Eeeexactly

“A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, and make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

Winter

I obsess about every other season for different reasons, but throughout my life, I've neglected winter. I always complain about it because it seems like nothing good ever happens in the winter, but this is actually completely untrue. Last year, winter was cozy and warm and full of cuddling. Last winter was the shit.

So, winter, please accept my apology. I always seem to forget how awesome hats and coats and scarves are. And being in my warm bed in the early morning. Hot showers. Cardigans. Christmas. The beginning of second semester.

Crushing one another with colossal expectations

"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious."
-Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I feel like my life is repeating itself.

The same stories are popping up, I wonder how far that idea will take itself.

Seriously. Same story time and time again.

Someone pressed the "rewind" button and I'm living out my life the same way over and over again.

I've been here before. I have been here four years ago, and I've been here a year ago.

I need to create some new stories.

What can I say?

I think I'm sick right now. My throat is killing me, my head hurts, I've got chills, I'm achy. I never get sick. I don't know what to do with myself. I'll probably have some crazy dreams, as if they could even get any crazier than they've been lately.

Being at home in LR gives me a lot of time to think. Too much probably. I don't have school and work and people around to distract me (sometimes even all that isn't enough).

Aaaaand I get all introspective and I think too much and so I write and write. I read old things, and that's always interesting. One thing that I just found hilarious: I was talking about some boy I was crushing on, or something, and I noted that he hugged me under my coat, and somehow that meant something? I mean, it did mean something. That was almost a year ago. That day's entry ended with "Really, it's about damn time." And so it goes.

So, like I said, I get to writing.

I expect more,

More work, I'm sure, and also some play.

Work on that "play" part.

When did this stop being fun?

(Can it be fun again?)

So pick, me up, okay? Throw me around.

Sling me over your shoulder.

Make me feel light,

lightheaded.

I'd do it all the same, to be honest.

I'd be terrified.

Swing dance with me,

Become mildly frustrated when I'm not learning.

Wait for me. Yell at me this time. Let me move by myself, okay?

But move me, sometimes.

Let me come to you,

Even across the room,

All the way over there,

To that space between your ear and jawline.

Go away and come back home.

Remember how to be with me again.

Squeeze my hand.

Hurt me all over again,

Apologize, and apologize, and apologize.

It ends. Eventually.

Turn over to your side,

And then back to me,

And I would do it again, and again, and again.

You get to expecting less.

Maybe I woulda been something you'd be good at

You know that feeling when one of your legs falls asleep? Yeah. That's how I've been feeling for a little bit. Alternating between numbness and then that pins and needles feeling. I think that's the best metaphor I've found. Which makes me realize that I'm far too big a mess to mess around with a relationship.

Eek. I should come with a warning label.

One thing that has happened:

I am much more comfortable in my own skin than I was before. I'm grateful for that; it's just so pointless to be fidgety, uncomfortable. It's exhausting, even.

That's not to say that I don't exercise or watch what I eat. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm more comfortable with my body, because I take care of it more than I used to.

Anyway, I'm grateful for that. At 22 years old.

What I've Learned in College

1. You can't change anyone.

2. You can only let people be.

3. You can't expect anyone to change you.

4. Grocery shopping isn't all that fun.

5. You can get used to just about anything.

6. Don't overthink.

7. Have an opinion. If you're an arts major. It's hard to write a paper without an opinion. So make one up. I have given this advice in the writing center. Don't be afraid of your opinion.

8. Procrastination isn't always a bad idea.

9. Go places, do things. Go somewhere on spring breaks.

10. Writing, like life, is about the details. The little things you notice. Taste, smell, etc.

11. Crying is okay.

12. What works for someone else might not work for you. What works for you might not work for someone else. Do what works.

13. Don't worry so much about money.

14. Do nice things for people. Remember birthdays.

15. If something bothers you, say so.

16. You have to do things you don't want to do all the time. But make sure it's for the right reasons.

17. Apply for things, submit your work even if you don't think you'll get it. If nothing else, you'll be humbled and learn to work harder.

I'm glad I started this blog. I have this urge to write, I don't exactly know what to do with it sometimes. Of course, I've always kept journals. But this is public, which makes it a little scarier. It's on my facebook page, so anyone interested in me enough to check out my profile might click on the link.

Sometimes I look back on the poems I copied, the quotes, the random questions and statements and just see my life as a whole and it puts things into order for me. Makes some sense. I can see a beginning, middle, and end; I can see whys and hows and whens.

And where am I going next? Somehow, I feel less sure of who I am than I've felt in a long time, maybe ever. There seems to be some kind of distance, a gap, between my soul and body, if that makes any sense. I trust myself less than I have, but I guess that's what happens sometimes when life gets shaken up and rearranged.

I'm able to speak, I'm able to smile, I'm able to kiss, though.

my sweet old etcetera... (X) by E. E. Cummings

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my

mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

I think that in the end, it's accepting, and even loving, a trade-off.

There's the trade of safety/security/all the rest of that for... possibility/something better/options.

It's my choice what I do with it. It puts some pressure on me to make something out of my life, but I think I can handle it.

I worked on this a little...

The house gets quiet at night,

Sound bounces up and down the walls,

I think it’s hollow,

Scooped out and left to dry.

The leaves fall from the oak tree outside,

Spreading themselves over the front yard.

It’s autumn today, the seasons have kept changing,

Can you see it?

It’s garish and vibrant and sometimes hurts this space in my chest.

It’s a burial, this season.

But I know I won’t find your body in the leaves.

In my house, the ceilings are high.

Sound echoes,

It’s getting cold,

I feel it in my knuckles when I type.

I taste it in the apple I left on the counter.

The food and books and plants take up space,

In the room that I painted,

My hands were blistered and stiff,

The fumes made me reel,

Where were you to pull me in?

The silverware in the kitchen is nestled together,

Waiting in drawers,

The house is resting, sighing and groaning as it takes up space.

But it’s not the same kind of space,

The moving, talking, touching kind of space.

The warm kind of space,

The laughing kind of space,

The space that has hands and lips,

Fingernails and collarbones,

The kind of space that plays guitar badly,

That sings off key on the porch.

The space that rearranges me,

The space that moves me up,

And over to this side of the bed.

I'm worried my poetry sounds too much like Anne Sexton's because I'm obsessed with her and she's all the poetry I've been reading. But let's be real, I couldn't imitate her if I tried. I do know this poem comes from me, whether it's good or bad.

Jeez, Anne Sexton, quit writing poetry that I should have written

At least at one time in my life. At the moment, I don't think this poem applies to me, but it's great nonetheless.

"What can I do with this memory?
Shake the bones out of it?
Defoliate the smile?
Stub out the chin with cigarettes?
Take the face of the man I love
and squeeze my foot into it,
when all the while my heart is making a museum?
I love you the way the oboe plays.
I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feel.
I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
Yet I fear you,
as one in the desert fears the sun."

"Waking Alone" from The Divorce Papers

I ain't scared.

Picture above taken in Yellowstone National Park by Annette Marie Toomer. She's a badass photographer.

I was going through some of these old pictures and was struck again by how different I feel now than I felt when the pictures were taken. I remember that I felt this sense of being on the edge of something great, but I also remember dreading the year for apparently no reason. It's conflicting I know. But when I came home, I was so damn ecstatic to be back, baby, and I went up to my room and looked through my pictures and felt like it just couldn't get much better. There isn't much that I can think of that's better than being reunited.

So smells are very connected to memory--these geysers had a very distinctive, rotting-egg smell, and even just looking at the picture brought back that smell, and then that feeling, I don't even know who I was at that time. I feel really removed from that right now.

God, this year.

What have I been doing?

I felt like my life was slowly expanding, reaching some point, and now it feels like it's closing in on itself, shrinking. How is that so? I'm 22 years old. I feel old. I'm not spending a lot of time alone or anything. I have a lot of friends. But right now, I feel like life, like college, is something I've done and I don't know what else there is. I'm disoriented. This year has not gone according to my plans. I guess I'll learn to not make plans.

Sorry if I sound down. It's getting darker earlier.

"To crave and to have

are as like as a thing and its shadow...When do out senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing--the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries."

-Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

"We came for salvation.

We came for family.

We came for all that's good,

That's how we'll walk away."

-"Salvation Song," The Avett Brothers

The house gets quiet at night,

The leaves fall from the oak tree outside,

Spreading themselves over the front yard.

It’s autumn, the seasons have kept changing,

Can you see it?

The food and books and plants take up space,

The silverware in the kitchen is nestled together,

Waiting in drawers,

The house is resting, sighing and groaning as it takes up space.

But it’s not the same kind of space,

The moving, talking, touching kind of space.

The laughing kind of space,

The space that has hands and lips,

The kind of space that plays guitar badly,

That sings off key on the porch.

The space that rearranges me,

The space that moves me up,

And over to this side of the bed.

"There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom."

-Annie Dillard

I'm happy to be into November just so that I can get October off my back and out of my system.

I'm picturing November as a month of comfort, laughter, sweatpants, turkey, putting things back together some more. That's all I can ask for right now.

But still, sometimes no matter how badly you want to turn a page and just be happy, it isn't time yet. Ugh.