Today was another crap day.

I’ve been having another rough week. My fingers are literally (yes, literally, not figuratively) aching from this ridiculously long writer’s block or whatever the hell it is that has kept me from writing anything substantial for so long. I’ve been trying nearly every night to get something out and all that forms is a series of gibberish that I think doesn’t make sense and when I reread it I find that I was right.

Meanwhile things are getting heavier in my mind. I couldn’t even write about MegaCon, for crying out loud.

I have a job but have only worked six hours and fifteen minutes since I’ve been hired. So far, since it’s been a dud it hasn’t affected my unemployment so if that stays the same I’ll at least have some income until I find something better. There was a work meeting that told me I was probably not going to be a good fit there but until I get something else I’ll do my best not to piss anyone off.

I’m not beeping wearing mascara for a job, though. I’ll dress nice and wear the jewelry I have but for some reason hearing “You have to wear mascara” really pissed me off. It just sounded… wrong to hear that in such a demanding tone. If I don’t want to wear make-up you have no grounds to have a problem with it. I’m just saying. It’s my face.

Maybe it’s just all the screaming in my head that got so pissy over that.

And just to clarify, by “screaming” I don’t mean the voices, I just mean the culminated frustration of all my thoughts.

I won the appeal for unemployment, by the way, I can’t remember if I mentioned that before. I won because BJ’s failed to fairly and consistently enforce their policies and they failed to provide any proof that I was screwing up — let alone deserved termination. But bleeping joy part of the general application for the school district (I had to fill out a “general” one and then I’ll fill out a substitute one when there’s a vacancy) involved me specifying why I didn’t work at my previous employer anymore and so I had to say I was terminated and so now I have to — by their instructions — write a letter to them explaining the whole thing. I’m just so dang tired of explaining the situation. Serves me right for ever taking a job at that place. And I had such high hopes for it at the time of hire, too…

Anyway, I just hope the letter is enough because if I have to have any more contact with BJ’s I’m just going to take them off my resume (from the “employment history” section, they’re not a reference) completely, because by now they surely hate me over there and I don’t need them screwing up anything else in my life.

I wish…

I wish I felt cared for.

I’ve been struggling with feeling any worth lately. 

It’s just loneliness I guess…

Still.

And it’s not just about Justin.

I have days here and there where I’ll be strong and confident and all “I deserve better than someone who lied” or “It’s his loss, I’ll find someone who really loves me” or other crap like that. But for every (one) day that I have those “you go, girl” thoughts, I have about 15 where I just want to crawl into a hole and close my eyes.

My room is slowly disappearing around me as I pack this week. I really do have a lot of crap.

But…

I put some things in my green box… the same box I once buried the ring in so I wouldn’t have to see it anymore…
Some things that were so hard to “lock” away but I wanted them to be safe in the move and I thought… I thought maybe it was past time they weren’t in my line of sight anymore…

Realistically not everything fit in there, so just the things that made me cry the most…

The name-card from his uncle’s wedding…

The poems…

Some wrapping paper from my favorite gifts…

Birthday cards…

I cried as I locked them away. The box itself doesn’t even lock, so it was mostly the reality check… and the fact that I’m not entirely sure they’re ever getting unpacked again…

Realistically Little N and the book should be in there too, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to lock him away. I’m not sure if it stemmed from my incredible imagination as a child, but stuffed animals have always linked me to memories more vividly than anything else.

And Little N is home to some of the more incredible ones…

I packed Minnie into the same box as my mangas since she was hanging from the shelves… She’ll probably go into the green box, too, after the move… She’s home to a vivid memory as well, but that one just makes my stomach turn with agony because she symbolizes a broken kiss.

Yeah… she’ll probably go into the box too…

I just want to write.

I miss it so much and I’m tired of feeling like such a failure for having done nothing since I’ve graduated.

I wonder how long I’ll be stuck living at home.

Saving up money sure as hell isn’t going to get easier.

Yancy got himself on the waiting list of the apartment complex where the other Adrians live. It’s a complex exclusively reserved for people who are artistic. Soon as one becomes available they’ll contact him and, after an “interview” with the board, should he prove himself artistic (which the other Adrians will obviously vouch for since they’re all still working on Dusk) he’ll get the place. There’s no telling how long it’ll take for a place to become available so that call can happen, but once it does, he’s in.

I miss my passion.

I need all this shtuff out of my head.

I want my fire again.

It was one of the few things I had to offer.

I have to pack more. Since everything required cleaning (dusting), all the packing I’ve done has only resulted in five boxes. 

I’ll be leaving some of my old stuffed animals (as in referring only to the ones from my childhood, not any acquired recently or during relationships). Just some. I’m still keeping the rest not only for sentimental value but because should I ever do become a mother and the child happen to be a girl, I’d like to pass them on to her.

I don’t think I’d be a good mom though.

God, I’m just having a really rough day.

I wonder how Tiny will take the move. She seemed to like this house almost right away but when we moved to the one in Viehman for example she quite visibly hated it and took sooo long to be herself again.

The last time Justin picked me up to hang out she stayed close and let him scratch behind her ears for quite a while… I think she missed him… I remember when Charles and I started dating the second time it took a long while for her to stop growling at him and allow him to touch her. I remember joking to myself at night that she was following the girl code, but maybe I should have paid more attention. Looking back at it now she could have been warning me/correctly judging the situation.

With Justin she does the normal growling thing that she does with everyone (where she growls but lets you touch her and sometimes asks for more petting — which makes me think maybe she thinks dogs can purr?) but hasn’t shown any signs of animosity in the few times she’s seen him.

God I am giving this way too much thought.

It’s midnight.

How long have I been typing in here?

My fingers are still aching, but my blogspot “new entry” window remains empty…

I really want to write something.

Anything.

Anything that makes sense.

I’m just scared.

I’ve been trying to knock it off. Really.

I mean I know I hadn’t packed up anything until now but it wasn’t like I was looking at them or holding them all the time. They were just there.

But really I’ve been trying.

But I haven’t been able to stop yet.

Even on the “you go, girl” days the best I can muster up is an “I’ll get over it,” but it has yet to actually happen.

I started thinking about his Nana a lot all of a sudden and ended up thinking about her for days straight… So I asked him if it would be alright if I sent her a small birthday gift.

I know. I’m the queen of unheard of situations. But… I believe it means something when someone suddenly pops into your mind and you can’t stop thinking about them — and often. And I couldn’t get her out of my mind for about a whole week…

So I sent her a necklace and a letter…

In it I explained why I was doing this totally random and unheard of act, how I felt, and all my wishes for her…

Yesterday I got a ‘thank you’ card from her with a long message written inside that quite easily left me in tears.

She’s a sweetheart.

God, this whole thing sucks.

But it seems I was right, because in that letter she explained how my letter and gift had arrived with incredible timing.

I’m not as spiritual as I once was; I don’t go to church, I can’t remember the last time I read my bible, and I hardly pray…

But there are still things I hold fast to, things that I believe with my whole heart.

And I believe it means something when I can’t stop thinking about someone. And that belief hasn’t been proved wrong yet.

So it’s moments like this that make me feel that I still have a connection with God.

But it’s also moments like this that make me wonder how I could be so wrong in hearing a message…

But that doesn’t matter.

I just hope Justin’s Nana and Pop Pop are well, and that whatever the troubles that may come their way pass quickly.

My eyes are burning.

I’ve had this killer headache all day…

I didn’t have a great night but it wasn’t as bad as others so I’m not sure why my head’s been hurting so much…

I want to paint something.

Or maybe I just want to touch some paint…

God, this isn’t making sense anymore. Maybe I should just try to sleep…

I just want to hear something nice… Something to quiet the thought that I’m not worth as much as I thought.

This is just sad.

I should just go to sleep. Who knows how long this has gotten.

Here’s hoping I sleep tonight.

 

En paz me acostaré
y asimismo me dormiré;
Porque solo tú, Jehova,
me haces vivir confiado.

**When I was a child, sometimes, instead of a lullaby, my mother and I would recite Psalm 4:8 (in spanish, of course). I had to look up where the accents went, but other than that I still remember the words and verse number to this day.

I’m crying in the livingroom while I watch a show with Yancy and Dad. The lights aren’t even all out, but they don’t notice.

Taken off of Tumblr, as far as I know, the original poster was “thunderpopcola”.

—

This is how you lose her. 

You lose her when you forget to remember the little things that mean the world to her: the sincerity in a stranger’s voice during a trip to the grocery, the delight of finding something lost or forgotten like a sticker from when she was five, the selflessness of a child giving a part of his meal to another, the scent of new books in the store, the surprise short but honest notes she tucks in her journal and others you could only see if you look closely.

You must remember when she forgets. 

You lose her when you don’t notice that she notices everything about you: your use of the proper punctuation that tells her continuation rather than finality, your silence when you’re about to ask a question but you think anything you’re about to say to her would be silly, your mindless humming when it is too quiet, your handwriting when you sign your name in blank sheets of paper, your muted laughter when you are trying to be polite, and more and more of what you are, which you don’t even know about yourself, because she pays attention.

She remembers when you forget. 

You lose her for every second you make her feel less and less of the  beauty that she is. When you make her feel that she is replaceable. She wants to feel cherished.When you make her feel that you are fleeting. She wants you to stay. When you make her feel inadequate. She wants to know that she is enough and she does not need to change for you, nor for anyone else because she is she and she is beautiful, kind and good.

You must learn her. 

You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. 

You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept.

And, this is how you keep her. 

I don’t know what the hell I am.

…A few weeks ago I had plans with Justin to catch a movie at the LOOP. I got a text from Dafne sometime during the night before (I was already asleep, it was late) saying she’d be in town. After I found her text in the morning I sent her an invite to join us. A few hours later she declined, saying she’d catch me another time, but I invited her again afraid she thought I didn’t want her there or something since it was Justin, and kept her updated on our whereabouts and such. I can’t remember if I got a response to the second invite, but after the movie let out I pulled out my phone to call her, and she called first. She decided to stop by after all so we met up and the three of us hung out.

It was awkward, I won’t lie, there’s nothing going on in my life other than the idea of doing substitute teaching so I had nothing to share, and while Dafne had tons of stories, I don’t know who any of those people are (which then forces the stories to be more explanation and set-up than actual telling) and the names get jumbled too easily in my head for me to follow the story clearly. But that wasn’t all that was going on. I was having a pretty bad week with very little sleep and a lot of things stirring up again (I actually started ripping up plates/napkins again) and I was having trouble keeping my head level and my feet grounded that day. Justin made light of everything and was being fun as usual but there was a little weirdness there too — later on Dafne would tell me on the phone that the reason she tried to decline is because she had stopped speaking to Justin for a long while now. I wasn’t aware of this, I knew she had stopped talking to him once before but I was under the impression that that was amended at some point. Guess not. And I still don’t see why she couldn’t just say that in the text to begin with, otherwise I wouldn’t have pushed her so hard.

Anyway… I gave her what was meant to be her christmas gift. She seemed to like it okay. It was season 1 of “DollHouse,” which (during her birthday dinner with me) she mentioned she liked but was hard to find. I was worried maybe she had found it since then or something since I never got a chance to give it to her at Christmas-time, but she said that wasn’t the case. In hindsight maybe she does have it and lied because of what she was planning to do, or maybe the knowledge of what she planned to do kept her from being genuinely excited for it.

Or maybe I just bombed and it was a crappy gift.

…She gave me some gifts too (better ones than mine I think so I felt bad. I really need to get better at this): a pair of frames with inspirational sayings on them, and the first book in the HUNGER GAMES series.

They were great gifts but I could tell she wasn’t in a touching mood so I tried to leave the hugs as quick as possible (if I circumstances allowed me to see her more often then I would’ve been able to just let hugging go for the day).

We parted ways as she drove back home. Justin and I hung out a little bit more by just walking around some but soon went home too.

Once home I went back to filling out some job applications I had “paused” before the hangout. Dafne texted me to call her when I had a chance. I finished the applications and called.

And so began a conversation that could not have come at a worser time to do the most damage.

She asked if we were still friends. I answered honestly, “Yes.” I know we’re no where close to how we were before, and that maybe the term “best” can’t be used anymore, but she was still my friend without question and I still loved her.

Dafne is not one to say how she feels, so throughout our entire friendship I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut the rare times she starts to open up because any word or sound could scare her away and make her lock it all up again.

So I tried to stay quiet and listen to what she had to say… and it quickly turned into me having to be quiet because I was trying so hard to keep my breath even and keep from sobbing.

She explained to me that we weren’t friends. That things have been so strained for a long time and that she felt like she was always making me choose, and then losing….

I never meant to make her feel that way, but every time I found out she was in town was either LATE the night before or the DAY OF a couple hours before, which is sometimes hard to work around (sometimes I worked, sometimes I had long-established commitments/plans, etc). The times I was free I always gave them to her but realistically there’s only so much I can do with that kind of notice. I remember back when she first moved out there she told me she needed to give a MONTH’S notice if she wanted to request a day off (which is hard in itself because it was hard for the gang to PLAN anything that far in advance). Years later, keeping that statement in mind, I told her my graduation date the MOMENT I knew it, which was well over a month in advance. She told me she wouldn’t be able to get it off because she was a manager-on-duty now. I understood but kept the online request for her ticket intact and asked/reminded some more. The day to pick up the tickets (a week before the ceremony I believe) finally came around and — after being told a couple times that she can’t do it over the course of the month — I picked up only the tickets I’d need and left the extras for other students who needed them.

That late afternoon/early evening (ticket pickup was early morning) she calls me to say she can come. That it came up in conversation and her manager pulled strings so she could make it. “I didn’t know I could ask for it off, I didn’t think I could.” But I couldn’t do anything about it now because her ticket was gone and I wasn’t going to uninvite anyone else because I wanted them there and they had already made it happen A MONTH AGO with their jobs and such to make sure they could make it. I was able to see her for the graduation dinner but over the phone I could tell she was upset she couldn’t be at the ceremony. I was hurt to find she hadn’t even asked.

So I don’t know if it’s just hurt from that realization or what but that “month’s notice” thing kept coming back at me combined with my assumption that she would know her scheduled days off at least a week in advance left me so thunderstruck as to why I always got notified at the last minute when she was in town.

She said she saw me maybe 2-3 times last year in all, while she saw Justin around 6 times. But there were so many times Justin would share a story about meeting up with her or letting her into the parks etc etc after the fact and I’d be sitting there thinking, “She was in town!?”

But what really got me was the megacon thing. I had made plans with Alisha and Jaunae to get the middle-school trio back together. Same week of megacon Dafne surprises me with a call and tells me she’s going. I’m excited about it but initially forgot about the plans with Jaunae and Alisha. So a couple days before I’m frantically talking to Dafne about not knowing how to coordinate things because I know she didn’t want to see Jerrick and I didn’t want to force her into doing anything that would make her uncomfortable or ruin her megacon experience. So I was working on an idea to do a series of meet ups and split ups where I’d switch from group to group so I could see everyone but she wouldn’t have to see them.

She tells me not to worry about it and that she’d drive herself up there so that there’s no trap of following the driver.

Day of megacon she tells me she’s not going and that she’s spending the day with her dad and sister instead.

I was bummed because I really wanted to see her, but figured it was the drive that caused her decision–since it IS a hell of a drive. :/

Turns out she HAD gone to Megacon and was there the whole time.

She didn’t want to make me feel like I was being spread out or having to run around trying to meet everyone. (None of that would have mattered to me though because I thought the idea would’ve worked and I would’ve gotten to see her).

But she said that’s what she meant that she felt like she was always making me choose and losing because I freaked out about finding a solution when she could’ve just hung out with all of us since they all can be civil and other people would be there to buffer.

My mind reeled with, THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THAT!? I’m here thinking you can’t see them at ALL because while, yes, you saw Jaunae when Justin broke up with me and the girls all came to help me but that was BEFORE I knew just what had gone down between the three of you and ALL that you felt on your side of the story. IF I KNEW THERE WAS NO PROBLEM I WOULDN’T HAVE FREAKED OUT ABOUT A PROBLEM.

So it was just this series of miscommunications that kept screwing us up but I still didn’t want to lose her because while we may not be as close as we had been before, I still loved her and still held her as my friend.

But she said it was too much and that our lives were too separate now and that nothing would even change if we stopped it now (which I can see to an extent what she means because since she doesn’t live here sure my day-to-day life wouldn’t change but it would still CHANGE THINGS. It’d still be losing a friend!)

It was taking all the strength I could muster to keep my breathing under control but I was quickly losing the battle as I failed to hide the sound of my crying.

And she called it quits… saying it was just better to end it now and not drag things out anymore….

She thanked me for all the great times…

and hung up…

I’ve texted her a couple times since then but no answers. I checked her blog online to see if she had further explained anything only to find that while her blog had not been deleted all the posts had been erased… And since that was the one online thing she had (save for her twitter, which I haven’t been able to find so it’s either blocked from my view or erased as well) I have no other connections left to her.

I know I’m not innocent in all this. I didn’t text or call anywhere near the amount I should have…..

but she was still my friend…

I still called her my Teddy Bear and Daf-Daf….

I mean Kathy and I are not as close as we once were either but we still keep in touch and I still love her dearly… And I pray she never wants to just up and end it, too….

But maybe it’s because Kathy still has her xanga and has a facebook…. Online social sites allow people to stay updated and linked to each other’s lives whenever they have a spare moment, allowing for communications on their own time… but texting and calls require both individuals to be free at the same time…

Still… I should have tried harder….

But, dammit, I didn’t and still don’t want to just end it.

She’s my friend, dammit. And I love her.

If she never speaks to me again, I still love her.

 

And in my heart she will always be my friend…

even if I’m not hers…

 

I should have tried harder…. 

 

But dammit…

 

Just… dammit.

I’ve tried to measure my bra size three times now using the instructions from work and do-it-yourself websites…

Each attempt says I’m a DD…

 

I can’t be doing this right.

 

 

 

On the plus side, my band size is down one size to 34in!

It makes me a little sad that the only men who ever say I’m beautiful anymore are all upwards of forty.

I don’t know where to begin.

Nothing in my home life has changed, yet a lot of things are happening.

 

I start my new job this coming Monday. Should’ve been today but it was postponed. Long story. It’s a miracle I got the job at all since I had to make an interview with swollen, red eyes the morning after Dafne broke up with me.

 

My head spins at night.

 

I just want to be happy again.

 

The new job will pay $9 an hour once I start. Maybe if I work enough I can do one of my resolutions this year. I’m still looking into becoming a substitute teacher, but so far there aren’t any openings yet and the school year’s almost over. In the meantime it’s retail for me since the office jobs at Dad’s work (and several other offices I’ve applied to online) didn’t work out.

I keep trying to write. Every day I try.

But I can’t feel my fire…

I feel like such a waste these days.

 

But I put on the smile.

I’m quite the little actress.