And So It Goes

It's always disappointing when bad days follow great nights. Went to the John Mayer concert and fell in love. Stood in puddles of sweat dripping of of every person in the crampped hole in the wall. The air was so thick with heat it was impossible to steal a breath that resembled refreshing. The music was amazing and I think I lost about 5 pounds, so everything seemed to balance out.
My first hints of troube came with recurring thoughts of Mr. Perfect as I drifted off to sleep. He haunted my dreams with hints of smiles and possibilities. He has continued his presence into today as I trip over images of every encounter we have ever had. Why? Why can't I just let go? Why can't the boy who walks 6 blocks just to hear me talk only to turn around and walk 12 the other way be enough? Every part of me wants him to be, even going so far as to wish for more than enough. So why is it that when I'm with him I can't help wishing he were someone else?

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Though I have so much to say, the pressing need to finish my homework and sleep allows me to say only this:Sweaty is one look that looks good on no one.
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Yes, he did.
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I really dont like Monday mornings. I take that back, why should I be biased against Mondays when it is every morning that I dislike. I've become victim to that slowness of thought that is symptom of not getting enough sleep. My bed looks tempting, and I know that I could curl up into it for another two hours, at least, if it weren't for class. This class with its dreaded attendance policy and mysterious boy. He walked me halfway to my car on Friday after class, and about the only thought running through my head at this hour is, "Will he do it again?"
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Partially due to my complete lack of inspiration and also to the fact that I have nothing interesting to say, I though I might answers some questions about the one subject on which I am an expert-myself:
1.Where were you born? Right here in Gainesville, Florida. Humble beginnings, I guess.
2.What was your high school mascot? The Fighting Eagles.
3.When was your first kiss? Believe it or not, it was on my 18th birthday with Travis the Canadian.
4.What was your favorite TV show as a kid? Definitely MacGuyver. He was the coolest. I wanted to be him.
5.Pepsi or Coke?Though this will most likely meet some opposition, I prefer Pepsi.
6.Who was your best friend in 5th grade? April Gillespie, the same best friend I've had since we were 10.
7.What was the last movie you saw? "A Beautiful Mind"
8.What was the last CD you bought? "Either/Or" by Elliot Smith.
9.What is your favorite book? "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. It makes me happy.
10.What is the first thing you do every morning? Hit the snooze button three or four times.
11.What are your plans for the rest of the night? Probably put off cleaning my house for another six hours so I can sit and watch movies on my tv.
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HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED:
Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.
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I found out today that a couple at work got engaged over the weekend. While my face congratulated them with best wishes, my heart sank deeper into my stomach. This makes couple number five this year to pass me by in the grand scheme of marriage things. Am I ready for marriage? I honestly couldn't tell you, which probably should be rewritten as no, I am not. Does that stop me from wanting to be? Not in the least. Is it possible to miss someone you've never met? If so, then I desperately miss my husband.
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I'm staring my future right in the face and wishing more and more that I could slowly back away.
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Tired of being such a terrible person.
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To him:
"The man in my shoes run the light and all the papers lie tonight. When falling over you is the news of the day. Angels fall like rain, and love is all of heaven away inside you, the time moves and she don't fade. The ghost in you, she don't fade. The race is on, I'm on your side but hearing you my engines die. I'm in the mood for you or for running away. All the stars come down in you, and love love love, you can't give it away. Inside you the time moves and she don't fade. The ghost in you, she don't fade. Inside you, time moves and she dont fade away. Dont you know she dont fade? Don't you go, it makes no sense and all these talking supermen just take away the time just to get it away. Ain't it just like the rain? 'Cause love is only heaven away. Inside you the time moves and she dont fade, the ghost in you she dont fade away. Inside you, time moves and she dont fade away. The ghost in you, she don't fade. Well the man in my shoes run the light and all the papers lie tonight but falling over you is the news of the day. And love will not fade away. And love, love, love will not fade away." ~Counting Crows
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I don't know how it happened, but all of my girl friends are gorgeous. I guess that blows the whole birds of a feather theory. Maybe I'm their token plain friend, every group needs a plain looking friend. Maybe I'm hoping some of their beauty might rub off on me. Maybe some of them hang out with me to feel better about themselves. Whatever the reason, I often feel like my life would be better if I could just look like them.
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Gaineville was swallowed whole tonight by the most incredible mist. Thousands of tiny water drops tickled the skin on my arms as I walked to my car to go home. It covered all the ugliness this city often presents and hushed every noise until there was an eerie peace about things. Even traffic was silent. It was beautiful.
I took a step towards following a dream tonight and browsed over a few of UK's job directories. Apparently, PR jobs are few and far between and even then only for people with multiple years of experience. I can, however, join the ranks as a telemarketer or tabloid writer. I guess I have a while to worry abut things like that, but with 30,000 British university students graduating every year with PR degrees, I doubt it is possible to start too early.
I wish I had some inspiration to share tonight, but suddenly it is 2 in the morning and the termite man will be here to inspect my house in six hours. Instead, I think I might let someone much wiser do all the work: "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast." ~Ephesians 2:6-9
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"Crazy, I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely. I'm crazy, crazy for feelin' so blue. I knew you'd love me as long as I wanted, then someday you'd leave me for somebody new. Worry, why do I let myself worry? Wonderin' what in the world did I do. Crazy, for thinkin' that my love could hold you. I'm crazy for tryin' and crazy for cryin' and I'm crazy for lovin' you." ~Patsy Cline

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A good movie is the type that stays with you, residing somewhere in the gut through rest of the night and often into the next day. The only problem with getting lost in these movies is all the trouble you have finding your way back out.
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Today I feel:
40% Frustrated
13% Irritated with Stuart
2% Hopeless
10.4% Bored
5.6% Lonely
11.8% Glad tomorrow is Friday/Payday
6% Worried about the assignments due in the next few days
7% Bummed about the quiz I took earlier
4% Tired and in desperate need of a nap
and
.2% Happy that dinner at Gator Greats is on my cousin the campaigner
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I feel sick and have spent the night on the couch desperately trying to stop feeling so poorly. FYI: It didn't work. My back hurts, my head hurts, my heart hurts. What I really need is a boy who will bring me two asprin and a glass of water, give me a nice long back rub, and then a nice long kiss goodnight. Why don't I have that? I hate boys, I hate hormones, and I really, really hate the third week of the month.
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Whatever.
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I have no intention of dwelling, but I thought I might take a moment to note the occurence of the first unmet expectation of the new year. (That didn't take very long). I'm a glutton for self-punishment.
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We should all just face facts- Vincent D'Onofrio is hot.
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I'm so proud about the fact that I have fingernails and I have yet to chew them all off that I find myself looking at them a great deal more than a normal person would. Sometimes, I'll turn the page of a book or pick up my pencil in such a way as to display them to myself and to the people who might be watching me. I want them to be impressed too.
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"God, I feel like hell tonight. Tears of rage I cannot hide. I'll be the last to help you understand, are you strong enough to be my man? Nothing's true and nothing's right, so let me be alone tonight. You can't change the way I am, are you strong enough to be my man? I have a face I cannot show, make the rules up as I go. So try and love me if you can, are you strong enough to be my man? And when I've shown you that I just don't care, when I'm throwin' punches in the air, when I'm broken down and I can't stand are you man enough to be my man?" ~Sheryl Crow
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Things today did not go quite like I had planned, but then again what in my life ever does. The day was not without its wonders though. I managed to find $4.25 so I could get gas for the drive out to my grandmother's and I wasn't calling my mother in tears begging her to come to Gainesville and rescue me from my broken heart (see same exact day one year ago). I failed to even realize that yesterday marked the one year "anniversary" of the day Dennis broke up with me. BIG STEP, I would say. Others might say the same thing. I guess I was drinking to celebrate more than one thing last night. Ahhhhh, peace.
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Sometimes, I wish I were brave.
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A borrowed thought: "Pride is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." ~Jane Austen
And one of my own: Nothing about ourselves can be wounded quite so easily, quite so severely as our pride. Those who chose to injure that part of ourselves are rarely easily forgiven. Pride can end relationships, pride can keep relationships from ever beginning in the first place. Pride is more than a feeling but rather one of the most dangerous parts of our hidden selves.
(To make a long entry much shorter...I'm tired of being passed over by guys because I'm not a model, nor do I have any of the outstanding features or qualities that make one irresistable, and they can't be bothered to lower themselves to consider me a possibility. I'm beginning to think the people who surrounded me as I grew up did me a great disservice by always telling me I was beautiful. Finding out that might not be true hurts more than never hearing it in the first place.)
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I bought a planner tonight at Barnes and Noble. It's part of my new "be optimistic about starting positive new habits and actually keeping up with them for longer than a week" plan. I buy a planner every year, they just seem to stop being useful when I never bother to write things down in them. Sometimes I go back and write in things I have already done on the dates that I did them so I don't feel so bad (and also because I thought if I lost it and someone happened to pick it up, they would look through and see how organized and busy I was and want to return it immediately). First entry: "Stop being such a dork! URGENT!"
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Back in Gainesville, but barely. I finally got into the car after a great deal of reassurance from my mother and about 12 hours later than the departure time my parents were hoping for. Mom said this semester will be what I make it, so tomorrow I have every intention of having the best day of my life.
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Still at home in Tampa, though in less than 24 hours I will have to leave and go back to school. For the first time in a very long time, I have absolutely no desire to leave here. Maybe I fear a repeat of last year, maybe I'm dreading the goodbyes the end of this semester will most certainly bring. Whatever it is, I want no part of it and would be perfectly content to spend a few more weeks resting here with my family. As I was crawling into bed the other night, I realized there won't be many times in the future where I can drop everything and come home for two weeks. It's a scary thing to grow up, I don't see how everyone manages to do it.
My mother and I saw the Royal Tenebaums last night. It was one of the smartest movies I have seen in a while. If I had any sort of say so in the movie business, I would say that every comedy should be like that one, though I imagine its novelty would wear off after a while and then everyone would hate me and I would eventually be stripped of my say so. Nevertheless, it was a great movie, and my mom even thought it was funny. (I don't know what sort of endorsement that is, if any, but I thought the fact that we agreed on a movie was a breakthrough.) You should go see it, and if you do, call me, because I want to come with. And, as if one good movie wasn't enough, I saw Beauty and the Beast at the IMAX theater tonight with my best friend. Now, I know what you all are thinking, but there is something very appealing about the things you loved when you were younger and this movie is no exception.
What else has happened...? I went to Tallahassee with my sister to drop off her "friend" Brian and left less than 12 hours later completely unimpressed with the city, their gas prices and the university that resides there. Returned briefly to Gaineville on the way home only to find the city in an uproar over the saddest event I have seen in three years of living there. Steve has waved his visor goodbye and I don't know if many saw it coming. Yesterday a plane crashed into a building in downtown Tampa, so all the stations have been airing special edition news broadcasts so they can spend half an hour repeating the same information and making the same comparisons to 9/11. Only this time it was a suicidal 15 year old flying a stolen Cessna into an empty building on a Saturday evening. I guess they'll take what they can get.

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Well, 2001 is long gone, and no one could be happier than I to see it go. If the archives of this blog aren't evidence enough, my 2001 was not what anyone would bother to call happy, productive, enjoyable, or any other positive adjective that might exist. Looking back, I see trials, and hurt, and pain, and damaged dreams, but I also see growth and faith and trust and love. On a better note, I enter this new year with a sort of unexpected, unlimited hope that will, Lord willing, last a few hours longer than the resolutions I made as the fireworks sprinkled the sky over the pier in St. Pete. For once, I didn't spend my New Year's Eve consumed with the fact that I didn't have someone to kiss as the year before faded into the year ahead but, instead, enjoyed the company of a best friend who sacrificed other invitations to spend the night with me. If that isn't growth, I certianly do not know what is.

And, for those of you still reading after five months of crying, and hopelessness, and complaints, complaints, complaints, I commend you and hereby resolve, for your sake and mine, to live a life in 2002 focused more on the unexepected joys rather than the unmet expectations.

Happy New Year.
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