too much

I'm on my period and I've already bled through 2 of my favorite pairs of panties and a skirt today. because I'm not in the best of moods, I really didn't want to write anything tonight but I feel like I have to put down something.

my family is awesome at having huge explosion fights during vacation and I thought I had managed to escape relatively unscathed, but the 17-hour drive home proved me wrong in the absolute worst way.

let me just say that I don't think my mother and I have ever fought as hard as we did last saturday. and I was a complete bitch in the morning, so I deserved some sort of smack down, but I didn't deserve what my mom did to me.

ever since my bike got stolen, my baseline self-esteem has been really low; I locked my bike incorrectly and left it outside for too long. it was my fault my bike was stolen. my haircut is growing out weird and I've been feeling down about myself, especially because of the fact that my parents helped me buy a new bike.

and don't get me wrong: I am the most grateful person in the world that they were willing to do that. but I am so embarrassed and guilty of how privileged I am. I have friends whose bed frames are milk crates, whose parents don't pay their rent, who have worked for everything they have. I haven't done that; I haven't needed to. my parents lived that way and have worked hard so I don't have to, and I really shouldn't feel guilty. but I do, it's like survivor's guilt that I can't shake. and because of that, it has become a trigger for me.

I honestly don't know or remember how my mom got onto the subject of my ungratefulness (we had been fighting about how i had been yelling that morning), but she just kept accusing things like, "you've been given a lot," "you've never been asked for anything in return," etc. and every time I told her that she was going to trigger me, she told me she didn't care. so it escalated until I was dry-heaving on the side of the road in North Carolina, playing an endless loop of all the times I have wanted more in my life and all the things I have ever been given. (guilt over dylan, gitsy, my car, how I used to trash my room, etc.)  after I spent our whole dinner crying to myself and fighting back sobbing, my mom started crying and told me that she was sorry, that she meant it but I was still a "beautiful" person, was afraid she did something seriously wrong. changed her story to say that she meant that I am selfish with time I take to process emotions, that I can't keep it together, that they give me a lot of emotional space.  I told her I deserved it (which I didn't and don't believe) and she said she knew, that her mom "kicked her ass to set her straight" when she was my age and she was so grateful for it.

I just decided that I'm too tired of fighting her over this shit. i've gotten to the point now where, im some ways, i feel more progressed than my mom. she's dealing with a lot at work and in her personal life right now, and I need to consider that when thinking of things she has said to me lately. I would rather let her think that she won, that she was right, than tear my family apart over it. when I am in Chicago I am not guilty or depressed, for the most part. I am given the space to process my emotions when and how I want without being made to feel bad about it.

because I am so grateful for everything I have and the people who are in my life. I'm not an ungrateful person. I don't continually shit on people with my emotions like my mom says I do. I may not have had to work hard for the things I have, but i have had to work through a lot of heavy emotions and tough situations in my life.

my mom has always been one of my idols, the person I look up to the most in my adult life. when I was a kid, I used to have nightmares that I was blind or deaf and would wake up crying because I was afraid I'd never hear her or see her face again. and through the blood clot thing, that all came rushing back to me, because when I was 15, I was a selfish bitch, i was the person who deserved what my mom said to me last Saturday.

so even though I don't think I deserve the things my mom said to me last weekend, I'm deeply hurt by the fact that someone I idolize thinks those things of me. that I did things that made her feel that way. that she would willingly trigger me. and I can tell by the fact that I couldn't even get through this post without breaking down that it's probably going to take a long time for me to get over it.
{{super emotional period feels rant, sorry}}

self perception

i saw this quote the other day that really hit me hard, that "it's good to hate yourself, because if you don't, everyone else will," and it just really pisses me off. sure, coming off as a cocky jerk makes everyone else feel like shit. failing to see flaws in yourself will piss your friends off. but who the fuck could use that logic to say that self-depreciation is necessary for others to love you? That others won't hate you so long as you hate yourself?

Because what i have to say is this: i have my bad days (today is one of them) when i don't feel at home in my skin, when i feel weak and fat and like i'm a spoiled brat for the privilege i have grown up with. but lately, i have fallen in love with me. i love myself when i wake up in the morning and my hair is crazy. i love the way my boobs look when i'm naked. i love the way that my friends come to me when they need help. i love that i would rather pay for 3 friends' dinner than not include them in our plans because they can't afford to go out. i love that i'm a good writer and a good designer.

i don't like that i never do the dishes or take the trash out, that i make literal and figurative messes bigger than i can clean up. that i can be really selfish and lazy a lot of the time. that sometimes i would rather stay in bed all day than go out and live life that day.


but like Blake was saying the other day, i'm the one person i've got for sure for the rest of this life. and i'm proud of myself for where i've come from (a vast pool of self-hatred i thought i'd never escape) and most days, i fucking love myself despite my flaws. and days like today when i don't, i'm nice to myself and i wait for it to pass.

crying forever

my bike was stolen and i literally feel empty

really living?

stuck in this really dissonant state of feeling very productive and active and at the same time very lazy. extreme productivity in class and biking 7.5 miles to school & back every day makes me feel amazing, but when i get home, all i find myself wanting to do is curl up on the couch and drift off while watching netflix, half-eaten dinner in hand.

afraid that i'm about to start my period/fighting off a cold, because once i get tired lately, i am deliriously tired and can't get any work done, which is not me. i feel extremely disassociated lately.

hoping to wake up tomorrow not feeling like i do currently

Sometimes my mom can say really hurtful things off the cuff, jokingly.

I have worked really hard to get to where I am, literally on the map and in the sense that I am standing head and shoulders above any level of happiness and stability I've ever experienced.

on emptiness, things that are over, and romanticizing silly things

no but seriously. it's like every time I come to evansville, it's the same old loop and i always write the same thing. aside from select friends who don't piss me off (blake, ivy), I generally feel reinforced in my decision to leave evansville by the time my visit is over, soaking in the few sun-streaked bits of happiness from coffee with blake or campy horror films with ivy & time spent biking or driving alone with music. these introspective moments are what I take from evansville, because there is always so much going on in Chicago that I don't get quiet moments like that in the hustle & bustle.

I hate writing so much about Dylan because when I am in Chicago and am happy, I don't think about him. but being back in evansville puts me in this weird state of being in which I am always on guard that we'll end up next to each other at a stoplight or something, and I just hate it. it makes me really self-aware, and not in a good way. I just feel like the whole breakup was this big childish thing, fuel for a melodramatic novel about the two of us standing five feet from each other behind the desk at Solaris, singing along to the same song in spite of the other. Even almost a year and a half after breaking up, he's still commenting on mutual friends' facebook statuses about how funny he is (literally "what a great comedian I am," wtf), right after I comment on it. it makes me laugh! and I'm just so glad to be over that inbred Midwestern, immature bullshit. I am thankful for the real love that we shared, but I'm done feeling sorry for myself and I'm way past feeling sorry for him. romanticizing that bullshit is over.

anyways! driving home tonight from Dustin's, the Smiths came on (melodramatic sadcore to the max) and I sang along the whole way home like an idiot, drumming on the steering wheel and everything. and I thought about all this, and how I don't want to go to Chicago on Sunday but I also don't want to stay here because I feel static. and Chicago makes me feel not static, my classes push me forward to internships and jobs and bars and relationships and becoming a real human being, not a child in the body of an almost 21-year-old. listening to sadcore music on 41 with the windows down is the only static I always enjoy, and it will probably always make me happy and will therefore get romanticized 9 ways to Sunday on here.

I'm going to paint my room when I get back, and find ways to keep moving forward.


Also, Blake: my blogger was somehow malfunctioning and didnt show your last post until just now. had I known you were feeling empty I would have brought you chai and told you all the reasons why you are my best friend in the world. I hope you are feeling less empty now <3 p="">

pan

for someone who has so intensely loved peter pan her entire life, i'm really surprised that it never occurred to me to read the original j.m. barrie novel until this summer. i knew that my favorite version of the film (with jeremy sumpter as peter) is heavily based on the original text, and have always loved "finding neverland," which delves into barrie's process while writing the original play & novel.

but i am amazed with how dark the novel is for a children's story, and how realistically the children are portrayed. it just fills me with such joy and fulfillment to open the book that i save it for the quiet moments before i sleep, and it has become a very special routine of this summer. i've always dreamed of having a neverland-themed wedding, and with chantel's wedding so close & being so involved in it, romance and weddings have been on my mind a lot lately.

i don't know what it is about peter pan, but it's one of those things that i love so much that it makes me cry if i think too long on it. kind of like leslie and ben, "romeo + juliet," and my interpretation of zelda and f. scott fitzgerald's relationship, it's just one of those things that i think will always make me feel a melancholy type of fulfillment.

sometimes i feel the same way about old happy memories of dylan and i, and when i get messages from my uncle bill or mamaw eileen at church, like when my mom tells me that the way my pinky fingers curve in when my hands are working comes from my dad's mom, who died right after i was born. something that feels right and sad and spiritual and meant to be all at once.