houston.

I was driving up to downtown last night, just soaking in the view and it occured to me...

Is this really my life? How proud am I of myself for making it to the big city and making it here on my own.  It's always what I wanted!! And there is nothing that I adore more than the skyline at night... and it's the view from my 25 foot window at my apartment! ~sigh~

I guess on some level I am living the dream! woo hoo!

what i realize.

So today, after spending the evening in my fancy apartment all alone I realized that something about me has changed.  I don't even know what it is that spurred this realization, but it became very obvious to me almost immediately.

I do not believe in love at first sight. Simple as that... I used to, and I remember that I used to because I secretly hoped that somewhere I would turn around and lock eyes with a man who I would instantly know was made for me.  

I am aware of how silly that sounds. But I swear I am not a dilusional nitwit. Unfortunately it dawned on me today that I no longer have even a glimmer of that hope left in me at all.  Maybe it's the fact that I have grown up, maybe it's just that I have finally become realistic about how silly the whole concept of love is.

I have been dating for almost a decade, I have had multiple failed relationships, hundreds of unreturned phone calls, and thousands of kisses. But for what? I am 23 years old, I am alone, and I don't even believe in love at first sight anymore.

post bar musings.

2am and I'm still awake writing a song,
If I get it all down on paper it's no longer
Inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to.

And i feel like i'm naked
in front of a crowd
cause these words are my diary
screaming out loud
and i know that you'll use them
however you want to.

lisa lampanelli.

OK I just have to say that I think I have met the coolest chick in the entire world this week.  Lisa Lampanelli... you have probably seen her on Comedy Central's Roast of Pam Anderson or in her Comedy Central Special.  Well, she is playing at the club this week and I think she is the coolest.

She hung out with Andrea and I last night after the show and I have to tell you, she has her shit together.  It's so awesome to talk to a woman who has totally made herself and is confident enough to admit that.  I always appreciate someone who can be real and tell you what you need to hear rather than what you want to hear. 

She may be the "Queen of Mean" onstage, but she is really a great person to talk with and could probably teach me many things! All I'm saying is I won't complain when she calls me a cunt or a twat because I know she means it with love. haha

love of your life.

As you may remember I decided this weekend to fight my innate urges to drunk dial in the evenings, and as I can honestly say that I am not drunk, I have indeed been drinking, so bear with me... this is my new alternative.

So I always hear that everyone has that "one" person in their life.   A person who you would give up everything and run to the ends of the earth for.  Someone with whom, no matter the time or distance between you, you will always be able to pick up right where you left off.  The one that is and will always be "the love of your life."  Well, what does that mean, exactly? Does that mean that no matter how hard you try to love someone else just as much, that you will never be sucessful? Or does it mean that this one person is truly "the one" you are supposed to be with for the rest of your life and if you missed the boat that you are just S.O.L.?

I am not entirely sure that I have a clear cut view on this issue, but it's hard not to at least consider it given the recent happenings in my life.  A few months ago I had the man who I consider to be that "one" for me right within my reach... so close that I could taste the kiss that will defne all others who come after him.  But I foolishly passed on my chance so that I could spend even more uneccessary time realizing what I had already known for quite some time about my present relationship.  I am now finding myself in a position of choice: I no longer have the obligations that initially held me back, but I am afraid that I have indeed missed the boat, and it is not willing to come back to get me.

I do not know that I can live with this quandry. Fate has somehow crossed our seemingly unlikely paths once again (how many chances can one girl get?!?) and I feel that I must do whatever it takes to follow through this time.  I do not know if I should make every effort possible to help him understand that I always have and always will feel that he is "the one" or if I should just chalk it up to bad decision making and give up on this chance forever?

drunk dialing.

Ok, so I have officially decided that I must CEASE with the drunk dialing.  It almost always involves calling the ex and making a complete fool of myself.  Why I feel the need to do this, I do not know, but it never fails... every weekend I go through the same motions. 

So last night I come home nice and sauced up ready for a real heart-to-heart with the man and lo and behold, he is not answering his phone! In my drunken mind this can only mean one thing... he's obviously screwing some other girl already. So after numerous calls gone unanswered, I decide to leave a message speaking my mind on this subject.  I think it pretty much went along the lines of slurring many words and making the accusation that I believed he was at the present moment occupied in bed with one of the hoochies that has been chasing him around since the day I met him. 

What's funny though, is after this lovely, several minute long message, I decide I feel guilty about this little maneuver and want to call back and apologize for my retardedness.  Well, this was a problem seeing as my mutiple long-winded messages have at this point somehow completely filled up his voicemailbox and I can no longer fix my little slip-up.  

So great, now I just look like a complete idiot and have to sit back and wait for him to call me and tell me so.  Lovely! I think I need an intervention..

sick.

Somehow I have managed to pick up a pesky stomach virus... not fun to say the least.  Unfortunately this just reaffirms how much is sucks to live alone.  No matter how shitty I feel I still have to get up to feed the cats, or go to the store when I run out of Gatorade and medicine.  I don't have anyone to intercept my phone calls or make sure I have enough blankets and plenty of movies to watch.  The list just keeps on multiplying... it sucks to grow up.  It's even worse to have to do it by yourself.

wednesday.

The precipice of a dream,
Realization of desires.

A frightful lingering of emotions
from my perch at the cusp of the future...

love smart.

One of the major dissapointments of my adult life has been finding out just how little being smart has to do with love. I've always relied on my brains to get me through, I've always secretly believed that I had a leg up in life because I was, if not the smartest person in the room, at least the one that the smartest person in the room would pick to talk to, and I figured that would make me good at love.

--Sarah Dunn, The Big Love

big love.

Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe it started out at love, but somewhere, somehow, something happened to it, and it became something else.

I want the BIG love.

thought.

Sometimes I wish I could be one of those people I see walking down the street who appear to have no inner world whatsoever-

People who manage to go through life without thinking about everything all the time...

dog tired.

So I am absolutely exhausted today. I don't even know how that's possible. I woke up on the couch at like 10:30 or something then went upstairs and lay awake until midnight. I can't seem to shake this weird feeling in my stomach. It's almost like I have this premonition that something bad is happening on the horizon. I'm sure it has to do with the uncertainty in so many levels of my life right now, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier to sleep.

I wish that making decisions and following through with them was not such a taxing effort. I thought that maybe I would be able to relax a little bit once I got my life in order, but unfortunately "getting my life in order" has turned it upside down.

I guess only time will tell...

laundry.

So I did your laundry this morning... it was weird putting what little there was into empty drawers. I wear your t-shirts because they still smell like you and it helps me sleep. How pathetic do I sound? As if this wasn't my own fault... as if I didn't do this to myself?

late at night.

It seems so strange to me to be alone.
Maybe it's not so much the aloneness that its strange, but the
absence I feel.
I find myself running in circles to keep up with myself,
But at the end of each day, when I crawl into bed, it is too quiet.
Though I try so hard not to... I miss you.

realize.

what an overwhelming feeling to realize your whole life has become merely a shadow of what it could be...

back of the bottom drawer.

Back of the Bottom Drawer

In the back of the bottom drawer
Of the dresser by our bed
Is a box of odds and ends that I have always kept.
But the man who sleeps beside me
Doesn't know it's even there,
Little pieces of my past that I shouldn't have to share.

A napkin that is stained with time
Has a poem on it that didn't quite rhyme, but it made me cry.
In a "Dear Jane" letter from a different guy
He broke up with me and he told me I'm not always right.
And a stolen key from an old hotel door
In the back of the bottom drawer.

I don't keep these things 'cause I'm longing to go back,
I keep them because I want to stay right where I'm at.
I'm reminded of my rights and wrongs
I don't want to mess this up,
But I woulnd't know where I belong
Without this box of stuff.

A birthday card from my first boyfriend
He signed it, "I love you" so I gave in.
Yeah we went too far in his daddy's car.
And those Mardi Gras beads from '98
We danced all night, stayed out so late...
We thought we were stars, closing down the bars.
That champagne was cheap but still I've got that cork,
In the back of the bottom drawer.

I'm not trying to hide these things from the man I love today
But I'm a better woman for him, thanks to yesterdays.

So now I try to give him more than I take
And bite my tongue, fight the urge to say it's my way
Or no way at all.
And now I cherish love a whole lot more
'Cause of what's
In the back of the bottom drawer.

--Chely Wright

enough.

How foolish can a person be to believe that they posess enough love to make up for the both of them?

faves.

I am youth's soldier chasing down an endless dawn.

"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body
I would break
into blossom."
-James Wright

"I love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need."
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Don't ask questions about longing, look into my face."
-Rumi

pieces of you.

"She's a pretty girl, does she make you think nasty thoughts?
She's a pretty girl, do you want to tie her down?
She's a pretty girl, do you call her a bitch?
She's a pretty girl, did she sleep with your whole town?
Pretty girl, pretty girl...
Do you hate her 'cause she's pieces of you?"

civil wars.

What is my civil war about? Is it the fear of being held in the warmth of familiar love versus the fear of running through the fog searching for love? Each holds its own terrors, extracts its own pound of flesh.

Flesh. Now we draw closer. Can I soften to love, with the full knowledge of the suffering I welcome in? Thomas Merton said the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones.

But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct the scenes.