maybe i'm being defeatist but

I think I begin to see why stuff in the New Yorker is so depressing. It's mostly by the young, "up and coming" writers of today, right? People like me. 

Apparently we're all depressed. I know I am, and telling a happy story requires so much more effort when you've forgotten just what happiness feels like. There's no hope, is there? We don't see a brighter or better future. Everything's bleak and awful.

I don't see a victory. No happy ending. We won't win.

So I can't write the novel I've been meaning to, or the poem, or the story. It'll just be another of those depressing New Yorker type pieces. I refuse to perpetuate misery.

what have i been up to?

seems impossible to me that it's been a month already, but it has. odd.

i keep hoping to have experiences about which to write, but nothing much happens to me, you know? i work and i complain about work and i work more and i complain more and then i sing a bit and it's better for a bit. until i go back to work.

we had thanksgiving and i worked for all of it. came home to the ruins of a feast and relatives lazing in chairs too stiff for supination. cried in the bathroom with rage for missing the only family holiday that is happening this year.

we had christmas the next day and i shopped all day and decorated all afternoon and wrapped presents including all the ones i bought myself because no one else got me anything. that's okay, really. i'm 24. mum is paying for a new jacket that i helped her order. surprises on christmas are overrated.

i baked cookies all day for a reception, then sang in a concert tonight with magnify and the dude quartet. i was pretty proud of it, but silvie just wanted to go home and mom was unimpressed/less than effusive with praise. i had fun, so that's what matters, isn't it? gonna say yes.

so yeah. not much happening, but lots happening, but it's not too much after all.

The Eve of All Hallows Eve

So I was pondering Halloween costumes tonight, and I can't decide on anything. 

Should I be a pirate? Easy, and I have most of the stuff to make it passable. It's boring, though, apparently. Every time I told someone I was gonna be a pirate for Halloween, they looked disappointed. Pirate is a no go.

A tall hobbit? I did that last year, for one. For another, it'd be something I have to explain, probably. Because tall hobbit. Also a no.

Gypsy and geisha strike me as vaguely offensive.

Elf too generic. Also used that one before.

I considered being a rabid Directioner, but I'm afraid someone will just be like, "And this is different from normal you how, exactly?"

Also thought about being Queen Bass. That's a choir inside joke. Hence, non-choir people won't get it and more explaining will be required. And it seems a bit...self-aggrandizing? Nah.

I'm not clever enough for a pun or lame enough to copy something "clever" from the internet.

I may, and this is a huge MAY, be WCW. Just need a red wheelbarrow, some white chickens, and a spray bottle of rainwater for glazing. If anyone asks what I am, I'm just going to spritz my wheelbarrow, look them dead in the eye, and say: 

so much depends

upon

. . . . you know the rest, and I'm not a plagiarist.

here we go again

my lack of self control is still in full effect, it would seem. 

the internet is not my friend.

good night.

so it begins

the time is 12:39 a.m.




i knew there was a reason internet was a bad idea.

it's been 84 years...

*takes huge breath*

I

*bursts through the door*

HAVE

*crashes through 3 walls to get outside*

INTERNET

*rips shirt in half*

. . . 

*to reveal tastefully modest camisole*

IN MY ROOM

mm....

i just did a terrifying thing

i asked a question

i asked someone for something

i asked for something i really really want

i have no idea how it's going to turn out

i am avoiding

Hot/Cold; Yes/No

I feel ancient on the one hand; I'm far too young on the other.

I know too much and not enough.

I can do anything I want. I'm paralyzed.

I have so much to tell everyone, but I can't say a coherent word.

I'm too cynical for love. Please love me anyway.

If I could only...

You can't possibly know, then. You don't understand what it means. You don't get how it feels to really, completely, heart-crushingly want.

If you did, you wouldn't just say it so easily.

I ache inside with the desire for this thing that I do not have; I am crushed down into a pinprick spike of crystallized longing.

I know not having this thing won't kill me, but I have no desire to keep living without it.

Do you understand that? I don't think you do. You're just going to call me dramatic and walk away with a flip comment.

"Just do something about it, then."

That's how I know, you know. You don't get it.

I'm a crystal of want, and rocks can't move.
 

Controversy

You're wrong, okay? It's complicated and confusing and it's really late, so I doubt I'm thinking straight, but you're just wrong. You're reacting badly to your upbringing, or something. You're over thinking the issue, and oversimplifying the argument, and misrepresenting the opposition. False conclusions based on faulty logic; you are wrong.

You have to be wrong. I believe I am right, so you have to be. It's not a case of differing opinions. You're definitely wrong.

I just wish I was smart enough to understand why.

Steamy sex steve

I was not expecting this. At all.

Talk about traumatic turnarounds. I've seen too much. Way too much. *collapses dramatically on a couch*

It's just a game, but I was soooo involved and I was soooo pleased that things were going well, but then they were going too well and it was TOO MUCH.

Fffffff.

Oddly enough, what I'll remember most

You'll never get anything done if you don't commit to it, said my mother. 

I knew and I know she was and is right. It struck me from out of nowhere, though. I just wanted to wander awhile and take my vacation at Oshkosh, Mum, geez. I wasn't asking you to make pronouncements relevant or real just because I didn't sign up for the Quilting Honor.

3 sentences

I am ill.

I have work tomorrow.

I am an idiot.

call me a cynical old bat

if you tell me i'm lovely,

i'll never believe you.

perhaps you should just call me smart.

if you say i'm your dream girl,

i'll just be annoyed.

do better to get to my heart.

if you try flattery on me,

i'll probably leave you.

pretty words are confusing at best.

if we talk for a while,

i could be your best friend.

someday, time might do the rest.

1D Regrets = Zero

Gather 'round, friends, and spend a spare moment to listen to my little tale. I think it's high time and highly appropriate, chronologically speaking, for me to share with all who care to know just how it came to be that I lost my gorram mind.

And I don't regret it one bit.

I, along with about half the known world, had heard of a certain group of youths prior to the summer of 2013. Apart from a small shake of my head now and again, however, I remained largely unaffected, being at the time older than 13 and believing myself to be firmly outside the appropriate demographic for said club of goofs. My friend and I chuckled benignly and shook our heads with great dignity as her sister-also older than 13-slowly fell under the sway of this pack of cubs. We were on one side of a vast divide, it seemed, and she had made the leap to the other.

To indulge her dear sister, my partner in beardwagging went to see this gang of boys on the silver screen, expecting perhaps a laugh or two. She emerged a changed woman. She took the jump. I was among millions of mostly indifferents, but I was suddenly alone.

My friend, seeing my confusion, tried to help me along. She sent me a single rope with which to cross the gap. A music video called "Kiss You." I watched it and surprised myself by giggling. I enjoyed it and admitted it, but it wasn't enough. I wasn't going to cross so easily. I listened to her raptures and smiled appropriately; I cooed over interviews and asked questions, but I wasn't over the chasm. More like toeing up to edge and yelling across.

A few months had passed by this time, and I was torn between the two sides. Knowing little enough to appease the one hindered me in conversing with the other to the point of near insanity. All came to a head at the end of October. 

I was going on a long road trip, and I needed something distracting. Personal stuff at the moment was making me a rather melancholic. More than usual, which is saying something when you are me. So the morning before we were leaving, I grabbed the rope. I downloaded the first video I had seen, "Kiss You". It had made me laugh, after all. Then I thought, *why not*, and also downloaded two other videos and this band of dudes' entire discography. It was going to be a long road trip, I told myself. Might as well immerse.

When I got off the bus at the end of the day, I was a changed woman. I had taken the leap. I was on the other side, and it was sparkling and bright, full of color and life and music. It was exactly what I needed that day. It's exactly what I need a lot of days.

On the fan side of the canyon, I discovered a boyband, and I realized that boybands are actually pretty great. They're sweetness and silliness and a light heart when the rest of your life is a lot of suck.

I won't say One Direction saved my life, because that's cliched, ridiculous and, as it happens, an exaggeration in my case. What's not an exaggeration is that they make it better.

I dove into the other side recklessly and without a smidgen of shame. I watched interviews and squealed loudly and long. I memorized albums. I analyzed vocal patterns to differentiate the boys and made a new blog to post their pictures. I read fanfiction. I bought concert tickets.

I was, and am, a complete and hopefully not completely obnoxious One Direction fan.

I regret nothing at all.

Today sucks.

oddly enough, it turns out that my largest current problem stems from my being a terrible person. surprise.

i'm profoundly lonely.

because i don't want to see/talk to/be around/even be in the same 50 foot radius as my friend's friend. who happens to be my brother's ex, so there's that as a possible excuse? maybe? but it's still me refusing to make something work.

because i have difficulty hanging out with people who are attached to other people at the hip or lips or what have they. whatever they have that can be attached. they usually are. and i resent people who are happy together.

because i feel left behind and irrelevant and pointless in my family's lives, so i avoid them by staying in my room to watch tv. then i get irritated when they forget about me or assume i don't want to do something.

because i'm constantly angry. or sad. or apathetic. i really don't blame anyone who isn't trying to be my friend.

i blame myself, as i should.

i just feel so very alone.

I'm horrid.

Just spent about 15 minutes on Facebook.

Remembered why I never ever get on.

I don't care about what any of my *friends* are doing. People are pretty boring, generally.

That's awful. I don't enjoy being reminded that I'm an awful person.

So I avoid Facebook as a rule.

Had it up to the neck or so

The saddest thing about this is, I'm not even surprised. What I'm feeling right now isn't the sharp sting of sudden betrayal. I can't burst into a torrent of tears and then get over it, you know?

Because it's more like a dull, soggy ache. Like I was expecting it all along and hoping for better was a bit pointless after all, which is disappointing, yes, but not a shock to my system by any means.

It's exhausting.

So go to bed

I know I've said this before.

I'll probably say it again.

I'm tired.

I'd like to talk about envy. How it squishes you up in the stomach area, squeezes you tight with wishing for what they've got that you just . . . don't.

But I'm too tired for that right now.

I'd like to talk about fear. How it shrivels your wanting, twists warm hope into icy dread of what you'll never be brave enough to try.

But I'm too tired for that right now.

I'd like to talk about exhaustion. How it sucks up your strength, saps the last bits of joy from every waking moment.

But I'm too tired for that right now.

Much too tired for that.