friday

Walked to my car in the rain yesterday, but it was fine, because work was done for the week and I was going home. I started the engine and sat there for a minute, wet and warm and perfectly content even though my shoes were soaked through and my hair was already starting to frizz. A song I liked was on the radio so I turned it up, turned off the street on which I was parked, and took my place in the line of traffic going through Kaneohe town. Hardly ever hear this song on weekdays, workdays, bad days. Took it as a signal that my weekend had begun and it would be good, even better because the next song was something big and boomy, a tune sung by a person who was cursed and knew it, could not feel alone even if he tried, and that was comforting. But I fumbled with the buttons on the radio and the song ended two minutes earlier than it should have. Couldn’t recover the station, the song, the moment, that weekend feeling that should happen every five days, but doesn’t. Stayed mad about it for hours, could hardly enjoy dinner with Daniel, skulked around the grocery store for a pack of Red Vines at nine thirty last night, because everything since the song had been cut short was not the way I thought it should be. I was grumpy, and I felt ugly, and I tried to apologize, but told Daniel instead that I wanted it to stop. We watched a movie that didn’t end til after one, and for all the waiting I’d done, it fell significantly short of expectations. Crawled into bed later hoping some sleep would wash it all away.

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euphoria

That’s happy. That’s me at the carnival, fifty feet in the air and dropping, flipping, spinning. I remember it, feeling it in my stomach, knowing that at the end of the night I’d be home in bed, wet hair, t-shirt, and it would be over. Sometimes it comes rushing in with a song barely lasting four minutes, a cold treat on a summery day, the hour or two following a conversation with a person who might think I’m Not So Bad. Most times, though, I sit alone to realize the possibility of such contentedness if I’d spoken, pretended for a moment I was not afraid, was clear and confident enough to have everyone look to me. If I don’t seem sullen or mean, they must think I’m stupid, and that’s even worse. But I try not to think about it, try not to think about it, think instead about my perfect weekend. About ordering out and renting a movie to watch at home on Friday night. About a late breakfast with Daniel on Saturday morning, and driving down long roads toward the mountain, past my old house, past all the things I could remember. About wanting to go fishing but deciding against it because aside from standing near the ocean with a pole, we can’t remember how. Agreeing to visit the botanical garden instead, happening across a Bluegrass festival at which thirty minutes later, the Saloon Pilots would play just as wonderfully they did the first time we saw them at Big City Diner in 2009, the night I’m pretty sure I fell in love with Daniel. About an impromptu dinner with friends, delicious food, feeling, at least, liked by people I really want to be liked by. About visiting with God again, dropping, flipping, spinning toward something better.

diversify

In eighth grade I was voted “Most Artistic”, and in high school, “Future Shakespeare.” And except for a few years of proud sad-blogging on Xanga, I never fully embraced these titles, like, with both hands, because I worried what the people who disagreed would think. Still probably kind of do. Still probably kind of wish for validation from seventy comments a post, but, you know, whatever. I thought that by twenty-five, I’d have it all figured out, drawing and writing my way across America with better skin and more money. Never once imagined myself in a car dealership, punching out numbers eight hours a day, caring at all about business, feeling the right side of my brain slowly calcifying, wearing slacks. Because I wanted to be good at art and writing, and I wanted to be better, and I wanted to be that girl, the one who was so good, it didn’t matter she wasn’t pretty or did not know how to multiply past eleven or wore the same pair of jeans every day. And I know Hot Fiance will read this and tell me all the things he should, that I’m good at art, I write well, I’m pretty too, but I do accounting now, and it’s such a big ugly deal that I hardly consider myself anything other than Wrong.

nostalgic

Some nights it gets really dark and I can see the stars, myself at fourteen looking up at them wishing to be loved and feeling furthest from it. I let it eat me til I was only bones, and they were the saddest parts. But they knew good people and they were loved in the sweetest ways by boys in buttoned shirts and jeans who cared that I’d be cared for by some other boy, some other time. And I’d remember them at nineteen crying on some other boy’s bed because he said I was even less than I thought, less than bones but he’d love me anyway, less than him, but we could be okay. Some nights it got really dark and the orange light from the city below his apartment hid the stars the way they hid when I was fifteen in my room with the cordless phone pressed to my ear at 3am, wishing to be loved and feeling furthest from it. I let it break me til I was dust on the hot cement, trying to gather itself together to be as hard and angry as it felt. But it knew good people and it was loved in the best way by a boy with kind brown eyes, long wavy hair, and big hands to hold it all at once so that it can feel fourteen again, and whole.

no comfort in the shade

Yesterday I spent the entire morning pulling at my hair and breathing all wrong because I was worried about the picture of me at a wedding with little to do but pull at my hair and breathe all wrong. But I put on my new dress, a sweet and bright blue thing, curled the ends of my hair and tried to remember that this was their day. All I’d be there for was to celebrate them, not their friends, not myself. It rained in the morning and grass was damp, but she was beautiful, and he was gorgeous, and while they said their vows, I struggled to hide myself in my faded black cardigan because I felt all too bright in the new dress I wish I’d stashed and chosen something a little less spring and a little more winter to help me blend into the grey sky. But it was dumb because no one cared, and by five-thirty, I didn’t either. I talked with people, had entire conversations with them, with Daniel. Remembered to pull my shoulders back a few times, tried to sit straight, tried to be brave and confident for the lovely couple, not only for my Jr. High crush just a table away, who’d I’d write anonymous notes to, who danced with me to N*Sync for five bucks from another girl, still the most humiliating memory in all my semi-romantic ventures. Still, none of it mattered. They sat at a table in the front, smiling at each other all new and bright and all the things they should have been, and it was perfect.

all dried up in the desert sun

When I was still in school and someone asked what I did, I’d tell them I’m an English major. They’d sort of smile and feel bad that if I’m not going to be a teacher, I’ll most likely be nothing. So when someone asks what I do now and I tell them I work in an office at a car dealership, I’m not even a student with potential enough to be someone Rowlingish, I’m nothing, and I’m nowhere, and it’s really, really depressing.

don’t even like her

Just tired of myself, mostly. I should probably run or do something invigorating/productive to stop from feeling so irritated, but anything involving standing is almost too much to bear. A lot of it is only me being a real brat, incapable of doing what I think I should because I think I should, but the rest of it is typical Sad Girl/Seventeen At Twenty-Five stuff I don’t want to talk about with anyone except twenty-something-year-old One Direction fangirls on Tumblr. Whatever, though. I put my hair in a high pony for the first time since I was working out every other day for two weeks earlier this year, and I’m already feeling 0.2% better.

trying to be motivational, kind of

Five hours of work today. I can do this, I can do this, I can get something done, I can go home, I can put on a little more eye makeup and see if anyone wants to go anywhere to eat, to drink a margarita, to go to Target or somewhere so I can buy cheap nail polish and a box of microwave popcorn.

Also, an update on my relationship with One Direction:IT IS OUT OF CONTROL. Have you seen the Kiss You music video? I mean, come on. Even Liam is starting to almost look good.

but this little town, this little house

It’s not even 8am and I’m doing that thing where I sit in the dark and think about how I hate myself for no/every reason. And it used to be only really sad, but for a while now, it’s been funny and I laugh about it in the shower when I scrub my forearms too hard, when the blood rushes to the surface of my skin and stays there for hours after in clusters of red dots that aren’t, but look, painful. I don’t lift my chin and cackle as mascara drips off my face, because I was never compelled to, because it’s not that funny, because I’m really not so blatantly consumed by the goodness of my evil. But sometimes I ha, out loud, ha ha, because it’s the one of few ways I know to express how stupid it is, I am, for believing I don’t actually love myself more than everyone in a truly repulsive sort of way.

hny

Forty minutes til midnight, until 2013. I’m having a nice evening with my family, and it’s good.
Blog Every Day in 2012, complete!