YOU

Just wanted to say you're beautiful.

I don't think anyone hears that enough--and even if you do have someone who will tell it to you every day, it starts to mean less, just because it's that person. You think they feel obligated to tell you that, or maybe even that they're wrong to think so, that maybe it isn't the truth, that they're the only one who feels this way.

But you're beautiful. Everyone needs to hear this, and everyone needs to hear why. It's not just the fact that you are a human being that makes you beautiful, although that is one reason. But you are beautiful because (I'm about to stray into cheesy, Dove commercial rhetoric) you are different. It sounds ridiculous and overplayed, but it's true. YOU are exactly what someone else out there is looking for, maybe they have found you already, and maybe they haven't. This is because there is no one else out there like you. People don't say it enough because it takes courage. Think about all the people you've found beautiful. You probably told only a couple of them. Some people will always say it, but most won't.

"The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you, and you're standing in the doorway."
I've used this quote before, but how amazing is that, the idea that you don't have to do ANYTHING but be there, and you are remarkable?

Another list...

This one's a little different. Tonight I was going through old journals from high school. I have at least fifteen of them in a box in my closet, and mostly they're pretty boring and repetitive. But I found this list that I wrote my sophomore year of high school. It's a list of things to do before I die. There was an exclamation point on that, too, although I don't think it belongs there now. Keep in mind I was at a weird point in my life...

Anyway, I started reading it, but was pretty sure my goals were unrealistic, or way-future. Basically I thought I hadn't accomplished any. It makes me feel really good that I actually have, although a lot of these things are subjective.

Things to do at some point before I die!
1-
1. Feel good about myself (done)

2. Lose all feelings of jealousy

3. Wear what I want to (done)

4. Travel to Greece

5. Sing a solo (done)

6. Stop being angry (done, mostly)

7. Randomly kiss a guy when I don't know for sure if I should (done)
(haha, this one makes me laugh now)

8. Be someone who other people wish they were
(this doesn't matter to me so much anymore.)

9. Be happy (done, I guess this one is particularly subjective)

10. Stop being afraid

11. Find some kind of God (sort of?)

12. Figure out what political party I belong to (haha, done)

13. Find something I enjoy doing and let that be my career (I think I know)

14. Stop being so apathetic (done)

15. Laugh more easily (done)

16. Kiss on a rooftop

17. Kiss on the beach (done)

18. See Phantom of the Opera on Broadway (done)

19. Find a really good pair of jeans

20. Find a great friend (DONE)

21. Mend my relationship with Annette (done)

22. Make my kids' Halloween costumes

25. Have kids

26. Learn to sew

27. Learn how to play an instrument (done)

28. Tell a guy how I really feel about him (done)

29. Have a really amazing college experience--let go. (haha, done)

Things to do on Fall Break

I'm into lists lately.

1. See Where the Wild Things Are (!!!!)

2. Take some fall pictures.

3. Finish Revolutionary Road.

4. Sleep in (It's a given.)

5. Write.

6. Haircut.

7. General recollection.

8. Camping.

I'm being very selfish this fall break. I'm doing nothing that's actually productive, and I have a feeling I'm going to get very bored very soon, but I need this!

Oh, Kansas City was great. It's really a beautiful city. Neighborhoods with red and yellow trees, and lots of grass, and old buildings. The BBQ was good--different than Central, but still good. It makes me happy to see that my siblings are doing well, are finding their places, building lives they love.

Things that make it worth it

1. pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks

2. great hugs

3. cuddling

4. being a student for the time being

5. watching Glee

6. using Post-it notes

7. driving home

8. songs on repeat

9. a hot shower on a cold day

10. any class with Dr. Wranovix

11. possibility

12. riding my bike

13. a towel straight out of the dryer

14. grocery shopping

15. writing in cursive

Break this tired, old routine

Have you ever woken up one day and realize that you're completely unattracted to someone who you used to be completely attracted to?

That happened to me today. And in this case, it's a good thing. It's weird, though, cause it wasn't even a gradual decrease, it was just there one day and gone the next.

I frequently find myself repelled and attracted in equal amounts to a person. I can't figure it out.

Lately, I've been cranking out paper after paper. Which is why I haven't really come up with much else creative for a while, it kind of takes the energy to write out of me.

I really miss working in a restaurant. I worked through my senior year of high school at this family-owned restaurant in Little Rock called Izzy's. I don't think I could have gotten through senior year without working there, which is contrary to what you might think. It's not just that life at school, and often home, sucked, but mindless work is comforting, even addicting. Being productive without really having to think about it is good therapy, it was really what I needed at the time. I also ended up getting pretty close to my coworkers, which was unexpected and nice. I miss making tips and feeling useful, knowledgable.

This rain is bringing me down. Things have not been looking up for me lately, or at least that's what it feels like today. Something really good needs to happen to me, it feels like it's been a while since something really good happened. Maybe it's my perspective, maybe I have to make something good happen, take the initiative. I feel like I'm out of motivation.

It's a work in progress.

Here's a paper I'm in the process of writing for a class. I just wanted some feedback, so please feel free to comment. We had to pick a place and connect it with some sort of spirituality. My basic idea is home as a static figure against which i measure my own growth. And if you don't get that out of it when you read it, let me know.

Angela Toomer
Spiritual Autobiography
Wranovix
Home
Walking through the door of 40 Chimney Sweep, carrying my purse over my shoulder and a duffel bag in my hand, I can expect to see quite a few faces immediately after walking in. I’m thankful that rarely have to walk into an empty house; more than likely one of my five siblings will be there, and I’ll probably get a hug from one of my little sisters, the best kind of hug, the kind that knocks you down, one filled with laughter and devoid of inhibition. It will probably be a little sticky, with some syrup from the pancakes they had this morning stuck in their curly red hair. Granted, this might be a little different, considering how my two littlest sisters are now seven and ten—past the syrup-in-hair stage. That’s another thing, how being away for so long makes me forget that they’re growing, getting older, learning how to write in cursive.
Coming home also brings my attention to the fact that they are not the only ones who are getting older, changing—it’s me, too. My hair is longer, I have some new clothes my family hasn’t seen before, along with new ideas and perspectives, many of which my parents are wary of. My house is the same, though. It reflects my mom’s spirituality: there’s a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the mantle, an icon depicting the Virgin Mary holding Jesus on the wall by the bathroom, along with various other religious statues, candles, and prayer books—or Catholic voodoo, depending on which way you look at it. These testaments to her spirituality have been around for as long as I can remember. They are part of a spirituality that I was expected to inherit, and now it’s obvious that I did not, in fact, adopt it as my own, and I wonder whether this direction has disappointed my mother. Now, I feel out of place standing in the same pews where I stood for my First Communion, left out of this life, one of rosaries and folded hands and signs of the cross. The only thing left is a faith that I can only claim halfway. A part of me wants to pick up my old Bible on the shelf in my room that has been untouched, gathering dust for the past few years. But it’s the same part of me that wants to pick up the Judy Blume books that are next to the Bible: that part that craves nostalgia and a reconnection with a simpler mind frame. That’s not to say that a part of my religious heritage hasn’t stuck with me, though. Just as my name is engraved into the bottom left hand corner of that Bible, there are certain parts of my religious upbringing that can’t be scraped out of the corners of my soul. I can still say all the prayers I learned in second grade by heart, and the words “Bless me Father, for I have sinned” are still filed away somewhere in the back of my mind.
Coming home reminds me that I’ve definitely changed, though, and am continuing to change. As I look around, at the wooden table in the kitchen, with some crumbs still lingering from this morning’s breakfast, and the TV blaring cartoons in the next room, it strikes me again how my house is still exactly the same as it was last time I was here. Every book and piece of furniture and doorway reminds me of a various, specific memory, the kind that are so crucial in my growing up that they are as clear, and sometimesas heart-wrenchingly painful, or embarrassing, or cliché adolescent, as they were on the day they happened. These memories come with smells, tastes, feelings. I’m proud of them, in a way; I claim them as my own, as pieces of evidence that display that yes, I have grown up, and it has not always been easy. I think of the songs I played on repeat in my room, and the boy who picked me up for my first date, and the connections between the all the high school songs and all the high school boys. Every time I come home, I feel like I did when I used to measure my height on the wall of the laundry room. My house is now the measuring stick that shows me how far I’ve come. I stand tall with my back against the wall and make another pencil mark each time I go home. It shows me that I’m in transition. I can see where I’ve been, look at that mark on the wall that I made last Christmas, or maybe when I came home from Labor Day weekend, and be reminded that each time I come home, I’m a little different.

The end.

I think my problem with it is that it's not as concrete as I'd like it. It's all a little abstract, which is boring. I think I'm putting too much pressure on myself to get a good grade, it's like getting a good review, it's like crack. So addicting.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
-Neil Gaiman

Angst!

"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be."
-May Sarton

It takes bravery, it shouldn't come easily, or maybe you're not really being yourself. The pressure, the tremendous pressure to be invisible, to blend into your surroundings makes it easy to be knocked down, and make you think that you don't have the right to be yourself. Who are you to _____? You're too young, too old, you're a woman, you're a man, you're not smart enough, you're too smart. Who are you to write? Who are you to sing? Who are you to speak your mind?
YOU don't need to justify yourself. About anything. And you have no obligation to answer those who question who you are. You have no duty to make excuses about who you are.

Such a great, much-needed, uneventful weekend.

Does anybody else love weekend so much because of the possibility...of what, I don't know, but exciting things always happen on weekends?

The goal is to always resist becoming stagnant.

"Do one thing every day that scares you." -Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear is the best way to become stagnant, to freeze up and accept mediocrity. I feel like I need to jump off more things, run harder, read more, talk more, shout more, kiss more, write more, travel more, stretch more, step on more toes, dance more, laugh more, touch more, mean "I love you" more, leave some kind of mark, and shape my life into something colorful and unique.
What am I doing?

Get out of my head more.

"The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway, is that it's YOU, and that you're standing in the doorway."
-The Mountain Goats

I will rearrange my plans and change for you

I've been Avett Brothers-obsessed lately...

Don't say it's over
Cause that's the worst news I could hear I swear that I will
Do my best to be here just the way you like it
Even though its hard to hide
Push my feelings all aside
I will rearrange my plans and change for you.

-"If it's the Beaches"

Lately I've seen girls tear each other down a lot. Not as much as I saw it and experienced it in high school. It makes me realize how lucky I am to have a couple of friends who I know I don't have to have my guard up with, who I can just be open with, and tell things to. I think people don't realize that they're tearing others down, it eventually just becomes a part of their reactions and such, it's just second nature.
If we stopped competing, and stopped with the acting and the backhanded compliments, then maybe we'd all be a lot happier.