Filling Empty Space

I'm still here.  Sitting in this practically empty room.  It's not empty, not really.  It just feels that way because everything that is mine, that is significant, meaningful, has been moved.  It's waiting to go elsewhere, as am I.  So I sit here, staring at an empty wall, waiting for the minutes and hours to pass until I am no longer here.  Until the only traces of my presence are the countless relics on my door that ceased to matter years ago, the adornments of the walls that I never spent enough time looking at.

I'm sad not because I don't want to leave, but because I am not yet excited.  I rather dislike transitions.  Much as I enjoy or at least appreciate the change they bring, I just don't like the process of the transitions themselves.  And that's what I'm in, or at least approaching.  I don't know when the transition technically starts, or if it did months ago or if it hasn't for a couple of hours yet.  In any case, I know it has at least a week to go before it's over, and that's what I'm waiting for.

Transitions aren't terrible or evil things, I know this.  I also know that these sorts of things push me into uncomfortable territory that I often find to be completely unnecessary.  Then again, I've already had the experience I needed to learn that I find people I like in ways other than forced introductions, whereas many of the people I will be forcefully introduced to will not have experienced these sorts of things.

My tone is odd.  I'm trying to distance myself right now.  If I wasn't, I'd be hyperventilating and losing track of things amid my nerves.  As it stands, I'm just fine.  Not quite excited, but ready to get this over with, at the very least.  I don't really know what happens from here, and I don't know if I will have time to blog tomorrow (just reiterating the warning).  In any case, I hope it all goes well.

Forgotten

Until about a second ago, I forgot that I had a blog and that I was still due to post at some point today.  Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), I remembered.  I'm not sure that I have much to say, but before I say anything, I present the warning that I will be in an extremely transitional state for the next few days and therefor may simply be unable to find the time to blog.

Regardless, I am still lacking in things to say.  Fair warning has been given that my blogging may temporarily (or perhaps permanently, I don't know) cease in the near future.  And that's about all I had to say.  I'm not terribly nervous right now, I say as my shoulders fall four inches once I consciously untense the muscles in the general area.

Okay, maybe I'm nervous and tense.  That's just me.  I'm less panicked about all of this than I was a few days ago, which is something at least.  Mostly, I just want to get this transition over with.  I like constancy, routine, and predictability.  It suits me and pleases me.  So for now, I have to deal with a few more days of panic and tumult, but I know it'll end soon.  Anyhow, that's all I've got right now, sorry.  Good night.

On Broken Promises

I broke that promise.  And I know I wrote later that I'd break it again in a heartbeat.  And I would.  But not completely.  Because I promised.  And with promises that serious, I like to keep them.  I don't think I would have gone any further than I did.  Not directly, anyway.  I may have worked to align things in such a way that it would more or less break the promise, but I would never have gone further directly.

I asked.  That's all I could have done.  Okay, I begged and pleaded, too.  But the general fact remains the same.  I didn't try to use guilt or to paint it in some miserable pathetic light.  I simply asked.  And I figured out the answer to your question, too.  No, I wouldn't have called.  I might have started wailing until someone woke up and I might have sobbed out just enough for them to get it, and I would have hoped that they'd call.  But no, I wouldn't have.

I'm glad I didn't have to.  I broke that promise, anyway.  There's no denying that.  But part of me somehow feels better knowing that I could have done worse and I didn't.  I could have done worse immediately.  I could have followed all the advice they shove down your throat when talking about these things.  Get help, don't try to do it alone, blah, blah, blah.

I'd have blamed myself.  There's no way I wouldn't have.  I would have wondered what I could have done differently, should have done.  I still do.  Even though things didn't go the way they seemed to be headed.  But I still blame myself for getting them there.  Because it was, after all, a quirk of my mood that set things off in the beginning and made that into the hell it was.

Those

I'm in one of those moods again.  And no, I don't actually know what I mean by that, not exactly, anyway.  It's just this state of oddness because I've calmed down and stopped being a nervous wreck (for the entirety of today, at least), but I don't know what to say and I feel like I'm drowning in emptiness.  It's not that I don't feel emotions right now, I feel plenty, I'm not numb.  It's just that I'm a little bit lost.

I'm in an in-between that resides in the empty space between a bigger in-between and a something-significant (which never turns out to be nearly as significant as you want it to be, but you still tell yourself that it is, and it will be).  In some ways, this is honestly very nice.  I read a book today.  An entire book.  I haven't done that in a while.  Oh, and it wasn't a book that I had to read for the purpose of learning something.  It was simply a novel, and one that I thoroughly enjoy, time and time again.

Parts of me like having nothing to do because it means I can drown myself in novels and people who never existed but have affected my life almost as much as the real people in it.  Parts of me hate it because it feels like the most worthless part of an already worthless life.  I'm not intending for that to sound self-deprecating or anything.  I've always been quite the existentialist, and it's coming through in my word choice here.  I do think that life is worthless because it leads nowhere...we're born and then we die and everything that happens in between really doesn't matter because after we're gone, we'll eventually be forgotten, no matter how great and wonderful we were.

It doesn't mean that I purposely try to live my life in an easily forgotten way, just that I don't strive to be eternally remembered.  I don't want to be the figurehead of a movement.  I don't need to change thousands of lives to feel satisfied with my own.  I just want to do my best and try to be happy and get to know the people around me and help them in any way I can.  That's enough for me.  Some people say that all they aspire to do is just to change one life, that that would be enough for them.  I have issues with that goal for two primary reasons:

1) Everyone changes the life of everyone they come in contact with and, indirectly, even some people they never know exist.  It's just how it works.  It may not be a major change, or may not seem like it at least, but, like it or not, we change the people around us and are constantly changed by them, even if we try not to be.

2) Everything is glorified these days.  Life is glorified, death is glorified, change is glorified, and so is everything in between.  Changing a life may mean the world to you, but it doesn't matter much on the grand scale of the universe.  Changing, or hell even saving a life, which is looked upon so highly, isn't some sort of magical process that completes a human being.  It doesn't work that way.  It's not the sort of thing you can look back on and cite as your defining moment, or certainly not in the majority of cases.

I've gotten off track and started ranting.  To be honest, I don't remember what I started writing about or how I got where I did.  I made a few points, expressed a few opinions.  I'm happy with that.  So I'm going to wrap this up while it's not too lengthy or unbearably convoluted.

Blurred

I don't remember if I blogged yesterday or not.  I think I did...then again, that might have been the day before.  Everything is a blur right now.  I can't remember if I have five days left or six, or whether I remembered to pack this yesterday or if I set it off until tomorrow.  I don't think I'm trying terribly hard to keep track anymore, though, I'm just letting it all float away.

To a point, I've become less stressed today (although the muscles in my neck most certainly don't agree with that assessment).  I've talked about anything and everything, for all the good that's done me.  I've made myself busy (at least to a point) by doing a bit more packing, not that there's much left, and crawling through the internet, which is unfortunately much less productive than I'd like.

Unlike the past few days, I really don't have anything to say right now.  I wish someone had opinions or thoughts on my posts of the past couple of days, but I don't terribly mind the lack thereof.  I'm just waiting for time to pass now, finishing up the little bit of work I have left.  I'm still very nervous, certainly, but not nearly as much as I was a day or two ago...I hope.

Puzzle Pieces

Someone I used to know wrote this post somewhere in the past twelve hours.  I don't imagine she remembers me, or not terribly well at least, so it feels like an invasion of her privacy to post that URL here so obviously.  In reading her blog somewhere around four years, now, after the last time I saw her, I find a lot more similarities than I did then.  Part of it is the music.  That might have been what made me curious enough to read her writing in the first place.

But there's something else there, too.  There's the much more subtle yet significant struggle for clear thinking, for making sense of things, for confidence.  And she seems to be a good ways ahead of me in that respect.  Not that it's really much of a surprise.  I wish I'd gotten to know her better when I could have.  Maybe I'd have turned out differently as a result, maybe I would have been more like her, which seems like anything but a bad thing to me right now.  And maybe I'd have fallen into different holes, or fewer, because it seems like we had a lot of those in common by the end, anyway.

I never had this semblance of individual identity.  Growing up, my room defied all psychological theorists.  Unlike most people, I never had a single picture of a person on my walls.  Even when I was twelve and picking out how I wanted my personal space to look, I oriented the idea around the way my parents put their house together--clean, simple, elegant, and sophisticated.  Yes, I was twelve.  I wonder sometimes if this rigid adherence to striving to make myself mature too early didn't deprive me of a sense of identity I could have had.

My taste in music didn't develop until a few years ago because until then, I never really listened to music...at all (which is hard to believe, given some of the people I spend most of my time with).  I never spent my time on the internet, and still don't spend as much as most people I know.  I miss all the trends, disregard all the passing fancies, and am very careful to never really commit myself to anything permanent because I'm constantly too busy being afraid of losing it all.

I never fit into cliques or stereotypes.  I spent most of my time feeling out of place even in a group of so-called friends because I was always too busy being detached to be interested, or my interests lay elsewhere and I still hung around because I didn't want to be that-one-kid-in-the-corner-who-has-no-friends.  Mentally, emotionally, though, that's exactly who I've become.

Even if I wanted to pick some interests, build myself an identity now, it's too late.  It feels like taking anyone else's interests and saying 'I like this,' building some core tenets of myself to reflect this fact, is cheating.  That it wasn't my interest and that whoever showed it to me will think I'm cheap and fake and worthless because I have to take something of theirs in order to be anything on my own.

I'm disinterested and I automatically disengage.  People offer no further appeal, mostly because I'm just too scared of having nothing to talk to them about and being hated for anything I do say.  That's just how it's been for me.  I don't avoid people because I don't want friends, I avoid them because I don't think I'm good enough to be considered a friend, because I'm not interesting enough to be worth talking to, because I'm too weird to want to be seen with.  And somehow, masochistic loneliness is easier to bear than rejection.

Effects of Stress

I'm currently studying a bit of psychology.  It doesn't matter why, but it's partially just one of those things I picked up because it legitimately interested me.  But anyway, the point is, that I'm reading a bit about it right now.  And I found a section about the effects of stress.  They seem to constantly be either positive or negative.  Never neutral.  Which, I guess, makes sense.  For the most part anyway.  It would just seem more intuitive, though, that if it could go one way or another, it'd also be possible to have no effect.

I've hypothesized before on the possibility of having an anxiety disorder.  I don't remember if I actually wrote a post about it, but I know I was definitely thinking about it at one point when I wrote a post (although I'll be damned if I try to remember which one it was).  I stress.  A lot.  Oftentimes for no good reason.  If I have nothing to worry about, I will find or even create something to worry about.  And I really wish I knew how to stop or at least control it, but anything I've tried hasn't worked so far.

So here I am, reading this book about psychology and considering possible positive and negative consequences of stress.  And the impression I got was that with support and other positive influences, a person under stress could often better describe a traumatic event or synthesize pertinent information than someone who had not been flooded with stress hormones.  On the other hand, those who were left to deal with stress on their own and lacked such positive support systems did worse, and were worse off on the whole.

I'm afraid this isn't making terribly much sense right now.  I don't know that it's supposed to because, to be fair, I'm mostly just rambling to take up space.  I'm trying to come to some conclusion about being stressed, but I don't think it's working.  I'm tired right now, way too tired for this.  I think I'm going to go to bed soon.  Apologies for this post.

Driving Alone in the Dark

Maybe it's something about nights like this.  When it's late and it's dark and there's rain pouring down everywhere and I don't want to turn on the windshield wipers until I literally almost can't see.  Maybe it's just a result of the day that came before the driving.  And maybe it's everything all together, the cascade of fatigue and emotions and not being home for quite a while.

But maybe it's fundamentally something far more significant than that.  And maybe these thoughts aren't just tired ramblings like they seem to be.  I'm resistant against such an answer because it's terrifying.  And I don't want it to be the truth.  And it scares me.  So it feels easier to just blame it on the exhaustion and lay the blame anywhere else so that I don't have to think about it.

Because the thing is, sometimes I think I'd rather die than lose this.  That it'd be easier to just let go than try to put all the pieces back together when the glue that held them there is just...gone.  Because I don't know how to end things any differently or how they could possibly work out without going haywire and messing everything up.

So maybe it's just the dark and stormy night.  And maybe it's just the feeling I always get when taking a turn a little too sharply.  And maybe it's just that one song that always sticks out in my mind when I drive alone.  Maybe I'm crazy.  But it's not a thought that I can get out of my mind.  And that scares the hell out of me.

Alone

I think I might have mentioned this before, but I'm going to say it as a form of introduction for the actual point of this post.  I've had my crazy couple of years, I've met people, stayed up until ungodly hours of the morning (if I went to sleep at all, that is), and done all sorts of ridiculous things that I knew full well to be bad ideas.  So now, when most people around me are going to be doing that, I'm not.  Because I've come to the realization that it was fun and wonderful and all, but I'm done with it.  I'm past it.  I grew up quickly and I've outgrown that portion of my life by now.

What this means, though, is that while most people around me will be looking for people they can call their best friends for the next few years if not the rest of their lives, looking for people they want to spend forever with, and generally trying to find people to occupy their time, I'm not going to be among them.  As stuffy and old as this sounds, I'm ready to settle down.  I want a calm life with a good bit of regularity and responsibility.  I've found some friends who have seen me through bad and worse.  And for me, that's good enough.

I'm not a particularly social person to begin with, so the fact that I have as few people who I can consider close as I do is surprising and unusual and generally confusing to me, to be honest.  And I realize that I'm losing touch with many of them rather quickly, which I'm also somehow mostly okay with, for now at least.  I've discovered over this past summer that I really need very few people I'm close to in order to be happy, and I'd like to think that I've already found a couple of people I can count on for that.

The thing that makes me wonder though is a matter of how much I may miss out on by not taking advantage of all the people around me.  I assume I will find a couple of new friends in the crowd eventually, even if I'm not looking terribly closely, just because people who get along drift together out of a shared environment.  But everyone says that you should go out and have the time of your life and meet new people.  And I'm just not interested in that.  I feel like I've already found at least a few of the people who are going to remain important to me for the rest of my life, and I think I'll probably stumble across a few others.

But what if I don't?  What if I lose touch with everyone I know and care about and find myself all alone, completely lonely?  I wonder what happens if I'm too ready to settle down at a point in my life when I'm not supposed to want to.  And that confuses and scares the hell out of me because I honestly have no idea how the next couple of years are going to go, and I'd rather not start trying to predict things because I know how poorly that generally works out.

While I'd like to count on a couple of things staying exactly the same, working out exactly the way I want them to and all, I know I can't ever assume anything like that.  So while everything seems to be going smoothly and quietly now, at no apparent risk for interruptions, I know that it could change at any moment, especially two weeks from now.  And after all of this, I'm absolutely terrified of being left alone.

Pandora's Box

I'm jealous.  Because I know that I can no longer be seen this way by you.  I'm not mysterious or unpredictable or tempting anymore.  Maybe I was once (but maybe that's just me flattering myself), but it's just something that it's not possible for me to be that way now.  You know me, and you know my habits, and, to put it simply, you have me in every applicable sense of the word.  There's no discovery left (which is really terrifying, but that's another blog post entirely).

I'm not afraid that you're going to all of a sudden hate me or that you're suddenly going to just disappear because something small displeases you.  But what I am afraid of is that you're going to find someone more interesting, someone more exciting, someone more alluring than me.  Which, to be perfectly frank, really isn't that hard to do.  Especially not when I can no longer offer surprises the way other people can.

And that's part of why this summer was so nice.  It was old and comfortable and familiar.  There were no new people to meet or new activities to engage in.  It was simple.  Maybe using the word jealous at the beginning of the post was a bad choice.  The point is, I'm scared of what happens when you meet new and interesting people and I'm still just...me.

Untitled

"I love you"


I didn't say
"your life would be so much easier if you didn't"
or
"you deserve to find someone better than this"
or even
"I'm sorry"

I just said
"I love you too"


~


To be fair, I could have said any of them.  None of them were lies.  And in the moment, not one was more true than any of the others.  But only in the moment.  See, maybe the reason I said what I did was because I knew it would hurt less than all the rest, because I knew that it would be easier to say the last thing that came to mind than any of the rest.

In the end though, it's also the most honest thing I could have said.

It's the only one of the above that I consistently mean, that I always feel.  Even though I get down on myself surprisingly often, and want to lash out with hurtful replies and express in poorly-chosen words my frustrations, the majority of the time, I don't.  The majority of the time, the only way I could think to respond to that would be by saying "I love you too."

Maybe I chose what I said for the wrong reasons.  Maybe it's a way of thinking I shouldn't have.  But no matter why I said it, I have no doubt that it was the right choice.  Because more than anything else, I love you.

Yawn

Well, this blog post marks the end of yet another unproductive day, devoid of working, productivity, and motivation entirely.  It was filled, rather, with hours and hours of reading people's blogs, wandering about the internet, and generally getting just about nothing done.  For once I'm not as bitter about that as I might be, which is most definitely a good thing.

I've been worrying significantly more than I should have been lately, which, while not uncommon, is still remarkably bad for me in pretty much every way imaginable.  Thus, today allowed me the chance to relax and take a few deep breaths, let some things go, and enjoy mindless humor and way too much ice cream.  Not a bad way to spend a day, if you ask me.

I still really have nothing to say, because, well, I haven't exactly done anything or had anything happen to me that's worth talking about.  I haven't even done terribly much thinking, so I can't even take up space with the conclusions I may have reached there.  I'm honestly sorry I still don't have anything to say.  I really need to get into the habit of writing earlier in the day so that I at least make myself come up with something worthwhile to write about rather than spewing words to try and get it over with already.  My apologies.

Packing

I'm still here for another thirteen days.  Well, twelve and a half, really, but that's just a minor detail.  And yet, despite this extended time frame that remains, I'm just about ready to be gone.  I could be out in two hours if you wanted me to be, that's how little remains to be packed, organized, checked off the list.  So why on earth do I still have almost two weeks left?

To a point, I'm just accustomed to being ready this early.  It's simply the way things have worked for the past several years and the way I'm used to, which immediately makes it more likely to be the way it works right now. It's also been a wonderful strategy to avoid being productive.  While it hasn't been imperative for me to get work done, it's one of those things that would be really good were I to be able to do it in a timely and organized fashion...which I've been failing at a little bit lately.

Then again, at least I've done something useful in all of this time.  I've been procrastinating efficiently, so to speak.  Packing is one of those things that needs to be done eventually, so rather than wasting my time on the internet, I've been packing instead of working.  That way, when the time to be gone rolls around, I have few productive options left but to work.  And I know myself well enough to realize that I'm more likely to be able to get work done over the next few days if I don't have more packing left to distract me.

This has been a wasted ramble of a post.  In case you couldn't tell, I don't really have terribly much to say so I've just been spewing some thoughts out.  My apologies for the poor quality.

Disappointing

I'm supposed to blog again.  I mean, I don't have to.  I could just drop this project.  But parts of me are insisting that I continue.  Not the least of which is the portion that read and took to heart one advice site for people with career interests in research.  What it boiled down to is that in the end, you'd have to write a lot, and writing a lot would eventually get you to be good at it.

So even though blogs don't necessarily have anything at all to do with what you're researching, the idea is that you just write things, anything, so long as you put words down and construct sentences and paragraphs out of them.  I can understand that, so I'm trying to keep this blog going if only to up the time I spend writing and the number of words I put down, even if most of them are just empty, space-filling things.

I feel like there are some days when I still manage to write worthwhile posts.  It just doesn't happen terribly often.  Especially not anymore.  But I'm working on it.  In two weeks, things will be going on and happening to me, so hopefully I'll have a bit more to write about.  No promises though, it's just my hope.  I don't know, I hope I find more things to write about in the meantime, though.

Emptiness

I guess I should blog now, shouldn't I?  Not that I know what to say.  As usual.  I'm not in a bad mood or anything, I'm just not in a good one, either.  And that's a problem, because most people don't seem to see the world the same way I do.  Most people understand it as you're either in a good mood or a bad one.  There's no in-between, no neutral mood.  It seems that most people interpret their emotions such that if they are not happy, they are most certainly sad.  Or on the sad side of things, at least.

One can be more or less happy or sad, but there's no true neutrality, no real in-between.  I don't see it that way, though.  I don't believe in black and white.  I live in shades of grey.  Things are harder that way because when there is no right or wrong, it's a lot harder to just pick a side or make a decision.  I've heard it said that people who think in shades of grey are more complicated, more difficult, that it is far harder to affect their minds or influence their decisions.  I consider that flattery to a point, because it was spoken in light of a comment that I don't see things in black and white, but regardless, it was said by someone I consider to be fairly intelligent.

Maybe that's why depression is such a problem these days.  Because not feeling anything is assumed to be a bad thing, when it isn't necessarily so.  Certainly, such as thing exists as a painful emptiness, a sad one, and while people may argue that it's a particular feeling--sadness or pain--I don't think it is.  I see it, rather, as a flavor of the emptiness.  These are ones that occur because of sadness or pain, not in concert with them.  But at the same time, there is the emptiness that came from bliss, from peace, from calm.  Feeling nothing isn't a bad thing.  It's just something different, that's all.

We live in a world full of overstimulating objects, people, experiences, sensations.  If we don't hear the constant buzz of electronics, we are confused.  If we are not constantly watching a talking head on the television screen, we are lonely.  Not all of us, sure, but many.  We've become too accustomed to constantly being assaulted by sensations and converting them into perceptions that we don't know what to do when they're no longer there.

I am empty right now.  That's not necessarily bad.  It doesn't mean it has to be good though, either.  It simply is.  Just as I simply am.  Which I am perfectly okay with.  I don't need any more than that.

The Collision of your Kiss...

I should never be allowed to reread old chat logs.  It's just bad for me.  To be fair, I was looking for something specific this time around.  And found it, eventually.  It's just that in the process, I uncovered a number of other things that I may have been much better off not going back to.  On the one hand, that is.

On the other hand, it's a good thing to remember where I've been.  It doesn't sting as much anymore because it's so clearly in the past.  Maybe not eternally, probably not, in fact.  We'll hurt each other plenty in the future, but it hasn't been nearly as bad.  We've managed to calm down significantly since the last time that happened.  Which is good.  It scares me sometimes, remembering those nights, wondering about what could have happened but didn't, or what did, or what could happen in the future.

That's probably the most frightening part of all.  The future.  What could happen.  How things could fall apart.  Who could get hurt.  And when.  And how.  I'm not sure what else to say.  There are a few things on my mind but none of them really pertain anymore.  I guess the point of this post was to express my concern.  Or maybe reflect on this morning's rereading of various things.

Either way, that's been covered now.  I lost whatever spark I had that made me start writing this earlier, so I guess that'll be the end of this post.  Apologies for being so anti-climactic.

Changes

It just hit me that this is the last summer I'll ever have like this.  Not just summer, and not just last.  These past two months, they've been the only period of my life that I can ever hope to turn out in any similar fashion.  Sure, things weren't perfect, but it was the best that could have happened, the best of the real, not idealized world.  Two months.  That's it.  The only time when I knew exactly what I wanted to be doing and where I wanted to be and I didn't doubt, for once in my life I didn't doubt and just let myself be happy.

It was (dare I say it?) wonderful.  So now my summer's over.  I know I'm still here for seventeen days, but it's not the same.  It's not my summer anymore.  My summer has been over for five days now, because that's when you left.  That's what really made my summer.  Being with someone I love.  Having the freedom to do so, and the time to spare.  I didn't have to be busy or stressed or preoccupied and I could see you every day.  It was the best of, well, everything, really.

I don't remember the last time anything made this much sense, and that scares me.  I know I worry too much, but I'm also trying to think rationally.  It's one thing to be happy without stress.  It's another to try to make not only your life but also someone else's work under pressure, facing adversity, dealing with a lot of pain.  And that's what I'm worried about.  Because while this summer was the most wonderful thing I could have asked for, I'm afraid that nothing's ever going to be that wonderful again, not even with you.

There was an odd, so to speak, character in a wonderful series of fantasy novels that I read many years back who was cursed.  His eyes saw the passage of time--each flower that was in bloom, he could already see wilting; the young, he could already see withering away into old age.  I feel to a point like that's the way my brain is working.  Everything around me that is beautiful and wonderful, I see falling to pieces and falling apart.  I don't know how to fix that, although I desperately want to.

I really hope it doesn't fall apart...

Back?

It looks like I'm getting back into the habit of blogging here.  I just started another blog (not at all linked to this one, nor related to it in any way), and having a reason to write something else is like something nagging at me that I still have this little piece of work, floating around in empty space.  If you'd like a link, by the way, let me know and I'll send one to you, but be warned, it is completely different from this one.

I had some thoughts I felt I could blog earlier today, but I wasn't feeling motivated (at all) at the time, and by now I have forgotten them all.  I ran across a site I've seen once before today, a particularly good one, which happened to have a page of tips for productivity.  I've spent the summer bumming around on my ass, so I think that was as good a sign as any to get back up and start doing useful things again.

In any case, with the amount of work I have coming my way in less than one month, it's looking like I'm going to need every single one of those tips, even if they are mostly common sense.  I've gotten over reckless behaviors, in most respects, anyway.  Now I just need to get my act together and stay responsible in every manner.  I know I can.  It's just a matter of actually doing it and not getting distracted.

I feel like it should be easier now that more of the things I'm going to be doing are going to interest me, but there are still going to be plenty of distractions.  I'm mostly just nervous because I have so much time to sit around and be nervous right now.  Once I get there and everything (including a routine) starts to take shape, I get the impression I'm going to be doing a lot better.  But for now, all I can do is sit here and worry a bit.

Age

It's odd.  The past couple of years have given me a sort of experience that most people don't get until they reach the age I'm currently at.  And while I realize that it's different, and that having gone through the transition a few years ago rather than a month from now isn't the same thing, I feel myself to be beyond that.  A step above it.  The transition I'm about to make feels beneath me in some way.

Let me interrupt that train of thought a little bit to put in this tidbit.  As you may or may not have guessed, I'm arrogant.  I have an odd mix of an inferiority complex while at the same time thinking that everything is beneath me.  I haven't yet been able to find a balance between the two.  Going back to the topic at hand, yes, I do think I'm better prepared and more capable of handling this coming situation than the vast majority of students.  Judge me all you want, I don't care.  This blog is here for a reason.  I'm allowed to rant.  I can scream about things that are unfair.  I know that just about nobody wants to hear me going on about this again because I've spent most of the summer doing just that, so I'll write it instead.  I'm not asking anyone to read it.  This is just for me.

And I feel like the past couple of years have gotten me over that phase where it seemed like an awesome idea or experience.  I got over the fact that being utterly screwed over is glamorous.  Yeah, I went through that phase.  I pushed a lot of limits.  And now I'm over it.  And I know that most of the people I'm going to meet aren't going to be.  It's their first taste of this sort of experience, and, like mine was years ago, it's going to be exciting, and they're going to be pushing limits too.

That's just the thing, though.  I have no interest in pushing limits or spending my time with people who are going to be doing that.  The fact of the matter is that I'm ready to settle down on my own and not bother with people trying to help me or protect me or "guide" me through this "transition."  I've never been terribly social and I've reached the point in my life where I just want to take responsibility for my own self, without being bothered about the importance of making friends or meeting new people.

I. Don't. Care.

Hell, I didn't care terribly much years ago, either.  And I found myself in a company of people I haven't talked to since that first month.  None of the friendships I made in that so-called critical period have stuck with me.  In a couple of months, I found people who I got along with well and who are my friends now.  I don't need to be pushed into social settings because the people I like spending my time with often don't like those settings either.

I just want to be left alone to figure things out on my own.  Is that really so much to ask?

Melancholy

I know I've used that title before.  I haven't blogged in a week.  Yes, me, the one who was so strict about blogging every single day and would apologize profusely for missing just one.  I'm out of things to say.  Even now, I don't have much to write.  But I'm putting words on a page because things are empty and I don't want them to be but I can't very well fix them.

Right then...I opened that early this morning.  I haven't touched it since.  I'm less melancholy now.  Then again, adorable things tend to fix one's mood quite nicely.  I'm still a bit lonely.  Still confused as to how it's possible that after the past two months, I won't get to see you today...or this week...or most of the rest of this month, even.  It's just odd.  I'm trying to adjust.

Again, it's been hours since I wrote the last paragraph.  If you can call it that.  I figure that since I started writing something, I might as well finish it, right?  I don't know what happens to this blog from here.  I've already fallen out of the habit of daily blogging, so it's not like I feel obligated to keep that up anymore.  Maybe I'll drop it.  Or maybe I'll just write every so often.  We'll see.  I'm sorry I suck at this so much.

Maybe

Maybe one day even these scars will fade.  Time passes quickly now, more quickly than it ever did before.  Hours blur as shadows flit across the ground, driven by the unceasing motion of the earth about the sun.  Days turn into weeks and weeks blend into months until one day you wake up and it's no longer summer, winter, spring, fall.  Everything comes with a certain sense of peace, an absolute in the calamity that is this world.  The walls of this tiny room don't move, don't change.  The clutter on the floor is growing, waiting to be boxed up and moved to a new place, a new time, a new life.

With each new life comes new adventure.  Bright, fragrant joy.  Deep, bitter anguish.  Every emotion is fresh and new because it is like nothing you have experienced before, as even the familiar becomes transformed.  One day you forget to eat, the next to sleep, a third you miss an appointment.  And even as these old familiars fall apart, as life itself is restructured grandly before you, new concepts become ingrained.  A smile at the sun and an embrace of the rain begins each morning.  A kiss blown at the moon and a blessing whispered into the wind draw each night to a close.

What was once daunting becomes commonplace and everything that had seemed familiar drifts steadily into the realm of light, nostalgic dreams.  Dreams that carry us back and leave us in confusion upon waking, no alarm, no noise, no brilliance having stirred us from sleep, but simply the featherlight touch of memory.  A cool reminder upon the cheek that this can never last, that it too shall pass, that nothing is forever and not even the most beautiful of sensations can promise to still be there in a day, a year, a century.

Different light shines on your skin and the contrast it presence initially becomes something you are accustomed to.  It shelters you and gently transforms what was into what is and will later make it what will be.  The fluidity of time is elegant and blissful.  It is as though the memory vanishes for a moment then returns, to a life completely different, people who were once just strangers, memories that you never thought would fade into the past.

Maybe you can just remember, or dream, or fall back to how life used to be.  But one day there is no choice but to wake up.  And then it is as though it never was.  Maybe.