urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence andrew brisch08@newpaltz.edu andrew 2009-01-06T03:46:22Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:86933 2009-01-06T03:46:22Z 2009-01-06T03:46:22Z a list of things, 5 days into 2009.<br /><br />-i got my septum pierced on friday. it felt real and good. the pain was like nothing i had ever felt before, and i think that that was a lot of the reason that I wanted to do it. i wanted to not feel like myself, i wanted to feel new, and i was so prepared for it to hurt. i was not, however, prepared for it to hurt that much. OUCH. crossing my eyes and seeing a blurry bloody spike in my face was... new.<br /><br />-tonight is my first night alone in new paltz during break. im trying to be aware of what i'm feeling, the difference between me feeling alone and me feeling lonely. the house feels bigger, less bright, the sounds are louder, and my nap on the couch was full of bad dreams.<br /><br />-i just wrote a text to michael and saved it in my drafts on my phone. it was the second time i've done that, the first time being on new years eve. seeing jason and kiley as soon as i walked into nicole's party on new years eve was a giant blow to the stomach. where is he, is he here, am i really dealing with michael and all the feelings associated with him as soon as i start my night? i didn't, in fact, end up having to see him--jenny didn't feel well so michael was staying in with her. or so kiley had told me. <br /><br />-i go through so many emotions involving him every day, every hour, every 10 minutes. there are times that i believe he misses me just as much as i miss him. i believe that i'm better off without him. i believe that i'll never see him again. i believe that every time i leave my house here in new paltz i need to look impeccable, that every car that passes me on the street could be him, that if i look good he'll miss me more, that he'll call me and everything will be better. i believe that when i do see him, at oasis or on the street, that i'll fall apart, have a panic attack, vomit in the bathroom, and do drugs to not feel anything. i believe that he is dating john again, that he is so relieved to be rid of me, my neurosis, and all my hangups with sex. i believe that im worth it and he'll realize that one day and it'll be too late, i'll have moved on again, and that we'll never really be on the same page ever in this lifetime. i believe that this semester will bring us back together, that i'll be able to be his friend more than i was this semester, and that this will be just a blip in the larger context of our relationship. i believe he wasn't right for me. i believe he was still too simple. i believe that he couldn't fulfill me, and didn't understand how complex i was. i believe we will still have that night that we talked about after true blood, laying in bed, discovering each other.<br /><br />-i believe that none of those things matter, that, as tom told me in therapy the other week, all i need to be concerned with is what the universe is trying to teach me in all of this. and that, i think, is what i really need help with.<br /><br />-kt moved into her new paltz with thea and i visited last night. it's amazing. im jealous. and i plan to visit a whole lot.<br /><br />-i am going to work on my art all day tomorrow unless i go home to celebrate my mother's birthday. i miss her and i miss my sister. oh, right. my sister got engaged.<br /><br />-i just realized that i have never spent a night alone in this house and that i'm scared! haha. 21 years old and scared to sleep alone. michael could really come in handy right now. hmmph!<br /><br />goodnight. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:86695 2008-12-27T06:46:04Z 2008-12-27T06:49:39Z fuck this, fuck this, fuck this. how do things just disappear, why do things never line up, how do you not call someone after feeling so much and learning so much and believing in it so much, and how on earth did i do this to him twice before.<br /><br />i hate this i hate this i hate this. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:86376 2008-12-22T08:37:56Z 2008-12-22T08:37:56Z i cant sleep.<br />so many dreams last night and the night before and the night before that.<br />im listening to come in from the cold by joni mitchell.<br />i don't want to go home tomorrow.<br />i don't want to drive past michael's house on the way out of new paltz and negotiate with myself whether or not i should look to see if his car is in the driveway (what would that do?).<br />i wish could be as receptive to sara as i know she wants me to be.<br />i want to be able to look into the future and see exactly what will happen. how long it will take before he'll call, if he'll ever call, if i'll stop caring long before i think that i will.<br />i just read journal entries from 2005. thinking how i was so different and that in some ways i'm still the same.<br />sometimes i want to be able to talk and talk and talk because i think that if i talk enough, everything possible to be said about someone will eventually be said. and when there's nothing left, it'll be gone and dead. two weeks later, i just want it to be dead.<br />he said to me recently that when he breaks up with someone, he processes it like they're dead. not the relationship, but the actual person.<br />i'm not dead, michael.<br />i hate andrew trying to get over someone. he is so hard to be with.<br />i wish i could fall asleep. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:86208 2008-12-21T06:55:15Z 2008-12-21T06:58:18Z what else am i supposed to do when tealights are lit, the wine is gone, and im listening to sarah mclachlan's version of I'll Be Home for Christmas?<br /><br />i don't know what this semester was. i don't know where it went, how it felt so fleeting but was also filled with so much emotion, and it's ending with me going home only for 10 days out of break but coming back up here, to my room on the top floor, filled with tealights and big windows and not enough heat.<br /><br />i found art this semester. i think before this semester, i was doing what i thought would get me praise. i did big portraits, splashes of bright color, so much texture. it was so loud. i was being so loud but i dont think i was really saying anything. so now it's different. there is no figure, there's no person for me to cling on to. it was a crutch. or as kathy said, I was "carrying around a dead dog." it just feels good right now. and right. and i feel like im saying something. that no one else is saying at my school. and it feels amazing.<br /><br />i found love. yea. i know. love. it was something that i didnt want, wasnt expecting--especially from michael--but it happened and it was real. real for as long as it lasted. i haven't spoken to michael in a week and a half, save for the two times i contacted him this week--first with a text ("I miss you" -- GOD I hate being that person, HATE IT) and the second with a call on his voicemail today saying that I hoped he was doing well with how crazy work was going. i don't know what happened. the talk last wednesday was about him being scared, him needing to take a few steps back, him feeling pressured. and I've been there. i've been there for 3 and a half years ever since mark. i've been there with michael twice before, two years in a row. i've broken his heart twice before, made him feel like a fool, tried to make it up to him, and fallen for him in the process. I finally feel ready. i felt like it was real. those two months from late september to late november were perfect. or so i'd like to think now. i felt pressured too, pressured in ways that i had forgotten about unless i read them in my journal. but it was full of courting. nights of sleepovers and sweet gestures and texts right after hanging out with each other and real things. REAL. THINGS. me feeling like myself and feeling heard and understood and safe. it was so much.<br /><br />it was so much but sometimes all it boils down to is the fact that i miss him and i don't understand why that isn't enough. i miss him and i want him here and i know that a month ago he felt so much and now he feels so little. it was SO much.<br /><br />and now it's nothing and i don't know why and i dont know what to do. i am so prepared--especially after these past 10 days--to let it go. to start letting it dissolve and to start getting over him and what we had and to erase things but there is so much i want to fight for. yea! i'm ready to fight. isn't that what people want and what people see in the movies all the time? Things get hard and then someone fights for someone's love. they send them things and make big grand gestures and let the other person know that they are worth fighting for and worth love. why can't that be what the real world is like? i was ready for something to grow and bloom and become a part of me. and now it's nothing. i don't understand it sometimes. people are in love all the time, in long term relationships and have amazing times with amazing people--i had them with mark, michael had a 6 year relationship with carl, kt and alexis are in the middle of one right now--what is it about me that makes it so hard for it to happen?<br /><br />i know i did nothing wrong, but sometimes--like right now, late at night--i think to myself. well what the fuck happened then? If i did nothing wrong, then what is going on? i had to have done something wrong for him to stop feeling whatever it was that he was feeling. i am tired of this. i'm so tired.<br /><br />the last tealight just died and the sarah mclachlan album just ended.<br /><br />i guess i'm going to bed. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:85822 2008-12-13T18:44:51Z 2008-12-13T18:44:51Z a list, hungover, happy, and listening to bonnie raitt:<br />-michael and i talked. he's scared. we're taking steps back. we haven't talked in 3 days.<br />-the moment he told me that something was up, my whole body lifted. i knew i wasn't crazy, i found out what was going on, and i was finally able to breathe for the first time in 8 days.<br />-sara and i are back on track.<br />-i'm not going to be on long island for winter break. or the majority of it. i came to the conclusion with my mom that i can't be home for 4 weeks straight. i feel too young, too depressed, and too disconnected to deal with when i'm home. so it's 7 days and that's it. back to new paltz to work on my thesis.<br />-i successfully said no to drugs 6 times last night. look at me!<br />-being drunk with sara and angela last night in my room was the best time i've had with them in a long, long time, and i know im going to look back on last night a long time from now and miss it.<br />-kt, alexis and i are obsessed with each other right now.<br />-what should I read over winter break?<br />-sigh. all i've been feeling over the past 2 weeks is one great big sigh. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:85752 2008-12-09T06:49:19Z 2008-12-09T06:49:19Z i don't know what's going on anymore, and this feeling--of not being able to sleep, of wanting to crawl out of my skin, of wondering what's underneath all that's unsaid--is so familiar. and i hate it.<br /><br />i need a reprieve. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:85143 2008-12-06T04:24:40Z 2008-12-06T04:24:40Z im not crazy<br />im intense.<br /><br />as tom put it tuesday night in therapy.<br /><br />you need to stop saying you're crazy. you're you. and that's okay. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:84637 2008-11-24T08:02:56Z 2008-11-24T08:02:56Z things that are keeping me up right now:<br /><br />-listening to alison krauss in the most pleasantly hurtful way.<br />-im excited to go home on tuesday. i am, however, already anxious about the 5 days flying by and feeling like i barely saw anyone i actually wanted to.<br />-there are times that i have so many contradicting feelings about me and michael's relationship that i think, literally, that i may burst. with happiness. and with fear. and with confusion. and with so many things. too many things.<br />-im going back to therapy next tuesday. it can't come soon enough.<br />-i dont understand so many parts of myself right now. why don't i think im able to talk about it with michael.<br />-i'm tired of being vilified by my family. it's how it's always been and im afraid it's how it's always going to be.<br />-art. my art! oh my art, my art, my art. the magic is back. and it's given me wings.<br />-so many people--too many people--in my life that i love i haven't spoken to. ari. genna. ruth. cara. ilana. even eden and lindsay. i miss so much.<br />-why couldn't i let go at mr. black on friday? im ready to let go.<br />-i need toni morrison's new book!<br />-i need a dialogue in smithtown. stat.<br /><br />goodnight. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:84400 2008-10-30T07:05:28Z 2008-10-30T07:05:28Z a few things, 3 01 am, thursday morning before halloween.<br /><br />-listening to joni mitchell while driving through the woods never loses its luster.<br />-i'm losing steam with my art. keep going.<br />-i miss my mother. and my father. and watching life as a house did not help.<br />-stop pushing people away.<br />-michael. michael? michael! michael... michael;<br />-i have gone to sleep the last three nights not wanting to wake up in the morning.<br />-i can't stop thinking of everything, no matter what, coming to an end.<br />-all that you have is your soul. so says tracy chapman.<br />-what if you don't have that?<br />-being with michael has made me want to call everyone i've ever liked and figured out what went wrong.<br />-i am so beyond fucked up. fucked up doesn't even describe it. it's just annoying now.<br /><br />there. perfect. andrew brischler is hereby no longer fucked up, but just annoying.<br /><br />i have got to get out of this mess in my head. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:84077 2008-10-23T06:24:19Z 2008-10-23T06:24:19Z over the course of the past 2 1/2 months (or maybe, i think, over the past 4 weekends, ever since that Giant Talk on the floor of my room), michael and i have developed something that i didn't think was in the cards. i don't think he thought it was in the cards either. in fact, i'm sure he didn't. <br /><br />i need to remember that this is not what has come before it. it isnt mark, justin, peter, evan, or the few times michael have tried this before. it isn't bad memories, bad relationships, overanalysis from when i was 18. it isnt me being a victim. it isn't pre surgery. it isn't a race against time or long distance or me trying so hard to figure out who i am in the presence of a man.<br /><br />it is a real thing. so real that there are nights that i go to bed and imagine horrible, very bad scenarios because it's what i'm used to, but it's not what this is. it's not cheating or unanswered phone calls or sex with ex's or teasing or me feeling young, small, and unheard.<br /><br />i have lived my entire life waiting for the other shoe to drop and on many, many occasions it has. how do i change that mindset, live without constant (and i mean constant) panic that all of it will disappear, that he will lose interest, and that it will all be a giant mess of rejection, anxiety, awkwardness, and too many drunk nights trying to get over another thing that never fully materialized. is there a way to live without that sense of inevitable badness without getting hurt?<br /><br />i need to relax<br />i need to calm down<br />i need to be with michael more<br />i need to realize that i am not going anywhere, he is not going anywhere, and that this is growing, not going away, and that he has said amazing things. <br /><br />i need to remember that this is great, he is great, and that my life is still stable, real, happy, and full with him in it.<br /><br />i need to go to bed tonight without having bad dreams and without waking up afraid of something terrible happening.<br /><br />no matter what, it's going to be okay. better than okay. great even. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:83829 2008-08-28T05:38:17Z 2008-08-28T05:38:17Z why wasnt i good enough.<br /><br />i think everyone has thought that at least once in their lives. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:83550 2008-08-19T08:49:05Z 2008-08-19T08:49:05Z this summer is coming to an end. friday morning i'll be back in new paltz, by the next friday i'll already be accustomed to my schedule, and by the friday after that friday i'll already be knee deep in art, frustration, good thrills in the studio, and drinking heavily whenever possible.<br /><br />i always get nostalgic at the ends of things, even if i'm excited about leaving them behind. summers, certain semesters, even great weekends that are like capsules--weekends at penn state, in the city, or coming home for a weekend in the middle of october (those weekends, for some reason, just feel so right). this summer didnt feel like <b>summer</b>. it wasn't capitalized, like so many Summers are. it was two and a half months away from new paltz, two months at home, two months wrestling with things. obviously. wrestling is what i evidently do best. it was a break from so much--from making art, from people in new paltz, from living in a filthy house (that i love so much). but it wasn't a break from me. i have been with myself more in these past two and a half months than i care to remember. i was jobless (partly, secretly, by a matter of choice. i had, infact, given up on the idea of employment by early june), most of my friends weren't home and if they were, they were immersed in other things--eden in her amazing internship in the city, ilana in the same boat, lindsay working at camp, and ari where ari always is---somewhere so close but yet also so distant from where i am.<br /><br />there were days, particularly in that first week or so of july, when i felt like i was going to burst. like i would never know what having a happy moment would feel like again (i hyperbolize often, but i assure you, when you're laying in bed, unable to muster up enough courage to get out of it at 1pm on a sunny day midweek in july, you are pretty confident that happiness is not in your foreseeable future). there were also days that were special, time capsules that i may never have again.<br /><br />sundays at danea's house with ari and caitlin and michael, especially on my birthday, when i was allowed to lay shirtless without feeling every ounce of fat on my body. nights out in brooklyn at billy's or to celebrate jenna's birthday. seeing david for maybe the last time (half of me hopes so, the other half of me is terrified of that fact). gay pride, seeing kt again after so many months of not hearing her genuinely perfect laugh, and getting drunk enough to maybe do more damage to peter than i already had (i still haven't recovered my necklace, maybe because i don't want peter to have to see me again---he doesn't deserve to have to deal with me again.) every night i spend with eden, feeling right, like me, not like a mask. genna surprising me, like she always does, two times in one summer: "i'm home for the next few hours, what are you doing RIGHT NOW?" and falling into those conversations that are so us. nights with hope in new paltz and in the city. a day with cara lounging by her pool, playing scrabble with her sister that she rarely lets any of us see. and a week with ilana---a real week, a week that wasn't just comprised of laughter and tight hugs because we're both so nervous. a week of long, long early morning walks where all there was to do was to talk and sweat. that week with ilana is probably the thing that i'll miss most about this summer---we were better friends to each other then more than i think we ever have been. and i hope, god i hope, it continues.<br /><br />every week in therapy i have worked on the idea of being present. Present, with a capital P. in my life, with myself, my friends, my mother, my sister and father, with michael and with any other guy i am involved in. just Present. here. without masks. but the present is so not what i have always been. the present is not where i've ever been.<br /><br />the past few weeks, i've been consistently having dreams about evan---evan who i had an amazing connection with for about 4 weeks last summer, right before and right after a life changing surgery of mine---evan who called me one night in late july and said to me, to ME, "i'm so sad, andrew, and i just want you to come over. i need you." evan, who one time one year ago told me he needed me, and then, 2 or so weeks after that, cut me out of his life completely. evan, who left me a voicemail while at a rilo kiley concert two months ago (whenever i hear this song i think of you), and who, after leaving me sporadic comments on myspace, has not actually tried to make real contact with me since. i have had dreams about conversations that we've never had, closure that i've never gotten, specific kinds of rejection that he never actually gave to me. and for what? what good is it bringing me? it isn't. it's kept me up at night, remember old pictures on my phone i took of him, thinking about the conversations i had with him that are still on my old computer sitting in my room up at school. it has tortured me with thinking about how many people he's slept with since last summer (not mark, god please not mark), how many men i've had sex with since (none. seriously? still none? what the fuck), if i am to him like several guys are to me---annoying, unattractive, regretful, and a (oh god, i hope not) mistakes. what he thinks about when he sees new pictures of me posted on facebook. and so much more. so much more that i wish wasn't there is. and it has kept coming back.<br /><br />i am regretful about evan because of several things. 1) i wish i hadn't gone soft that night. 2) i wish i hadn't met him right before my surgery, possibly during the most unsexy time of my entire life. 3) i wish i had been more present with him, the way i am vowing to be--and successfully being--right now. 4) i wish we would've tried, even though i know we never would've worked. but most of all, it's the Present issue. i wish i was present with him the way i am now. aware, secure (i think), and refusing to be one of my masks i know how to use so well.<br /><br />this summer was hard. and now, in the week before it ends, im feeling more achey than ever. i was walking derby the other day and i walked into this smell--oh GOD, this SMELL--this specific kind of burnt charcoal barbeque smell i hadn't smelled since i was 6, 7, maybe younger, and at Indian Island Campgrounds in Riverhead with my mom, dad, and sister visiting my grandparents and their camping association--The Pathfinders--for labor day. the smell brought back so much--what the inside of my grandparents trailer looked like, how the astroturf of the steps felt on my feet, how dusty and dirty my hands got after running them through the dirty sand for hours, how my eyes hurt from the red hot heat of the bonfire at night, and how every year, like clockwork, pop-pop would win 20 ears of corn or 10 pounds of hamburgers at the labor day dinner raffle. how they were all drunk. how my grandmother smelled. how pop-pop's belly was so full and hard. and how mom and dad never sat together. it brought me back to places i didn't remember. <br /><br />and now things are different. pop-pop is dead, grandma is in a nursing home, em just moved out (something i refuse to deal with), and i havent seen my dad in a month. how can i be Present? it hurts.<br /><br />i always get like this the last week in august. maybe it's because august has always been full of anxiety (as ilana said, "in high school, august was like One Big Sunday Night") or because each year i move further and further away from the typical idea of "summer." but here i am. 5am, sleepless, and listening to sarah mclachlan.<br /><br />happy senior year!<br /><br />oh and also.<br /><br />read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. just fucking do it. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:83406 2008-08-02T05:58:11Z 2008-08-02T05:58:11Z things ache. all over. all the time. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:82953 2008-07-28T05:11:06Z 2008-07-28T05:11:06Z there are times that i feel like i may break. not emotionally. not in a beautiful way that i could describe with in words or images. or with friends, having one of those perfect conversations that refill you, reorient you, make you re-remember things. not like the kind that can be strung together with certain songs that you have just discovered or, more likely, ones that you stumble upon buried in the deep trenches of the often skimmed over sections of itunes.<br /><br />not breaking like that.<br /><br />this kind. where things ache and you dont know where to put the ache. the ache has been there for so long--maybe always--that you try to imagine yourself away from it and outside of it and cant. i think there are two kinds of people. hurt people who are sometimes happy and happy people who are sometimes hurt. (it's like that with love, or the prospect of love, too: those who are single people sometimes in relationships and those who need to be in relationships but are, regardless of circumstance, single). there are those who just hurt. or rather, i guess i'm one of those people. i may be the only one. i hope not. god i hope not.<br /><br />but it's a hurt that doesnt have a name or a color. it just is. it's there when i'm happy, gliding around campus at 4 30am with meg after going to two bars and not knowing how to occupy the rest of our high. and during drives home with hope after dropping off ashley in queens, listening to judy garland, and trying to memorize the order of the neighborhoods: forest hills, woodhaven, ozone park, south ozone park, and howard beach. it's there on long island and in new paltz and in manhattan and where i am. it's me. i guess. or it's not me. maybe it's something that i could fix or escape from or banish. maybe i don't want it gone. it's never not here.<br /><br />i am realizing so many things. i am realizing that i have never had a good relationship because i have never known how to be me. i have never known how to not compartmentalize sex and men, hide them away from the rest of who i am--friends, school, bar, family. i have never known what mask to put on so i just try to fake it, muster up the courage to be more than awkward and get through it. i could not look at michael in the eye, could not feel his body friday night with the covers twisting around it. the lights were off and i felt right, less unsafe than i had with him a year before. then morning came. and something seized up in my chest. more than my chest. all over. the room was caving in. i was sweating. it was morning and i had to get him out of there.<br /><br />i don't know how to make everything fit. i can see farther down the tunnel, though. farther than i ever have. i can conjure something that is real, where i am real, able to look into his eyes (his being an anonymous faceless him, i havent gotten that far yet) and not break, not try to calculate what i need to say to be considered a man and not a boy. that is some of it, i think. i have not been able to believe i'm a man having sex with a man because i still feel unsure, unsexy, unreal. not 21. 12. or even younger.<br /><br />that ache. ugh. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:82839 2008-07-01T04:56:54Z 2008-07-01T04:56:54Z <b>a list, because the alternative seems too daunting</b><br /><br />-today was one of those days that felt like being inside sadness. like i would never know anything that wasn't this feeling.<br />-do other people have those days?<br />-i'm listening to the cinematic orchestra over and over and over again.<br />-21 really does feel different. it really does.<br />-this summer is a farce. purposeless, directionless, money-less, man-less, and expendable.<br />-despite the fact that I always tell myself otherwise, the summer is always about ruminating on future art projects rather than actually doing them. text, stencils, splashes, ghosts, teeth, polymer, giant paintings. again.<br />-i don't need more online friends. i don't need more walls. i'm tired of looking at screens instead of faces.<br />-my therapist thinks that all i want is a man to make me happy. what he doesnt know is that the prospect of a relationship makes me the opposite of happy.<br />-whats the opposite of happy?<br />-i need more of last night to happen. kt, alexis, and i, and me finally realizing that i can talk to men without having a panic attack.<br />-oh, also, KT IS BACK.<br />-i hope ari realizes how many things she has.<br />-how do i fill my days?<br />-i wish i had more things to list.<br />-i wish it was easier. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:82481 2008-06-18T06:01:42Z 2008-06-18T06:01:42Z ari, in honor of your return to livejournal, please look at this link.<br /><br /><a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/screamer59/DSCN3059.jpg">http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/screamer59/DSCN3059.jpg</a><br /><br />were we ever so young? urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:82176 2008-05-28T06:53:27Z 2008-05-28T06:53:27Z i just read about 50 of my old livejournal entries starting at around the time i was rejected from Brown in 2005.<br /><br />i'm exhausted.<br /><br />and lonely! urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:82091 2008-05-21T16:46:47Z 2008-05-21T16:46:47Z written for my independent study on memoir writing.<br /><br /><b>Fourteen Seconds</b><br /><br /><b>I.</b><br />I want you to need me. I want you to tell me things you believe I cannot understand. I want you to know I don’t ever want to be not here. Always.<br /><br /><b>II.</b><br />It is always at 3am, never later, when I am deep in the nightmares, still believing in their realness, and find myself clinging to my pillow, as if the clinging could seal their permanence. I am wet, caked to my sheets with oil, sweat, and threats of semen, and my mouth is ajar, always, and crusted with jellied memories of drool and snot. I can see things, though, hidden among the sinewy lightshow behind my eyes, rusted shut with swollen skin. People surface in and out of my half-sleep, strung together with neon threads of my own imagination. I can see things, always with effortless clarity, in colors I cannot ever reconstruct. <br /><br /><b>III.</b><br />I drift into unexplored places underneath the sheets, my legs sliding out of the warmth of knowing and into cold places—icy, unexplored countries of bed sheets, the off-limit territories of sleep. I find places that hurt—hurt in ways that real things hurt—logical, awake things—like the hot pain of a freshly skinned knee or the throbbing ache of very, very bad news. Each image and successive non-image of my sleep is peopled with graininess, memory, and things I swore to myself were dead, but aren’t. They never are.<br /><br /><b>IV.</b><br />My grandmother, whose voice I haven’t heard in months, is pink, violet, and trembling, clutching a drink in her hands like a prize. She walks in my dreams with lucidness and ease, something I can hardly remember. It is now, only in darkness, that I can take refuge in her, have faith in her outrageous lies and in believe in her own sense of reality more dreamlike than mine, one that has an ebb and flow which few, if any, have understood. She propels herself forward with muffled, incongruous footfalls—thunk thunk—on a loop of ten or fifteen-minute intervals, repeating her words with the slow drip of molasses from a jar. I have written about her many times, tried to explore in metaphors and precise syntax her disastrous stories made out of whiskey and cheap beer in plastic steins; they’re never right. Grandma wins, though, every night that I see her in these dreamy incantations, and she disappears before I ever get to ask her if she remembers why or how she loves me, always.<br /><br /><b>V.</b><br />Mom is making me grilled cheese and tomato soup, its wet redness feathering out in thin rivulets into space. There is no smell, save for the low note of boxed wine and dollar store nail polish that mixes with the oily soup in the black air. Why is she here? Why do I feel her haunting me in the dark like she does during the day when we talk on the phone, the heaviness of trees, bodies of water, stretches of road, and the promise of static separating us? Is she with her son at 3am the way he is sometimes with his mother, floating in the split-second black spaces between eyelids and down feathers? Are we both together, tapping into both of our imaginations, meeting each other somewhere primal, hungry, and real? Are our dreams the only place where we live without memories of what the past twenty years have been, or are they more ruled by our past than the daylight hours? I don’t have the answer, I never will, because I have never known any of my mother’s dreams, spoken to her about her wild overnights of impossible travel or if I’m there with her when she becomes a girl again. I’ve never asked—how could I? I wonder, though, who she is, even as a ghost in my dreams. And I still feel that guilt, remorse, and that dull ache even in the afterimage of a nightmare.<br /><br /><b>VI.</b><br />And there are the teeth. Those, which I always see every night, turn to dust in my mouth and fall out of my head and into the air like soot, only yellow, sour. They reappear before me every 3am like clockwork, resurfacing in different incarnations. They bite at me ravenously, tear me apart into fragments, shattered pictures of loss and imagination. I dream of them with zeal and wonder like some children dream of candy or imaginary pets; the teeth come in rolling waves of bliss and torment, sometimes piling up around me and suffocating me, burying me alive—asleep—in their porcelain smell. No matter how many times I recreate them in daylight—with pencil, paint, or words—they always return, hungry and strange, and crumble, turning to dust long before sunrise.<br /><br /><br /><b>VII.</b><br />What is this cycle of imagination, this endless ladder fashioned out of rotten teeth and red, swollen gums? What are these symbols of life, symbols of death, fragile threats of an overactive, muscled unconscious full of contradiction. What are these smells, these sounds, these ghosts of real things pooling together with mythic synesthesia? How can I refuse to be an archetype when all I feel are tens of thousands of things I’ve never lived to experience?<br /><br /><b>VIII.</b><br />Never, ever my father—he is never here, not at night, in darkness, under the cloak of hard work and excavation. What do I wish for during these several seconds of untold possibility? Are we on one of his magical sailboats like we were when I was six or seven, battling the treacherous currents of the Long Island Sound, and stopping to eat too wet sandwiches during lulls in the adventure? Or do I wish for anything at all? He has never been here, and not since those nights when I was ten or eleven, confused, wrong, and ashamed has he been here in the daylight either. <br /><br /><b>IX.</b><br />And Michael, the one I let get away too many times, has returned, differently this time, with more weight, vividness, and wisdom. Other men have come before him, all who have haunted me in different ways: Mark tore at my skin with his fingernails, told me I was too boyish while heaving his wild, beastly body into mine; Evan burned me with cigarettes and mocked my flaccid penis; and Justin, the whore who I never loved, still returns to tell me he believes that I create my own sadness. There were others, of course; nameless men who I refuse to believe were real people but figments, ghouls, lessons in what not to do, who not to be. They are all the bad memories, the inaccurate re-enactments of botched things, stalwart reminders of how I have failed. I have only had sex with one man in my life, but each of them have had their way with me in my sleep: dirty words, stinking mouths, contracting muscles—they are here every night, those filthy palimpsests. <br /><br /><b>X.</b><br />Michael, though, is a surprise, an apparition, a phantom in a long line of phantoms who I cannot, try as I might, shake from these nights. He is the older one, the one who always professed his simple love to me at inauspicious times when we were drunk or laying in bed with our new nakedness still stinking up the dark glow of the room. He is here though, suddenly, returning home to me under a pale green sky, cloudless and pinpricked with stars. He pulls me into him with his giant, elastic arms, and kisses me, sliding his tongue between my lips just enough for me to know none of it is real. I have spent eight months not thinking of him; I have not missed the hairlessness of his triceps, the meatiness of his thighs. I have slept two hundred times and never once dreamt of his innocuous, naïve laugh, his strong optimism toward his dead mother, or his two tattoos of expensive liquor seals, ironic, hollow, and unfunny; I still kissed them every time we were together. Tonight, though, he says things, things that I have never heard another man say, words that seeped out of his mouth in whispers—glowing and fragrant—things that I remember now sourly, knowing I should have believed him. <br /><br /><b>XI.</b><br />All of this, everything in the world, everything I have ever known, begins and ends in three seconds—four if I’m lucky. Reverie is a word that fools use, those who believe that dreams are long, epic masterpieces of our own invention, mysterious and grandiose. They are wrong. Dreams are not gifts; they are dangerous gibberish full of unwanted remembrance and seemingly dormant parts of the self. I did not know I was still in love, still afraid of my mother’s inevitable death, or still could recall how my grandmother breathes—slow, labored, emphysemic. That’s all we are: impatience at 3am, moonlessness, and impossible permutations of all that we had, all that we gave, and all that we never were.<br /><br /><b>XII.</b><br />I never believed it could curdle so fast.<br /><br /><b>XIII.</b><br />And then he is gone, just as they are all gone: my grandmother is senile, Mom’s tomato soup is dried up, smelling of mothballs and cigarettes, and the men, just as the teeth, pepper the air with their dust.<br /><br /><b>XIV.</b><br />Michael is down the street, just awake from a nightmare. His memories of me are quickly turning to salt. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:81722 2008-02-01T07:44:39Z 2008-02-01T07:44:39Z <b>one of the first lists of the semester, a little drunk, but not enough:</b><br />-kt came to visit tonight. i think, more than anyone else, she completely brightened up alexis and i. i saw it in alexis' face and i knew i showed it radiating out through mine. i'm so excited/jealous/elated/anxious/sad/angry/proud of her trip to australia in a little over a week. having her not be here, even for just a week or so, has really taught me how much she is ingrained in my concept of peace, happiness, and comfort here.<br />-i dodged michael like a pro tonight.<br />-typing to the atonement soundtrack.<br />-i hope i see thea and sara on saturday night.<br />-even though i passed it off to me being lazy, disinterested, and blaze' about jason and i not talking tonight, it hurt. it made me feel small and insignificant. so much so that when i was in the bathroom with kt and saw myself in the mirror, i was surprised to see myself attractive, not as a 10th grade awkward drama nerd. it hurt and was weird. but. i've been doing single long enough, it ain't so bad.<br />-sometimes i just self consciously, selfishly, immmaturely, naively need someone to make me feel important or special or attractive. and i think, deep down, everyone feels like that.<br />-ADELE. ADELE ADELE ADELE.<br />-this is the first semester that i've had a professor who has completely challenged me in my art. not even so much as to push me into things i've never explored but to actually challenge my entire ideology about my art. it's already helped me a lot and also made me more self conscious than i thought i would be. more than ever i dont feel like i'll ever really amount to anything or feel like my art is special.<br />-silver stallion by cat power on jukebox. KILLS.<br />-ellice. you know. so i don't even have to say it.<br />-i miss lindsay and eden.<br />-safety nets.<br />-where am i living next semester? that makes me more anxious than anything else in my entire life.<br />-i think maybe the reason i miss michael sometimes is because i can clearly picture him holding me as we fall asleep. that's it.<br />-watching corrina corrina. all i want is to be inside of that movie and have a corrina washington. or even a whoopi goldberg.<br />-everyone that i know and love will either see me die or i will see them die.<br />-paint that.<br />-there have been so many good vibes in the bfa studio. i'm so glad that i feel so accepted.<br />-kt, don't go.<br />-meg, did you end up not going? that'd be lovely.<br />-if you did, please have the most amazing time anyone's ever had.<br />-i love.<br />-i hope. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:81411 2008-01-20T04:54:43Z 2008-01-20T04:54:43Z driving lindsay home tonight after having dinner and coffee with mr nolan (and after being taken to his house, which was, by all accounts, exactly what we pictured and absolutely awe-inspiring), I said this: "i don't even know if im happy. i don't know if im fulfilled. i just don't know anymore." <br /><br />it hurt to say it, to finally just be able to formulate all of those livejournal entries and talks and lack of talks with friends or with myself. things, i think, are too complicated now to really be able to say "im happy" or "i'm not happy." things are shrinking and expanding in size at the same time, circles of friends are reforming into ameoba shapes, ideas of possible future plans are looming all too closely above our heads. bringing up books and poems we read in english our senior year while standing in mr. nolan's study in his house, his real house, the house that i have imagined over and over and over again in my head, really felt like something more important than just the moment that i existed in. i mentioned keats. mr nolan mentioned silas marner. lindsay mentioned yeats. yeats. the second coming. "Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold."<br /><br />that's how it feels, and how it's felt for several months, maybe even longer. a year or two. maybe three. there is no center to things, nothing that i can take refuge in at the end of the night that will ease me to sleep. maybe i'm just being 20, like joan didion says, "one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before." maybe this is all anyone feels right now. maybe this is all anyone in new paltz is feeling, it's all lindsay and i are feeling, it's all anyone has ever felt during their third year of college. but that doesn't make it easier. to wake up in the morning feeling the weight of the terrible possibility of being so alone that it hurts in your chest to walk around an empty house. to drive home from an amazing night with one of your best friends and a teacher that taught you so many things about english and continues to teach you so many things about life. but there's that feeling. that gnawing sense of urgency, like you can't possibly be safe right now, no matter how it may seem.<br /><br />that's what this break was. "break". haha. it felt like a fantasy being cradled by these few really amazing people that always understood me and understood my sense of fear and uncertainty. how do i crawl out of that?<br /><br />i'm scared. and i don't want to feel alone. i don't want to go back to putting on happy faces and drinking every night like i should and being with a whole group of people who, for some reason i've never been able to figure out, make that step into just taking a breath. and being with another person. really being present with another person and their fears and anxieties. what is any of this worth--finding a job, creating art to hopefully make money off of it, going to class, finding an apartment, applying to grad school--what is any of it worth if you don't feel really a part of someone else's center? nothing. and that's all i want. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:81285 2008-01-12T06:52:59Z 2008-01-12T06:52:59Z im the most emotional and analytical and nostalgic and anxious person i know.<br /><br />and paula deen is holding a ham on the desktop of my macbook. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:81047 2008-01-11T05:28:29Z 2008-01-11T05:34:45Z <b>the 12AM list</b><br /><br />-yesterday with lindsay was perfect. traversing our way up and down fifth avenue, getting lost, buying things out of the realm of my normal possibility. it made me hopeful for what could be 2 years down the line, she and i both in the city maybe even living together and talking our lives out while meeting friends at penn. it was just perfect.<br />-the dries van noten scarf. even more perfect.<br />-"a relationship is like couture. if it isn't a perfect fit, it's a disaster." -carrie bradshaw as quoted by lindsay denninger.<br />-i'm really lonely tonight. the first night without seeing anyone in several nights, confined to the walls of my room. it's weird how i can simultaneously turned off to the idea of adoration but terrified of ending up alone.<br />-joel?<br />-im in a very, very sad music phase. send me weepy songs.<br />-no country for old men. absolutely amazing.<br />-thea's coming on saturday. i miss her terribly.<br />-i can't wait for kt's on sunday. i hate how we have such a hard time seeing each other on the island sometimes. i love her so much.<br />-megan elyse krietsch is hereby not going to brno.<br />-last night happened. really? hah.<br />-how do i reconcile new paltz?<br />-is it okay to make ravioli at midnight?<br />-i want to delete every account i have on every gay oriented personals site and i dont know why i can't bring myself to do it for more than a few days.<br />-that's pretty sad.<br />-i want to stop having dreams.<br />-i hate that going into new paltz this coming semester i'm not looking forward to just being there. im looking forward to being in the studio all day and im looking forward to the penn state trip on february 14th. but the fact that im not looking forward--read: unbelievably anxious--about being there again really hurts. and it sucks. im scared of leaving what i've built here over the past 3 weeks. im scared that the cycle will begin again: not feeling heard so not opening up and feeling overwhelmingly alone in my room, that giant room with no one in it except me and qvc and iChat. when i've been alone here it's been circumstantial or because of my own doing, not because i've felt alienated or angry or afraid. i dont know if i can go back to that. i feel like because of new paltz this past semester i have this crushing feeling like i can never be close enough to anyone. no matter what, there will always be some sort of separation between me and _________.<br />-the rowing song by patty griffin. ugh.<br />-how am i going to fill my last week here?<br />-i dont want to wake up alone in this house tomorrow morning.<br />-woops. that's teh saddest thing i've ever written. haha. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:80839 2008-01-07T19:49:00Z 2008-01-07T19:49:00Z if you listen to Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters by elton john enough, it'll begin to make sense. but only if you do every day while alone in your house on your winter break from college when you have nothing to do but sit in your room and think about every possible trajectory your life could take within the next 5 years. how you may end up at columbia with your art career seemingly solidified in stone. or you may end up in chicago, away from the northeast for at least 2 years, maybe 4, maybe your entire life. or how you may end up somewhere decidedly different.<br /><br />i think what I've had such a hard time with over the past 2 weeks and what i'll continue to wrestle with over the next 2 is that nothing seems real right now. i'm so grateful that eden and i continue to proclaim our love for each other night after night and that dj and i found our friendship again after a semester or 2 of not exactly being on the same page. but when you're back at home for a solid month and escaping every hurtful thing that can happen with friends at college, none of it is really a part of reality. im not plowing ahead with my art or going to classes. im not ambitious right now or a part of a "daily grind" or work and play and not enough sleep. so how, then, can i take what i've felt here, over these past 2 weeks with eden and dj and daniel and lindsay and cara (especially cara) and bring it back to new paltz? where everything feels wrong and scary and doubtful and full of problems. i don't know. maybe this month is the hibernation that i need and i'll be able to plow through the next semester feeling sure of myself and sure of the people that say they need me and love me and actually follow through.<br /><br />maybe.<br /><br />i need to believe in myself more. and believe what eden and i said to each other the other night; i need to believe that she and i are completely fulfilled because we both know that the other is great. like jack nicholson said in as good as it gets to helen hunt. "I may be the only person on earth that knows that you're the greatest woman on earth." shouldnt that be enough? to feel at home and comfortable with someone and to know that at least they believe and continue to believe that you are worth it? shouldn't it be enough? maybe it is. but every time i hear about someone's boyfriend or girlfriend or about the number of people someone's slept with, i start to feel shaky. i start to feel behind the curve. i start to feel unhandsome and fat. and that, without question, is what has dictated lots of my days around the house during these last two weeks. i feel the weight of my stomach, how hefty it is, and how no matter what or how smart i am, i always have those little slivers of moments where i feel "this is why no one has loved me the right way yet."<br /><br />a list of the good things, for me, so i dont go crazy:<br />-thea coming on saturday<br />-wednesday, new york city, barneys, and lindsay.<br />-there will be blood<br />-sweeney todd<br />-1970s elton john<br />-the barefoot contessa<br />-having clear pictures of what i want to do next semester, art wise.<br />-a list of galleries to apply to<br />-pilates<br />-last week with cara on my couch for 3 hours.<br />-wondering where i will be in 1 year, a week into 2009.<br />-the potluck on sunday<br />-not being in new paltz<br />-my mom's birthday dinner at h20. letting go. feeling alive.<br />-understanding football for the first time.<br />-laughing with daniel.<br />-not settling.<br />-joan didion.<br />-knowing that i will be in penn state for 4 days in just over a month.<br /><br />and so on and so forth.<br /><br />ellice litwak, we need to watch Magnolia as soon as we get back to school. with 40s.<br /><br />goodbye. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:80612 2007-12-26T06:11:31Z 2007-12-26T06:11:31Z december 26th, 1:02am. several things.<br /><br />-sweeney todd was an absolutely perfect movie.<br />-juno, while touching, was not. why do i feel like i was too old for it? it felt like something indie high school kids could embrace.<br />-christmas hurts every year more and more. the smallness of our family, the divisions between the two sides, how my grandfather isnt here anymore, and the wall i feel erected between me and my extended family. i got a lot of gifts but never once did i feel like i shouldve.<br />-lindsay and eden and dj: always what i need.<br />-ive been really emotional this break. not sad, but just full of emotion. the condition i left new paltz in is still gnawing at me, and i continually feel like there's a type of relationship that i need that's just not existing in my life.<br />-what does that even mean?<br />-i thought i needed a break from art. all i've wanted to do while home is draw.<br />-joel told me last night that i was "as good as in" for columbia's mfa program. getting a compliment like that from someone like joel makes someone like me feel really good.<br />-coffee with justin?<br />-i miss lauren.<br />-how do i fill the void.<br />-remember evan wasn't worth it. remember to forget.<br />-how do i attain a balance between feeling like i need to cut myself off from 90% of the relationships i have with guys, being online or otherwise versus feeling lonely without some kind of vaccuous male affection.<br />-what?<br />-i feel like i keep trying to get a point across and it just isn't working. with anyone. help.<br />-i will always love you by whitney houston is DEAD. ON.<br />-believe in yourself.<br />-attain apathy in regards to the size of your stomach.<br />-don't listen to kimya dawson because of Juno.<br />-don't run away.<br />-achieve something by january 22nd. anything. something.<br />-goodnight. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:of_providence:80226 2007-12-18T22:33:37Z 2007-12-18T22:33:37Z i just took my last final.<br />i'm eating dinner with meg, dropping something off, and then i'm out of here. the talk last night with kt was exactly what it needed to be. how have things become this? how have i let myself be surrounded by such toxicity, surrealism, melodrama, meanness, and hurt?<br /><br />i hate escaping things, anything. i hate feeling like i am running away from something rather than dealing with it head on, but i think i have. i've somehow resolved things with myself and that's all i can ask for. how are kt and meg leaving me? this place? how will i survive without them next semester?<br /><br />i will.<br /><br />2008. 2 weeks. a rounder number, more whole than 2007. i'm more whole. The Process. the ultimate cop out.<br /><br />here i go. surrounding myself with the good things in life. gbye.