thanksgiving

I'm thankful for good friends and warm food, that I'm fortunate enough to have a car and an iPhone and a nice home. I'm thankful for my family and the completeness I feel when ther laughter fills my normally spacious house. I'm thankful for my baby girl curled up asleep in a warm ball on my lap right this moment. I'm thankful to have the talents I've been blessed with, and that my teachers are willing to work closely with me to help me make up the points I've missed because of the talent i don't possess: timeliness. I'm thankful that my mom is alive, because last year this time, I didn't think she would be. I'm thankful that my parents have come around to the fact that I want and need to go to art school. I'm thankful to finally have my thyroid levels regulated. I'm thankful, as I watch my baby cousins play, that someday I'll be able to have babies of my own. I'm thankful to be loved and surrounded by family and friends, despite my countless imperfections.

that's all I can think of for now..happy thanksgiving day, all!

lovely.

today was quite good. I had some good quality time with jaime and blake, cleaned profusely, and painted 3 new paintings. ive been soul-searching of late, which is something i havent done in a while. i miss my mom, and i want to be there for natalie. things are hard emotionally lately, but not in the way id thought it might be. im worried for my family. i'm conflicted about college, after talking to alex about how much he loves new york. i miss having my mom at home. but I'm reeling in all the free time I have to sleep, to study, to spend time on my makeup. time that i either forgot how to use or was occupying with other things. right now I'm covered in paint and have a terrible headache accompanying the disgusting sinus drainage and raw throat I've had all day, but gitsy is snuggled up warm with me and I can feel sleep starting to pull at me. despite my sickness and my family worries, all is well with soul.

saturday was hard.

today was better. i got my room clean (mostlyyyy..there's still a pile of trash and small shit like bobby pins and earrings and coins in the middle of the floor), including the closet. and i made my "studio" by shoving all of my art stuff into one corner and tomorrow i'm going to make some curtains out of old sheets and attach curtain rods to the ceiling so it's like a separate space completely and i can really focus on my work. because i'm super behind in art. i should probably make a studio for euro at this point, though..i'm way behind in there, too. which is why i'm glad we only have two days of school this week. i'm going to find out what i missed, and then use thanksgiving break to do it and all of the catch-up work. and my ee. and finishing sending off college applications. busy week next week, but it will be worth it in the long run.
i think sometimes breaks like this are good. i was sick for thursday and friday, so i basically did nothing but think and sleep and listen to music and take medicine. saturday and today, though, i kicked it into high gear and cleaned and organized my room. i threw away like 5 trashbags of shit and then had another 2 trashbags full of things to give to goodwill. and i still haven't completely gone through all of the bins in my room, so i'll most likely throw away more stuff. it just feels good to get that done. now i feel like, despite all the work i have to do, i'll be able to handle it because i'll have a clean, open space to work in and no dread feelings hanging over my head.
and another thing: i just feel good. i've been eating really healthily since i got sick because i had such awful nausea and couldn't eat anything heavy, so i've lost about 5 lbs. which isn't much at all, but i feel better. and i started following two different people on tumblr, one who runs a plus size fashion/fat acceptance blog and the other a feminist. so now every time i get on tumblr i see lovely self-respect boosting messages, which has done wonders for my self image ever since the formspring attack i woke up to on saturday. and i've been reading childhood books, which is helping me find myself again. also, despite feeling incredibly lonely pretty much all day yesterday, i found the lovely niche i usually have at night after everyone is asleep or after school on days when my friends are busy: being alone and not being lonely, but rather reveling in the time i have to remember who i am.

hopefully this week will keep looking up. <3

sticks and stones

my mom always used to say " sticks and stones may break bones, but words can do much worse"

I'm disabling anonymous questions on formspring, and I'll pretend like what was said to me didn't cause me to break down completely for a while.

I wish that I didn't feel so alone right now. my mom is out of town for another week, dylan and I aren't talking, and blake's life is stressful enough without my shit. I think I'm going to finish cleaning my room and then go goodwill hunting.

stargirl

when I was a kid, I wanted to grow up and be stargirl. I cried in the end, when she leaves and Leo grows up without her. I remember thinking that in high school, I would be a better person. I would become stargirl. but over the years I forgot about stargirl. I reread it the other day and I remember why it was so important to me. I can't even begin to describe how much I would love to be like her. so I think I want one of my first tattoos to be the stargirl symbol, to remind me to live in such a selfless way, and to be myself no matter what.

i feel so sick.

but it's more than that. I just don't care about anything. not my calculus homework nor the fact that I have a Spanish test tomorrow, nor completing my two outstanding portfolio submissions nor what I'm wearing (sweatpants, for the second day in a row). I feel good about things with me and dylan, though, for the first time in a while. I never thought taking a break would fix things--and maybe it won't--but at this point I feel that the space is good. and maybe it's because of that that I just want to bask in doing essentially nothing for a few days. I didn't go to school for the first half of the day, having woken up dizzy and nauseous, and it was a good break. I still feel pretty awful, but I could stick out school tomorrow if I really tried. I just don't want to. it'll depend on how I feel tomorrow, but at this point I'm not going. im just in a weird mood...I guess I'll just catch up on being productive this weekend.

yuck.

i have consistently felt like shit for two days,
not to mention how shitty I felt last week before dylan and i talked.
so basically, i've had a week of continuous shit.

and i'm so tired of it.
we talked about the significance of flowers in english the other day, how it's not common knowledge that certain flowers mean different things. apparently, daisies represent joy.

i just think it'd be so wonderful for someone to just walk up to me and give me a bunch of pretty white daisies. it would certainly make me joyful.

or maybe if i didn't have any obligations, and i could just lie in bed all day. that would make me happy, i think.

chicago

Chicago was lovely. SAIC is no doubt my new #1 school. I was really impressed with not only their facilities (attached to the art institute of Chicago, which is the 3rd largest collection of art in the world) and their gradin style (credit/no credit or check plus/check/check minus instead of bullshit 3-page rubrics like ib), but also their student work on display and their dorms. their dorms were seriously like apartments! and their residence halls in general were very open and clean-looking. no to mention that the school and studio spaces are open 24/7. how great is that?! and I've realized that being 6 hours away might be better than being 13 hours away in New York, because then I can come home for thanksgiving and fall break and even long weekends if I want, when before I only might have made it back for Christmas.

Columbia was cool, but definitely more of a school fro aspiring musicians and filmmakers. I wasn't really impressed with anything except their print shop. Their student artwork in the a&d department was actually pretty bad. but that's not to say all of it was--their performers were excellent a was their choir and all of the videos they played for us.

I had so much good food while I was in Chicago, and walked at least 6 miles. Not to mention that there is and h&m, an anthroplogie, AND a forever 21/faith 21! And the prospect of living and working in the same city as my best friend and her boyfriend is just the best thing I could imagine. I have unlimited visitors and 5 sleepover nights per month, so I could quite possibly see as much of blake as I do now!

it was great to get out of town, and I can't wait to go back.

I understand that youre mad,

but I dont deserve this.

i need to try and take a hold of you,

but to choke you
or stroke you
or stoke what glows inside of you,
i can't decide, i can't decide.


never was a song so perfect.









there used to be a time when if i said i needed you,
you'd drop everything.

...i'd still do that for you.