none for me, thanks

I don't want it. any of it.

to the best day...

My birthday was on October 7. And if you read my blog from a couple days ago you will know i was feeling like it wasn't important, but my view was radically changed. More people wished me happy birthday and did wonderful things than i ever expected. I felt truly appreciated and loved and i don't how another birthday will top it. it was wonderful and i am so thankful to everyone who was a part of it.

Better than fiction

I am in a fiction class this semester. I find it thoroughly entertaining and interesting, but i am having some trouble. I am a horrible fiction writer. And now i know for certain.

I just find myself liking to write the silly musings i write here on this blog far better. I feel like they are so much more truthful and sometimes i feel like they just write themselves. Perhaps it is just my selfish humanity that is much preferring to write about myself than anyone else, fiction or otherwise. This life is just so much more thrilling to me.

And there is one more problem i have noticed, all my stories are far too happy. I think my optimistic views about life creep in far too much and make every story sound like a stupid cliche. the thing is is that i still somehow believe in some kind of happy ending and that is the death of my fiction career. I can't make up situations about the way things actually are in life because i figure, "hey, while i am making stuff up, i might as well make it the way i think things should/or could be".

Damn.

SSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssss........

There is a distinct noise a balloon makes when it deflates. If you close your eyes you can hear it. It is a soft hissing noise and if you think about it it can make your stomach feel like it is caving in. I feel a little like that. like everyday a little more of my air is escaping.

Sign creeper talked to me again tonight. I don't know why he keeps on trying. I have turned him down every single time, but everytime i feel a little worse about it. But I am not a nice person and the reason i feel worse everytime has very little to do with the fact that i might actually be hurting his feelings and more with the worry that now he is going to think i am truly a jerk and he will never try to talk to me again. Of course, i don't particularly enjoy it when he talks to me. I call him sign creeper for a reason. he makes me uncomfortable. i never miss our conversation, but it would be a lie to say there was not a part of me that feels good about the fact that time after time he has decided it is worth me rejecting him to ask me, one more time, if i want to be friends. It feels nice to be wanted. even just a little. even by sign creeper.

Of course, i have been completely honest. I have not led him on or misled him, because i think that is a horrible thing to do to a person. I shoot him down every time, and fairly bluntly. But once the conversation is over i wonder if that was finally the last time the little chatbox with his name on it will pop up on my facebook page. And i think how relieved i will be. And i also think about how somewhere deep down i hope it is not the last time. I wish for another chance to turn him down because that would mean i am still worth it. Pretty soon i wont be worth it anymore. I think he is finally getting the message, much to my delight and regret.

I am so ready to be wanted.

no one is ready to want me.

As anyone who is romantically lonely knows, your lonliness comes in waves, in seasons. There are times when you hardly notice the small empty place in your mind and heart, and then there are times when that small empty place feels like it is threatening to unhinge its mouth and swallow you whole. Sometimes it feels like the waves might just drag you out to sea. Right now i feel like i am trying to hang on to my life boat. But soon the storm will pass. the season will change. It won't be the day before my 22nd birthday and i won't be thinking about the fact that in 22 years the most men i have managed to interest is one sign creeper.

it will be a new day, and i will appreciate the new chill in the air and i will let it fill my bones and shock my senses and i will feel better and i will tie my life boat up on the shore again and i will wrap myself in a warm sweater and a scarf i made myself and i will enjoy my favorite season: the fall.

another day down.

It's my birthday tomorrow. I will be 22.

It's funny, because usually i love birthdays. I think they are fantastic and special and they should matter. I think people should make a big deal out of them and they should celebrate that their friends or family are there with them. And I should care about my friends birthdays and be glad they are in my life. Be glad they were born on this day however many years ago. You should feel important and wanted and cared about on your birthday. I love birthdays.

This year, however, my birthday is on a wednesday. Wednesdays in my life this semester are remarkably exhausting and flustering. and i am sadly beginning to realize, that for most people your birthday is just another day. it is something to write on your facebook wall and then forget about. No one else really cares about your birthday, and that is sad to me... my birthday is just another wednesday. But it is not to me. It is my birthday. I have now survived or squandered, or gifted, or lived twenty two years. And I will celebrate with me. despite the fact that it is wednesday

and i will remember to celebrate with you on your birthday, because if i know when your birthday is that means i am probably pretty glad you are here with me.

sniff.

I love perfume. My dad almost always gives me a bottle for my birthday or for christmas and it is one of my favorite things. I have a lovely little collection of scents these days....

I discovered, however, that I hate smelling like food. perfume or lipstick that smells (or tastes) like frosting, strawberry smoothie lotion, vanilla cupcake body mist, pear deoderant... i hate it all. I don't mind when other people smell like this. I just hate to smell like food.

just a little weird thing about me...

solitude.

One evening in high school during our annual missions trip to mexico a whole group of us sat around our camp on the beach and listened as one of our chaperones gave us a devotion. The devotion was about silence. He talked about this book that had been written by a monk who took a vow of silence and he then asked us to do a funny thing. He asked us to name our silence. We then went around and some of us said where it is that we find our silence or what we named it. I didn't say anything at the time.

this idea is one that has remained in my head until this day, and four years later it is still something i think about fairly often. especially in the days immediately following the devotion i spent a long time trying to figure out what my silence meant to me. what would i name it?

i finally settled on discovery. that is what i named my silence.

I named it that because my silence is reflective. It is ponderous and my mind is anything but quiet in my silence. I learn things, i discover things in my silence. I discover things about myself and things about others and things about life in general.

For me the idea of silence and solitude go together. Solitude is something i have come to treasure greatly in the last few years. I need it. daily. I need time to be completely alone with my silence. time to discover. time to grow.

i have previously mentioned the poet rilke in other blogs, but i love what he has to say about solitude. here are a few quotes:

"It is Good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it"

"I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other"

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch, and greet eachother"

"Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. your solitude will be a support and a home for you"

"Solitude is nothing one can choose or refrain from. we are solitary. we can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. that is all."

I love that he acknowledges that sometimes solitude is hard and it hurts and you might discover things you didn't really want to. you might have to face yourself. you might feel lonely or scared, but that is all the more reason to do it. As humans we need solitude. we need to find our own thoughts and we can comfort ourselves in our solitude and our silence.

Secondly I love that he says that love is when two solitudes protect eachother. they even touch, but they remain their own. they are protected, they are their own. We must give the people we love space to figure themselves out for themselves alone. Give them a solitude. let them name their silence.

i think you have to know your silence to be able to share it at all.....

blog.

Why do I blog? why do i have this blog? why did i make it? what purpose does it serve?

there are 3 people who read it. Why not just write in my journal or some other private place?

I don't know. I was trying to figure this out and i just don't know. I don't know why the fact that some stranger could find this (though i have no idea how) is somehow important....I guess i just like knowing that this piece of me is out there and maybe it could mean something to someone else. It probably doesn't....but it could. Could is a powerful word.

be still

i have been noticing this funny thing we humans do. we try to "outlove" eachother. Sometimes it is just over something silly like a song or a tv show and we stand there in a circle and we try to convince the other people that we are the one single person who loves this specific thing the most because we have listened to that song thirty times a day or watched that tv show so many times we can quote it back verbatim. Of course other times we try to outlove other grander things. most specifically, other people.

I hate this.

then of course i was thinking about the things and people i love. i don't want to have to stand in a circle and prove to others how much i love them. I want to be still and be quiet and know the power of my own love even when it is silent to anyone else. My love of you does not need to be proven to anyone else. it does not need to be greater than anyone else's love. It just needs to be evident to you and it needs to be the best i can give. it is mine and it is for you. I don't care how much anyone else loves you because i know how much i love you. and i hope you know too. and that is enough. perhaps a quiet and confident love that does not need to prove itself to anyone is the most powerful of all...

untitled.

confession:

when i try to think of the reasons why i may or may not be a good person one of the first things that springs to my mind in the "yes i just might be a good person" column is the fact that i always put my shopping cart back back in the shopping cart receptacle when i am through using it, instead of simply leaving it in the parking lot....

....bad sign???.....

scream

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH.

wouldn't it be nice if we all let out our screams once in a while....

"The Friend Box"

I was thinking about many things today. I was thinking about something a friend of mine said in a letter to me this summer about how i know how to make her feel better because i replace the broken pieces of her heart with pieces of my own heart. I think this is a really wonderful picture of what friends can do for each other. we can heal each other but we have to be willing to share bits of ourself and trust they will be replenished in return should we ever need them.

i was also thinking about this dreadful habit i have of trying to give these pieces of myself to people who either don't want or don't deserve them...that never works out very well. anyway, from these thoughts came this (slightly morbid and depressing) story. i am sorry it is remarkably poorly written. eesh. but it is just what fell out of my head at 2 am. anyway, here it is...

"The Friend Box"

once there was a girl. She was like most other girls; nothing extraordinary, not someone who turned heads or would stand out in a crowd, But this girl had a friend. it was a new friend, but it was someone who she thought she could be there for, and one day when her friend was feeling down she cut off a lock of her hair and put it in a box which she then gave to him and she said, "here. this is something soft to comfort you when you feel sad".

He took the box from her hands and thanked her.

On another occasion her friend was feeling lost, so she cut off her index finger and put it in the box and said, "here. this is for when you have lost your way and need some direction".

he took the box and thanked her.

still the next time she saw this friend he was feeling blinded so she carefully removed one of her eyes and put it in the box then she gave it to her friend saying, "here. this is for when you can't see and you need another viewpoint"

he took the box and thanked her.

and yet, the next time she saw him he was feeling insignificant, so she cut off her ear and put it in the box saying, "here. this is so you know someone is always listening to you"

he took the box and thanked her.

and the next time she visited him he was lonely so she cut out a piece of her heart and she put it in the box and said, 'here. this is so you always know that no matter what happens you are loved".

he took the box and he thanked her.

after visiting this friend so many times the girl had begun to become weak and the next time she saw him she said, "i care for you so much that i have given you all these pieces of me to help you along and i suppose i hoped that after i gave you enough pieces the box would weigh enough to matter and you would realize that in order for both of us to thrive you would have to share pieces of yourself so that my hair would be full, and i would have all ten fingers to point my direction, and i could see clearly, and hear the music in the world, and my heart would be whole because you would have filled the empty space with a piece of your own"

the boy said nothing. and he silently rose from his seat and walked to his room where there lay on his shelf a neat collection of boxes from various other friends who had offered up pieces of themselves. all of them remained sealed and unused. he retrieved the box the girl had filled up and returned all of her pieces without a word.

grasp.

it has been nearly the entire month of august and i haven't posted any blogs...not that anyone would notice...but i don't like it. i was thinking to myself about the reason i haven't written anything and i came to some conclusions. first of all, besides the blogs about random things i appreciated that day or silly things i like, i generally blog about things that have been on my mind for awhile, things i have spent time thinking about and figuring out and making opinions on. I don't like to mindlessly say things and i like to have reasons for what i am thinking. but why nothing this month? my mind has been just as active and thoughtful. as someone told me today, "you think a lot", and yes i certainly do, probably more than one should...but as of late i feel like i can't grasp my own thoughts. i feel like there are so many bounding about in my head and ricocheting around in my mind that i can't slow any of them down to identify or analyze them. they slip right through my grasp and they land just beyond my reach. Sometimes for a brief moment i will catch one and i will think, "yes, i have some things to say about that. i think i shall blog about it" but of course once the time has come to sit down and gather the thoughts together i have forgotten what i was thinking about in the first place and that beautiful, silvery thought that was mine alone has now floated away again to somewhere only i can find it, but i have lost the map.

urgh.

i am here everyday and we do nothing. you are leaving. i am sorry you feel sad i will be seeing other people before i leave myself, but like i said, i am here everyday. you are the one who is leaving for two weeks. if hanging out with me is so important...why don't you ever do it? and why are you making me feel guilty for having plans? how many days have i said, "hey lets do something?" and how many times have you said "yes"?

thats what i thought.

Thimble

Today my parents returned from a short trip. My mother and I were sitting in the living room and my mom looked up, smiled, and said to me, "your dad has something for you." Now, as souvenirs go my dad does not have the best track record....i have certainly received some jewelry of questionable taste over the years; but none of that really mattered because it was from my dad.

I could fill a million pages with how much I love my dad... he is why i am who i am.

anyway, i stood up and went over to my dad who was exiting his study and walked over to him grinning a playful grin which he matched when he looked at me. He then reached out and handed me two small balled up rolls of white gift wrap tissue. I took them and started to unravel one. i unraveled and unraveled and unraveled. I teasingly paused and glanced up at my dad saying, "is there anything in here...?". "keep going" he assured me. When i finally got to the bottom i opened a small silver thimble with a picture of the homestead on it. The homestead is the hotel my mom and dad had just stayed in on their vacation. my mother and father and i all started giggling and we continued to giggle as i unwrapped the next ball of tissue to find ...ANOTHER thimble. this one was slightly larger and white ceramic with a picture of a mountain and "utah" emblazoned over the top. We all burst out laughing and i hugged my dad and thanked him. My mom said, "i tried to get him to only buy one, but he had to buy them both!" he hugged me back gave me a kiss on the cheek and gently poked my sides to tickle me.

now, this is the very best part. Why is it you think my dad returned from this vacation bearing not one, but two thimbles for me? ....because i was "knitting". In actuality i was crocheting. and even more importantly neither one of those activities requires a thimble or runs the risk of being pricked by a needle.

"why is this the best part?" one might wonder. i will tell you. it is the best part because it means that my dad paid such close attention to me to notice that i was sitting in the living room "knitting" as we watched tv. it means he listened as i mentioned in passing that i was going to need more yarn. it means he was interested in what i was doing. it means he wanted to help me. It means he cares that i don't prick my fingers. It means he loves me.

That is why i now think a thimble just might be one of the greatest gifts...

You'll see the sun come shining through if you just smile...

Today you made me smile. and the smile bubbled up from deep inside my belly all the way out the tips of my hair. If felt refreshing and at the same time...somehow expected. but it was still surprising. and it planted a smile on these lips. thank you.

OOOOh, AHHHH, OHHHHH...

I really do love the 4th of July.

My favorite part is going to go see the fireworks.

fireworks are magical.

My whole family packs up blankets and drives over to louisville and we always get there too late to park anywhere near where the fireworks are so we all lug our blankets and chairs a good half mile to get to the park. then we must of course find the perfect spot amidst all the other celebrators and once we do we lay down the blankets and all of us huddle together and listen to the band play while we wait for the light to drip from the sky before the spectacle begins.

it is just one of the most wonderful feelings ever.

happy fourth of July

A little poetry on a Saturday.

I love this poem. It is by a German Poet. Rainer Maria Rilke. I love a lot of what he has to say actually...about seeing people and solitude and love and art and life. anyway...

"Love Song"

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Thanks For Being My Balloons

Thanks for being my Balloons. I know that you have no idea you are being my balloons right now, but you are. you are making me feel lifted and you aren't even trying. We make a funny pair you and me. We are so different but somehow we make sense. if you weren't in my life i would be different. you challenge me and you make me consider even silly (yet interesting) things, like, "how many of the people out there in the world that i could be happy with speak english?". I know you really care about me and you respect my opinion on things. You make me feel smart and interesting and like i could give something valuable to the world. and i appreciate that. You have listened to me complain about boys and i have heard all your girl stories. you make me laugh, you gross me out, and you humiliate me sometimes...but i always, always have fun with you. and i love you so much.

the other day we were talking and you stopped whatever silliness we were chatting about and, in that serious, "i mean what i am about to say" voice you said, "you are absolutely beautiful" and in that moment i got so close to tears. it was embarrassing. and then of course you said something utterly ridiculous but it didn't matter, you had already made my day.

and also, you call me every single day. i love that. even when we only talk for two minutes it means so much to me that you thought of me and you called. you are interested in my stupid everyday life and that is rare. you are someone in my life who truly truly makes me feel loved. and i hope you know how much i truly truly love you.

thank you. thank you for being my balloons.

crack

yesterday i felt the crack in my heart with your name on it grow just a little deeper. it hurt. Everytime you do this it gets deeper and deeper and i wonder how many more times it will take before you cut all the way through and just break it.

And by now all i can do is is wonder how many times i am going to fight for something you won't. how many times am i going to lose all my pride and beg you to be with me? how long until you grow up? how long till i matter at all? of course, i know somewhere in me that i am never going to stop fighting for you. i love you too damn much. i know cause i love you more than you love me.

i almost started crying last night when i found out there was another battle to be had and i didn't even know it was coming. i didn't cry because i wasn't alone, but i felt my eyes sting in that all too familiar way. you know the what the worst part was? it was the part where you gave up. the part where you said, "i have accepted it". that crushed me.

and I am sorry i hurt you. I didn't even know i did. I still wouldn't if it hadn't been for someone else. after all this time you can't bring yourself to talk to me? I must not be a very good friend to you, and i apologize for that.

today, you sent me a message. it didn't say anything about how you feel. but, it was something. and it was you reaching out a little. it was you fighting just a little bit...and it made me feel like that crack with your name on it started to heal just a little.

thank you.

please don't give up ever. fight for our friendship. it matters. i know it does.