It is going to get better.

I promise.

I have trust in the fact that it will.

See I know it will regardless. Eventually I will be okay.

But it will be okay in the way that I want it to be okay. In the way that I think it should be okay.

I just can't be here.

Here is what would be ideal:

I wouldn't really care much about anything.
I could become a business major.
I would be a capitalist.
I could date and marry someone rich.
I could spend my free time at home, in front of my pool or on my yacht.

I think what occurred was this:

Two conflicting emotions hit each other
and it was like a thunderstorm in my entire body
and now the sides are fighting it out
but instead this will just make me feel awful about everything.

I just don't want to be like this.

I don't have low self-esteem. I just do when it comes to this. I hate it when I panic. I hate how I act, I hate what I do. I hate how it makes everyone hate me.

I always regret the things I say while panicking, but usually it needs to be said so I'll leave it.

I just want to go somewhere for a couple of days.

But not by myself.

Basically this isn't a solution.

The real question:

When I have panic attacks, talking to people helps.

But: I'm really difficult to deal with while having a panic attack.

And: I feel bad calling people when I have them.

And: I have no one to call.

So: What do I do?

Fuck, I wish people read blogs at night. I need an answer now. What do I do? I really don't know.

Biking with a baguette sounds picturesque, but it's actually very awkward.

I need to write some poems.

I had a dream that there were giant bugs in my room. Some of the giant bugs ate other giant bugs.

This stemmed from the thought of having something inside that I need to squash. Except, I'm not sure what that thing inside is or where it came from.

This is the sound of my life exploding into fifteen hundred confusing little pieces.

Reassemble now, please?

I'm in Norway, Michigan. Last night we saw most of the town gathered to play volleyball. When my brother asked my dad why so many people were playing, my dad said, "What else would they do here?"

I know I say this everytime I go through small towns, but it's a surreal experience. Yesterday my dad was driving around trying to find a good running spot and we drove past this house that was falling down that had "No trespassing" signs all over. It looked haunted from the road.

Today is our second day of driving. Some of my relatives will be at my cabin that I haven't seen since I was a small child. That's always rather nervewracking. What if I am not living up to the expectations of me that were given then? But I am excited.

Driving in the car is making me think a lot and listen to music a lot, which is turn is making me think more. My thinking isn't really going anywhere. I have nothing big to ponder, except I keep feeling like I am making mistakes, and I don't like to think about that because there is nothing I can do now.

I am just pretending that I will go home and everything will be good. This could happen.

Text me if you need me. Text me if you are bored. Lack of contact with people is making me feel more isolated than I literally am.

I started writing a story this morning.

I'm going to Coryell Island.

I will be back on Saturday.

I feel like I will be gone for a long time.

But that's okay.

Someone anonymously wrote to me on facebook telling me that they like my blog and how honest I am on it. They then told me I'm intense, which can be off-putting, but they are glad that I am me.

I'm thinking about this. I'm sort of honest on my blog, I'm half honest. If I'm upset, I never say quite how upset I am and if I feel strongly about something, I don't show how strong the feeling is, because as they said, I'm intense and that's off-putting.

But regardless, it's nice to know that there's at least one person that enjoys reading this. I've had a strange sort of confidence lately. I'm mostly okay with how I look, but personality-wise I'm floundering.

"Oh crap you're going to write another blog, aren't you," says my brother.
"Yes," I say. "I am writing another blog."
"What do you ever write in your blog?"
"Right now I am writing 'Oh crap you're going to..."
"Oh god, you aren't actually going to post that shit are you?"


I think I watch too much TLC. But I can't help it, my intials are TLC, I am tender loving care, the learning channel, the learning company, Kashi brand cookies and granola bars, and a girl group that sings about not wanting scrubs, and in a bizarre way I think my initials make perfect sense.

Lots of thoughts here.

1. The Duggars have courtships and get married young because that is their way of protecting themselves. My version of protecting myself is complaining about the focus our society has on monogamy and marriage and how we should love everyone. I do this because I believe it and I believe if society had less focus on finding that one person to love you and only you, we would be less bothered by the fact that most people do not love just one person. I don't love just one person. I do in fact find many people attractive. Yet, despite everything I tell myself and everyone around me, part of me still wants to be singled out as being special.

2. During lunch today we were talking about empathy and studies they do on people with autism and people who have lost limbs. Physical and emotional empathy are very connected. I am a very empathetic person. I hate it when people label themselves at being "very" something, but I am. One time my mom bought coffee mugs and they broke in the car and I started crying because it upset me so much that my mother was upset. This is why when I see someone upset, it upsets me for days. Or why when people do something that makes me angry, I always look it from their perspective and realize that I shouldn't be angry, even when I should. The interesting thing about human empathy is that it's immediate and engrained, except not in people with autism. In animals it's learned. They learn what others' anger and sadness is. I think empathy is part of what makes me so passive and emotional, but I don't think it's entirely bad.

3. I've written before about how we are on planets. Except this summer I have been coming back to Earth. I have a range of emotions. Instead of just blank, I feel a lot of things. I had a moment tonight where I thought, "just when I was coming back to Earth to be with everyone, I had to be sent back to space, floating." I am hoping that I won't go back out to space and I can stay here.

4. I've written before about how trust issues feel stupid. But I do have trust. And if any of you break my fucking trust I am going to be really upset.

But you know, I never really stay mad at anyone, so you could probably get away with it, it would just be a shitty thing to do.

5. I will be okay. I am always okay. Just so you know, you know? No matter what. Even if all the things I don't want to happen, happen. That already happened to me this year, remember?

6. Back to the Duggars.

Harry Potter also equates marriage and relationships to happiness.

I want to believe that's not true.

7. I just want to add to my list at this point.

8. Oh, I realized one reason why people are religious today while I was watching Harry Potter. So Harry was fighting Draco, right, and it was epic and exciting and I thought "I never have fun adventures like this, my type of adventure is completely different and much less consequential." Then I realized, if you are religious, then you are fighting a constant battle of good versus evil all the time and everyone could potentially be the evil and you have to save them all. It creates a world that doesn't really exist.

9. I want a different world, one that is quite opposite from the religious world. I can't use the words to describe my world. They look like they should be printed on a tye-dye t-shirt and smoked in rolling paper.

I've been out of it all week.

I'm working on fixing this.

I am a poet because I long for something
concrete,
but all I can find is abstraction.

Tell me, just how does one relax?

I just don't know.

Surfacing

You know, it's life. I'm still here.

This fall, all I will want to write about is the summer. I will pretend that all of it is fiction. I mean it basically is fiction, right? Life is the right amount of real.

I had nothing to do last night and so I just went to sleep. A good decision as I was exhausted, but it made me less satisfied than I thought it would. I always reach the same conclusion about satisfaction and what causes it and that conclusion is almost always people.

I need to stop thinking about the school year. Summer is only half over. I need to remember the rest of summer. I still need to do so many things, like tubing and go to the zoo and get that wonderful fulfilled feeling inside many more times.

As a result of my going to bed early I woke up at 6 AM. I think I am going to go do my laundry now. I feel rather awful for someone who just got around 10 hours of sleep.

Some say that "Everyone touches your life somehow,"
but I don't miss most of them.
I prefer: "Everyone is inconsequential, except some people."

There are the wrong people.
There is nothing distinct about these people,
no excess of fingers,
no perpetual hiccups,
but when I see them I get angry
and I say: "You are the wrong people. Come back when you are the right person."

There are those people.
The almost perfect ones.
They couldn't be better if they were processed and packaged
and shipped to your doorstep.
Some say that "No one is perfect."
But I think that: "You could be."

It lies in those moments,
you know, the perfect ones.
They usually smell good
and have bare skin, so beautiful
that you close your eyes,
but that feels good too:
just floating there with a body.

Some say "It could be any body."
I almost agree.
But: "It's better because it's yours."

Perhaps best of all are those non-speaking ideals
who stay behind the coffee counter.

I feel mostly better today. Yesterday was bad in a sort of indescribable way. Not all of yesterday. The kids in the first two classes were nice. My brother was sweet when he saw how freaked out I was. I mellowed out after class in a big way. That was good too.

This is what I do when the kids draw superheroes

I think that everyone is beautiful
and that should be
enough
to be part of that glorious mass.

Individual glory is only
appreciated
when one is picked
by the stem.
We make wishes
on these things.

I want to appreciate
the masses--
My communisms mean more
than the monetary.

I like zebra fish a lot.
Released into the ocean
when their owners
realize how poisonous they are.

I am fucking freaking out. I drank too much coffee. I didn't know this really happened.

Life has been getting to me in this awfully good way recently. Awfully good, like it's really awful that these things are getting to me and really awful like they are getting to me a lot.

It's weird when parents drop their kids off at art class for the first time. They usually give them a hug and kiss them on the cheek when they are only leaving them for an hour and a half. I don't know if I could handle having children. One of my favorite stories by Joyce Carol Oates talks about how painful love is between a mother and her child. I think the best part goes something like, "The worst thing: to give yourself away for not enough love."

But at the sametime those children are darling.

When you're looking for it, people are quite appreciative of one another. Mostly physically, but the other ways are harder to find.

I laughed so hard today.
I cried several times last week.
It's regression in the opposite way of the spring.
In the spring my body tingled, quite literally. I liked to watch tv shows that were about nothing. I didn't cry at all, except in the shower. I am so vulnerable in the shower, but I don't think it has to do with nudity. Often I feel like vulnerable when naked.
I am such a goddamn sensitive person all the time.

I don't like it when people have mundane voices.
With the most attractive people I can always pin point a moment where they sounded amazing.

This is getting far too sentimental.

I've been writing poems I can't post and thinking thoughts I can't share, but if you want to read the poems, ask me and I may share them.

Here's a review of what happened last week during party week:
Monday: movies and beer
Tuesday: Capture the flag
Wednesday: Dinner party
Thursday: Sort of day of rest
Friday: Cocktail party
Saturday: Annual 4th of July barbeque in the park only now with more beer
Sunday: Went to a Twins game with my dad and brother and then crashed from Party Week exhaustion.

It's hard to do nothing after doing so much. But I always have a hard time doing nothing.

Cocktail party!

I'm still really happy.

Tonight is weird.