|
| The Hard GoodbyeMy best friend was first. We stood outside my house and she reminded me to call and to give her my new address. And then she hugged me, which was weird because there's always been an odd barrier between us that prevented any sort of physical contact except at extraordinary moments like this. And she cried and nothing could have been worse than standing there watching my best friend cry and being so shocked with everything that i couldn't do the same. Things didn't go as planned, but they never do.
After karaoke more of my friends left, and it felt so normal. They waved and slipped out of the room and it felt just like usual, like I'd run into them later that week. I paid the bill and we stood outside the karaoke place saying even more goodbyes as people finished writing in my notebook. And then they too got into their cars and left and nothing felt special or weird.
I left the Inwood Theater after the midnight movie and drove home alone tonight as usual and nothing was different about the road or the night or the other night drivers. And now I sit in my bedroom in the dark, and even though a couple posters are missing from the walls and an item or two has been packed away, it doesn't feel like the last evening I will spend here.
Everything just seems too surreal.
It will never be the same as it is now. In three months we'll be back together again but it won't be the same, we will only be half here, with half of each of us looking back over our shoulders at our new lives. And I didn't fully appreciate it, the time I had left. It only begins to set in when I realize that my friends will continue to live their lives here, without me. Their lives will go on as usual whilst I face the most utterly terrifying change of my life: I have to leave, and I have to go it alone.
And that brings me to the end, the end of life as I know it. And at all ends, a word of wisdom must be imparted: try to appreciate them as much as you can while you can, those last moments with your friends and with your normal life, because it's horrible to look back on those lasts and feel like you didn't appreciate what was ending.
Goodbye, everyone.
At the final moment, I cried,
I always cry at endings | | |
| 5 daysHoly crap, i definitely have not packed.
I bought everything - nothing was stopping me being a consumer whore - but the putting the things in your room that you use every day into stacks and piles and boxes and getting ready to go is the really hard part.
Well, no, actually creating the time to even consider doing that is the hard part.
Every morning for about a week now when i wake up my body has resented its existence. I can't even convince myself to get out of bed before 12, or eat anything of real substance until maybe two, otherwise my incredibly tense stomach really does not like it, lets put it that way. My mind isn't all that worried, because i have a game plan and a roommate who i know will be a great friend, or at least foothold (we've already made plans to go see Wolf Parade when they come to lawrence at the end of august), but i know i must be in some serious denial if my body is killing itself over this.
There's a lot more to packing than i thought about. Like the fact that i have no warm clothes. Or tennis shoes. Or that i have to print out photos of my friends if i want to take picture frames. Or load my camera stuff onto my mac, and take all the warrent information and such in case i have to have it worked on. Or that i don't know how to fix anything on my car if it breaks down when i'm driving home by myself. Or what to do when i'm sick or going clothes shopping on my own - i've never bought clothes entirely by myself, just a couple things here and there and that's always been with friends at least. I've always considered myself to be well grounded and pretty self sufficient, i can do all the stereotypical stuff that collegebound teenagers supposedly don't know how to do (laundry, feed themself, clean, etc.), but i still feel like i'm totally lost on a lot of things, like i really haven't stood completely on my own, probably because i haven't been allowed to.
And i dunno, i'm worried about the friend scene a lot because i've done a fair amount of research on facebook into the general KU populous and the general KU populous is not quite what i want it to be. It scares me that there are very few people interested in the same things i am (at least music, movie, and book-wise). I've got myself fairly convinced that there will be people there for me to hang out with, at the very least my awesome roommate, but it still scares me to be faced with what looks like high school all over again.
In other news, the days leading up to me leaving have been absolutely beautiful. It's raining right now and my rooms all dark and messy and the light in my closet flickers and the music is right and the incense is right and the curtains are right and the week dead flowers and it's cool and perfect and beautiful, and now i know why my subconcious is waging a war against lawrence. | | |
| Red Balloons
I may have always considered myself a very sub-par girlfriend, but i am fantastic at one thing: handling bad news.
And thus, my summer fling ended. | | |
| THE EPIC BATTLE - PART (MOTHERFUCKING) THREEEDIT: Picture of his roachiness (and me looking like a really rag-tag ninja) ahead. You have been warned.
So, umm, the roach thing happened again.
This time i had my wits about me. And i was wearing pajama bottoms, which means i was half ready for battle.
I spotted the twin brother of the cockroach from the first epic battle on the doorframe of bedroom as i came back from my midnight snack attack. After watching it not move for five minutes, i decided that there was little chance it was going to fuck with me, and proceed to get in bed, wrap my mosquito net around my bed, and go on with my evening.
Five minutes later, i heard a small thud. I looked around, and on the wall behind me (completely across the room from my door) was the cockroach. Clearly, it had flown, and clearly it was just as crappy at landing as the other one. It moved in the same skittery drunk fashion as Epic Battle Roach I, crawling up to the ceiling and then falling backwards. I continued to sit in my fortress and hope for the best. But then i made the connection between the two roaches behavior, and quickly went into battle mode.
First, i put House of Pain's "Jump Around" on repeat.
I slowly exited my fortress and moved around the perimeter of the room towards my closet, where i jumped inside, grabbed the first hoodie i could find, and zipped it up over my tank-top clad torso (not idea for roach battle - leaves too much skin exposed and SKIN is the last thing you want a roach landing on). I grabbed a bandanna and tied it over my nose and mouth, remember the awful stat i had once heard about during his or her lifetime everyone will have at least four bugs crawl into their mouth while they're asleep. Finally, i grabbed a pair of closed toed shoes and slipped them on, in case of a ground assault.
Then i got the vacuum.
Epic Battle Roach II had taken the same strategy as his predecessor, landing first on my mosquito net, and then sticking to other surfaces that i couldn't suck him up on (a loose poster, crawling along my christmas lights). I decided it was safe enough to force him to move, and started throwing small stuffed animals at him (i always knew leaving my beanie baby collection in my room would one day come in handy). However, every time i threw something at him he'd just move from un-suckable surface to un-suckable surface. Bad news.
He went back to the mosquito net while i thought about what to do. Figuring that there was nothing at all i could do with him on the net, i threw an animal at him. Mistake.
The animal missed, and instead pulled the mosquito net open enough for him to slip inside - and penetrate the sanctity of my bed-fortress. I panicked. I pulled the curtains open as far as i could. I continued to bombard him with animal aerial attacks. But to no avail. Somehow that fucker stayed in there.
And then it fell of the curtain. And onto my pillows. Since i don't have a headboard and the head of my bed is in one of the corners of my room, i've had to build up a backboard using pillows - a great place for a roach to hide.
I stared at my bed in complete terror. Never had a roach delt such a below the belt blow. The bed is sacred territory. No bug ever gets on the bed. Except this motherfucker. This demon roach.
I crept towards the head of the bed, vacuum in one hand, the other slowly reaching toward the outer throw pillow. I quickly threw it off the bed. Nothing.
The next was one of those chair pillow things. Harder to quickly throw. I hooked it's loop with the end of the vacuum cleaner nossle and swung it off the bed. Nothing as well.
At this point i began to consider that the roach might have gone under my bed, where i would never be able to find it and consequently would have to find other sleeping arrangements for the night. I did not like this prospect. I grabbed the next pillow.
And there it was.
"Luckily" it ran towards the opposite end of the bed. I flipped the vacuum cleaner on. This madness ended now.
It flew from the bed back to the christmas lights around my window. I decided to take my chances. I swung the nossle up behind it and chased it down until it too met the fate of its twin brother, thus ending the second Epic Battle of the summer.
While it was flying around like a drunkard i managed to snap it's picture. Sorry i didn't take the time to turn off the flash so that it would have more ambiance and style:
Afterwards, i took a picture of the roach-fighting outfit, sans my weapon of choice because the moment i suck one up i immediately put the end back on the nossle and get the vacuum quite far a way from my room, just to be safe. Also you can get a better idea of the mosquito curtain situation.
In the two and a half weeks i have left, i better not have to don that gear again.
Damn fucking roaches. | | |
| Writers...or maybe Life BlockI wrote a post about the absolute madness that was The Container Store college night (20% off all items in the store, hoards of frantic shoppers, a really well-timed mom impasse) but my concentration was broken by my mom (surprise surprise) in the middle of writing it and when I picked it up again the humor sort of went completely downhill. It irritates me just because a. I feel like I have some sort of obligation to post on here again – and make it good - and b. I’m beginning to wonder whether or not I’m still a decent writer. Granted, it could just be stagnation due to my circumstances – my life has gotten relatively repetitive, dull, and uninteresting, and if I find it uninteresting, it’s definitely not worth writing about. And I hate to rehash the topic of leaving for college and cutting ties and all that angsty crap, especially when I leave in two and a half weeks and I know I’ll mega-post about that.
So, with that, I leave you until I find something else post-worthy – and am able to actually effectively write about it.
Wait, okay, something for you to contemplate (and comment on, preferably): is it better to keep your secrets or to be completely open and honest?
P.S. I highly recommend the book below - short (100 pages), well organized, logical essay (yet very smoothly and beautifully written like a novel) about the conditions of women writers and their development. One of the best books i've read recently, definitely the best scholarly work i've read. | | |
|
