Back in the Day Take Six: 3/03/2009

If only I knew my one and only would come in the form of a little rugrat with pigtails:

Being single is a lonely business.  It can be nice to have the freedom to do and go as you please, but being void of the intimate companionship that everyone seeks after is tiring.  Then again, love isn’t something you can necessarily seek after and find.  It’s like the old saying: “a watched pot never boils.”  That’s all fine and dandy to say, but do you have any idea how hard it is to NOT look?  It’s like telling someone to not think about chocolate.  Just don’t think about.  Stop it.  Get it out of your head.  You are under no circumstances allowed to think about chocolate.  Did you think about chocolate?  That’s why I can’t stop looking.  Every new person that waltzes into my life stops my heart in anticipation of discovering what the possibilities are.  Of wondering if this is the one.  Does my premature planning before I even really know him make me a little psycho?  I hope not because if it does I am absolutely mental.  But I just can’t help myself!  It’s the curse of a monogamous species.  Always looking for your one and only.  The more time that lapses before finding that person, the more intensely you search.  I like to think that I’m a grounded person.  I am reasonable and have a clear view of reality.  I know my age and my prospects.  I know what I have accomplished and what I still have yet to accomplish.  And I know that when the time comes, everything will fall into place for me.  But sometimes I get tired of the wait.  I want immediate gratification.  I want love and to be loved.  I want my life to start.  So is it strange that my mind is always filled with daydreams of what might transpire?  Does it make me crazy that I have planned a future with the most remote of men?  Am I alone in my unquenchable need for more?

Back in the Day Take Five: 1/24/2009

Apparently I've had a hard time coming up with words for quite a long time:

So here is how it stands: I have not been able to write.  I sit down and stare at the screen until my eyes are tired and still nothing is accomplished.  It has been much too long, but I can’t seem to snap out of this helpless stage of inability.  My mind is overworked.  It never shuts off.  But even with all of the overtime, nothing makes sense.  My previous method of organizing my life on paper doesn’t work anymore.  So what now?  Do I keep writing this piece about not being able to write?  Or do I find a new method of expression?  Maybe I should just wait until my mind has healed and my pen takes life again.  My fear: that will never happen.  I will go on for the rest of my life writing the thoughts of others and little blabbering blurbs like this one that have no substance, no meaning.   Then again, maybe it isn’t my writing that is the problem.  Maybe it is my life.  If my life has no meaning or substance, how could my thoughts and feelings?  That is a disgrace to my standing.  I work hard.  Every hour of the day.  My life is consumed with trying to make a future for myself.  Trying to discover my calling and preparing myself to be able to do my life’s work well.  Of course my life has substance – it just doesn’t feel that way right now.  I feel like I get up every day and go to bed every night without having done anything.  Nothing ever changes.  Nothing ever progresses.  Except for time.  I realize is it immediate gratification I seek.  I suppose I’ve accomplished a lot in the time I’ve had, I just haven’t reached the outcome.  I have another sixteen weeks until I graduate from college.  And then life is a mystery to me.  I have hopes.  Of course I want to find a job that means something to me.  I want to lean to dance.  I want to learn to speak Spanish.  I want to go to grad school.  I want to get married and have children.  And I want it all together.  I want the entire package, wrapped pretty with a big bow and card that says, “Just for you.”  But at this point, anything could happen.  It is no mystery that life can change in a matter of seconds.  And there are a lot of seconds between now and then, whenever “then” is.   But for now I need sleep.  Endless, beautiful, peaceful sleep.  So please, don’t disturb me for the next 6 to 10 hours.  The moments when my brain is at rest are precious.

Back in the Day Take Four: 1/24/2009

Oh if only I knew how sleep deprived I would yet become:

I have come to realize that sleep is a luxury.  It seems to be increasingly hard to come by with each passing day.  I guess it’s not falling asleep that is hard, but turning off my mind has become impossible.  I day dream of what could have been.  Wonder what will be.  Worry about what I need to do.  Try to make decisions and then become anxious

How is it that some people can just turn off their minds?  Indeed, many people in this world never think at all.  And here I am, completely unable to stop.  What is it that makes a mind have to work so hard?  Thinking can only do so much.  It is action that is important.  Yet that is what I lack.

Back in the Day Take Three: 9/28/2008

I used to really enjoy writing the "About Me" sections every online networking site has:

My favorite time of day is whenever my brain feels most alive.  I dance in the rain and make angels in the snow.  My favorite person in the entire world is my cat, who in return lives to scar my hand with her sharp teeth and claws.  I speak kitty fluently and know a little bit of the puppy language.  I am incredibly romantic, but awkward and evasive when it comes to personal romances.  I use words when I don't know what they mean.  I daydream every second of every day and incorporate almost every person I meet into these stories.  I'm a sucker for pretty words and live my life lost in fantasy worlds.  I don't want to wake up, but am quite capable of understanding the real world when no one else wants to.

These are all parts of who I am.  A girl who lives her life just like any other.  But there is only one me, and that's all I'd ever wish there to be.  As small and as insignificant as my life might seem, it is mine and it's the only one I get.  I plan on making the most of it and welcome all who wish to join

Back in the Day Take Two: 9/6/2008

I told you I was melodramatic:

The lights go out.  The cold sets in.  Another day gone.  Another night of restless sleep.  Oh the sweet despair that stabs at the depths of my stomach.  The sick memories of times past torment my mind again.  It is an uncontrollable reaction that I don’t even try to stop anymore.  Yet the agony is unbearable.  The bitter sadness has encroached itself into my being and has stubbornly refused to leave, not matter what I do.  I’ve tried it all.  Faking it worked until I realized I wasn’t really faking it.  I just wasn’t saying that I acknowledged it.  Giving way worked until I realized how much I was missing.  Life is too precious to let yourself waste away during the prime of it all.  Ignoring it worked until it built up to the point of a breakdown.  Now I’m just stagnating.  Waiting for something to happen.  At this point I don’t really care what it is, as long as it’s something.  I still remember the first time I laughed.  It sounded strange and horse.  I’m not sure if it would even count as laughter; it was so foreign.  I’d almost forgotten what it meant to be anything more than simply existing.  Yet here I am: being self-aware enough to count as more than a lump of flesh.  I’ve come far enough to write little black marks on a white sheet of paper and still make sense, even if only I understand.  Each day that passes makes the previous seem obsolete.  Happiness seems to have been centuries ago.  I’ve forgotten it.  The taste.  The feel.  The smell.  Even the simplicity of it all is lost.  Happiness.  Joy.  Love.  Hope.  They seem too great of a challenge to ever be realities again.  Of course, these conclusions are with reason aside.  But they exist even in the most reasonable of minds.  Reason and feeling survive contrary to one another.  It is the way life is.  A little melodramatic?  Oh but you forget that exaggeration is my first mate.  My soul mate.  And so here I go again to shut my self up in the minds of those greater than I am.  To lose myself in the words of passion and feeling that cannot have come from my sorry excuse of a pen.  To forget life and with it the disappointment that eats away at my very skin.  So if I disappear for a time, you know where to find me.  Not in this world.

Back in the Day Take One: 4/13/2008

I've been going through old emails and documents lately.  Since inspiration hasn't hit me in a while, I decided to start posting some things I wrote in the past. This one is something I wrote after a breakup.  In retrospect, a lot of things I used to write were depressing, lonely pleas of heartbreak.  I'm so glad things have changed. 

Entry One:

What do you do when life gets you down?  Take comfort in future hopes and aspirations and the friends that are always by your side?  But what if that’s not enough?  What then?  How do you make hurt and sorrow go away?  Right now I feel flat.  Flat and lost.  Everything I had ever hoped for is now dead.  Powerful words?  Maybe.  But true ones. Everything I wanted and had worked towards disappeared in a blink of an eye.  No warning.  No preparation.  Just the cold, hard fact and an unpleasant goodbye.  So what now?  I pick up my life and move on, right?  But what if I don’t know how?  My life is different – forever changed.  Who I was before is neither who I am now nor someone I can ever be again.  So who am I?  I wish someone could tell me because right now I have no clue.  I don’t know what I want or need.  All I know is that I want what I can’t have.  I want to go back to before things changed and make things right before they went wrong.  I want to take back every hurtful word ever spoken and mend each broken heart.  Most of all I want to stop hurting in the now.  I wish, more than anything, that I could just forget.  Forget and let go.  But why would I want that?  Each painful event makes us grow and learn.  And we can take that new knowledge into another potentially painful event where we learn even more.  So forgetting is not the answer.  Maybe it’s just letting go.  But why does it have to be so difficult?  When you hold on to something for so long and invest your entire being into it, how do you walk away?  How are you supposed to go on living a life when you don’t know how to live in this new and terrifying world?  I wish there were an answer to that question.  I know it takes time and effort.  But time takes far too long.