The litter box is under my desk, and whenever the cat takes a shit, she looks up at me, squints her eyes, and mews a little bit. Haha. It's adorable.
I bought this powder stuff that you put in the litter so that when she poos it makes a pleasant flowery smell. I find it lovely.

I miss my Arlington friends.

I might be getting a job at the Gaylord Texan. $9 an hour. Actually my 3rd interview is like...
right now..

g2g

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Ever feel like things are moving too fast, like a tilt-o-whirl and you're screaming but can't get off...? You can't keep up, you can't slow it down, all the things you wish you could see are whizzing by, blurry and out of focus. You want to take a closer look, but as soon as you lean in they're already gone. Your position of control seems lost. You feel helpless. You know you're not, but the feeling pushes through your great wall of logic and overwhelms you anyway. Instead of focusing on things that can help you, you just let your demons plague you. Instead of pushing forwards, you fall down on the ground and tremble. You break.

breathe, keep breathing... don't lose your nerve...

Situations bring themselves to my threshold and look me dead in the eye, they need my decision, my judgment, my ruling. I freeze. This is where I need to be strong but my legs buckle in and my heart beats faster than I would like it to.

I want to be strong, independent, and responsible.
I want to be compassionate, loving, and beautiful.
I want to be artistic, intelligent, and a realist.
I want to have opinions, and I want to matter.

I know what I want. But I don't remember my path. I'm flipping through the pages of all my favorite books, I googled the word "hope"... I'm looking for the answers. I'm asking more questions than I can handle. I'm choking.
What have I done?
What do I do next?
What is right?
How do I learn how to do this on my own?

Am I still allowed to cry...?

breathe, keep breathing... I can't do this alone...

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I feel like writing, yet... I don't. Know what I mean?

Matt has been coming by my apartment frequently lately, so finally on Tuesday I told him quite literally that it's over and he has no chance with me.
He got teary-eyed and left, I sent him off with a hug and a CD I thought he would like.

I still feel like a cold hearted bitch. It's hard... this stuff.

On the other hand my feelings for Ben are getting stronger all the time, yet his anxiety keeps him from being able to see me. Which is frustrating to say the least. I am not a patient person, but I'm trying.

School is going OK, as always. My grades are in the B range so... that's acceptable I guess. The only classes I actually like are physical anth, and cultural geography. The rest are boring.

Money still sucks I'm having the hardest time finding a job out here. Since it's a college town I'm not the only one out there searching so the competition is rough. This weekend sometime I think I am going to go out to some of the smaller towns around Denton and apply at random places there. My loans still haven't come in and things are getting really tight. I really hope this all works out.

And in my abundance of free time (since potential employers keep evading me) I have been watching TV, playing with my new kitten, reading poetry books from the library, and eating ramen noodles wishing they were a 3 course steak dinner.

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I had always wondered why we spent so much time in high school english class making sure everyone knew what "irony" meant. Now I reminisce back to the days when irony was just a literary device, and nothing more.

You say, "I'm sorry I know this is selfish but I don't care I'm going to be selfish anyway, I miss you and I love you."

And I want to say, "Ah yes. Love - always selfish, twisted and unkind. I have always loved you and missed you. Yeah I know, you thought you were doing this for me. And really, it did change me, and it did change me for the better, but not in the ways you thought you were helping. I changed myself for the better. I didn't have to do it without you. It was on my agenda of things to do. Honest."

I want to say, "I had cried for you thicker tears than you could imagine, and look here you are... five months later at my doorstep telling me you're sorry for all the wrong things. And you know, honestly, I would like nothing better than a picture perfect ending. I've fantasized about it. This night. Your return. But you know, in those five months I grew far more than either of us had anticipated; I learned that maybe these storybook endings didn't exist in one form or another. Maybe to get happiness we have to experience tragedy, maybe we have to work hard for just a little payoff. Maybe in the end the beauty of the story doesn't matter at all, maybe just the honesty."

I wanted to say those things, I really did.
But all I could gather together from the air particles floating around my mouth was,
"Well, it's getting late. I'm gonna go to sleep here in a bit, so I'll talk to you later."

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I was at a party being a social recluse as always, and while the rowdy kids in the living room were dancing around in strobe light and waving their glow sticks, I sat alone on a small white couch perpendicular to the kitchen. This wasn't really my kind of crowd. Trying not to mope too much, I make small talk with a few of the people stumbling in and out of the kitchen to get more drinks. In between strangers my phone buzzes. I take it out and look at the name above the little animated phone on the LCD screen.
I shiver.
It's Matt.

I sigh a little and then answer. He's got nothing out of the ordinary to say, as usual, but he's been thinking about me lately and wants to visit me this Friday. I say OK. And really, the only thing I am not OK with is the lack of discussion that has gone on about... well... anything regarding our relationship and why is it exactly that we haven't talked in a few months. Oh well I guess I'll see what's up on Friday. I have no idea what he's been thinking about, and really he has no idea what I've been up to either. It's so strange not being involved in his life, but I have let myself go ahead and accept that. Not sure there was much more to it except that I wasn't going to sit there and cry over him any longer.

I talk Ben about all this sometimes and he's totally understanding. Which amazes me, maybe because I'm just not used to that kind of acceptance. Or perhaps he's just naive? Whatever it is, I'm glad it doesn't bother him... because it doesn't need to.

In all honesty I have mixed feelings about seeing him Friday. I'm kind of excited, kind of dreading it.

We'll see.

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I live across the street from a cemetery, it's a big one too. Every morning on my way to the bus stop I walk right next to it, usually with headphones on (I'm not a big fan of the loud traffic noise that accompanies busy streets). You'd think such scenery would sink me down into a feeling of pity, sadness and whatever it else is that normal people feel when observing this symbolism of death. But what I feel is a little different. It's a reflective feeling, no doubt, but a cemetery is actually a very soothing style of landscaping if you really think about it. A wide open field with no interruptions save for these small, somewhat uniform, stones protruding from the surface. I look at it and as the breeze rushes by me in just the right direction, and I feel no sadness or grief, but I let out a great sigh of relief. I'm not too sure why I react this way but it's such a pleasant, peaceful part of my morning walk.

What I like about the bus is that there are always so many people, and most of them look just as sleepy as I do. 7:30am, It's one of the few times of day where so many 20-somethings can congregate together and be so silent. I often wonder what living in a college town is like if you are not a student, or not of the typical college age. Probably awkward, you probably feel like such an outsider. I even feel like a little bit of an outsider sometimes. Then again, who doesn't? Life is intimidating.

Once I'm on campus I've still got quite a way to walk to get to my first class. And since it's a little bit of a walk I have time to reflect for a little while. This morning I must have been glowing as much on the outside as I had felt like I was inside because every stranger I passed seemed to be smiling, and once I realized that, I realized I was smiling too. Everything has been going just right, and I suppose that's what they say happens after everything goes wrong. But who believes that stuff until it actually happens... really?

Creating a life for yourself is quite an undertaking I've learned, but worth every bit of effort. My ambition is widening, and I don't feel trapped by my circumstances in any way. I feel liberated. I have the freedom to do whatever I want, in all reality. The only drawback to the things I want is money... but I have decided that it's okay to spend money... even money that is borrowed, because money is not real, it does not exist in the wide scheme of what really matters. The things that I want to experience belong to no one. I belong to no one, and material wealth belongs to no one. If giving in to this game of money is what it takes to get me there because that's how everyone else believes things should work, then so be it. Because money really means little to me. Simply paper dollars and metal coins that can do nothing but be exchanged. Money cannot stifle the excitement and ambition I have about this life I'm living.

Instead of lecturing about Geography, this morning my professor told us about a trip he is taking this summer and is inviting 12 students to accompany him. They are going to the British Isles for about 2 weeks and studying the cultural/economic geography of the land. It's about $3,500. It's not the first time an opportunity like this has come up in school. Not this one, but I would like to take one of these trips sometime. And if I continue to feel the way I do about Physical Anthropology at the end of this semester, perhaps even more opportunities will arise there.

For right now I live in a small apartment complex that looks pretty shabby on the outside, but we made a nice little place for ourselves inside. It's the kind of place where no one ever has their blinds open because the view is nothing to brag about, it's the kind of place where you don't quite trust the deadbolt lock on the front door because sometimes it opens anyway even when it is locked, but this is the place where I live, and I like it. My room mate is a gay guy I met in creative writing class during high school 2 years ago. We were never really friends much and only started talking again at the end of last year, but we get along incredibly well. I'm broke and jobless at the moment, and the loan I took out to help me with this has not arrived yet so I'm at a stalemate as far as money. But I like it, it's a means of living and most importantly: I chose this.

I chose this life, and the feeling I get from the freedom of being able to continue making decisions that make me happy is just incredible. Beyond words.

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