Spring Break Post #6

Getting my read on. Here's one I coulda told you: "Finally, these dares one made oneself commit didn't change a thing." - Birds of America, Lorrie Moore

Spring Break Post #5

The theme of my converstions lately: this is not the life I imagined for myself. It's nothing like what I dreamed as a girl.

Spring Break Post #4

"There was nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being." - Birds of America, Lorrie Moore

Spring Break Post #3

Grammy's watching The Celtic Thunder. They're singing "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," a surprisingly apt description of my current state of mind.

Spring Break Post #2

Cried to Liz Phair love song tonight. Wish I'd been born the kind of woman that drove men crazy. Sometimes I think love is the only thing worth living for.

Spring Break Post #1

Yesterday, I made frequent eye contact with a very cute patron at Perkins. Through the entire meal, I lived a lifetime in those cursory glances. I felt hope.

Sprung

Spring break has sprung and sometime tomorrow, I will be escaping this godforsaken city of brotherly angst and hate for the sweet bliss of a week with my GrammyGrams. This woman, who is exactly 59 years and 364 days my senior, is my hero. She's survived breast cancer and colon cancer and a divorce. She's my best friend and my soul sister.

God, I cannot wait!

Yes, not only has spring sprung, but I have sprung from the prison America calls college. Honestly, I have come to realize the only place on earth I feel whole and happy is at my Grammy's house and I have been looking forward to spending my break there for months.

I won't be posting much this week, although I'll try to text in a few 160-character posts whenever something really important comes up.

In my somewhat absence, I urge you to have fun. Get out there and enjoy your spring break or your work/school week or whatever the case may be. For now, I'm going to dream of a Coffee Shop Intellectual (one of the guy archetypes in February 2010's Cosmopolitan, from which the above image of 26-year-old actor Sebastian Stan comes -- yes, I'm catching up on some very important reading) and enjoy some home-cooking in the Lehigh Valley.

Smooches, pooches!

Shipwreck

Yesterday, before I could talk myself out of it, I bombarded the cute guy in the class before my creative writing class and gave him my phone number. He looked at me like I was strange the entire time. The look on his face is burned into my memory.

It is that look which signifies just what kind of reaction I seem to get in everyone. I think I tend to horrify people. Or maybe I am horrified of other people. I do not know which it is anymore.

I feel like I'm always on -- or that I'm so lost that I don't even know what I am like when I am "off."

Today in my sociology class, we touched again on this concept of front and backstage behavior that we seem to always talk about. And it just makes me sad to think that there is no one outside of my own family with whom I am backstage.

I wish I had the energy to delve into this further, but I do not. I am terribly sorry I have been so short of shrift of late. I really just need to try and find my footing.

I can feel the world, my life, flow in and out around my feet, washing away the sand on which I stand. I am sinking slowly but surely. And I feel I have nothing to hold onto.

A hundred years

Today I feel weary.

Walking from the central library here in Philly to the subway, I felt like sitting down and crying. My feet hurt, my back ached. I was (and am still) so tired. My brain hurt too.

Like it's a suitcase I've overpacked. It's ready to burst at the seams at any given moment.

I feel like I'm not really learning anything useful but my head is being crammed full of useless information and it gives me headaches.

I need to sleep for a hundred years. Even then, I'm sure I'd still be tired.

A heart wrapped in cotton candy

Earlier today, before I gained full consciousness, I was happy.

Utterly, unmistakably, over-the-moon happy.

All because of a dream. I can only remember one detail of my dream: I was dating Mr. Athlete and it quite possibly could have been a sex dream -- well not in the case that that's all I dreamt of. There were other things. I feel like there were sun and blue skies in my dream. Whatever exactly went down between myself and my dream guy, I was the happiest I've ever felt.

Except possibly when I dream about being pregnant.

The point is I would sleep forever if I could keep having those dreams that made me feel that way.

It's impossible to even convey in words just how happy I felt. It was like I was filled with hot air, but like a sweet hot air. It's like I was filled with cotton candy -- yes, like my heart had been wrapped in cotton candy.

There's hardly a thing I wouldn't do if it could make me feel that way all the time.

Then again, I know better than to believe that I could ever be that happy and not put an end to it myself if outside forces didn't conspire against my happiness. It's human nature. I think as much as I sometimes think others are out to make me miserable, the fact of the matter is, I am. Even if it's subconsciously.

Other than this dream, there's one other big thing on my mind. It's something I realized yesterday and which I think is a perfect example of something I've been thinking about for the past couple of days.

I'm not quite as unhappy when I'm by myself as I come off in conversations with others (even though I'm never as happy as when I'm dreaming). Honestly, I feel like the people I talk to the most are usually bitching about something -- I do not dare invalidate their anger or frustration but the problem is its affect on my mood. No matter how content or satisfied I may feel when I'm alone, there are certain people I can't talk to without complaining.

One of these people is my mother. I feel like 90% of what I share with her is my anger or frustration with something. And while she'll tell me I need to get happy, like today when I told her I've never felt happier than during that dream this morning, the times when I try to share something positive, she'll find something negative to say about it. Of course, an example escapes me at the moment.

But I'm really tired of this melodramatic crap that so many of us pull when attempting to socialize.

Why do these people do it? Why do I do it?

Is it because these people don't want to see me happy while they're upset or because I don't want to be happy when they're upset? Am I sacrificing my own inner peace in an attempt to lighten the emotional load of my companion? Is that really my job anyway?

Can it really be the case that we could all be happy if it weren't for others pulling -- or pushing -- us down?

I think the dream is the perfect proof that "yes" is the answer to this question. In my dreams, anything can make me happy whether or not others would deem in wrong in the real world.

Take my dreams about being pregnant for instance. For some reason, I've had a lot of dreams lately where I'm pregnant. And, next to the dream I had this morning, they're the happiest dreams I've ever had. If I were actually pregnant, the outside world would make me upset about being pregnant. I'd be told that at 18 I shouldn't have a kid, it'll ruin my life. But when I'm dreaming, no one can stop me.

Even when I told my mom about the kinds of dreams that make me happiest, she said "I worry about you."

Who the fuck are you to tell me what can and can't make me happy? Who am I to do that to you?

Well, all of this thinking is giving me a headache. I do declare it's bedtime for me.