baggage

i feel weird writing so much lately about dylan and things surrounding our relationship because i am over him, i have been for a long time. but i guess i'm not over everything that happened, and doing more artwork about that recently has helped me realize that i might not be for a long time, if ever. the fact that he tried to kill himself hurts me. the fact that i helped put him in the dark place he was in hurts me. it might always be a soft spot for me, because i loved him and he was broken and i hurt him.

right now i'm working on a type project in which we have to use text we write (representing two separate memories) and an outside source of text in two posters on a theme (most people are using an emotion or set of circumstances). i decided to use moments that i look back to as critical periods of growth; moments that made me more Real either because they built me up or stripped me of everything i had known. the first memory i'm using is the night i texted dylan's mom and told her he had tried to kill himself, and the second is a night i spent with ivy and dustin lying on the pavement by the riverwalk, talking deeply for the first time after a year apart at college. when i got up to talk about my theme, i couldn't keep myself from getting red-faced and no matter what i did, my voice shook and stuck in my throat.

when i was at ivy's this weekend, we were drinking and ivy kept telling dustin & i to go dance with boys, that she'd introduce us to the ones we thought were cute. we told her, and she ran off the find them, and i immediately felt scared and nervous and guilty. all of a sudden i didn't want to be there, but more importantly, i didn't want to be in my own skin. i didn't go talk to the guy, so nothing happened, and the feeling went away.

tonight i was thinking about that, wondering why i got worked up like that, and i remembered some stuff that i had forgotten (or maybe blocked out) about the last time dylan and i had sex. and maybe this is too much to be writing about on a blog. but it made me panic for a second that i could have forgotten, and then i felt the tiniest bit better. i probably still need to go have a good cry in the shower about it, but i'm finally dealing with things that i don't think i was able to process when they happened. and i'm hoping that doing so will allow me to move on and to open back up so that when someone good and kind walks into my life, i don't have all this baggage keeping me from making a connection.

fucking dreams

I'm at Ivy's for the weekend & I just woke up from an exhaustingly long and horrid dream, crying. I'm going to try to sleep for a bit more and make this feeling go away but I'm just sad & I can't figure out if I'm justified in feeling this depressed over a dream or not

perspective

i follow this plus size fashion blog of a girl who lives in chicago, in the thick of it (here) that i like a lot because
a.) she's close to my size and shape (around 220 lbs, 5'9", pants in the 16-20 range -- she looks like she has a smaller waist than me, but most fatshion blogs i follow are of girls who have a much different body than me, so i like this blog best)
b.) she's edgy in her style & does a lot of thrifting/bargain hunting, which is what i'm all about
c.) she lives in chicago, so i know the places she shops at & am able to frequent them myself

i kinda talked in my last post about how i haven't been feeling quite right in my body lately. i've put on about 10-15 lbs over the course of the past few months of being stressed to the max and not sleeping, and then being too tired to bike or run like i was doing last semester. i had been maintaining about 205-215 since the end of freshman year of college, and back up to 225-230, what i was in high school. and it's not a huge change, especially for someone as tall as i am, but it feels huge. i feel huge. and the fact that something in my mind is relentlessly tearing me down about it has made it really hard to change my habits; i'm an emotional eater & always have been.

so anyway. i was reading this blog today, and the girl is in london. in her most recent post, she said that in the UK, most places stock up to a US size 20 in the regular departments. and i had to do a double take. i just think about how my life, my perception of self-worth, would be drastically different if i lived in a place where i could find clothes that would fit my body in almost any store i walked into. it just amazes me that our culture's fucked up perception of size normality could permeate so deeply into my psyche that i spend every day sitting in ways that make me look thinner, stressing out about every calorie i eat or every time i take the escalator instead of the stairs, guilt tripping every day i take the train instead of riding my bike.

anyways, i lost steam with this & i have work to do, but you get the point, which is ~brb moving to london~

good enough

this weekend was wonderful. my parents came up to see my first show & it was just so good to see them. since the beginning of this school year, i've been so fucking overwhelmed that i haven't felt like i could catch my breath, and my self esteem has been suffering greatly. it's nothing like the sadness that gripped me around the the beginning of february last year, but it's been a significant problem for me lately. it's like no matter what i'm doing, there's a voice in my head telling me that i'm not good enough: that dress is too short, everyone is staring at you because your clothes don't fit, your hair is messy, your work is sloppy, you shouldn't have said that, he isn't into you, you can bike faster than this, you're weak if you have to stop running now, you've gained weight, you should be working, you should be working, you should be working.

it's just been relentless, and it was good to have my family here supporting me and making me feel validated for a little bit. at the show, i drank with my classmates and i felt so popular; people were hugging me and telling me my work was awesome. it feels really good to finally be "in" with the STA kids & seniors in the VCD department. being a designer is all about making connections & i'm finally doing that.

i hadn't looked at any of dylan's social media in a really long time & i did earlier, which was dumb of me because now i'm thinking about everything that happened again. he's dating someone else now & i'm actually happy for him; she's really pretty and seems like a nice person. i was even proud of myself because my heart didn't even do the dumb floppy thing or sink down in my stomach; i didn't have a physical reaction or even really that much of an emotional reaction & that feels more amazing than i can probably express.

i think sometimes that i have worked so hard to prove to people (who? i have no idea) that i came out on top; that i was not broken, that i'm ok. i was pretending to be alright for a long long time and i realize now that i thought i was still pretending, and i don't think i have been for months. i look around me and i have a 2 bedroom apartment in the 3rd biggest city in the US with my dog & a wonderful roommate, i am thriving at an amazing design school, and i have literally everything in front of me open to opportunity. i could up and move to london after school if i saved up enough for a ticket and had a job waiting. i live an amazing life and i don't have to prove myself to anyone, not even myself.

lessons

i'm sure there's something to be learned in all of this chaos that happened tonight (namely in-progress saves, since i couldn't really help that i was sick all week/end) but mostly i am just tired and stressed and want to be asleep right now. i have to leave for school at 5 to make sure i have enough time to print and mount before my 10am proposal. it's 3:20 now. so, do the math, no sleep for me ever again.

a real update

i feel like this moment is the first real free time i've had in two weeks! this is an exaggeration, of course...i've managed to fill my time with countless episodes of law & order SVU and unnecessarily long showers, by seeing blue jasmine (finally!!!) and sleeping late on the weekend. lately i have just been extremely busy, and it comes in stark contrast to one of the most relaxing summers i've ever experienced.

i've been ditching class because my work isn't done, and on the rare occasion that it is done, it's not me; it's rushed and lacking so much of the passion i pride myself on putting into my work. i've been so busy that every attempt to clean my room gets thwarted halfway through, so every weekend i have to start cleaning from square one all over again. gitsy has probably peed on half of my clean laundry that somehow ended up on the floor because i was too tired to pick it up off my bed and hang it. i didn't have groceries for a week because i literally couldn't find the time to go to the store, and i haven't eaten most of what i bought when i finally did get to go shopping on monday because i haven't been home or had the time. i spent 2 days this week getting home from 8 hours at school to do 5 hours of design work for amy only to be too tired to even start my homework. i feel so unbearably and deeply lonely, constantly, obsessively so. to the point that it's scaring me that i can feel this level of dependency or need for attention. to the point where i am unable to concentrate on anything other than the fact that i have to be doing something wrong for no one to be interested in me. for my work to be so uninspired. for me to feel this low.

i was sitting in class this morning with work that i'm not proud of, work that has no concept behind it, and i started to have a panic attack over the fact that i'm mostly behind in all of my classes already, with no inspiration and no way out (add/drop ended on tuesday), and i realized that i'm actually not ok right now. this is how it always is with me, the eternal optimist. i complain a lot, but it's a unrepresentative habit i have; i think i'm fine until i look around me and realize i've been flailing underwater.

i feel guilty all the time, and then i feel even more guilty for wallowing instead of pulling myself up out of it. i went to a noontime lecture today, for a designer named mark mcquade (who has done work for wired UK and the new york times), and it was probably the highlight of my week so far. i was so inspired after he presented his work and his process to us because i realized that that's what my work is lacking (process work, the hard stuff, the stuff i love doing). so i guess at this point it's just trying my best to put in the hours on my work and seeing what happens with everything else. i'm hoping it's the type of situation that will get easier with time and habit-forming.

wow what a hell of a week. I've been sleeping on & off all day after several days of getting about 2 hours a night. had a nightmare I texted dylan (it's his birthday) that woke me up & now I'm just watching a movie with dani.

I'm mostly pretty lonely these days, but I'm good. I ran into dan, who remembered that it was my birthday soon, and that was nice. friends have rearranged schedules so I know someone in most of my classes now. aside from the stressful mess of not sleeping, this week had been good. I'm pushing my design styles in new ways, I finished everything I needed to give to Amy, and I can relax for the night. tomorrow I have to spend the day fixing my bike up and cleaning my room, and then do lots of homework on Monday, but it will be worth it to have taken a day to rest. I'm physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted and I deserved to take a break. wish I hadn't slept away so much of it, but feeling a lot better than I did this time yesterday.