i don't have any of my material for this, i spent months and months pouring my heart out onto a computer file, and now i'm at the library and have no way to find it.

and i'll be honest, i almost just left this place and walked home, forgetting i drove.

my weeks have been filled with the following: reckless, useless desire, baking, old dvds and vhs (specifically degrassi, buffy, and home movies that make me burst into tears), hormones, the hospice, dreams every night about faces i don't see anymore, HOPE, and the smell of burning electronics.  oh, and jm of course:

but i won't hold you hostage,
and i won't set you free,
i'll always leave the lights on,
and you'll return to me,
please don't lose the keys

 

this is how my weekend is shaping up:

additionally, i should be a librarian for YA fiction.  missed my calling.  that is all.

this time every year i usually write a long list of resolutions... i'm going to be nicer, love myself, eat veggies, cultivate peace on earth kumbaya bananarama bullshit. instead this year i thought i'd make a list of all the things i plan to do, with pictures of course... just to get my priorities in order.

1. i'm going to convince a certain someone to come with me to california, where there we will stalk alexander skarsgard and seth mcfarlane at comincon, and go to disneyland, and see the desert, and drive north along the coast to san francisco and see the bridge and the aquarium and eat chinese food. i imagine it will be a lot like the scene in my girl 2, where i ride in the back and swingtown plays.

2. i'm going to actually get some work done, get my books written and (even though you say she writes populist bullshit) i'm going to make a run on my idol. and if it ever works out i'm going to pay off my debt, buy a small cheap car, and buy some land. yep, dream big.

3. i'm going to make martha proud of me with a raised garden, tuille cookies, dutch oven, and sea glass trays. i've got to learn to trust her when she says "sift flour", even though she doesn't respect that my mixer doesn't have a whisk attachment and i don't understand folding batter at all.

4. i'm going to find some way to reclaim my favorite place in the world, even though i haven't got the slightest idea how yet.

5. i'm going to forget about you, jordan catalano. again, i haven't go the slightest idea how yet, but the dreams are literally killing me. it would be a lot easier if you'd let me go, you know.

6. i'm going to do as jess/steph/my mother suggested and try to figure out exactly what's holding me back and fix it.

and lastly, here's a pair of excerpts from the last 7 years... because i'm feeling nostalgic:

and there's a smell of ink all around, a product of the idle doodles and thoughtless scribbles that inhabit my mind. thoughts so sweet, sounds so smooth... wishing more than ever i could find that feeling comfort again, so different from the hard edges and dirty corners of this mindset. the darkness is ambiguous, so soft and softer. it leads to skin and air and all the best intentions. my intent is to recapture the jittery emotions seeping into my ears just now... to feel the roughness again, the choregraphed simplicity of love and lust and infinity.

a long list of things i'd like right now... springtime smells and warm breeze. chocolate. someones lips on mine. sunshine. ocean waves and salt water. popsicles. a ceiling of a hundred billion stars. a worthy debate partner. a book or film that will change my life. to ride a shopping cart down grocery store aisles at breakneck speeds. endless summer nights. stones tapping on my window glass. real food. a huge strawberry mocktail. high heels and concrete to pound them on. highrise buildings. open fields. summer drives that make my skin sticky and my hair tangled. fat snowflakes that stick to my cheeks and eyelashes. to be at the center of the pit. coffee. art supplies. fruit. the smell of upscale restaurants. the smell of BOY. batteries. to know everything there is to know.

that is all.

let me start by saying i spent half the night dreaming i couldn't get my doc marten's off, and woke up with my stuffed tiger jammed up under my ribs (i'm still sore from it, invisible strings that pull at my abs when i move). the other half of the night's journey was doled out to you, in a fashion that was really spectacularly unfair, because the explanations you always seem to offer in my dreams are so soothing that i wake up confused and twisted around in the sheets, having to explain to myself that none of it was real.

and so all day i've been walking around with a sick stomach, though i'm sure it's 80 percent gingerbread latte and 10 percent pine-sol absorbed through my bare feet, but i know ten percent relates directly back to those dreams, which besides chatting with you and fighting my boots involved rooming with jessica and avery, a man wanting to withdraw 8 million dollars, and a serious tsunami at hampton beach which i was trying to drive away from.

and now this, because i know you'd hate it:

i don't know that i have anything to say. life is good, apart from the nightmares, though it all breaks down to lather rinse repeat.

i just want... this feeling back:

of being secure, anticipation. full heart.

watching DH part 1 didn't help at all.

well, here's what i love best just now:

my mother claims not to have stolen this tape from me when i was a child, but honestly, how many times could you hear it before you went nuts??

and lastly:

that is all. carry on.

i'm working on serious projects, listening to new jack's mannequin, writing silly letters to andrew mcmahon.

as you may have heard, i left my heart and soul in boston. this was how i spent the weekend:

it was loads of fun, getting my makeup done at MAC and eating cupcakes (though i still think i can do better). oh, and drinking a bottle of champagne with my mom in twenty minutes. we're powerhouses.

been listening to cassette tapes and watching vhs tapes. i'm old school.

i can't decide if i still think of people. mostly i just dream about them.

and now, in a long list of things that do not matter, here are my massive, crippling celebrity crushes. you know, just in case the opportunity arises.

jon stewart

taylor swift

seth mcfarlane

kaya scodelario

sofia black d'elia

lloyd dobler (counts, because even as a character i lurve him)

so in short, i will marry any one of these people... even the barely legal miss scodelario... though the fact that i'd make a list about it seems to indicate that i'm not the kind of person these people would want to be with... a hahaha.

WARNING!!! the following is essentially six months of journaling. i'm not consistently nutzoid. only moderately.

an open letter to my past.

i've recently been thinking (and overthinking, what's new) about the reasons why i can't seem to move past the things that make my heart ache. namely, why do i still cling the the memories of people i've known and loved, as though those memories were something i could recapture and hold? and the more i thought about it, the more i realized that i was clinging to these things because it's easier for me to look back on people that want nothing to do with me than it is to go out and make new memories. and i've also come to the conclusion that the past is a collection of pretty lies i told myself over the years (it works, nick, it really does, but only for so long). so here i'm going to let it go, maybe, for a while, just to see if it helps me move forward. because i really need to move forward.

and i don't care if you don't love me, and i don't care if you don't change, and i could live inside the shadow that i cast for you, if it meant that you would stay.

so let's collect up all the good moments, all the things i loved about you (mm.mp.dy.cc.jo.bb.rp.jf, sp). let's see my love faces.

i loved the way you were the only one i could call (the ONLY one) when i was crying so hard i couldn't breathe, and you would listen and just KNOW everything, like i was a part of your bones or your heart. you'd let me get it all out and not say anything and then somehow when we were finished i'd be laughing. and i loved the way that it was always you and me, inside jokes, united against whoever else came along, because i trusted you more than i probably should have. and i loved that you knew me, had known me (well enough to know that i like diet dr. pepper when i'm sad or sick), and weren't afraid of my girl-rages.

now i'm standing alone in a crowded room and we're not speaking,
and i'm dying to know if it's killing you like it's killing me

i loved the way you showed up out of nowhere, in a blaze of tripping, trash bagging, rubber band snapping glory. i loved the way you never pushed me (19 and oh-so-innocent, a miracle of science, or maybe a national disaster), but still showed up drunk at my window to walk and talk. i loved the way you wore my pink glow in the dark bracelet for weeks, even when i said i only gave it to you so they could identify your body. and i loved that i sometimes convinced myself that you let me see some other side of you, something besides what everyone else got, a secret little sweetness you kept locked away. that was why when people would cluck their tongues and tell me about how you broke this/punched that i would just smile and think how much more clever i was than they were. how could they be so blind as not to see it?

where is your boy tonight?
i hope he is a gentleman,
maybe he won't find out what i know,
you were the last good thing about this part of town

i loved knowing you and still meeting you for the first time, homeless but still sweet. i loved the way we'd whisper, fingers secretly locked together in the dark, while the bonfire cage matches raged on the lawn. i loved sitting with you in that field, with the bugs buzzing so damn loud in the middle of the night, and knowing that you were looking at me in the dark. always darkness, sweatpants, no pants, almost-skinny dipping and then pingpong champion match that always dissolved into wrestling. i loved running from room to room with you, finding a person in every bed, before escaping into the woods. i loved you perched on that edge, right between too far and just far enough.

wait, they don't love you like i love you

i loved that you were my first love, back when i was a freshman and terrified of boys. you gave me your fleece that summer (even though i was bigger than you), and i always said i forgot to give it back, but really i would practically sleep in that thing. i held it till it didn't smell of you anymore, and then i gave it back. i loved that after so many years of thinking about you and wanting you, of thinking i was never good enough for you, you were mine, all mine, even if it was only for a little while. i even loved that you were crazy... like, probably certifiable, but you were the first boy i ever wanted to kiss, and your love confession was just a few years too late.

i said c'mon all you cowboys, all you blue-eyed baby boys,
oh c'mon all you dashing gentlemen of summer,
i wait for you where saturday's a memory and sunday comes to gather me,
into the arms of god who'll welcome me, because i believe oh i believe

i loved that you looked at me that night and said "i can't believe i never knew you till now." and you said "if i'd met you when i was younger, we would definitely have been friends." followed closely by "i just don't want to look away, because i'm afraid you might disappear." then you told me i could always touch you if i wanted to. i loved the way you made me feel like i was special because you didn't ignore me like you did to so many others (we see how well that worked out, don't we!). i loved that lazy way you talk and the things youd say, about how everyone was shit, and i believed everything that came out of your mouth. i thought i loved the fact that you cared enough to save me (how did that go again? i can't see him or you won't be my friend? well now he's married to someone else and you still hate me... i guess that was a hollow threat). despite everything i loved the fact that you were an asshole, complete and total, because at least you were honest about it (though no, admitting it doesn't make it fucking okay).

is this the end of the moment
or just a beautiful unfolding
of a love that will never be
or maybe be

i loved the fact that you were shorter than me (FACT), and built all solid like a fucking hobbit or something. i loved the games we'd play, and the fact that we could make out for HOURS and i'd never get bored. i loved that i wanted to love you, even if i was afraid because i never thought you'd love me. i loved that we could drink and play and dance but at the end of the night it was my bed you came home to (even if i did kick you out, twins beds are the devil's cinnamon buns). i love that you broke my heart, an actual pain in my chest, because it meant that i could care about someone. and i love that every time i hear my chemical romance there's a drunken jamboree in my heart, in the basement of some undisclosed building, a spent bottle of vodka in one hand and your hand in the other.

You don't know me, and you don't even care

i loved that i thought you could do no wrong. even on days when you would stand me up, i always knew you'd be back, thin crust dominos pizza and john stewart, baseball games and power outages, locked out of your room and scary movie friday, people watching in the pub and the emo music hour, dressup playtime and photoshoots, VERY sketchy thrift stores and epic voyages to the pnc. i honestly wanted nothing more than for you to love me back then, and now it's mostly too late because i don't know that you were ever really that person. we would fight and you wouldn't know why, but usually it was because you kissed a meredith.ashley.blondebluemonsterchild. i loved breathing your secondhand cloves and dreaming that someday you would see me as something more.

never thought I'd say "i'm sorry"
never thought i'd be the one to bring you down
now when i look out my window
but there doesn't seem to be anyone around

i loved that i never knew when you'd show up, wearing a costume or disguise (spandex, uniform, toga, birthday suit), and notice me. it was like a drive by flirting, stolen kisses never explained and parties that ended abruptly in a flurry of adorations in secret corners. i love that you have two names, and the first cannot be without the second, and i knew the whole time you were so near to me while being so far away. i loved the idea that i could help you, could be there for you, even if you never wanted me. you never really wanted me, unless you remembered.

so there you are, o loves of mine life. can you believe i ever cared about you that much? did you ever (ever ever, through the days i didn't eat and the days i said things i shouldn't and the ones where i'd cry and even on days when i was mean or ugly or rude, but especially on the days when i was mysterious, pretty, special, wild) care about me? or did i make it all up, a shared delusion of space and time that means that i've never been loved a day in my life? is it possible that my sixteen year old self was right? am i broken, irredeemable, hopeless, heartless?

some days i feel like i could crush people, like i'm so enormous and awful that just being in the same area as other people is a hazard. like maybe if i tripped and fell on someone i would snap their bones, crush vital organs like blueberries. maybe i am too big to love. maybe i am too big to live.

oops. melodrama. but wasn't that the name of the game? or is it only cute on 19 year olds in short skirts?

give me back my heart. give me my self-confidence and my friends and lovers and soul. give me crying jags and laughing fits and underpants dance parties and strawberry smoothies and midnight rendezvous and sleepless days and heavy summer heat and most of all the words. give me back my will to spin phrases around my brain like a halo, flowers growing sticky sweet through my hair and taking root in my mouth. leaves filling my nose and sucking me down into the dirt. perennial girl, does that mean you have to plant me every year, water me, watch me grow? or is that an annual? i can never remember.

hope you remember me, when you're homesick and need a change
i miss your purple hair, i miss the way you taste
i know you'll come back someday, on a bed of nails i wait
i'm praying that you don't burn out, or fade away

big hearts are for breakin'.

and the bars are finally closed
so i tried living in the moment
till the moment it just froze
and i felt sick and so alone

i don't understand this at all. it feels like a sickness, a morbid obsession. i don't know why i can remember all these parts of your lives, and i can't even remember my own. and i don't know how to deal with the past at all, because it feels like the people you will do anything to defend, the ones that you give everything you have, are always the ones that aren't worth it. why do i drive past ghosts, why do i spend my hours thinking and bringing myself down to nothing? here are some things i can't get out of my head. tell me if you see yourself:

1. i realize that i wasn't special. it took me soooo many years, and so much contemplation to realize this, but i do understand now. in the set list of things that i remember, people and moments i use for creative inspiration, i always came back to the idea that you once cared about me. but i get it now, i really do. it's a convenience thing, the closest stupid girl to your current situation. and let me tell you, i was a very stupid, love starved little thing back in those days.

2. i'm sorry that you only care to talk to me when you're feeling nostalgic and have been drinking. i'm sorry i'm not interesting anymore, it's a symptom of something bigger than all of us, and while i wouldn't want to talk to me either it would be nice if you weren't quite so obvious about it.

3. i don't entertain fantasies anymore that we will ever reconcile our friendship. won't happen. obviously. i'm honestly not that deluded, although the fact that i still think about you doesn't bode well for my mental capacity. but still there are times, little moments that i can't seem to get out of my mind. when amanda came, and you were so nice to her... i couldn't believe it, and i asked you why, and you told me that you knew how important she was to me, and that made her important to you. helps me to forget about the time you said the people i hung out with only proved i wasn't capable of having friends. which you know, i could probably have done without, even if i did nod and smile like a fucking trained monkey.

4. i think i might be a shit writer.

5. that was kind of a fucked up thing you did to me. i mean, i did a pretty fucked up thing too, it was kind of a mutual clusterfuck, but there was no need for what came after. considering i never actually DID anything to you, the awkward punkass bullshit attitude is pretty much uncalled for. i'm sorry to be the obvious mistake slapping you in the face, but i don't think i should have to pay for what some drunkass idiot did.

6. y'all ruined christmas for me. just sayin.

7. my mother thought she saw you when we were in the store together. she asked what i would do if it really were you. i said i'd puke down my front and run. i don't know what's sadder, that you have that effect on me or that i'm not actually kidding.

8. there aren't any pictures of you on my wall. this is mainly due to the fact that every single day you break my heart for no reason. not that i think about it. at all. ever.

9. i think i might be fucking crazy. maybe even certifiable.

10. the next time napoleon or alexander declare war on me for no reason, i am going to find a way to go inside my computer and choke a bitch.

bat your eyes girl, be otherworldly, count your blessings, seduce a stranger

i feel like my body is a condemned house. every step is a danger, a potential disaster. every moment is another second toward the roof collapsing on my head.

lately i've been dreaming in comics. and here are some facts:

you're not supposed to be able to read in your dreams.
i always thought it was illegal to ride a bicycle without a helmet and you'd get stopped by the cops.
marisol saved my life.
andy mcmahon saved my life too, several times:

you gotta swim
swim when it hurts
the whole world is watching
you haven't come this far
to fall of the earth

i do not believe in love. it is a biological lie.
pepcid AC taken before drinking prevents the "asian flush"
i am starting to understand why people stopped talking to me.
time magazine did a four page article on fan-fiction. fact.
facebook and credit cards have forever ruined the world (markzuckerburg is the antichrist)

i feel so very helpless. everything is fine, or some derivative or simulation of fine anyway, and then i get an unexpected jolt. it's a picture of you pressed between the pages of some oversized album, your voice on videotape (you love me, you say, then bust a move), a song in my car when i'm feeling low. and i have no recourse. i've acted insanely, sent you messages, left emails voicemails textmessages smoke signals, and yet there's absolutely nothing more i can do. there's no way for me to discover what it was exactly that made you hate me so (or rather, care nothing for me, which is almost worse), no way to ever feel close to you again. and that breaks my heart in a kind of indescribable, irreparable way.

they tell me i'm addicted to the damage, tethered to the ones that hurt me most because i don't like to feel happy. i'd rather torment myself with memories of the people that i used to hold closest in my heart (cr-pi.ra-pe.se-pr.ch-po.ev-ri.jo-de.ma-me.mi-pe.ju-ol.co-co.am-ca.je-bu.je-mi.be-bo.as-le.jo-wa.ji-fa.ol-cu.ha-he.ry-pr.ja-co.and on and on and on), delight in the fact that they faded out of my life, or i pushed them away, or they hate me loathe me miss me without letting me know. but really, what's to miss? what part of me was ever worth the effort, worth putting up with the drama and the bullshit and the constant mememe (and how is this any different, pages of drama and self-centeredness?)

it's ten-thirty five, drink a coke, plot my escape slash plan my funeral, because i'm sure if we've ever really talked i would have told you that i never expected to live past 27, and here i am at all of 26 with crippling depression and a very strange freckle on my leg and all i can think of is that my time-bomb of a heart might be running out of ticks. and since i don't know what i want anyway, and will probably never get it once i do decide, is that really such a horrible prospect?

my next projects involve a red-riding hood and a white snowy day, a games games games tee shirt and the county fair, full seventies regalia and a dark wood, audrey sunglasses for breakfast at tiffany's, a bout de souffle (breathless, my french is for shit), a merlottes uniform and some fake blood, and alexander skarsgard. is it so wrong to dream?

and what, really, is the point after all? do i just live week to week, counting the hours between episodes of shows until i die? i don't believe in an afterlife, but parts of me want to feel supernatural, to see something out of this world that makes me question everything. i want to research celtic legends and then write fantasy books about them, i want to learn to give tarot readings, i want to visit roswell and see the ruins in the middle east and ponder the mysteries of the world (like ancient sumerian texts and the amazing improbability of building structures like the pyramids without tools). i don't care about politics one little bit, because i'm pretty sure we're all royally fucked anyway. consider how fast our technology has progressed. in a hundred years we went from horse and buggies to the moon (yes, i've been watching the history channel, big fucking deal), so how long before life as we know it is completely unrelatable? as much as i love the internet, and am addicted to it's siren call, i think it's the downfall of society. why should kids bother to learn to interact? they can just do it online. and how am i any better? couldn't i just drive to your house (i don't know where you live anymore, silly, and we both know i'd never just SHOW UP, because that would take balls i don't have, although i'm sure if you didn't hate me you'd be glad to hear that i've overcome my fear of eating in front of people!)... but no, i just spew all my thoughts into pixalated nothingness, like screaming into a great black void and waiting to hear the echo of your own voice.

good luck exploring the infinite abyss.

and if you read all that, pat yourself on the back. it's been while since i had the internet, and NOOOO i didn't feel all those things at once, but damn if it doesn't feel good to get them out.

perhaps it's the multiple wild tea absolut and liptons, but i'm feeling quite strange.  mildly poetic, if you will, and here is a complete/definitive list of the things i miss about my life:

1. ginger hobbits
2. the 80's
3. closet monster dreams
4. hipbones
5. adult swim with pink lemonade lips
6. buggy fields and extreme bonfire wrestling
7. knowing my mysterious benefactor gave a shit
8. freedom
9. effy stonem

10. photoshoots
11. andy i love you

in short, i am sunburned, sleepy, with a headache, and just want to take the next week and sleep my life away.  any chance of that happening?  yeah, i'm holding a grudge, it's true... but honestly, when someone kills your favorite thing and isn't sorry, what else can you really do?  and besides, whatever it is that you think that i did, i didn't.  believe that, would you?

it's about time to dial back the crazy, who'd have thought?  ugh, let's all just go to sleep.  fuck it.  as cookie would say, fuck it.

and, in case you didn't get it the first time:

i've given up the internet.

i wish i could say it's meant wonderful things for me, but wonderful things don't seem to come around much anymore, so mostly it's just plugging along, existing, struggling, overthinking, and the usual redhead shenanigans.

so rather than bore you all with what's been happening (i'll give you a hint, it's nothing, unless you count wondering whether or not i actually have a heart, ridiculously epic dreams involving pennies and brad pitt as a vampire, confessions brought about by too much booze and then clearly regretted (otherwise i would not be universally ignored, cough cough), discovering the tightening jawline, and copious amounts of spicy black bean burgers) let's talk about the future.  summer is coming and here's a short list of things i want:

here's what i'll probably get:

can you find yourself in the files i found on my computer?

lucyfilmmaker: fancy meeting you here
ceebee: Im here all the time
lucyfilmmaker: really?
ceebee: trolling forunsuspecting minors
lucyfilmmaker: ahhh
lucyfilmmaker: yummy
ceebee: to lure back to my basement
lucyfilmmaker: and eat or molest
lucyfilmmaker: ?

lucyfilmmaker: you can come back to the dorm with me . . . we'll share a meal plan and a bed and you can sneak into film class
ceepee:  really?
lucyfilmmaker: how do you feel about chef boyardee
ceepee:  yeah and we can just pretend to be one person.... or else you could tell them that i am your imaginary friend come to life
lucyfilmmaker: yes!
ceepee:  and i could be like a pet prodigy and inspire four year olds across the country with hope for their imaginary friends too!!!!!
ceepee:  like my life size barbie or something!!!!
ceepee:  and then we can snuggle snuggle snuggle

ceepee:  i told her i was like you stupid ignorant little troll i've had a bad fucking week pardon me if i don't want to hear about how you had to go to school today with mismatched socks and purse

lucyfilmmaker: i'm going to come to school in 4 days
lucyfilmmaker: and saying HEY
lucyfilmmaker: REMEMBER WHEN WE HAD CYBER SEX
lucyfilmmaker: WELL . . .
enell: you're cyber-knocked-the-fuck-up?

jaydee: i like your mind and the way you think of things, although you can draw a really messed up picture when you want to

so... bertolli and pina coladas and lifetime movies.  whee!