids who wait at the same bus stop as me but don't attend the same school as me laugh at me. then i walked around the block, down two streets and then back home. then sat on tumblr for an hour and came to school, where i sat in silence for an hour. this would be because my art class is full of douchebags and drew a penis on someone's folder. in paint. and no one will fess up, so we sat in silence and got zeroes until someone does. lol. can college come any sooner? jesus christ.

and now i'm on formspring and someone just asked:

"why are u such an ugly lesbian dike? i'm sick of looking at gaytards likes you."

WOW. I'M NOT SURE HOW TO BEGIN IN RESPONDING TO YOUR WELL THOUGHT OUT QUESTION, ASSHOLE.

and now my internship teacher is trying to tell me that my vegan cooking internship is not possible. even though i gave her a location for me to go. WHAT? what sense does this make? none, i tell you.
i will get through the day if it kills me.

2010-09-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

always do they say it's
fine
stop worrying
put your pencils down
if you twist it to its advantage,
insanity is something worth
dying for

i want to go on the best roadtrip ever.

2010-09-11T17:30:00.001-07:00

a post senior year road trip for me would honestly be better than a senior trip of any sort. i dunno what you think of when you hear the word "roadtrip", but this is what i want on mine:

1.) the best of best friends.
2.) absolutely no drama.
3.) endless laughter.
4.) music, whether we know all the words or not.
5.) a group reading of a book (not including the driver.)
6.) documentation of each state we enter.
7.) absurd rest stops.
8.) a plethora of inside jokes that everyone gets.
9.) driving at night.
10.) unhealthy snacks.
11.) care. free.
12.) candid photos.
13.) air conditioning.
14.) faking finding margo.
15.) gossip about grade school.
16.) latoya.
17.) relating everything to harry potter.
18.) funny road signs.
19.) eating at a restaurant just because of its name.
20.) being able to say we're done with another year of school.
21.) feeling infinite.
22.) peeing in a bottle.
23.) smiles left and right.
24.) minivan.
25.) picking up more people on the way.
26.) ukulele.
27.) imitating each other's laughter.
28.) story time.
29.) holding hands.
30.) seeing the last harry potter movie together.
31.) buffalo sighting.
32.) i spy.
33.) accents changing as we go.
34.) doesn't even matter when we're out of service.
35.) vegan cookies.
36.) sour patch kids.
37.) shoeless.
38.) booty shorts.
39.) choking on food laughing.
40.) freestylin' about scenery.
41.) quote book.
42.) dvd player.
43.) braiding each other's hair.
44.) giggling over the cute waiter.
45.) flipping off the pittsburgh sign.
46.) "girlfriend, you need a hat."
47.) vlogging.
48.) crazy looks when we stop to get gas.
49.) no check ups from crazy parents.
50.) nappy hair from the wind.

the list goes on.

i don't even know

2010-09-09T12:36:00.001-07:00

i don't know what hurts the most - the part where i was led on, or the part where i would've preferred being lied to.
the part where i believed it or the part where i needed it.
that i want it to be how it was but i need to start fresh.
that i care too much to let go and hurt too much to hold on.
that i cry too much to be cheerful and laugh too much to be morose.
that i wish too much to move on and accustom myself to rejection too much to be surprised.
that i still want you too much to be friends.
that i still mope when i'm not distracted.
that i'm still never too distracted enough not to mope.
that i still feel worthless and friendless and unloved and i shouldn't.
ever.
i'm too good for this. why can't i believe it even though i know it deep down?
why? because your face just screams 'fuck you' in every way possible. how?
it's just a face.
time to grow up.
but i know that even when i do figure out what really hits the bruise in the right spot, i'll just be more upset.
and i think that's what stings the most, at least.

i blog about reality all the time

2010-09-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

it's so hard for me to stop wishing something would happen. like, you know, getting over someone and all that jazz. because i've had my head in the clouds all my life, i'm used to bending the rules of normality to get what i want. and it's just hard to sit back and watch people adapt to 'pure reality' and be stuck with nothing but my dreams to keep me going. and when those are crushed, i'm absolutely clueless on what to do next. i get really depressed, but that's not the worst part. it's the getting better that's hard, because sometimes i'll have moments and segments of days where it seems like everything is getting better. but it's not. it's all a trick, and when it actually does get better, how will i keep my dreams out of the reality i'm trying to pursue? i don't even know if reality is worth any attention i could give. my life.

where i'm from

2010-09-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

I'm just gonna post lots of poems I write in school here, kkz? :)

I am from the frog pond,
from quads I didn't want to ride
and swimming pools I was too embarrassed to get in
(chlorine, cousins
who thought of me
as a city rat)
I am from the bleeding heart plant,
the treehouse in the woods
my brother and sister built
now just a memory.

I am from roadtrips,
from Diane and Tara.
I'm from Alanis Morisette
and James Taylor,
from pirouettes and plies.
I'm from a wardrobe of
fur coats and fawns.

I'm from gingerale,
broken mugs and neglected tea.
From acoustic guitars,
power chords and Vienna sausage.
I am from the eight-sided circle
reading "stop Voldemort"
at the bottom of the hill,
far off in Virginia,
or a castle across the seas
from Silly Strawberry toothpaste
and the Walmart parking lot
all of the magic
stowed away, kept in blogs
and annual conventions
the kind of interaction I was born for

50 ways to convince people you're magic

2010-08-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

i wrote this for poetry class. when it's written out on the page it looks a lot cooler, with like 20 of them on one page, but i ain't tryna confuse myself by replicatin' that on blogger. whuddair. my teacher clearly loves me. yeahyeah, i know i'm clever.

1.
offer
a ride
in your
flying car

2.
keep checking
the mailbox
the letter
will come

3.
yell
LUMOS
at the
light switch

4.
sew
an
invisibility
cloak

5.
join
the
quidditch
team

6.
invisible friends:
ron
and
hermione

7.
purchase
a
magic
wand

8.
get
fitted
for
robes

9.
stupefy
the
school
bully

10.
beg dad
to grow
hagrid's
beard

11.
recreate
tom
riddle's
diary

12.
"has
anyone
seen my
horcrux?"

13.
get
adopted
by
molly

14.
make
your
own
spells

15.
pregnant?
name
her
hermione

16.
write a
musical
about
it

17.
claim
you're
a
metamorphmagus

18.
listen
to
wizard
rock

19.
refuse
the
3rd
floor

20.
actually
believe
in
nargles

21.
love
poems
to
gilderoy

22.
security guard?
no,
that's
filch!

23.
only
sleep
in
four posters

24.
request a
government
time
turner

25.
there
has to be
ginger
hair dye

26.
lose
count of
the
rereads

27.
cosplay draco
even if
you're
a girl

28.
no
fighting
just
dueling

29.
"make
love
not
horcruxes"

30.
wand
always
at the
ready

31.
harry potter
posters
count as
wallpaper

32.
study
your
star
sign

33.
you're not
riding a horse,
you're a
centaur

34.
make
your own
radish
earrings

35.
pass out
anti-
umbridge
flyers

36.
palin
and
voldemort
2012

37.
it's not
halloween,
but i'm still
luna

38.
crucio
when
things
get bad

39.
50 ways
to make
voldemort
mad

40.
horn-rimmed
glasses? must
work for
the ministry

41.
you're a
catholic,
i'm a
potterist

42.
mom, i'm
scared for
school
tomorrow.

43.
what if
they put
me in
slytherin?

44.
you're a
quarterback,
i'm a
beater

45.
the whomping
willow has
feelings
too

46.
defacing property?
just letting them
know the
chamber's open

47.
no castle?
not applying
to your
school

48.
in your
next life,
haunt the
bathroom

49.
my child
is a
NEWT
student

50.
toyota?
have you
heard of
the nimbus?

heat

2010-08-27T11:04:00.001-07:00

heat
shuts my eyelids
rests my head against the car seat
lulls me into a greedy stupor
desire
overcomes me, unwanted
threatens to, unwillingly
convince me, swiftly
if I were in your arms
it would all be okay
if I were your neighbor
it would be just fine
if I were someone else
it wouldn’t be a failure
to need to see the emotion in
eyes I’ve never looked into
to need to feel the love in
arms I’ve never been encased in
to need to breathe the faith of
a scent I’ve never smelled
cold
leaves me empty
drops my ego on the tile
becomes the reality
of knowing that
l
o
w
is where it needs to stay

Natasha Bedingfield is my one true love... with Cate Blanchett as a close second.

2010-08-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Who am I, thinking I can blog two days in a row?

So, I admit that I'm a bit of a shopaholic. Well, okay, a LOT of a shopaholic. I don't even have a job, but when I get one, I know that I'll be like my BFF Bobby and just spend all the pay checks on SHIT. Sorry for my language, but it's the truth. I see something and I want it and I can't say no to myself. This is going to be terrible when I have kids, because I'm going to want to purchase everything for them even if I go into crazy mother debt. That's kind of how my mom is. Guess it runs in the family - woopssss. But the things I buy are cute! It should be okay, right? I guess that's not how the world works. Sniffle.

For some reason, over the past week of sadness I've had (it sucks. a lot) I've been listening to an ungodly amount of Natasha Bedingfield. Right now it's "Pocketful of Sunshine", but "Single" also makes me pretty damn inspired. I wish I was her. She looks like one of those girls who went through high school with admirers and creepers and just said 'screw you' to all of them. Then again, I could be totally wrong. I'm just making judgements here. Guilty habit of mine.

I'm currently brushing my teeth as I type this. It takes skill. Actually, the toothbrush is just sitting in my mouth while I type and suck on spearmint. ...Wow, I'm Hermione Granger.

So today is John Green's and Rupert Grint's birthday, so kudos to you guys for sticking around on this lousy planet for as long as you have! Just kidding, you're not that old. You've got lots of time left to be disappointed. ...I'm joking, right? Right. Also, Mockingjay was released today and I was supposed to go to the midnight party last night but I couldn't hitch myself a ride there. I ordered it a while ago and it still probably won't get here until the weekend. My luck!

Alright, so, if I wasn't nerdy enough already, I decided to increase that aspect of myself by deciding to make lembas bread with my best friend, the aforementioned Bobby, today. And thanks to this lovely website (http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=267358), we've adapted the recipe to my veganism and we have all the ingredients except 8 tablespoons of vegan butter. Anyhow, that's not the point. When I was asking my mom if we had all the necessary items, she took one look at the picture and went "Where are you gonna get a leaf to wrap it in? We don't have a leaf." And I'm like.. no mom, that's just what the Hobbits keep it in. And she's like, "Sorry hon, where are you gonna get a leaf. It's not gonna happen." I can't even tell if she's serious. And the funniest part is that we have too many trees for our own good in the backyard. She makes no sense.

Also, I just checked the mail and my mom got a travel magazine with a full body shot of Cate Blanchett of the cover. I stared for a half hour. She is too beautiful in every way. *cowers under Elvish beauty*

Later, y'all. Let's hope I stick to my blogging spree of inspiration. <3

i legitimately...

2010-08-23T23:49:00.001-07:00

...haven't blogged since march.
wow, i'mma failure.
Well, let's start with the "since then..." approach.

Since then, I've gone to two Harry Potter conventions - Expeditious and Infinitus. One was much better than the other, but this isn't a blog post for complaining, so I'm keeping that to myself.
Since then, a lot of drama has gone down with my friends. It's mostly been because of dating, which I should've known better than to dabble in inside of the fandom. Silly me.
Since then, I turned seventeen. It doesn't feel any different, and I'm still too lazy to get my license.
Since then, I've had my heart broken. Let's not talk about it.
Since then, I've written better music that's gradually growing more Muggle roots.
Since then, I've fallen for a straight girl.
Since then, I've fallen for a guy who lives 14 hours away.
Since then, I went on tour.
Since then, I've been trying to grow my hair out and getting really annoyed with it.
Since then, I've been trying to be an optimist.

newsflash, people!

2010-03-08T19:31:00.001-08:00

Did you ever have one of those friends who you were embarrassed to be around but too subdued to send them away? Ever meet a new friend and become engaged in a conversation for what seems like a millisecond when that embarrassing person rounds the corner and tries to butt in? If you do, then you know that subsequently the new friend drifts off. It's pretty horrid when you think about it, and a sure way to be a loner through something called high school.

As you know by now, bad friends exist. Unwanted friends exist. Friends who aren't really friends - they're out there too. That's why your argument is completely worthless when you try to side with them. It's obvious from the way you speak of them that you don't like them, so DON'T USE IT AS AN EXCUSE.

"Oh, it's okay that you're a lesbian. I totally have a lesbian friend...!"

At least try to make it convincing. Sheesh.

Legit Carolina Hacker Attack.

2010-02-21T18:09:00.001-08:00

For some reason when I hit "log in" on blogger this evening, I found myself mysteriously logged in to this blog.

Tianna, consider yourself Legit Carolina hacker attacked.

xoxo,
Sarah, the Legit Carolinian.

snails

2009-12-10T18:06:00.001-08:00

As usual, the HP Alliance has given me something to think about yet again.

Stress is a ridiculously popular norm in our society. And by norm, I mean it’s such a fad that no one recognizes it as one. Think about it. Every day you probably wake up and think “It’s time already?”, and then you flee out the door to wherever your day begins. From there, endless amounts of stress are ladled onto your plate from unnecessary sources. Maybe you have an intimidating first job interview, maybe you’re worried about the cost of your dream vacation for the holiday seasons, or maybe you’re just focused on getting into the right college, no matter how many states or countries separate you from it.

In fact, you might just be worried about all three things. And to me, that seems pretty ridiculous. Why? If you think about it, you’re putting the stress on yourself. Society does play an enormous role, letting you know just what celebrities are vacationing where and for how much money, force feeding you knowledge of luxuries you’ll surely never have, and scaring you into firmly believing that no matter what you try, you’re going to fail.

So you reach for the stars. You go and pick out all of these different activities, classes, even extracurricular things - and you don’t realize it at the time, but they’re going to take over your life. They’re going to boggle you down between the mattress and the boxspring and squeeze the air out of you. They’ll strip you of your social life and everything you appreciated before you got to be such a busy bee. And good luck trying to squeeze out, because by the time you do you’ll be flat as a pancake.

How can you be both busy and stress-free, you ask? It’s not possible. Which is why I strive for a life of tranquility and peace, and the HPA just made me realize this. I’m not too lazy or too quiet or too boring. I’m just living my life at a slower pace than most of you crazed folk who are on the go 24/7. I’m saying goodbye to my days like a snail, and I’m learning to love every minute of it. All I need is another snail to say hello to every morning when I get out of bed and try not to yell at my alarm clock.

Introduction

2009-11-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, so maybe I've never really introduced myself on here. Have I? Who knows. I don't even know who actually reads this; most of the time it's just me talking to myself. But maybe I'll introduce myself to myself and learn more about myself. I'm worried I might have just used the word "myself" enough times to be considered scientifically narcissistic.

My name's Tianna. That's pronounced Tee- Ann (the A sounds like the A in alligator)- Na (like sodium). I would tell you my real last name (grossly Italian), but it's kind of useless since everyone knows me as Tianna Weasley. I've been obsessed with Ron Weasley ever since my second grade teacher, Mrs. Cipullo, read the Harry Potter books to my class of eight-year-olds. Until this date, and I have enough high school evidence for proof, I don't believe that anyone in that class has taken to heart the ideas of love and tolerance that I gained from those books. I had already harbored a passion for reading at that age, but never before had I actually believed something so beautiful could be real, might be real somewhere.

Some might say it's childish, but it's nevertheless true. Harry Potter became my life, and the fact that that might sound like the lamest thing ever to some people has totally escaped my concern - but not notice, which is the great thing about it. I love going out in public and wearing extreme Harry Potter merchandise and showing off my passion for the series and the fandom I've gotten into because of it. I wouldn't trade it for anything, not anything. I wouldn't even give up the crazy stares I get because of it, because those looks of confusion and awe toward the entire community make us an enigma of hope, I think. That there are people out there who care enough about books still to be into them to a hardcore extreme years after the last book has been released, to organize meetings and discuss the books and movies, to plan events and base them off of things that happen in the series, and to actually write music about them that started its own genre? Insane. A miracle, if you ask me.

I've ranted about the Harry Potter/wizard rock fandom before and although in some aspects I kind of feel like repeating myself (since no one reads this anyway, LOL), but I'm going to continue. Two Saturdays ago I played my fourth wizard rock show. (www.myspace.com/ispeaktree) :) It was definitely one of the best fandom experiences I've had. By the way, Blogspot keeps telling me that "fandom" should be corrected as "random." I'd have thought that a site like this would be warmed up to the word, but I guess not. Anyway, people were really supportive at the show, which was with 3 other wizard rock bands that I've looked up to for Merlin knows how long. The gratitude I feel from their appraisal is something I couldn't have gained if I didn't venture out and make my own wizard rock band on my own. I never thought I could do it by myself, but I am. And if it takes being along to succeed right now, well, I'M GONNA DO IT.

I'm in the process of restarting a Pittsburgh chapter of the Harry Potter Alliance. Why? Because I'm sick of feeling that ever since the last chapter we had died, we're nothing. We're definitely not, and I feel like we can rekindle the fire of what we once had and be something even larger and more powerful than before. After all, it's the Order of the PHOENIX for a reason. And like Harry implied, every famous and great wizard started out as simply a student. If someone else can do it, you can do it too - even better.

I wish I felt this inspired every day. Sometimes I get ideas to write at night and then in the morning I feel like a completely different person. I just wish I would get more incentive to rush to my computer and blog when I felt all those crazy emotions that I do when I write. Oh, well. It'll miracle-ize someday. New word.

Also, I'd like to point out how much (and how long) this made me laugh earlier:

Simply wonderful.

NaNoWriMo count: 41,551

i wish....

2009-11-20T19:44:00.000-08:00

...
i was a natural redhead.
i could read a book in a day like i used to.
my best friend could live within 10 minutes of me.
i could make music that really moves people.
i could write something that inspires people.
my cats wouldn't fight so much.
my teeth were perfect.
i would never gain slower metabolism.
my mom would live forever.
my grandma would have never died.
i could remember more of my grandfathers.
my sister wasn't the way she is.
i wouldn't snap out on my best friends when they don't deserve it.
my best friends would understand me better.
my stubbornness wouldn't come off so badly.
i could find a good pleated hogwarts skirt.
i could explain things to people without being rude.
people could explain things to me without being rude.

but all these wishes, i know,
can't come true unless i try to make them to.
someday.

anything's possible.

2009-11-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been arguing with almost all of my friends. Naturally, this makes me feel really shitty. But what I'm feeling that I wasn't expecting is stubbornness. I know I'm stubborn and I have been for as long as I can remember. But I just don't understand why all of a sudden I seem to be changing and everyone's staying in place. It kind of scares me sometimes because it seems like I'll lose all my friends, especially the long distance ones. But how can I when I'm being so practical? I'm not a horrible person, am I?

Day 3, NaNoWriMo: 6,767.

"freaking out" vs "personality"

2009-10-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, seriously: since when has having a colorful personality become constituted as "freaking out"? You can't be "chill" about everything. We humans tend to form opinions about our surroundings and the relationships we have with people, and the people themselves. I guess if that's considered freaking out, so be it. I've gratefully learned to grab hold of my emotions, soak them in, and then release them. Letting your feelings run wild is the best path to release, and that includes speaking your mind at any given time. I've come so far, climbed up to the very top rung of this ladder, and now I'm being told I'm freaking out just for sharing my opinion. Can you gather what people are feeling just by what they say? No, because humans often speak on a whim. It's one of our many downsides. What really matters is the way they say it, and I wish more people could see it this way. Maybe they do and I'm living in fear. Maybe I've been prejudiced and blinded this entire time.

I'm beginning to think that sometimes when we believe people are becoming brainwashed, we're in the process of, and just as vulnerable to, being brainwashed by our own selves. I can't let myself get too wrapped up in the idea of someone else being brainwashed, or else the idea of their brains fogging over will become the only thought in my mind, washing out all other ideas that otherwise would have naturally occurred to me. I'm not exactly sure if the way I phrase it is very articulate, but it makes sense in my brain. That's another thing I'm trying to work on, saying just what I mean. And to stop stuttering, gosh. I wonder if there's anyone who just never stutters.

But really. I think it's the epitome of immaturity when you simply disregard someone's opinions and strong attitude toward something and just refer to it as "freaking out." Is this implying that the accuser never freaks out? Because in my situation, that's definitely not true. If you apparently understand that someone's freaking out who you're trying to deal something out with, aren't you going to try to reason with them and not let them get carried away? Unless you want them to go away, in which case you should just tell the goddamn truth.

I'm also starting to believe some people are born without a heart.

in a world so humungous,

2009-10-27T13:33:00.001-07:00

what do we have to live for?

well, there goes a layer of my skin.

2009-10-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

What. The. Hell.
Okay so it's Monday, no school because it's Columbus Day, and last night I went to bed at around four in the morning. Not really that unusual except for the fact that I've been going to bed at like 11pm now. I'm trying to become a faster reader and all that jazz. Even though speed isn't really that important, but my old creative writing teacher is begging me to read The Hunger Games and I really want to as well, so I'm trying to hurry up. I still have some library books out too that I already renewed a long time ago so.. that can't be good.
Anyway, I woke up at eleven a.m., rolled out of bed, and was told by my mom that there was a calico kitten on the front porch mewing its face off. She said my older calico cat had been pawing at the door which is ironic because the older one hates our tabby kitten. :( anyway I ran downstairs and it was gone, and my mom had left for a doctor's appointment, so I put food and water on the porch and basically stared out the glass front door for like an hour and ate vegan pizza for breakfast. Eventually I gave up and went back upstairs to practice guitar for my show next month when I heard mewing and sort of like mousy noises coming from outside, so I ran down and saw this cute, fuzzy, Halloween-colored kitten walking over the porch swing. Then I opened the door and it...ran away. Yeah. All these dogs have been barking nonstop. It's probably scared senseless. :(
So back to the guitar thing, yeah. I said I was going to try to make a CD by November 14th, when I play a show. But... uh, I don't see that really happening. I was so excited for it until now. Basically, Audacity plus the recording stuff I have is so shitty that I can't control the volume even if I wanted to. And I want to. It's either too loud or too quiet or too scratchy and it sucks. And people tell me that other wizard rockers' first CD's weren't too great either, but like..they probably had help or experience or a calm temper. I don't have any of those things. It's just frustrating. I played the same song for almost four hours straight trying to get it right and it still turned out crappy. And my left hand's finger pads have skin peeling off and it hurts to type and my fingernails are split and it's just gross. And someone wanted me to send her a Christmas wizard rock song for a charity compilation...and I have no idea how I'm going to record that by October 26th.
It reduced me to tears and hair-pulling and I'm still at a loss of ideas.

epiph

2009-10-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

"You know, I just had en epiphany," she said philosophically. "Everyone you're scared of isn't really worth it."

"But if you believe that, then there's no competition in life," he frowned.

"So you think competition spawns from fear?"

"No, I just think fear leads a powerful debate," he shrugged.

9:29

2009-10-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

when i say i love you, i'm not speaking on a whim.
i'm preaching from my honest heart.
i'm trying to help you, not be brave.
i'm just telling it like it is.
accept it or leave it.

when i say i mean it,
i'm not expecting long walks on the beach
or for you to hold my hand and look deep in my eyes
or for you to worship me like the sun shines out my ass
or even to kiss me in the rain
or take me out to a movie and kiss me til the end credits

no, i'm looking for
honesty, trust, respect
humor, a serious face,
trustworthiness, reality
but with a fantasy so
b e l i e v a b l e

i start to fall into the
cracks
and think
that maybe
one of these days
i'll open my eyes and

you'll be standing right next to me.

escape

2009-10-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

You think you need escape from this place, you believe you hate it. You don't know where I've been, though. I've been so far gone and back that now I'm grateful I don't live in better places - but better has various, flexible meanings. If you are looking for freedom, good luck finding it outside your own mind. If you are hunting down a beautiful landscape replete with exotic scents and sights, I wish you luck in finding an outcome that's not lonely. Call me wrong, shut me down, but you haven't watched the spiders crawl up the wall like I have. Follow them, tap, tap, patter, splash, and put yourself in their shoes. Don't focus on where you want to be, but where you are now. All you've got to do is make that place worth living in, and voila. You've escaped.

fantasies

2009-09-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

"Why do you talk to everyone so half-ass?" He shook his head impatiently.
"I... I guess I..." she opened and closed her mouth several fish-like times, quickly trying to formulate an answer in her brain before she snuck into her English class.
"Yeah?"
"I just live and put all my energy into my own world."
He sighed, emanating an indiscernible array of emotions in one breath.
"Well some day, do you think you'll ever float on back down to mine?"
She watched as he walked away, tucking his books under his arm and leaving her late for English.

weak

2009-09-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

my greatest weakness is that ever since i stopped talking to my old best friend, i've had the uncanny ability to ignore someone, even those close to me, for long, long periods of time.

on a whim

2009-09-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

"If you have to constantly remind yourself that you're lucky... are you still lucky?"

"It depends on who's doing the reminding: your heart or your brain."

wait, what?

2009-09-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

i can feel the temptation,
longing shades of red, orange, yellow, and mauve
twisting and turning to the shape of your brain.
one thing you haven't realized
until the colors hit you in the face
and the cool turns to noon,
noon becomes after,
after turns to evening,
evening hatches night
and by the time it's all over,
what attraction have you resisted?

when i walk home, my feet accustomed to the concrete rise and fall
pitter patter, this way, that way, paved or not
i know my way around, though things have changed
i see them as they once and always were
whether the subject is uplifting is no one's business
except for the wild birds calling come home, come home
but this is where i grew up, mr. bird
and who are you to think i'll stray?
for once i did, never again, so ship me away, away
as far as you'd like, but to this day i'm not running.

jealousy plays no part in this act, but watch and you'll learn
the many ways and aspects of this society will unfold
just open your eyes, differently each day
maybe pry them monday,
drift open tuesday,
rub them wednesday,
stretch them thursday,
and after all this,
maybe you should keep them closed on friday.

clueless, past, doubled, sideways
i saw you standing on the steps regardless
with a swift mind i told myself don't look away, don't look, not now
but it's friday, i kept them closed, didn't i?
i closed my eyes and also my mind to shut you out
but you're right down the street, aren't you?
my fingers hate you.

tension, tension, unlike a knife
slice it once and what do you get?
two halves of the same price, both undesirable as well as nice
but
wait
you're
forgetting
to
keep
them
open

inspiration

2009-09-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Inspiration
More than
An arm’s breadth away
But still you reach,
Reach,
Reach,
And when it hits, you run
Run
Run home
Until the insight shoots
From your fingertips
Collides with your toes
Jolts back to your heart
And into your brain
You’re home now
Sand slipping through your fingers
You can’t recall
A single shot of
Inspiration

magic & memories

2009-08-22T00:00:00.001-07:00

8/18/09

Sometimes I think you ought to revisit memories – the good and the bad, but mostly the good. However, I think people sometimes get these two mixed up. Good memories can initiate bad or miserable feelings, while unhappy memories may create joy in the fact that whatever happened is long over. At least that’s how it is for me.
I think you need to make the best of the memories you’ve got. That definitely doesn’t mean sugar coating anything; nothing tastes worse. It’s not trying to fit puzzle pieces together that never fit in the first place either. There’s also nothing more useful than learning to block out that lazy, apathetic feeling you can get from occasional memories. The Venus fly trap of last summer pulls me in sometimes and threatens to hold me hostage. Sometimes I’m taken, sometimes I even willingly give in. Whether this is unintelligent or not will never upset the consequences. I’ve learned the more you kick and struggle your limbs, the tighter the knot between then and now will inflict more markings in your skin so forgetting the pain or loss you experienced once your euphoria was over is inevitable. It’s uncannily funny how everything that reminds you of that state of euphoria is hugely depressing. So what do we want? Euphoria or normalcy? Infinite dullness or occasional bliss? Living under a veil or living an epiphany? Is it noticeable to be changed by one week of your life, noticeable enough to live off of until your next dosage of fever medicine?
My life is tainted by constant day dreams of memories. Is there anything so tangible it can be savored for what it is? This is a tempting idea, but I remain torn between this and the proposal of strapping my feelings on a leash. All I know is that memories will personally refuse to be cast aside or become a host to dust bunnies. There are memories, magical ones at that, that have spoken to me, placed a healing hand on my heart, and with a soothing voice told me never to regret taking for granted all those days I counted down, persuading me to move on and try new things. ‘It’s alright, Sparrow,’ it spoke to me, ‘don’t shake and shudder your wings now, you’ve got too much to lose.’ But maybe that’s just it.
Maybe it’s all magic playing tricks on us again. It wouldn’t be the first time. It’s just that magic has a fault, and it accepts no apologies. Whether to look up to this or not is still unclear to me, however, the whiny voice of my past tells me to sulk and revolve my world around a question mark.
I can’t tell if I’m done with those days or not. There’s only one thing jumping out of the bushes at me now though, and that’s the never ending excitement that courses through my blood at the thought of my next opportunity to take a stab at a well-earned round of memory-making. For now I’m stuck in a dry land of confusion and masks, where every sorrow becomes a joke and every memory turns to dust.

blah

2009-08-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted anything in forever, i know. sorry i don't capitalize right or punctuate either. not like anyone reads this, but yanno. just self conscious. this is a little hard to type because my cat cheshire is laying on the counter under my arms, lawl.

i'm back from vacation and california and azkatraz and everything. honestly, if someone had told me beforehand how dramatic it would have been, i wouldn't have gone. seriously. like.. i just don't understand why anything that happened happened. it's so stupid. i want something new. as far as i'm concerned i'm not part of the fandom i witnessed at azkatraz. sorry. just sayin

i've realized that i spend too much time being pissed off and unsatisfied. i don't think that's necessarily good for someone my age. or anyone's age really. i really think i'll have to try changing this before i go to college, which i don't even want to think about in the slightest. i like blogspot more than facebook notes because hardly anyone reads this and that's weirdly refreshing. yayyy my cat just got up and stretched so i have arm room. bah. i'm just very restless with this place and everywhere i've been and my friends and anything and everything. it makes me so sad all the time. my mom insists i need a therapist. i just need my best friend 7 hours away.

i'm happy for you.

2009-06-24T01:01:00.000-07:00

what is being happy for someone?

do you show it in a letter, a card, an online message, an email, a phone call, or do you need to be face to face to get your well wishing through? and how many times do you need to reinforce it to seem genuine? i could write a song, a poem, or a 3,000 word message. but it would never be enough. nothing, nothing, could put my feelings out there like my mind formulates them. every time i try it's not good enough, not for the person intended, but it just doesn't seem good enough to do my thoughts justice.

i thought the moral of the story was to go with the flow, to let the river take your soggy shoes wherever nature decided. but i simply can't be forced to try to act happy for someone, and i'm not apologizing.

you can continue to throw up your bouquets of flowers and scream your hallelujahs but i know deep down you're wishing you had the strength to be honest.
really.

New

2009-06-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Each time I hang out with my friends, I feel like a different person. Maybe it's the fact that I don't see all of my friends together very often (the long distance ones or the nearby/Pittsburgh ones) and so I'll reminisce upon the last time we shared a day together or the last time we had as much fun. True friends are a wondrous thing, really, because no matter how lame you are, no matter how silly you may act, they always see inside of you, and can relate your actions to your past experiences. They can understand your emotions and soak you in, relating the closest thing they have to your troubles. I feel like every time I see my friends I've grown from what they've taught me last. I admire the fact that we can have fun doing anything, that we could simply sit there and talk about the summer or a birthday or a random adventure we took once upon a time when we were all together and there was no drama.
Clearly the more drama there is, the harder it is for a large group of friends to stick together. But what also comes into play is the fact that the ones who are remaining and move on past the drama and gossip and hurt have more strength and are unified in one loving circle, because after all they've shared with each other from their lives, they have one solid thing in common. And while some people might despair over that one common bond being a negative thing, it's no big whoop. What binds you will remain.

Last Day of Schoooool.

2009-06-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

So today, approximately two hours and thirty-six minutes ago, I finished my last day of tenth grade. This year has been surprisingly easy. I'm not sure whether that's due to the fact that I transferred to a new school (which is a middle college, so you wouldn't expect it to be easier, but it was), or whether I got smarter, or whether the classes were 55 minutes long so I pretty much didn't have any homework at all. Or something else. I definitely do know that my social life and... is it called an emotional life? struggled more than my academic...path.

Not only was it difficult to make close friends at Boyce, but I seemed to be the only one with this problem. Even though there were small bouts of drama here and there, everyone pretty much got along and most certainly everyone knew everyone. Even to the last day of school I got asked "Wait, what's your name?" Yeah, really. The school was so much different than what I had been expecting, and when I told people that I was possibly moving to State College it seemed the teachers were the people who cared most. Maybe it's my fault, though; maybe I entered the school year with too stubborn opinions and too little hopes.

I've compiled a list of things I've done or learned this school year, not necessarily in school or anything, just from last August to today. Enjoy.

1) Contrary to my prior belief (and what I thought was fact), I've learned that you can indeed present a powerpoint on homosexual issues in the media and have people NOT laugh at you.
2) I've learned that I can indeed compile my own set lists.
3) With a set list I had the courage to play a wizard rock show with my own songs, which felt better than anything I've experienced this year.
4) I've come to realize that the reason I love the Weasleys so much is that my family sucks and I yearn to have one like theirs, which, no, is NOT perfect.
5) I've realized that clearly I've become more frigid and closed to people, which led me to confusion over whether I'm just more clever in certain situations than some people, or whether I'm just not experiencing everything.
6) Sometime in March I wrote a four page essay until four in the morning. And WASN'T late for school the next day.
7) I've noticed that my reputation of "that Harry Potter girl" is not going anywhere.
8) I realize that #7 is nothing to complain about.
9) I learned to hold my head high especially when a) I'm being horribly embarrassed, b) I do indeed know what I'm talking about, and c) I'm being stared at.
10) I've learned to walk with dignity and laugh my loudest, no matter who's looking or what ridiculous face I make when I laugh.
11) I have gone over a year without talking to someone who I used to belief I couldn't live a day without. Two people, actually.
12) I've maintained very close relationships with people who I haven't seen for 6-11 months.
13) I reread Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince so I was up to date on the little details before the movie comes out this summer. (Not that the movies pay attention to the little details or anything.)
14) Became obsessed with the songs Butterfly Kisses for Minerva, The Fall, and I May Lose Everything.
15) I not only filled nearly every visible spot of turqoise paint on my walls, but I also began to write some of my favorite quotes on them with sharpie (Zach!) and then proceeded to move onto covering the ceiling (Ivy!).
16) I've realized that I really, really, really, really, really REALLY WISH SOMEONE WOULD DO YOUTUBE WITH ME AND NOT BE LAZY. Sorry, I felt like that had to be in all caps to get my point across.
17) Sometimes my all caps disguise my fear, my insecurity, or my serious take on things. Sometimes I don't even try to make it that way.
18) I've gone to wizard rock shows and had an amazing time even though there were a bunch of Muggles standing around and people staring at my ridiculous dance moves. Back in 2007 you would've never ever seen me with so much confidence.
19) I've begun to go religiously by Tianna Weasley.
20) I realized I liked someone a whole, whole lot and did what I knew best: ignored it.
21) I started wearing clothes that, you know, fit me.
22) I accepted that I'm crazy sometimes and also accepted that if you don't accept it, too fuggin shay.
23) I ended up with all A's and one C, which is a replica of my grades on my last 2 final report cards of the last 2 years of my education.
24) Began to yearn to get back into musical theater.
25) Wrote a song for three of my best friends.
26) Organized a show at my local library.
27) Agreed to play a show in a Hot Topic.
28) Sat in a car alone with my brother driving for 5 hours total.
29) Registered for Azkatraz.
30) Made about a hundred 5witches2wizards videos. How many did you make, guys?
31) Realized I don't hold grudges, but some bitterness just doesn't go away.
32) Got a 100% in gym class.
33) Survived two horrible college classes on campus.
34) Got a tripod, a flickr, and a born again inspiration for photography.
35) Rode a train by myself to the Bryn Mawr yule ball and back in under 24 hours.
36) Missed something more than I thought I was ever capable of.
37) Booked a plane ride for only myself. I'm still terrified at the thought.
38) Missed the 2009 ball drop because I was watching Hairspray and talking to Zach on the phone.
39) Got 40 pages into a Stephen King book and..stopped.
40) Saw my favorite muggle band in concert.
41) Went to prom without a date.
42) Got to my 3 year vegetarian anniversary mark.
43) Had someone get to know me because of Sweeney Todd.
44) Sustained injuries tripping over dollhouses, up the stairs, and hitting my head off the open bathroom mirror all in under 10 minutes.
45) Had my best friend come visit for one concert, one night, skipped school the day of and the day after, and then got bestfriendsick because I could smell her on my sheets.
46) Got strep throat twice.
47) Went 8 months without dying my hair.

Yep. that was my 10th grade year. Sooo exciting.

Hey guys, it's...

2009-04-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

...Wednesday!

Yeah, that's right, you heard me. It's Wednesday, my favorite day of the week. Why? I'll give you some reasons.

Number one: I get out of school early every Wednesday at 12:15.
Number two: I will always be 5witches2wizards's resident Wednesday.
Number three: Because I used to rush home every day and make videos for 5w2w, it's given me a positive spirit I continue to bring home with me every Wednesday because it's the anniversary of the days I got to make hilarious lengthy videos for my best friends.
Number four: It's the middle of the week. Half of it's gone, what is there to lose?
Number five: Nobody can spell Wednesday.

So yeah. Wednesdays are pretty amazing. It's 1:19 pm and none of my friends are home from school. But then again, even if they were they wouldn't be talking to me because... they suck. Well no, they're just really busy and experts on life, as opposed to being a novice at life, like me.

I actually did get to be on Pwncast with Cody and Julia, and I got to talk about the Weasleys and I Speak Tree! It was so much fun. Well, besides the parts where my internet kept going off and on but I battled that Muggle technology like the stubborn Weasley I am. Some links:

http://www.myspace.com/ispeaktree
http://pwncastofwrock.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/5witches2wizards
http://www.myspace.com/cccabbages

Anyway...
I'm sitting here in my blue snake skin (obviously faux) flip flops and listening to the Mudbloods and just getting really pumped about my show on June 19th with The Chinese Chomping Cabbages. :D It's going to be freaking amazing. Yesterday, which happened to be wizard rock awareness day, my creative writing teacher finally said yes to coming to our show! :) I'm so excited. I thought she wouldn't be able to come, but I'm so glad she can, because all year she's told me stories about how much her 9 year old son loves Harry Potter and dressed as him for Halloween and everything. Oh man. I can't wait for school to be over.

HOT, HOT, HOT

2009-04-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

I can NOT sleep. It is too damn hot for a normal human being to sleep in this condition. Honestly, like… my mother insists I “lay still until I feel cool.” Yeah right, I’d rather go haul out the old bug infested Toys R Us tent and camp outside. If I’m considered a normal human being, well, then I’m incapable of sleeping in this weather.

People are all like, oh it’s so much cooler tonight because it rained! NO. No, people, no. My room is a SAUNA. You don’t understand. There could be a consecutive row of floor-to-ceiling windows with the screens flung wide open and my room would still be the hottest part of the house.

This is not fair. I did nothing to deserve this.

It’s not even MAY yet and it’s in the 80’s? Really? Where the hell did spring go? We’re starting to have a winter, summer, winter, summer pattern with no interruptions of spring or fall. This is depressing. Maybe it can become some new version of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I mean seriously, if it’s like this until September I don’t know how I’ll live. I love summer weather, but really? This just makes me sad. Too soon, mother nature, too god damn soon.

Now I shall go “lay still until I feel cool.” Wish me luck.

Sunday

2009-04-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

For some reason, Sunday is my least favorite day of the week. On some calendars it's the last day of the week, but in America it's day number one. I don't know if that makes me a pessimist to dread the new beginning of a fresh week, or an optimist because I'd be looking forward to the end of the week, meaning I'd be excited for a new beginning? I just confused myself really badly. I don't even know.

I just got really depressed because one of my friends asked me if I'd be on their podcast and talk about my band and the Weasleys tomorrow, but I can't because I have my psychology class. Blahh. I'm not even in college, don't ask why I'm taking these difficult courses. It's ridiculous. And I have a quiz where I have no idea what I'm supposed to know, so I tried reading pretty much the whole book at once, and I'm just going to forget a bunch of things.

I wish I had more incentive to blog more often.

April 13th

2009-04-13T20:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I studied ridiculously hard for my second psychology exam of the semester.
This weekend, I visited my grandma and realized that people in rehab centers might as well be dead, they're all so lifeless and miserable.
This weekend, I understood that when you're in the country you'll do anything for entertainment. Yes, even strenuous tasks like pulling the weeds.
Yesterday, I laughed at a joke my brother made. That's a rarity.
Yesterday, I listened to old people bowling all day.
Yesterday, my mom gave me a movie for Easter because it has my best friend's name in it.
Today, I got an A on that second psychology exam of the semester and nearly broke out right there in the classroom in the electric slide.
Today, I came to the conclusion I want to write a quiet song.
Today, I'm going to bed before midnight.

lillies

2009-04-12T22:21:00.001-07:00

I've been neglecting blogspot already. *fails*

You are my clock. In fact, you have been for quite a while now. You skip around sometimes, go back an hour and then forward when I'm least expecting it, but what can I say? It'll grow on me like weeds in between the glowing lillies. I always find a way to count on you somehow, even if I don't try. Sometimes I can even hear you from two rooms over, and when I go to sleep, you're still there, ticking along, a constant reminder that no matter how much effort you put into slowing down time, it will never happen. There will always be tomorrow, always. Even the times I've fallen asleep praying that I wouldn't wake up, your incessant ticking awoke my spirits once more, however begrudgingly. You are the reminder I beg for, telling me to keep going, although that's not what you'd do. Your hypocrisy gets to me sometimes and I'll roll my eyes at you, but then realize you were right in the first place. Even if you didn't know what you were talking about. Funny how that works.
You are my inner nature. You are what it's worth, my worth. You are the reason I keep going, keep on writing, keep on living and looking forward to each new day. I suppose you really do need to be there. You are my world, my static. My velcro. If we were a pair of shoes, we'd be tied together at the laces. Maybe we couldn't walk, sure that's an inconvenience. But that's us. Maybe this will die out, but before it does I'd like to tell you how much it means to me. I could fly across seas and it wouldn't be enough for you. I'm not a person to you, I'm an idea, and that's what kills me. Your understanding does not compensate for your lack of knowing.
You are my sense of chaos. You are the earthquake inside of me, the trainwreck, its cause and effect pattern too extraneous for my own good. My wishes will never fulfill reality, will never extricate what I long to say. In my dreams I take your hand, trace into your palm what I'm trying to say. We get each other like nothing else, not even the purest bluejays could read our minds like we do. Speaking is overrated, but it's the only form of communication I'm left with, there's no other way I can face what's out there.
You are the brightest star in the sky, always. I know I'm only one out of a million that's crazy for your attention, but with each coming moon I know it will wane, and I'm not too much looking forward to the waxing.
I'm really really sorry. This deserves more than a message in a bottle floating off to nowhere, but maybe something will intercept and you'll catch it. A butterfly struggles in the gaps between your fingers, screaming for freedom. You are whole, and there is no room for my appreciation. The butterfly understands, just as I do.
But whatever we end up, you'll always be my clock. The second hand that never tires, you'll always subconsciously push me to create new beginnings. There is no way to shut you up. The thumping of your standard ticking, the beating of my heart in tune, it's all too much to be a mere coincidence. I think I'm going crazy.

breathe

2009-04-07T19:41:00.001-07:00

The creaking hinges of the front door are stained with rust despite their recent appliance. It's almost an omen, as if no matter how new something is, it's still tainted. And it really is, this being the new door with all those translucent prisms and glass contortions. This is the same door you clumsily slammed your hand inside in attempt to quicken your pace for her. You are her greatest sense of pride and her worst disappointment. Although she spends endless nights slaving away at what she thinks is the right answer, you still expect her to return to you, to give you what you crave for. But your trust is fading, and soon you will take to relying on the closest to her you can get. But when that proves a holographic image, a wispy, pathetic excuse, a shoulder too bony to lean on, what remains?
Your silence will slowly deteriorate her body, leaving behind nothing of the euphoria you swept clean from mere irritability, and yet you understand that this is happening. Frustration finds its way to you like it always does, climbing up your skin and nestling into your scalp. You lash out, pulling your hair out in great clumps, before realizing it won't do a thing. You stand up, finished with responsibility, finished with trying to make people happy, finished with anything that means using willpower. Done. You make your way toward the new door, what was supposed to be a fresh start but instead turned out a mental disaster.
"I'm not part of you anymore," you tell her as you slam the door behind you, being careful not to slam your hand in the latch again to escape not only embarrassment, but a sense of dependence. Maybe you should have lowered your voice. Maybe you should have known what you WERE a part of before making such a bold statement.
But you know one thing. If you can make it through this lonely year, you can accomplish anything. Just breathe.

so..

2009-04-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've given up on school entirely.

inspiration

2009-04-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

I need to write more. Like, it's decided. I used to write short storise and I even had a huge 200-something page novel that I just deleted one day because I got sick of the fact that it was progressing into nothing and had no real plot. Blah. People say I need to write when something comes to me, but nothing ever comes to me. Or else things come to me and I don't realize they came and should be put into writing. Or if that's even how it really works. I don't know anymore. I'm confused. My writer's block turned into an attempt at fan fiction, which failed. And that's where I am now. Nowhere. I need to start again, I hope it's possible.

home alone

2009-04-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

I kind of feel bad. I should be seeing my best friend in State College but I'm not. And it's pretty much all my fault. gahh. So I'm home alone again... wait, how many times has this happened? Total count of 300, right? I'm so sick of it. Most people are like "z0mgg gurl I'm so jealous, you'z home all da time by yaself, you must be partyin it up ova thurr!" like..no. When it's only my mom and me living here and she's not here 3/4 of the time, it gets really boring. There's only so much I can do. It's not like I even have people to invite over anyway. All the friends I had here decided they were too important for me, too old, too rich, too far away even though it's only 20 minutes distance, or we just slowly grew apart and there was nothing we could do about it.

But whatever. I told myself I wouldn't complain in these blogs too much, so I'll stop. I was just looking at my top 25 on iTunes for the first time and all 25 of them are only 5 bands - The Mudbloods, Ministry of Magic, The Moaning Myrtles, Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls, and the Butterbeer Experience. Well there you go, my favorite wizard rock bands right there! Except Gred and Forge, because I still haven't uploaded his CD onto my computer yet. I'm so lazy. Like, it takes me forever to get around to doing something once I say I'm going to do it. I have no idea where my music stuff with I Speak Tree is going either. I kind of really need help recording so I'm going to have to look into that. Yesterday someone asked me to sing in one of their songs so I'm really excited about that. But like really, all I record with is my digital camera. And then I convert the file into an audio mp3. Lame.

I really hope I can go to Wrockstock this year but I feel like some people don't want me there. I don't know. I'm going to need all the money I can for Azkatraz this summer anyway. I'm so stoked for summer, by the way. All of my July plans are done and it's just June and August I have to think about. My birthday is August 7th and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I'll probably have a party with my mom or something. I mean, nothing too terrible.

I should probably go take a walk or film a video or go on a photography spree. Being home alone is more boring than you'd think. If I didn't have any music to play, it'd be dead silent.

Rain = Sleep

2009-04-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

Is there any kind of mathematical equation for this? Seriously. Rain makes sleep. Ever since I was told last night that it was gonna be wet outside today, I've been tired. I don't know why though. It's not like the rain is heavy or anything. But once you get home and the specific outfit you set for that day is soaking wet, and your hair is ten times as frizzy as you had intended it to be in the morning, you're just... tired. It's hard to explain. I mean, some people love rain. I can't speak for everyone. But what's there to do when it's raining, really? You could always dance in the rain, but there's your grandma telling you you'll get pneumonia. Well, if your grandma's not in a home.

Okay, this is going all over the place. See, this is why I don't blog. I can't even write a paragraph without going off tangent.

I've actually never blogged before. I mean, I've had a livejournal when I was like...10. But I hardly ever used it. And I just complained about everything. I'll try not to do that as much here, if I even consistently update this. Which hopefully I can push and remind myself to do. I wish I could've started this two days ago, then I could officially be part of BEDA (Blog Every Day in April). Instead of vlogging. Because I can't vlog. Cameras make me feel awkward. Maybe I could get a late start and do a BEDETF2DOA. Blog every day except for the first two days of April! ..Why am I so lame?

I never really blogged on myspace either. I have in the past, but I deleted most of them from embarrassment. And they weren't really "blogs" like you'd write in a diary or something. I'd only write them when I was angry, so they'd amount to nothing but meaningless rants that no one ever read. Not that an abundance of people will be flocking to read this. But you know what I mean.

And then there was xanga, bahahha. Everyone had an xanga. Everyone. And then it was myspace, then facebook. But not many people post notes or anything on facebook, and if they do, it wasn't intended for facebook, they just copied and pasted it there so the lazy people who didn't want to click links to their blogs could read whatever it was.

So here I am again, blogging. I hope I can keep this up. Watch me like, completely forget and then this will be the only post I ever do on this site. I've never even heard of this site before. Wait, maybe I have. I was just bored and the rain is making me so tired that I have to drink horrid amounts of liquids so I keep having to pee so I don't sleep. And since I don't drink coffee...

My mind is so unorganized. I'm not sure it amounts to good blogging. But I try. Yay for new beginnings!