this is going to be a ride so just hold on (evansville, for the last extended period of time)

back in evansville, back to work, back to memories.

i was reading a post on tumblr about how some famous actor i like (i cant remember who) was saying that men are more romantic than women, that when a man wants to marry someone, he's dead serious about it and commits and she becomes everything whereas women are always looking for what's good enough in order to make a decision to settle, like "oh he's got a good job" or something, and i had one of those mini stab-in-the-gut moments when i felt like i fucked up everything i had with my ex, because what we had was real (at least it was on my end, and i feel like it was on his for the most part) and i broke it off because he was dicking around with his band and blah blah blah and whatever.

but then i stopped myself, and i thought:

1. that's stereotypical bullshit, because while women (in my experience) think this way more than men, i know a lot of men who aren't romantic and do the same thing

2. i didn't break up with my ex because he didn't have a good job or go to college (even though he didn't & doesn't), i broke up with him because when you love someone you don't forbid them from doing things that make sense in their heart, you don't tell them they disgust you for making choices you don't approve of, you make an effort to be there for them when they need you instead of blowing them off/somehow fucking up their important memories, and you sure as hell don't get pissed at them for telling your family when you're about to shoot yourself in the head

3. women are genetically trained to look for the best mate to raise their children whereas men aren't built the same way

i just needed to write all this down. because even though i really am over him finally, every time i come home i think it's inevitable that i'm going to think about my ex. because i think about my adolescence and how this place shaped who i am, my friends and enemies and all the shit i went through. the streets i drove and walked every day, and he was a huge part of that for almost three years.

maybe it's because i'm a libra and i am ruled by venus (love), or because no matter how hard you try you can never forget your first love, or because it really was real. maybe because i'm just not the type of person who lets go easily, and i never wanted to let him go but i had to in order to be who i'm supposed to be.

i am talking to a new guy, a sweet guy who i think has really great potential to stay in my life for a while, and i'm very happy to say that. because at first i was scared to not be alone anymore. but he is sweet and not judgmental and i want to know more about him, which is a new thing for me. and it is awkward and things will take getting used to, but that is what's so beautiful about it all.

learning to not be alone again is challenging, but it's the good kind of challenging and i like it.




(by the way, when someone comes up with a way to record thoughts, i will give an arm and a leg to have it. it seems the theme of my thoughts to writing process is to forget everything that had inspired me to write. it seems that i never have a pen/can't write or stay awake long enough when i'm drunk or exhausted or in the shower or driving home at night and these thoughts play on a loop in my head, and it's starting to get incredibly upsetting)

fuck everything

im tired and have way too much work to do and everything in my life is creating stress for me

Is it possible to still care about someone you can't stand?

Food for thought
food for feeling

remembering the namesake of this blog

She makes a lot of abstract art
She haggles for the cheapest price
She never orders take out food before ten o'clock at night
She's really into snowmobiles
She owns a lot of nice flashlights
She cares for all the stupid cats that never found their way home
She shaves her legs with Ginsu knives
She quotes a lot of Annie Hall
She misplaced her virginity back in 1995
She's what's keeping me alive
She's the pizza of my eye
Without her near me I would not survive

It gets cold when she's not around
I float until I sink and I'm swallowed up
It's so cold when she's not around
I wait for her to come home and tell me I'll be fine

She's always eating Captain Crunch
She sings a lot of Ben Folds Five
She's scared to death of cobra snakes
Just like Indiana Jones
She tells the dumbest knock-knock jokes
She drinks a lot of Chardonnay
She hates the way I comb my hair
But she married me last June
She was the bride, I was the groom
I cried a lot and then we spooned
Without her in my life I would be doomed

It gets cold when she's not around
I float until I sink and I'm swallowed up
It's so cold when she's not around
I wait for her to come home and tell me I'll be fine
Tell me I'll be fine

She loves the smell of Christmas trees
She sneezes when she sees bright lights
She fainted on the kitchen floor
When her father passed away
Our baby girl is due this May
And when the little lady grows up
I hope that she will be just like her mother

blogging for no reason in particular

i'm just happy lately, i guess.

i spent the last few days in a fever-induced blur, literally doing nothing but sleeping and eating crackers. i have tomorrow off school and no classes tuesday and am feeling well enough to sit up at my computer, so tomorrow and tuesday will be spent catching up on work for classes and for amy, as well as catching up on breaking bad (a recent studio background tv favorite.)

things are good. i'm a little strapped for cash, but i've got paychecks in the wings. i've got homework up to my neck, but i'm excited to do most of it (exception: art history critical response paper), as they're all book projects that i'm invested in (a book about my mom's blood clot, a book about daniil kharms' "blue notebook no 15," a book for dustin and ivy about our ihop nights and how they helped save my sanity this summer). i'm happy to be working, happy to have things to occupy me when i don't have work (tj and i are working on some super cool collaborations), happy to have friends like tj and blake, and a roommate who will take care of me when i'm sick and not give me shit for not being able to help clean.

on top of all that, my blog is public again and i feel a little freedom with that. i really don't care to block my ex from my life anymore--i just don't care enough about any of it anymore, and that's freeing. i also deleted a lot of his friends who were still friends with me/following me on social network sites, and i think that will help keep him out of my life. that and the fact that i finally get to return to one of my last remaining communities at home--the salon--and know that he won't be there. my mom told me that everyone was so happy that he was leaving that they had a party without him, and i guess that lifted my spirits a little; i was so worried i was going to come home and everyone would be all about him, but that's not the case. amy came up to chicago last week and sent me lots of love from the salon and reassured me that everyone was as happy as i was that my ex was no longer working there. i think it's good for him, too...maybe he can get back to his band stuff without having to juggle 2 jobs. and hopefully he's still planning on moving out of evansville, i think he'd do much better starting new somewhere. i saw his name the other day and didn't see the cool brown tones i used to associate with his name. it was just a name, its normal colors, no different from any other. that felt really good.

i also deleted my okcupid about a month ago, not disabled, deleted. fully gone. and although i get a little lonely without it, it's good. i told myself that, if i still want it back, i can recreate my account when i move back to chicago at the end of january. but for now it's nice to just be.

anyways, i just felt like writing so i did. nothing super important here. just feeling some good vibes lately and wanted to remember them.

this is what my voice sounds like. i don't need to be talking to someone else to hear it.

i am relaxing on my couch with an MIA roommate for the first time in all too long (read: ever. daniella likes to hang about the house a lot, and tonight is really the first time i've been able to just chill alone & it's nice.) gitsy is snoozing on the other side of the couch and i'm blaring some death cab for cutie while procrastinating homework.

i always loved "i can't do better than you" but i never let myself sing it, especially when dylan and i were dating, because i knew it wasn't true. because i can--and will--do better than dylan, but he can't do better than me. maybe that's vain or one-sided but i don't really give a fuck and that feels pretty damn amazing.

tonight was needed.

things

i spent the better part of this evening reviewing past posts on my tumblr and blogger, searching for something--anything--to use in a book project for my letterpress bookworks class. and i think it's so funny how i talk about finding closure and finally being over my ex in almost every post for the past 9 months or so, as though every time i'm saying "this time it's real and i won't have to do it again." and sometimes it really did feel like that. and i guess it still does a little, either that or i'm still coming off of a good few days of being unfalteringly happy without a lover.

but i think, in some respects, i'm coming to terms with the fact that being over my relationship with dylan doesn't mean i don't have memories with him that i think about often. and of course i've created new memories with new friends and think about those, too. but i spent so long with him, and during such a pivotal time of growth, that it would be impossible to look back and not think of him.

i don't want to forget how amazing my senior prom was, or the fact that i drove to six flags on 4 hours of sleep with someone i loved on a total whim. i was going through my text posts on tumblr and it just smacked me in the face that loving him helped me define me. and of course i knew that, but looking back through things i'd forgotten i had written literally illustrated that for me. through loving dylan, i opened up the doors in my heart that i assumed at age 13 i'd never open.

things became so messy this summer and loneliness has got me yearning for any sort of contact with someone i used to share so much with, be it dylan or family i haven't seen in a while or childhood friends who fell out of my life, that i let myself re-think the decisions i began making this time last year. which is always dangerous. i saw that 4 days before dylan and i broke up for real, i posted at 3 am about waking up crying because i missed him so much. and i didn't remember that, not at all. it scared me a little. because of course my posts are heavy with fighting words from almost constant dilemmas he and i had, but i remember thinking that i could marry him last november. for the first time, feeling like you wanted to walk down the aisle with someone, and then essentially barring them from your life a month later. i just sometimes wish i could go back and replay it all again in slow motion.

not saying things would change. but maybe i wouldn't feel like such a bad person right now if i could see it all again.

i'm shaky right now from coming across a status he posted on facebook about a week ago, in response to the photo of my colophon for "what a bitch!," which apparently a friend of his had shown him. i just honestly didn't expect him to see it, or for so many people who i thought understood my side to back him up on facebook. the way people act in situations like that scares me a little, and i feel defenseless. of course his mom takes his side; my mom takes mine. but for people to become so rooted into drama that has absolutely nothing to do with them is ridiculous.

i just really felt like i was in a good place with all of this earlier tonight, and to come across this sends me reeling back for a while. i hate it that the idea of him still has so much control over me (and this might sound stupid, but i'm taking it back to sex and love: i was not dylan's first--of either of those things--and he was mine for both.) they say you always love your first, but that isn't it. it's that i distanced myself because i needed space and room to grow, and he turned me into a monster for it. that's what hurts. that's what makes me shake and cry and not be able to even say hi when i stop by the salon on visits home. it's that i always extended a loving hand (even after he told me to lose contact with him and his family after he tried to kill himself) and it has constantly been met with a slap.