True love's diss

When I first like someone, I can think only of them -- nothing else. It used to be there was no end to this honeymoon period and I would forever reminisce about the cute boy who worked at Rita's (just one of many such instances).

Lately, I've found that my ability to get over a guy has increased tenfold.

It's likely not a good thing that I have learned to pick people apart and decide whether or not I'm truly attracted to them. I might just be too critical.

I find it incredible that even the sound of a guy's voice can become annoying -- even when it was part of the initial attraction.

Things like a guy's failure to open doors or the way they dress can break the attraction.

What does this all mean?

I think I have become too desensitized. I have been attracted to too many boys, thinking that they must like me too because -- well, he just made steady eye contact with me for upwards of 30 seconds -- and these little crushes never came to fruition in any way. I have come to believe that no one is ever attracted to me -- because honestly, a guy making eye contact can't mean he's interested. He's just being friendly.

"A wise person once told me that if a guy wants to be with a girl, he will make it happen, no matter what," Gigi says in He's Just Not That Into You. And it's hard to disagree. If a guy truly wanted to be with you, he'd make it happen, right? Or at least, he'd respond in kind to one of your moves.

Sure, guys can be intimidated by girls but where does that end? Why is it that the girl's supposed to buck up and make the move? When was it that men decided women had to go 90 percent, and in some cases the full 100?

So after all of this -- the rejections and being blatantly ignored -- I have learned to pick the bones clean so that there isn't a scrap of desire left.

Maybe some day, my Prince Philip will come and with love's true kiss, wake me from the deep slumber that is cynicism.

But then again, I doubt it.

Bridge to nowhere

Sitting here listening to the strains of "The Bitch of Living" from the musical Spring Awakening!, I can't help but think that Jonathan Groff and the chorus are singing the story of my life.

Of course this has happened with the last few melancholy or "Fuck you, life" songs I've listened to.

At 3 a.m. this morning, while sitting in the TECH center, the lines "Nothing ever goes the right way / Got to live life day by day" from Hanson's song "Need You Now" had me convinced that once again the boys were singing exactly how I feel about my life.

I have been feeling less than human lately. I am not getting nowhere near enough sleep, constantly have a headache, and eat an average of one meal a day. Sometimes it feels as though I'm taking life second by agonizing second.

Is everyone else this miserable?

I feel like I'm crossing a bridge -- that's what college is, a bridge to somewhere else -- and can't see the other side. What's the point of this all?

Dying on a diet of hope

Yesterday, I saw this painted on the side of a garage: "He who lives on hope will die fasting."

I must admit that sometimes the poetic significance of things flies right over my head, thundering like a 787 Dreamliner, and the meaning of this quote definitely escaped me at first. So, being a member of the Google generation, I figured I could find my answer online. Sure enough, I did. At the aptly named Answers.com.

My answer was this: "hope is not enough to live upon, there must be some material needs met." Yeah, I probably could have guessed this one. Silly me.

But anyhow, I know now how ironic it is that I saw that yesterday since I have been feeling for a while like I am Slimfasting on hope. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong -- and sometimes it's not that anything is going particularly wrong but just that nothing is going right.

My friend Julie is having a moment of ahhhhhhh! as her life pulls together. As she aptly put it at lunch today, "I've got the guy I've always wanted, the car I've always wanted, the life I've always wanted!"

How often does this actually happen to people? Especially to those who truly deserve it? I talked with Julie earlier about how something good has to happen to me.

For instance, I wanted to get an apartment or a house and now I'm stuck living with my dad -- although this has been tempered by the possibility that my best friend Michele might move in with me. I have been losing my faith in my ability to do journalism and have been flailing like a drowning person, waving my hands out for help and I just keep getting pulled under.

I keep hoping that something good will happen and I'm losing my hope. If you've got nothing but hope and that's evaporating too, what do you do?

(The above image of Marlon Brando was taken for LIFE magazine by Edward Clark in 1949.)

Falling fast

Just had a thought: If God created the world in seven days, how can it be so impossible to fall in love at first sight? (Or at least quickly?)

Think about it!

(The above picture was taken this summer at Smith College, which I only got to pass through with Grammy and Aunt Cindy on our journey to Massachusetts.)

Setting myself apart

Anytime a guy I kind of like has a lot of female friends, I get worried. The reasoning: I always figure that these girls are friends with these boys because they too at one time had or still do have crushes on them. And if none of these girls were special enough for this boy to want to date, what about me? I think only a wholly vain person could face this situation and not think they could never be what this guy is looking for.

Needless to say, I am far from vain and find this incredibly difficult to face.

How can I set myself apart from the pack of adoring fans? How can I make him sit up and take notice of me?

It's times like these when I try to remind myself that I am a great girlfriend and any guy would be lucky to have me. This is for several reasons, most of which I do believe I've listed before. I'm a good kisser, a fun person, smart, I like to laugh, I am flexible (in all meanings of the word), kind, caring and deserving of love. For some reason, I feel like there's a disconnect between all of this and my outward appearance or at least how I'm perceived by others.

For some reason, nobody sees all these great parts of me. If they did, surely, I would stick out among the masses of girls befriending the boys I like.

Should Have Said movie trailer

Check out this movie trailer for a short film I'm in. The director, Michele Elaine Hannon, is a good friend of mine. It stars J. David Arnold, Heather Leigh Polchin and myself.

I've had a fantastic time working on this beautiful story with Mirrorwall Films.

xoxoxo

Rubber bullets

I wish I could turn off certain channels in my brain, control what and who I think about and for how long. It would surely save me some trouble.

I wish I could find a nice, undamaged guy who would love me like he's never loved before. Someone who could make me laugh all day and get me out of my head. Someone who wants to be with me as much as I want to be with him and someone who will make me happy, period.

The guy I want is someone who will hold my hand when he walk, kiss my forehead, give me back rubs and foot rubs and someone who wants to fall asleep in my Grammy's living room with all the men folk in my family after holiday dinners.

I don't even really care about height as long as I can still wear my high heels occasionally. I just care that he loves me and makes me happy.

And I always get to thinking "Oooh, maybe he's the one, the guy who fits this description." And then nothing ever happens. And I wonder, you know, if relationships are really as simple as "He's just not that into you." (I don't know if it's a good or bad thing to watch that movie.)

More than anything I want to stop thinking about any guy who doesn't think as much about me. I wonder if any guy has ever gotten worked up over whether or not I like him. I worry all the time, does he like me or does he not? Could he ever like me? What if I'm too tall or too fat or just too weird? What if, does he, does he not?

These questions are like rubber bullets; they may not kill me but they hurt like hell.

I feel like I'm unintentionally cutting myself and am completely unable to stop. I know they call them crushes cause they hurt but why do I have to crush on anybody?

Parental supervision

My parents... Boy! Sometimes I feel like I'm the only adult in my family.

Both of them are telling me that the other got nasty when they were talking about filling out my FAFSA.

Both of them talk nasty about each other to me.

One says he or she is sorry I'm in the middle while the other says I'm not in the middle that the other is just acting like an asshole.

I can't even begin to tell you who is the asshole in this situation. I feel like it's me. I feel like it's me because I have to put up with pushing this shit out.

Yes, I just made a vaguely heinous not-funny joke.

I am so disgusted with my life the way it is. I'm starting to feel like neither cares enough about me to put their idiocy aside and it kills a girl to feel like her parents don't care.

It really does slay.

I'm thinking of buying a plane ticket and running away to Europe. Or South America. Or maybe Canada. Somewhere far, far away from the hassles of supervising one's own parents and all the other problems I'm dealing with.

Maybe I'll go to Italy where it's common for married men to have lovers they pay for. That way the burden of living wouldn't actually be on me. But that arrangement sounds about as comfortable as dealing with my parents.

Maybe I'll just go hide at my Grammy's house until my parents stop and wonder where their eldest is. Would either ever notice my absence?

I just want to be free of this and of everything else I've had to deal with lately.

(The above picture is of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo + Juliet.)

Shreds of thoughts, nearly incoherent

To do the blind date thing or not? That is the question.

Although I guess what I'm considering participating in is a group dinner where a bunch of couples bring a guy for me to meet. It sounds eerily similar to previous awkward situations involving a double-blind date thing at IHOP which ended in a friend of mine dating Vin.

But I'm clearly not getting any dates on my own; even when I smile back at the cute and totally awkward guy a few people ahead of me in line at Sev (the college vernacular for 7-Eleven) -- the same one who stands in my way, still smiling, when the teller calls me up to the open cash register. Not even then do these guys on campus say a word!

(I once proposed to a friend of mine that I would just start punching the guys who stare at me and never say a word and also those that never even look at me; of course, we both recognized the flaw in this plan: I'd have to punch every single guy I saw in my cross-campus travels.)

Strong enough to break

That's it. I'm keeping score of all the shit that happens to me. Deduct points for every time I'm used or cheated or just generally mistreated. Add points for those rare occasions when I actually get the good things I deserve.

When the game is over, or it's approaching overtime, I'll look at the scoreboard and if I'm not winning on the cosmic scale of life, I'm not going out easy.

I just cannot imagine why everything always goes wrong. I mean, I'm sure there are people who disagree, but I just don't feel like I deserve to work so hard and never have anything go right.

Every day is an uphill battle to make my dreams -- all of them: a happy family/living situation, a good love in my life, getting through school without feeling the weight of the world, making a name for myself in the work world -- come true and my strength is waning.

But I never stop. I am a soldier. Or a force, like my best friend Ashley told me tonight.

I don't know how to not give something my everything. I push and push and push. It's like this trick of physics my friend Michele showed me where you push the backs of your hands against a door frame really hard for 60 seconds and then when you step away, your arms float upward.

Someday my 60 seconds will be up, I'll let go a little bit, step away from the door, and everything I want will come to me as effortlessly as my arms float skyward.

Someday, man.

Every ounce of pain shooting up my arms right now is just a piece of the puzzle.

Someday I'll float.

(This post borrows the name of a Hanson song that has been pretty much my theme song in life. The above photo of Hanson was taken by Bryan Johnson.)