i just can't stop.

Other things that are interesting: how you can be in love with the idea of a person, but hate who they really are. Like every time you are with them, you try your best to mask your disappointment that they aren't doing exactly what you imagined they'd be doing (which is turning that car around and changing plans). You are angry because they turn your dreams around and skew your perception of perfection.

I am starting to come around to another interesting realization: I have never known love. I have known idealizations and fabricated Disney Channel nightmares, but I have never known love. I think it is interesting how so many people I know have only experienced the same exact thing, but they try to pass it off as something more deep and meaningful. Truthfully, I don't feel as though I'm missing out on much. I'm not ready to compromise my own wants for anyone else at this point, and I know that when I really do fall in love, I will have no choices to make-- everything will be clear. I won't weigh the options. I won't cringe. I can feel the ability in me, I just have not found anyone worth sharing it with.

In fact, I am grateful that I've never been in love. If I had been in love before, it would have ruined the surprise of what is to come. Not only that, if what I had before was love, love would suck.

But, really, at 19, who the fuck cares? Let's go out and go crazy!

one more thing.

I decided that if love does exist, it resides in spontaneity.

Dropping by for a surprise date. Now that is love.
Calling me two hours beforehand to see if I'm free. Now that is faking it.

But, in the real world, you have to call ahead it seems. Well I'm not for that. I think of all of the romantic notions that I alone have fostered, that have not been affected by the media's influence, and they all include an element of surprise. So when I say that I am looking for someone adventurous, I don't mean mountain climbing. I mean, call me just to ask what time it is. Or, better yet, call me at 2:46 am to talk about the eternal forms (yes, I've written about this one before) or ask if I want to share a bottle of wine (or a can of coke and a sandwich) with you on a lonely patch of Los Angeles grass.

i can barely breathe.

I keep having these strange epiphanies. Like, all the sudden, I'll feel like I can start over. But starting over is so difficult. I just don't know if I have the strength to do it right now.

Do I really have to? All the happiness mixed with all the pain? Wouldn't it just be much easier to resign myself to apathy?

Wouldn't it?

love is a growing up.

I am filled with this vast empty pit of loneliness. It's something I am not used to, having believed all my life that I am independent and having been told just last night that I've never been good tied down. But it's about time I stop lying to myself.

I am alone.

And I have never felt more like it before. I'm so used to having someone's arm to squeeze, or having someone who I can call when someone says something stupid that I can't stop laughing at, or even having someone whose hair I can play with as we drive down the highway.

Yet I think of all these things, and I can't stop thinking me, me, me. What am I missing? What do I need to make me happy? Not, what can I do to make sure that whoever I'm with is just as happy? How can I make that person smile?

Which is exactly why I need to feel alone, I suppose. While I do think it is reasonable to wonder what makes me happy, I don't think it's reasonable to always be thinking what others can do to get me there. I think the questions I need to ask myself are more like, why do I hate myself so much that I can't spend a night alone in my dorm room without feeling the need to beg someone to hang out with me? Why do I get so angry with Rebecca when she ditches me? Shouldn't I be able to be by myself for one, maybe two nights without having a breakdown?

I have a lot of things to figure out. I have a long way to go before I can feel what I see others feeling constantly-- that they belong to someone, and they don't care. Because they'll do whatever it takes to make sure they smile.

More questions flood over me: am I even capable of that emotion? Have I been so spoiled that I may never be happy with anyone? Or is it just what Nika said, that it's not true that no one will put up with me like he did? That I just need some time to figure out why I'm even worth anyone spending any time on me at all?

I just wish I could feel like I was the same girl I was two years ago, when life was perfect and simple. So perfect and simple that I was able to acknowledge it, even at the time.

a box full of paper hearts.

When I look out my window from here, I see a mansion through a heavy mist of Autumn fog.

I wonder who the people are inside. What their lives are like. If they are lonely.

I wonder if they are home. If they have kids. Whether it is a husband and wife. And if they are in love with each other. Or if they are just lying to make life easier.

You say I was never in love with you, but you don't know what you mean. You fall in love too easily until it isn't love at all. You lied to make life easier. I lied to make you think it was working.

Now I know love is a feeling that isn't convenient to feel until you are old enough to be miserable.

locked up tight.

It's hard not to wonder what would have happened if I had chosen New York over you.

Would I have saved myself the pain? Or would I wake up every morning to the dark grey sky, wondering what would have become of us?

Well I know now. And it is more painful than any unanswered question or nostalgia-ridden dream.

Now every day I wake up to headache-inducing sunlight, wondering what emotion will run through me when my eyes meet yours again. Will it be regret that I have made this decision? Will it be relief that you are still in my life? Will it be a feeling of comfortable abandon? Will I feel sick to my stomache for hurting you like I have? Or will I have to continue forcefully swallowing the three words that got me where I am, so I don't end up where I was?

Lately, it has been all of the above.

When you told me that story over breakfast, I don't know what happened between us. Something in me went blank, whether from jealousy or insecurity or frustration, I will never know. I don't know what to make of the anger I felt or how little I felt I knew you in those ten minutes.

And then when I trudged up Rieber steps after newspaper training, I almost expected you to still be sitting there alone like you were as I looked back over my shoulder this morning, still so angry you were willing to throw all those little seeds onto my favorite sweater (the one you bought me last Christmas) like a little boy angry at his big sister for tattling.

And I was just thinking, maybe in New York, this would have all disappeared. Maybe I could replace the hole you leave when you're away with expensive shoes and snow and skyscrapers.

Then, just as I think of the alternatives, the question comes back again: Do you feel better now, you heartless bitch?

so there.

Today at Rendezvous, a campus restaurant, I spotted a girl with hair like mine waiting for her Mexican food at the counter. Next to her stood a boy about her height with light brown hair that covered the tops of his ears. The man behind the counter called the girl's number and the boy reached out to grab her box of food for her. She took it from him and smiled. She handed him some napkins and a fork from the baskets on her left.

I couldn't help smiling at the simple reciprocity. I couldn't help going numb from feeling so far away.

and and and.

On another note, I am going to stop censoring myself for you now.

So be prepared for it. You might not like what I have to say.

Deal with it.