september already

when i moved into my new place almost two weeks ago, only one of my four roommates was here; sam was house-sitting for a friend, emily hadn't really moved in yet (except her stuff), and dan was (still is) in israel. it was just me and leah, who i get along with best of the group, and it was really peaceful. and then everyone got back (except dan), gitsy had to leave, and we decided to clean the house up. there's way too much furniture (nancy & eric, who just moved out, left a bunch of shit, including a queen and twin bed, a huge coffee table, and kitchen table, a gigantic armoire, and a bunch of random art supplies and building material), but with my ankle fucked up (oh yeah, i tore the muscle in my calf when a shelf fell on my leg & have internal bleeding and scary bruising in my leg rn) i opted to clean their DISGUSTING bathroom. literally, the tub was black when i started cleaning. 2 rolls of paper towels, 3 towels, a bottle of CLR, half a can of ajax, 6 steel wool pads, 3 sponges, and 3 swiffer pads later, and that place is sparkling white. i'm so proud, and i finally feel like a member of the house.

i'm the only one up right now, but last night we gave each other tarot readings and leah told me she'd bring me home some vegan ice cream from the ice cream shop where she works when she goes to work later. i think the plan is to go through the pantry and fridge & clean/re-allot spaces for everyone tonight, but this morning i have to do some design work & do a little embroidery before i can do anything. my etsy shop is doing well & i'm doing lots of good work for my clients with good responses, so things are ok right now even though i'm sad for my mom and sad that gitsy's not here.

i applied for a letterpress/graphic design job at this amazing print shop that is hiring in st. louis, so right now i'm trying to wrap my mind around the idea of possibly moving there, or possibly going to grad school. trying to keep all my options open i guess! september is always my favorite month, so i really hope that by this time in october, i'll have more of a concrete plan in front of me

moved

so i moved today, and as exhausting as it was, it really wasn't the end of the world. I assure you I will not be leaving this apartment until i find a job and have enough savings to pay movers (this day feels like it was 3 days long and my entire body aches) but i'm doing ok.

my mom and jaime drove up as a surprise to help me move, which was an absolute godsend if nothing more than for the fact the my mom was there when i got to the new place and had a major doubt meltdown. but more on that later! so mom and jaime got here at 230 and alea was there by 3. we ended up having to literally throw my mattress off the balcony, which pisses me off to no end, but we got it down. some random guy walking in the alley named jorge saw how pathetic it was for three girls to be struggling with heavy boxes and offered to help us out, free of charge, and managed to move a lot of heavy shit that took two to three of us to get into the new place, all by himself. he left before we were able to get his contact info, but i know his name and where he works and fully intend on delivering him a thank you and $50 when i make some money and am able to do so. tim came by around 630 and was also a big help.

the room in my new apartment was shared by two people, who both left a lot of stuff in my room, but leah and sam failed to mention this. so when i got to my room (in which i am supposed to squeeze my bed, tv, couch, desk, coffee table, vanity, and all of my other shit that essentially furnished daniella's & my entire apartment) i discovered that nancy had left her bed, her kitchen table, a gigantic red armoire (like ok that's awful but the fact that it was RED was adding insult to injury for me) and a whole bunch of shit in the closet. and for some reason, this was the tipping point for me. i saw my bed leaned up against hers and my shit thrown in the floor of the closet because she still has shelves and hangers and sheets in the way, and i was just hit with a flood of doubt and regret. and i'm pretty sure that if my mom wasn't there to just understand what i was feeling and talk me down, i would have had a complete meltdown and probably would be crying myself to sleep right now instead of being relatively calm about the whole situation.

mom and jaime had to leave around 830 or 9, when we were about halfway done unloading. after a hellacious assembly line load-in to the top floor of a four-flat (without the help of jorge's superstrength), we finally managed to get everything in my room. i drove everyone back to my old apartment with 2 people in the cab with me and three people in the actual uhaul on speakerphone with us (hilarious), returned the uhaul, and bought everyone dinner at jeri's grill. it was only $60 (a gratuitous tip included) for all of us to stuff ourselves (like most people got two meals) and for everyone except me to get desert (i had like 3 diet cokes & was sugared out), and we had a really good time just sitting around and laughing. so worth it, and it made me feel better about making all of these people haul my shit around all day.

tomorrow i have a ridiculously long day ahead of me which includes ditching all of nancy's stuff (eric was kind enough to at least put his in the other room), organizing the closet, assembling my couch and bedframe, and essentially making the place liveable, but i'm not setting an alarm because i worked my ass off and deserve to sleep in.

moving

tomorrow i'm moving and it's exhausting and sad and horrible. and it doesn't help that i don't feel built up by anyone i have a relationship with except blake. ross was too depressed to date me and has been fucking weird since (i just want my book back.) and i'm talking to another guy i met a pixfest who i really want to like but i'm just not feeling amazing about it anymore. my mom is dealing with her own issues and jaime's issues so i can't burden her & yet somehow feel like i am without really even saying much. daniella is being really awful to me and i just cant deal right now.

i just feel like everyone is draining me, and it makes me really sad because i thought things would be different by now. i thought i'd have a job and a little apartment and a boyfriend. and instead i got none of that. and i know i need to keep positive but it's just really hard right now. feeling like ross liked me felt amazing, and i know that i don't need other people to validate me but i liked that connection. and i'm glad that he said something to me and is not with me because i know he's depressed, and he would just be draining me too.

i don't know. everything is scattered right now. sorry for a scattered post

Big D, pt. II

basically I have a lot of really positive stuff to blog about in regards to being connected with my church again, but I'm alone for the first time all vacation at a coffee shop (where I should be working, shhhhh) and I just need to vent about some stuff.

I think that the Welbutrin has finally kicked all the way in, and I've had a pretty rough couple of days. (It doesn't help that I'm also about to start my period and am wayyy more emotional than usual.) Ross has had some low days too in the past week, and I've just been thinking a lot about how depression was handled in my last relationship.

I got a message on Wednesday at church that was basically like, "this new guy in your life is really good for you & we support you dating him and see him being a wonderful influence in your life, but you have work to do in your sacral chakra about letting go of your relationship with dylan & until you do that, you're not going to be able to be fully present in your relationship with ross"

ugh.

it's probably true (i mean how can you argue with your dead grandpa), but ugh. the sacral chakra is about sexuality, creativity, intimacy, and empathy, but it also is greatly concerned with fear and guilt. (hah, bingo, ms. guilt internalizer right here!) the problem is that i don't know how to fix these issues, and it's bringing me down. i think maybe a lot of it has to do with letting ross know how things with dylan were so horrible at the end, but i think it's also going to take me to stop comparing my life to dylan's. it doesn't fucking matter what is going on in his life, and i need to keep reminding myself of that no matter how many times he tries to invite me to shows and shit.

i guess this kind of got off track? because i wanted to post about how i'm already proud of ross and me for being able to say "i'm having a low day and i just really need to not skype with you tonight" or " hey, things suck for me today, send me something funny." it just feels like so much more of a team effort in building each other up, already this early in the relationship, when from day one with dylan (even if i didn't see it until later) there was always some manipulation and put-downs (on both of our parts) when it came to issues like this. i think a lot of it comes with being older and having experienced depression firsthand for me, but so much of it is about how open ross is wiling to be with me and how open that makes me want to be with him. i feel like i'm probably still the most emotionally stable in the relationship (which is scary because i don't feel very emotionally stable a lot of the time) but it's better.

the deed

when I realized that things with Ross were going to be serious, I decided that I didn't want to have sex with him before i was going to leave chicago for 3 weeks. After a week of seeing him almost every day, the first week we met, I knew it would be rough to transition so quickly into being back in my parents' house, feeling insecure and child-like again. (My mom has had it rough post-clot #2 and everyone is trying to be nice, but she's on a short fuse and needs a lot of help, which leaves me, the adult child in the house, in a place of being told what to do and fussed over a lot, which is exhausting.) but what's that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men?

Basically we had a perfect opportunity, and we decided to take it. It was rainy out (both our favorite weather) and we had my newly air-conditioned apartment to ourselves. I realized that I didn't want the first time we slept together to be with Daniella 25 feet away. And I'm not sorry that we had sex. It gives me something to anchor myself to when I get into these depressive rifts about my body image & feeling like maybe he doesn't like me as much as I want him to. But of course it sucks to be far away from the person I want to have sex with. Blake sent me a buzzfeed article today about choosing between food and sex, and it made me realize that it's going to be another two full weeks before I can cuddle up with that sweet boy again.

I'm not really sure why I wrote this. I guess it just feels nice for someone to be genuinely interested in me who I also want to be with. And things aren't quite right with me emotionally yet, and I feel like a lot of the time when he tells me that he thinks I'm cute or sexy, it's really hard for me to believe him because I am in such a rough spot with liking my own body right now. And for the first night of having a very bad body image night since then, I am glad to be able to focus on that memory & feel not so shitty.

lucky #3

so tonight was date #3 with the lovely ross, and it's for real, i really like this guy.

we met at reno, a pizza place near his house, and even though i got there 15 minutes early, he was already waiting there with a table for us. we got a chorizo pizza (omg, so good, i'm going to start eating pork if only for chorizo. seriously amazing.) and a desert cake thing to go, and he paid for it all, but promised he'd let me pay next time.

when we left the restaurant, there was a step down that i didn't notice, and he warned me to watch my step. while we walked, he talked about how he used to be a christian but considers himself more of an agnostic/buddhist now, but that he finds it really admirable when he has friends who are christians who are spiritual & let it uplift them more than dogmatic & centered on putting people down/placing restrictions on them. i talked about my spirituality and how i agree completely; that blake and i have different religious beliefs but are still thick as thieves because she is that wonderful type of person. he would tell me how long we were going to be on each street, because he hates when people are leading him somewhere new & he feels like he's walking forever. he lit a cigarette for the second time around me, asking if it was ok first, and literally stepped off the curb and started walking in the street any time we passed kids so he wouldn't make them breathe in his smoke.

i talked with his roommate, brad, who went to saic with me, and then when brad left we just sat on the couch and watched an episode of friends. we made out for a little bit, then went to his room & made out some more. it was really hot (there's a/c in like maybe 5% of chicago buildings, it's awful in the summer) so we both ended up in our undies. he was very explicit about the fact that we didn't have to do anything i didn't want to do, and i told him i didn't want to sleep with him yet, and he felt the same way. any time we went past just kissing, he stopped to make sure it was ok first, and was all about making sure i was comfortable and into it. we just talked & kissed & made jokes, and then after a while he went and got the cake & 1 fork from the kitchen, and he made me play this game where we traded off playing guilty pleasure songs on his computer. it was so awful/wonderful. ludo, coheed and cambria, riff raff, j-lo, big sean, mayday parade, and lots of my chemical romance. we had to listen to the whole song, no matter what, so we normally ended up laughing at the music videos or feeding each other cake. 

it started getting late, so i pulled on my dress & went to fix my hair in the bathroom, and when i came back in the room he was lying half on the bed, playing 'moon song' on his ukelele. ~swoon~

he's coming over tomorrow straight from work, and we're going to go walk around my neighborhood and take gitsy to bad dog tavern. this feels unreal, and wonderful, and positive in a way that no other date situation has. so here's hoping it stays

healthy

i feel like i've been really bad at updating this lately, but right now things are rounding out & feeling much more stable than they have in a while. i started taking welbutrin, and while i still don't feel like everything is under control, i feel a lot better. and i can't drink on it, which is good; i think i got to a point last semester where i was so depressed and anxious all the time that drinking almost every weekend just made me feel overwhelmed and unbalanced. i've been eating a lot healthier, being a little more active, and my thyroid is slowly working its way back to normal, all which are helping. i got a haircut & the 8 or so pounds i've lost have boosted my body image significantly.

i've also been seeing this guy, ross, and it just feels pretty right. i talked with him for weeks before meeting him in person, and i really think that made a big difference. while i'm pretty sure he's rebounding pretty hard from a serious relationship (less than a year, but she dumped him for some other dude), i really like him. like, actually. i don't think i've ever felt this way about anyone i've met off okcupid, except maybe zach, but we didn't have much chemistry. ross is really geeky & kinda awkward, but in an endearing way. plus he is very tall and dresses really well. he's always making jokes that i find hilarious, and i've been able to be really open with him about a lot of things, including the fact that i'm struggling a little bit emotionally right now & a lot about spiritualism, both which normally scare guys off.

i found a dime in the bathroom on our first date (i'm sure i've posted about it on here, but my mom's dad, who died when he was 24, leaves my mom and me dimes--always heads up in plain sight--when we're struggling or are wondering if we're making a right decision, as a kind of confirmation that we're doing the right thing & that we have spiritual support) and last night he came over to make pizzas and watch game of thrones, and when he left we made out in the foyer of my apartment building. so for now it feels pretty nice, and i like talking to him, so we'll see where it goes. i think it's really easy for me to get worked up about emotional health in relationships--my own & that of the people i'm interested in--because of how dylan's & my relationship crashed and burned because of it, but i think it's also ok (as long as i am being open about the state that i'm in) to look to someone else for emotional support and to help me remind myself that i am an interesting and valuable person.

i only have a few more days left in chicago before i go to plan-it-x fest with dana and then head to north carolina with my family, and i am so stoked for it that it's unbelievable. i cannot wait to see my aunt and cousins, to hike in the woods, to see the sunrise on ocracoke, and to hang out with my best friend in my favorite place in the US.