nap in the sun

today my coffee froze in the car

2009-01-17T22:20:00.000-08:00

one time i bumped into a wall and fractured three ribs.

you found me

2008-12-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

I found God
on the corner of First and Amistad
Where the west
was all but won
All along
Smoking his last cigarette
I said, where've you been?
He said, ask anything.

Where were you?
When everything was falling apart.
All my days spent by the telephone.
And all I needed was a call
It never came
To the corner of First and Amistad

Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me
Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late.
You found me, you found me.

But in the end
Everyone ends up alone
Losing hope
The only one who's ever known
Who I am, Who I'm not, Who I want to be
No way to know
How long she will be next to me

Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me
Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late.
You found me, you found me.

I've been calling for years and years
and you've never left me no messages
Never sent me no letters

Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me
Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late.
You found me, you found me.

Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me
Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late.
You found me, you found me.

do you imagine your sufferings to be less because you love truth, beauty?

2008-11-26T20:27:00.000-08:00

for christmas, all i want is a future.

someone fucking tell me what to do with my life.

kthanxbai.

science of sleep

2008-11-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

the last time i was not tired was fifth grade. i was just your typical ten year old: i had braces and glasses, i had crushes and cafeteria woes, i had the backstreet boys and the babysitters club. oh, and i had insomnia.

i can remember the day after my first sleepless night, standing on the black top (the play ground was reserved for "grade k" only), eating my snack (probably sliced apples or one of those handipack crackers with the spreadable orange cheese [yum!!]), waiting for my turn to jump rope (i could never do double dutch) and feeling unstoppable.

i now know that the accurate description for the condition is: manic.

i can remember looking around and laughing at everyone else on the inside. looking at them, the silly sleep-requiring creatures! didn't they realize how much they missed when their eyes were closed? i barely wanted to even blink, i was so afraid i'd let my opportunity for Greatness pass me by! they thought sleep was necessary. i saw myself as proof that it wasn't. look at me! i didn't sleep last night, and i'm fine. pssh.

i missed having dreams, though.

it lasted pretty much the entire school year, but its novelty had dissipated by december. usually i stayed in my room until the green glow of my digital clock read 11:00, and then i'd run downstairs to my parents' room (i'm sure they loved this) and announced with a whine and a barefooted stomp "i can't sleeeee-eeeeeeep!" at first they took pity, turning on the bedside lamp and folding me between them. They rubbed my back and let me watch the late night news with them in their feather soft king sized bed. One would rub my back while the other would hold my hand. After my thirty minutes of what i can only describe as womb-like safety, i would return to my master bedroom, sip some chamomile, and relax to some pachelbel and puccini. i wrote, some.

then patience wore thin. i was allowed one visit to vent, in the threshold of the doorway, then ordered back upstairs. they weren't being mean - they were just establishing boundaries and tired. they were mere mortals, after all - diurnal organisms desiring sleep. i, however, sat upright in my princess bed with all of my lights on, listening to everclear and eating saltine crackers (they are still a major comfort food for me).

in school i began to cry. my mind was so mixed up. sometime in the spring, the teacher sent a note home to my mother, suggesting that i speak with the school guidance counselor. i was relieved when i secretly read it on the bus on the way home after school - the guidance counselor! i knew where she was in the building - there was a sign in all caps on her office door. from a distance, it looked comfortable; it was one of the few rooms that had carpeting and wallpaper instead of the institutional speckled tile floor and spearmint green and white concrete cinderblock walls. i always wondered what she did all day. now i knew: she could help me sleep! i didn't understand puberty yet, but i figured my sleeplessness must be it and that i was just one of the first kids in my class to start going through it. hah.

i showed my mom the note, beaming, thinking she would be so happy. why hadn't she thought of it?! the guidance counselor! months now i had had this problem, and the whole time, the solution was the oasis right at the end of the hall!

oh. ohhhh, i was wrong.

my mom took the note as a personal affront to her parenting skills and i was in deep shit. how dare i cry at school? only kids with messed up home lives ever cried in school. she told me i was an embarrassment, and that next time i felt like i was going to cry i should remember that. as if i wasnt already mortified enough, right?

i never went to the guidance counselor. my teacher suspected i never gave my mom the note. i cried myself to sleep. and returned to normal.

hah.

i don't think i think enough

2008-11-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

i wonder how long he's known. something i said spurred it, i'm sure. he called me last week on more than a single consecutive day. I enjoy talking and the sound of my voice, but i would never expect another person to voluntarily listen to my mindless ramblings and yet -- here was proof!

even crazier is the fact that i picked up the phone and answered it instead of letting it ring like always.

i almost feel bad, really. like i'm wasting his time. like i should warn him, since no one else has yet. how does one gracefully go about it? dashing hopes, shattering reality?

it's for his own good, i should remind you.

last year when A was mildly interested, i recoiled like a turtle in its shell. stopped returning calls and acknowledging the taps on the glass of my display case. not wanting to bring any attention to myself, i stayed put until gradually he forgot about me or cognitively refused to consider me. whichever came first.

he may have been upset with me for a bit, but i think that's passed now that he's realized i did him a huge favor. we're still friends, he calls me on the mornings of my radio show (never more than one day in a row, so i don't run out of anything to talk about and hopefully don't bore him over the course of our two minute convo).

but to return to the present. any advice? is the ignore tactic okay or have i employed it too often? i don't want him to be mad at me, maybe i should just cut to the chase and explain somehow it's not him it's me.

dependency?

2008-11-06T20:53:00.001-08:00

you are sitting next to me and i want so desperately to talk but i am afraid to interrupt your work. instead i sit here typing, wondering. scared. in a good way, but nonetheless. silent fear silences.

shocked and awed

2008-11-05T21:39:00.000-08:00

it's funny how when you start to take care of yourself, others do, too.

there it was, sitting in my inbox on election day, sandwiched in between my nytimes news alerts. my eyes blurred and i told jaime it was there before i even opened it. i started crying because i didn't deserve it. thank you.

communication was the key word you used. i have never been good at that. i tend to bottle up all negative emotions until i physically cannot withstand them any longer and regurgitate them all at the most inconvenient of times. a black hole, it all just gets sucked in until the universe expands and explodes, release a catastrophic amount of energy and black matter. or something like that.

in my family, we talk a lot, but don't communicate anything. passive aggression is the modus operandi. god forbid anyone actually just come out and say what about the other person is currently pissing them off; no, if you don't know, then i'm not going to tell you why i want to strangle you. this is so fucking ridiculously ineffective. i realize that it's probably like this in most families. this is how i comfort myself.

i wish, however, that we communicated better. i appreciate you opening up the lines to me once again. this time, i'm not going to be the passive aggressive bitch i've been raised to be, and instead am going to effectively share my thoughts and feelings, and i hope you will do the same. this way, we save ourselves the awful strain of trying to figure out what on another is not telling us - think of all the energy! time! effort! we are saving!

i can't lose you again. i can't afford to not communicate. this time, i'm not going to binge on my unspoken emotions and thoughts. please don't walk away; i need you to lay it out on the table for me so that i can be sustained off of yours.

another reason why i need to become a doctor: so i can write my own prescriptions.

2008-11-04T23:45:00.001-08:00

"Drug 'tricks the body to lose weight'"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7707876.stm

irony

2008-11-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

flabbergasted.

scared but not because it's halloween eve

2008-10-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

i awake to find no peace of mind. how do you live as a fugitive?

i should be happy. this is the one time of the year that it's okay to eat candy until you puke and pretend to be something you're not.

and i am happy, really! just also... weary. or is it leery? it's 930 and i'm drunk. good going. really good going.

gosh, i feel so like madeleine right now. drunk posting and hitting the backspace to try to prove that i'm not drunk. prove to whom? myself, mostly, but i guess you too.

i'm pretty convinced that the universe hates me.

i just looked in the mirror and realized that i have very small wrists.

okay, off to jared's. more later. or not. depends on how i feel. (or if i don't feel, for that matter.)

21 october 2008

2008-10-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

What happens to our memories when we fail to recall them anymore? Where do they disappear to? what does it mean for the remember-er (the one doing the remembering) and the remember-ee?

i was talking about that time to see peter pan at trinity rep with patty and... and... who else was it that accompanied us?

i knew there was another. i could see the very order in which we sat. i may be making this part up, but in my memory (half memory, really) he wore an off-white, cream colored sweater and black school shoes.

i think i am letting R go. He left years ago. 1 january 2007. that was the last time he ever spoke to me, after breakfast and a car ride home from madeleine's.

i used to think about it everyday - what would i have said then knowing what i know now? would i have said anything? i probably would have just cried silently while watching out of the car window, all mascara streaks and raccoon eyes from the night before, snow crunching under his feet (brother's boots) and not even looking back once.

it happened on sunday. i said his name out loud and i swear to you i felt physical pain. i pretended nothing had happened, like when you trip on the bottom stair that you forget is there for recover nicely all in the same movement.

later i sat in the semi darkness of an unfamiliar place and willed myself to call to mind his face but it refused to reveal itself and i couldn't breathe. i lay down on the dark grain of the wooden bench and curled into the fetal position until hours later when someone woke me up and i realized they probably thought i was crazy.

i walk (present tense) around smiling at strangers but on the inside i feel dead.

my symbiotic couterpart has ripped himself me (zooxanthellae + jellyfish)

i wither, shrive, and die in the wake of his abandonment.

memories are leaving me too, now; i have nothing left.

the few remaining wisps of reality's shadow that he left me are going away now, too. and i blame me. do you hear me? i know this is my fault. i'd leave me too. i've tried.

right now

2008-10-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

i seriously have more work than god.

when did i get so in over my head with life?

i sit down and i am so distracted. luckily, today it's with good things. for instance, did you know that it is possible to miss someone you barely know?

i suppose things could be worse.

m4w-gsoh

2008-10-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

i miss our summer outings.

in the office

2008-10-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

jon: what the hell!? tnine doesn't recognize that i'm trying to type "ninjas"????????
annmarie: i know! and you have to put a space in between "gang" and "bang." seriously, like wtf, right?

i'm not even particularly angry right now, i just love this song

2008-10-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

Like a California King
-Everclear-

I see you have made yourself a brand new life
Such a cool blue star with a bright new shine
I see you wear your checkered past
Just like a shining suit of gold
I know you think you look so special

I am told you have found yourself a brand new time
Watch the world stand still as years go by
I know you think you are so new and different
But it makes no sense to me
There is nothing new about you
Just another self-made man
There is nothing new that I see
Enjoy it while you can
I know you think you look so special

What makes you think you are so special?
What makes you think you are unique?
I see you smile and I get angry
As I watch you go colossal
Like a california king

I hear you gave the world a brand new voice
Such a happy melody with a new wave whine
Yeah I see you hide behind your own noise
I think we've seen enough

I will find you in the crowded room
I will knock you off your feet
I will burn you just like teenage love
I will eat you just like meat
I will break you into pieces
Hold you up for all the world to see
What makes you think you are better than me?

What makes you think you are better?
What makes you think you are so complete?
What makes you think you are the only one immune to falling down?
Why cant you see?
I see you fall and I get happy
I will watch you burn like fire
I will watch you burn like a california king

I will watch you burn like a california king

eleven squared

2008-10-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

i have this quote in three places in my 10 x 10 bedroom, with the hopes that the more i read it, the more likely i am to actually believe it.

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
-c.s. lewis, The Four Loves

hm. nope, not believing it yet. maybe i'll convince myself tomorrow.

scary thought of the hour

2008-10-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

it occurred to me as i was writing a card to my friend john

having graduated from pc in may, he's currently in the process of studying to receive his phd from suny stony brook (yeah, i know, my friends are geniuses, nbd). he has called me a few times since school has started, presumably each time just to make sure i'm doing well (or at least okay) because he is the big brother i don't have.

those of you who are reading (2? 3?) no doubt know i am deathly afraid of the phone and never return calls (and yes I KNOW I AM A TERRIBLE FRIEND. it's simply that verbal vomit spews out of my mouth a million miles a minute when i talk on the phone, so really, i do anyone who calls me a favor by not actually returning their request to dial their digits back.)

so anyways, the handwritten note is my primary modus operandi.

and as i sat with the fresh papyrus and my favorite pen, i wrote: "sorry, i have not been myself lately."

and then i realized: i have always been this way. "lately" essentially describes the last 3 years of my life. these coupled insights, in turn, led to this hour's scary thought (yes, i get about 24 of these a day, sometimes more)

what if this *is* my self?

dear god please nononono

click goes my camera

2008-10-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

someday i will laugh and ache over this/you.

but for today... i will pretend i feel nothing.

peace train

2008-10-21T01:12:00.000-07:00

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

it's happening again.

2008-08-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

i wasn't even going to apply to brown, but my dad encouraged me to. i thought one ivy was already one too many to be wasting money on for the application and sat-score-sending fees, but he was the one signing the checks, so i shrugged my shoulders and submitted my supplemental app.

to everyone's surprise - most especially my own - i got in.

the big white envelope arrived unceremoniously, squeezed in the plain mailbox with nary a care. i was so excited - no one in my family had ever gained acceptance into an ivy, much less the one right down the road!

drunk with self-confidence and arrogance, i suddenly forgot how the school didn't even fit into my top five (inhale yalestanfordtulanenotredamebostoncollege exhale) choices. and how my #1 argument against attending providence college was that i wanted to leave (i.e., get the fuck out of) rhode island. unable to be a bulldog, i was happily settling for the bears.

we went to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner - tortilla flats - and my mom ordered me a margarita and my dad was beaming with pride. we would always go there for my good report cards. (this reminds me, i still need to read the john steinbeck novel.) i don't remember what we talked about - my senior year was just about wrapping up, so probably just the usual: AP exams, prom, graduation, where other people were accepted. the baseball season had just started, so red sox.

one thing is obvious: we did not talk about where i would be that fall.

that is, until my little sister inquired, "will you still visit us when you go to brown?"

before i could reassure her with a yes and a "bear" hug (hah), my mom let out a laugh and said, "she's not going to brown! she can't turn down the scholarship at pc!"

this was news to me.

that was the day i received the best and the worst news of my life. within a 5 hour or so span.

what is the difference between colorless and clear? i never learned that, despite it being taught to me.

2008-07-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

i want to throw a tantrum like a two year child just physically hurl myself on the floor and cry and kick and scream and be utterly unreasonable wail to the point where my face is red, maybe even rupture some vessels in my eye(s) so that later there are red splotches surrounding the pupils to serve as little reminders of the total loss of control have tears stream down my cheeks and taste them on my lips and cause the wispy sun-kissed hair that frames my face to stick to my skin sob until i'm positively hyperventilating and eventually reach a point where my mouth is open but no sound is coming out, that awful silent scream that children emit and the noise that emerges after is animalistic and full of pain and causes you to shudder

the only way to handle such a state would be for all to abandon. you know the drill: just ignore them until they tucker themselves out and go to sleep in the crib from which they haven't yet figured out how to escape. you check up on them every 5 minutes, to make sure they are breathing normally again. temperature burning and hair damp with sweat and snot and you collapse in your own pile of silent tears.

this is what i am doing: making everyone i love hate me so that when i go away no one will mind or even notice for that matter. it seems to be working so far.

"my god! people say. you have so much self-control! and later: my god. you're so, so sick. when people say this, they turn their heads, you've won your little game. you have proven your thesis that nobody-loves-me-everybody-hates-me, guess-i'll-go-eat-worms. you get to sink back into your hospital bed, shrieking with righteous indignation. see? you get to say. i knew you'd give up on me. i knew you'd leave." -m.h.

well, i plan on leaving before everyone else can.

even inside, it's so cold.

2008-07-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

"she left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. 'it's easier to feel the sunlight without them' she said." - brian andreas

inaction speaks louder than words.

2008-07-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

we fight and say things neither of us mean. but sometimes the things that hurt the most are the things that aren't said. and that is my weapon of choice.

i was there for less than twenty minutes before my anger was ignited by the blue sparks spitting out of her mouth. i yelled. i hate when i yell. i start off strong, then realize how childish yelling is, and taper off sheepishly, avert my eyes and try to pretend i wasn't just yelling. she spared me this tail-end embarrassment by interrupting me mid-yell.

i shook my head, neither of us needed this right now/ever. we have the same fights all the time, a broken record. they are the ones that have survived since high school years, so our lines are well-rehearsed by now. except the tears are real.

as the steam was dissipating, i left. she called and apologized and said she loved me, please come back now?

i knew what i was supposed to say: "i'm sorry too, i love you too, okay." except i didn't.

i drove (music blasting, sunroof open) to my house (it's no home) and distracted myself by sipping peach iced tea and looking at the advertisements in mindless modeling magazines. when it caught up with me later, it hit me hard.

my friend's mother died last week and i am killing mine with words left unsaid.

i hate myself.

wheel

2008-06-24T01:20:00.000-07:00

and if you never stop when you wave goodbye
you just might find if you give it time
you will wave hello again
you just might wave hello again

good to know for that menage a tois

2008-06-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

"anyone who doesn't like him is probably a c**t."
-chris martin on my other love, jay-z

"how did it start?" she asks; "how will it end?" i want to know.

2008-06-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

it didn't just start. it happened, and it continues to happen. something that has a start logically must have an end. there is no end here. i bet i could end and this would go on.

one of my earliest memories is from dance class. my sister is not born yet so i am less than five years old. we are practicing a move - something called window shutters, i believe. two girls stand side by side, then step in opposite directions, thus revealing a third girl who was standing behind them the whole time, shielded from the view of the audience.

i was not sufficiently small enough to be the third girl by any stretch of the imagination. i remember knowing i could never even be considered by the instructor to be girl #3. i remember being worried that i could play the part of both girls #1 and #2. how mortifying would that have been? to be both shutters. thankfully i was spared this imagined embarrassment. so many mirrors. so many little girls. but i was never a "little" girl.

this was my last dance class. the next few days i complained of a bellyache and imitated my mother's morning-sickness. the following saturday i announced i would not being going to dance class.

i feigned stage fright the night of the recital. i told my parents i was not a dancer, and they assumed i'd much rather just play softball and soccer and plus, with a new baby sister, they had other things on their mind, other things to spend their money on besides wasted dance lessons for child elephants better suited for catcher or goalie.

that was my last dance class. i hate mirrors.

who cares how it starts, all i care about is how it ends.

how's this for a personal statement?

2008-06-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

"i want to become a doctor because, despite not being able to take care of myself, i'm spectacular at saving the lives of others."

tell me what i'm supposed to want. that's what i want.

2008-06-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

you ask me what i want like it actually matters. and for the thousandth time i answer like i actually know.

the truth is that i've never been further from knowing anything in my life. how the fuck am i supposed to know? why am i supposed to know? (you don't. that i know.)

a few months ago, i told you before we deserved better than 'this'... and then yesterday i went directly against what i said. (classic jess move, right there.) you asked what changed, why we suddenly don't deserve better.

the truth is you deserve better, and i'm a masochist, and that is all.

i said i was comfortable with our continued state of no "us" despite not wanting to be one-half of anything else. i mentioned waiting for something to want to be apart of (another "us") and you used that against me.

i would like to remind you waiting is passive; it is seeking that is active.

i can wait forever. masochist, remember? sick joy in something horrible. not getting what i want makes me happy because then i can complain about it. and in a sick way, complaining makes me happy.

and there we are.

i miss you now. i miss you all the time.

2008-06-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

it feels so weird to be missing you. or no, not "weird." maybe "wrong" is the right word. yes, "wrong" - for a million reasons. you are there and i am here. apart like always, but now miles separate us in addition to a multitude of similarly intangible distances.

i have dreams where you make a guest appearance and then i am upset with my subconscious for teasing me with surreality and manifestations of wants i wasn't even aware of (like meeting your sisters, apparently). i wake up mixed up.

you talk little and i savor each word on my tongue, drips of water in the sahara. but is it only a oasis? yes. silly, silly me.

it is my imagination getting the better of me. it is my mind playing tricks on me. it is my sense leaving me. (and i am waving goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.)

it is anything but wrong because it is not even real.

not for the faint of heart

2008-06-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

things that are hazardous to my health:

coldplay + alcohol

those who are dead
are not dead
they're just living in my head
and since i fell for that spell
i am living there as well

i have found what you are like (e e cummings)

2008-06-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

        i have found what you are like
       the rain,

               (Who feathers frightened fields
       with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

       easily the pale club of the wind
       and swirled justly souls of flower strike

       the air in utterable coolness

       deeds of green thrilling light
                                     with thinned

       newfragile yellows

                         lurch and.press

       -in the woods
                    which
                         stutter
                                and

                                   sing

       And the coolness of your smile is
       stirringofbirds between my arms;but
       i should rather than anything
       have(almost when hugeness will shut
       quietly)almost,
                      your kiss