I have this panicky, anxious feeling that comes with graduating in two weeks. I want to spend as much time as possible with everyone because I might not see them for a very long time. And when I do, I know it won't be the same.

So I'm not focused on school. I'm all over the place. I don't go to yoga anymore. I spend zero time by myself it feels like. I'm going from place to place, trying to hang out with as many people as I can for as long as I can before I'm not in college anymore. Damn. I can't be with all of my friends at once either. I have to choose who I spend my time with.

I know I have a whole lot ahead of me. And I may even be here for summer if Italy doesn't pan out. But man it's hard graduating. I haven't felt all that sad yet, just anxious and feeling all this guilt that came out of nowhere. It hit me the other day that I brush people off a lot. I don't appreciate people as much as I should, I don't show that appreciation enough. I'm flaky sometimes. I don't keep in touch with all of my friends like I should. I've kept people at a distance, especially recently.

I've had a lot of fun this semester. I've done things that are uncharacteristic of me. I don't have any regrets about any of that.

I think I'm a grownup

1. I take a multivitamin.

2. I now own stock, thanks to my grandpa.

3. I schedule my own doctor's appointments.

4. I do my taxes on my own.

5. I don't get all that nervous talking in front of people anymore (mostly).

6. I have stamps in my wallet.

7. I cook sometimes.

8. I vote.

9. I (mostly) no longer fight with my siblings.

10. I drink coffee in the morning.

11. I like wine and beer.

Plan

for the rest of my short time in college.

Being ridiculous about 90% of the time. The remaining 10% will be allotted to just squeezing through in academics.

Laziness. Outside time. Yeah.

I've got to actually read something by this guy.

All Charles Bukowski...It's all very extreme, and I think that's why I'm liking it.

"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now." -

"Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss."

"Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom-love-happiness."

"you've got to burn
straight up and down
and then maybe sidewise
for a while
and have your guts
scrambled by a
bully
and the demonic
ladies,
you've got to run
along the edge of
madness
teetering,
you've got to starve
like a winter
alleycat,
you've go to live
with the imbecility
of at least a dozen
cities,
then maybe
maybe
maybe
you might know
where you are
for a tiny
blinking
moment."

Well here we are again. No urge to write. It's funny how that works.

My life right now--the only way I can put it, is I'm throughly enjoying it. It is excellent. I think I can say I've officially turned a page.

It's not the same. I don't think I want somebody completely adoring me again, though...there was a lot of pressure. I'm just a person! Anyway I'm hoping this isn't a train wreck. I'm thinking the lines are drawn and now there can just be fun, uncomplicated fun. This is all I need right now.

If I Could Help You

If I could help you, buddy, I would
I really would
I’d pray for you
I’d make muscles appear on your back
I’d take you to a bridge
that people think is beautiful
if there were the slightest chance
that you’d like it
I’d get you that motorcycle
I'd put your songs on the jukebox
if you were a singer
I’d help you step across
that crack in your life
I’d die for you on the cross again
I would do all these things for you
because I’m the Lord of your life
but you’ve gone so far from me
that I’ve decided to embrace you here
with my most elusive qualities
You always wanted to be brave and true
So breathe deeply now
and begin your great adventure
with crushing solitude

-Leonard Cohen

"Perhaps," said the man, "You would like to be lost with us. I have found it much more agreeable to be lost in the company others."

-The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo

Being single is like snow flurries. You get the butterflies, the lightness, the airy lack of attachment, the space. The excitement. It's unexpected, delicate. It brushes your surface, doesn't bury you in anything to oppressive, wakes you up to yourself.

Being in one of those silly things called a relationship is like snowfall, heavy on the ground, deep, silent, all-consuming. Calm. Lazy, even. I was so lazy when I was in a relationship.

This memory just came to me, it was at the end of my freshman year after play practice one time and it was raining. We all ran back to the apartments, but realized we were completely soaked, so went out to the soccer field and played in the rain. It was one of those April rains that have been happening lately, where everything seems shockingly lush afterwards. I remember that the cold dampness of my clothes felt great on my skin, all I wanted to do was roll around in the grass in exuberance at the beginning of feeling totally at home on campus.

A reason to leave: This town very often feels haunted.

I get reminders, daily, that I'm leaving. The whole world is green right now, and somehow that makes me nostalgic. It makes me wonder what I'm doing these days, in this in-between period, and if I actually had more direction this time last year. I am ready to throw myself wholeheartedly into forgetting, as sad as that is. It's what I have to do--as long as I'm in this city, as long as I'm with the same people, wandering the same campus, driving down the same streets, it's going to be haunted, and there will be an ache. I didn't realize one person could make an entire city feel haunted. I've got to go somewhere else in order to forget.

Don't get me wrong--this one person didn't drive me out. I was planning on doing Lasallian Volunteers long before my world turned upside down. But now, as sweet as it is to spend my days remembering, I've got to go somewhere that shocks me into the present.

"Sex is a much bigger part of what we want than most of us will admit."

-Dolly Parton

Most of me want to experience everything there is out there, despite the scariness or whatever else holds me back. That part is greater than the part that is hesitant. I might get hurt. Ok. It's happened before, and it will happen again.

The lesson I've learned is to give it a try, even if it seems unlikely. The most unlikely things are sometimes the best.

I want to write letters to all of my friends before I graduate and leave and tell them each what they've meant to me. So get ready for that (: The top 10 or so. Everyone needs to be reminded of why they are awesome, and it's important for me to thank them for being that way.

Oh hey I'm going to Oakland, probably, by the way. California. Lots of exclamation points, even though I'm too tired at the moment to be really excited.

Every freaking muscle in my body is sore. Is this my body rebelling? I don't know what it wants! I don't know if it's good sore or bad sore. I think I might have a two-day long hangover. Something of the sort. Blahhhh.

It’s not a level playing ground for either of us, for the men or the women. This is the most challenging activity that humans get into: love. We have the sense that we can’t live without love. So we’re invited into this arena which is a very dangerous arena where the possibilities for humiliation and failure are ample. There’s no fixed lesson that one can learn about the thing, because the heart is always opening and closing. It’s always softening and hardening. […] Most men have a woman in their heart, most women have a man in their heart. Most of us cherish some sort of dream of surrender.

— Leonard Cohen

And so Leonard Cohen manages to articulate my thoughts far more beautifully than I have ever managed. This is why I read.

Tell me we'll never get used to it.

I have broken just about all of my rules. Nope, I've literally broken all of them--surrounding relationships. Boys. I don't know why I set rules for myself because I am not thinking with my head when it comes to boys. That "I will never..." is completely useless. It's "I will never...except if I am feeling...or if he is...or maybe..." Out of control. I've hurt myself and others in the process, but there have been some pretty profound moments too.

I've gotten tough. It feels a little dangerous because it means I take more chances, I think I can handle whatever, no big, I've been through worse. When it comes to rejection or forgetting or whatever else comes my way, I mean. That "I've handled worse" mentality at least means that I don't stand in my own way with hesitation.

Whatever the case. There is some sadness because the best, the greatest, is, well, being with someone. One person. Coming home to the same person. Learning each other. However, there is some excitement being single, the possibility of something great around the corner, however fleeting. You appreciate it more when you aren't used to it.

I wish someone had shaken me, way back when, and told me "This is IT," well maybe not IT, but something incredibly unique. I will be with other people, and I can say with hope that it will be even better, but I don't think I'll ever have that same fascination of newness, exuberance, disbelief, even with some of the bad awkwardness and even pain. It certainly was never boring. It was good at its core.

I miss the innocence I've known.

It shocks me every day when I realize there are people walking around in this world who have never had their hearts broken. As I'm standing at the other side of it, I am, admittedly, a little jealous of those lucky people who have intact hearts, without scars, but I guess it's part of me now. Am I better for it?

Anne Sexton is brilliant.

"She is so naked and singular.

She is the sum of yourself and your dream.

Climb her like a monument, step after step.

She is solid.

As for me, I am a watercolor.

I wash off."

-"For My Lover, Returning to his Wife"

Sometimes, in the blinding spring afternoon,

It's not so much a feeling of heartache, of "I miss you"

But a feeling of aimlessness, of empty hands,

And a need for a corner of my world to feel like home.

There are loose-ended Friday afternoons

When my body wants to to lie around

For however long in bed, falling in and out of sleep

Writing words on your back with the tip of my finger,

And scrawling plans for the summer

With sleepy cursive

That mimics the curve of your chest.

As for me, there are scars on my body

That you don't know about.

You may have uncovered them,

If you had taken a breath

And let the frenetic energy

That was always in your chest

lie. still.

"I hid behind a mound of earth that had been dug up to make a grave for some old books, literature was the only religion her father practiced, when a book fell to the foor he kissed it, when he was done with a book, he tried to give it away to someone who would love it, and if he couldn't find a worthy recipient, he buried it, I looked for her all day but didn't see her, not in the yard, not through a window, I promised myself I would stay until I found her, but as night began to come in, I knew I had to go home. I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays? I walked back with my head down, I couldn't stop thinking about her even though I hardly knew her, I didn't know what good would come of going to see her, but I knew that I needed to be near her, it occured to me, as I walked back to her the next day with my head down, that she might not be thinking of me. The books had been buried, so this time I hid behind a group of trees, I imagined their roots wrapping around books, pulling nourishment from the pages, I imagined rings of letters in their trunks."
-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

A Resolution

I just had a revelation. Which will be followed by a resolution.

I take vitamins and eat organic mac and cheese and go to yoga and run and do all these things that are healthy for me, but I drink waaaaay too much. As in, three nights a week I get somewhat tipsy or straight-up drunk. This is so bad for me. My liver can't be in good shape right now.

I'm going to drink less. I'm not going to stop drinking. Hell no. But a) I can have a lot of fun without getting wasted out of my mind, and b) I spend too many days hung over.

On another note, I had the greatest yoga class ever today. Every pose felt fantastic. I had crazy, superhero balance. I feel awesome right now. I got a new dress that I can't wait to wear this weekend. I got a haircut. I am feeling good.

Life has been absurd lately.

My adultness and my ability to get over it is being tested. Every part of me rebells against that getting over it.

Otherwise, I've been quite happy.

The Trapeze Swinger

"Please, remember me
Seldomly
In the car behind the carnival
My hand between your knees
You turn from me
And said 'The trapeze act was wonderful
But never meant to last'
The clown that passed
Saw me just come up with anger
When it filled with circus dogs
The parking lot
Had an element of danger"

Iron and Wine makes my heart hurt.

"I've got a perfect body

But sometimes I forget,

I've got a perfect body

Cause my eyelashes catch my sweat."

-Regina Spektor

You are beautiful.