Atleast I'm not crazy.

I think I am having psychosomatic back pain. Can a person have psychosomatic back pain?

I'm so excited to see Paige.

I honestly believe that there are some people you will always like no matter what they do or how they act. It's like how a few weeks ago Blair asked me why we were still friends even though her and Emma were so awful to me and high school and I said it was because I know she's not really like that, which is true, but it's more like as people, despite how different we are we are compatible. This is more complicated when it comes to boys. But I pretend it's not different and doesn't matter.

Chicago: the drive down was good. I was exhausted due to going out the night before and not getting into bed untilt three AM, but I got some coffee and mixed some cds and made the drive in exactly 7 hrs and 10 minutes, which is exactly what google says it should take. I was pretty tired so Glo and I ordered Thai food, which is one of my favorite cuisines and went out for drinks with Abby and then we went home and talked and things and went to sleep. I woke up pretty late yesterday so largely Glo and I watched this Lifetime movie about these evil cheerleaders, went to rehearsal of the Fringe show that she is helping on (it was pretty funny) and then came back, ordered pizza and watched the season finale of Drop Dead Diva, a fine Lifetime show that I pretend I don't watch and a bunch of other movies, finshing three bottles of wine between the two of us by the time we went to bed. Now it's 9AM and I can't sleep probably due to my massive wine consumption so I am playing stupid games online.

Ever since I was accused of having low self esteem ("This is why we can never be together."), I've gone out of my way to prove to myself how much this isn't true. I'm not sure where that impression came from. I certainly had low self esteem when I was a teenager. I don't always think I'm the best person ever, but I like myself. I like how I look, I like who I am. I like the kind of people who like me. So I settle at the end of the night and say I don't need to prove to people that I am an attractive likable person, because I know I am.

Really good night. Almost not a really good night at the end, but then we got a cab and I got to eat my favorite drunk food and it was all okay. Chicago tomorrow!

I'm going to have a great night tonight to make up for last Friday.

Cleaning out my cat's litter box was the worst thing ever. It smelled like an outhouse, only I had to smell it for longer than I pee. This was really not something I should've procrastinated on.

Things that happened last Friday that will not happen this Friday: drunk texting, crying, friends vomiting, cab home, calling my dad at 2AM for a ride, sleeping on the couch, working tomorrow.

I had dreams of people I don't know breaking up with other people I don't know.

I need to start submitting some poetry, but I'm not excited for all those rejections.

This sounds dumb, but I check to make sure he hasn't deleted me on facebook everytime he comes online. That's all I want. The knowledge that we aren't completely cut off forever.

Everything is better today. Transcript is in, kitty cat is purring next to me on my bed. I am still there, in a giant t-shirt, lazily thinking about getting up but watching Matthew Dickman videos on youtube instead.

Riding my bike around aimlessly after midnight almost always makes me cry. Except I didn't cry. It was all very anticlimatic. I saw a kid sitting in his house watching "The Daily Show" and typing on his laptop and it was such a kid thing to be doing. Today was kind of a shit day, besides seeing Elizabeth. Tomorrow will not be a shit day. I just want to sob, but I'm not sad enough.

I went to the eye doctor today. I always like how it smells, probably because it smells like chemicals and it's so unnatural I find it highly pleasurable. I was really concerned when I first sat down in the chair to take the eye exam and then realized it was an exam I had already failed and so there was no reason to be nervous. My eyes are worse, my eyes are always worse. I wasn't scared of the dark until I became older and my vision started going.

I stopped writing about you after you started talking to me again. You lost any glory you once had.

Things that have happened today: Fulbright informed me they have not yet received my transcript I requested over a month ago and now I am having a panic attack. During my panic attack I submitted four stories.

This sounds dumb, but I am oddly comforted by all the people online right now, as if we are all tucked safetly in somewhere.

I thought about going somewhere and submitting things, but several hours after I intended to leave I was still home and Blair texted and told me to go boating, which sounded lovely on such a nice day and so I did.

My confessions are wholly overdramatic. Really I'm fine, spending my time with other people. Talking about it like it's not a big deal. Thinking about it like it's not a big deal. I am just always overdramatic. I don't like it when people take that as reality.

One time, three years ago I was really upset and a friend took me to Starbucks to calm down. I rarely go to Starbucks, being the snob I am. At the time they had quotes on their cups. My cup said something like "If you want someone who doesn't give you the love you deserve, that must be the sort of love you want." I kept the cup for two years. Sometime before that a friend said, "I think I don't like having money because I always spend all that I have." By this logic I could assume that I like it when people treat me poorly. There is no reason to be sad about loosing things that made me so upset. I always make a mess of my summers. I either need to stop leaving at the end or stop becoming attached to people during.

Sometimes I think I like all the boys and sometimes I think I like none of them.

My brother is partying at my dad's currently. I keep threatening to come over, just to keep him on his toes. My brother keeps offering to give me beer if I don't. Truth is, I'm somewhat petrified of walking into a house of 16-18 year old stoned and drunk males.

I'm so excited for the state fair I started looking at food maps.

My dad is out of town for a few days. This used to mean party and now it means that I'm sad that he's gone because we hang out a lot. If you're in the area, text me and we'll have dinner.

I felt perfectly fine until I woke up in the morning. It's true, that dumb scene that's used for everything, that moment where a person wakes up and realizes what has happened and everything starts sinking. It's not really terrible. It's just complicated and unnecessary. This ache was supposed to be gone a long time ago. This ache was gone a long time ago. This is round two.

I'm glad the shit of yesterday is over and that Danny is home and I'm glad there are places where bottles of wine cost three dollars.

So last night sucked. A friend got too drunk and threw up outside and I started crying because I didn't know what to do and kept trying to call people inside to come help us, but they couldn't hear their phones. Finally Jamie came out and managed to put hysterical me and my drunk friend in a cab and then she collapsed in her front lawn. I ended up calling my dad and he drove me home while I continued to cry my eyes out. Sometimes I don't like my life.

Tortellini with homemade sauce and french bread. If I were a really good cook I would make the tortellini too, but I'm not that good yet.

Riding a bike with a backpack on in 84 degree heat becomes really unpleasant which you reach home and discover your back covered in sweat

I didn't take a very good picture, but here's what I made this summer.

I'm so excited to go out tonight and tomorrow night! And to die on Sunday.

I feel a little sad, but only a little sad. Tessa and I went out for coffee on Sunday and we talked about how different parts of the day feel. The morning is the worst. Nighttime is second bad, but at least it means you can sleep. When you can sleep through the morning it means that you are over a person or over a person enough. I've been sleeping for months. This is why I am only a little sad. I recognize the ending of the cycle, repeatedly. The thing that feels sad is the possibility that it might not be over, but it probably is. Even there I put probably, I don't want to be definate about it. There are still things living in my head, whales, wales.

I want to dance up on some boys.

I really liked this video. And I rarely like youtube videos.

The day got so much better post-crying-Ihateeveryonebutreallyonlyboys. Last 5-8 class, pizza outing with coworkers, finished Degas pastel, homemade ice cream cake, Jersey Shore and whiskey sours with Elizabeth and Blair. If I just swell with love for enough people then it won't matter.

A morning of crying only to be somewhat relieved. Only somewhat though.

This is why there is poetry. To know that I am sad, but to pick up a book next to me and open it and say, "Sarah Manguso has been sad like this, like me right now and if Sarah Manguso has felt that way than certainly it's okay to feel the way that I feel."

So here's a nice Sarah Manguso poem.

I rarely leave people. I've stayed in friendships for years that were wholly damaging to me as a person. I don't know why. I am always so scared of being lonely. But I'm not lonely, not really. I have plans for the next three days. I'm going to Chicago in a week and a half and I'm going to see people there. So I wonder why I put up with people treating me poorly, why I put up with person treating me poorly. Last night Blair said she was having an existential crisis and by existential crisis she meant that she likes a boy and doesn't understand why she likes him. I told her that feelings aren't rational, we don't choose who we like, it just happens. And it's like this fact, this feeling that, yes I care about this person even though there is every reason I shouldn't, means that I become spineless and let them hurt me repeatedly, as if loosing them could be worse than that, though obviously it isn't. Now is the point where I say that I'm not going to let that happen anymore, but I know it's a lie. I already know that some point in the next three days, probably while I am drinking, I will do some sort of groveling to right wrongs I never committed and I don't know why I am doing it. I do care about myself and like myself and think I deserve more, that's not the problem, the problem is that I care about everyone else too and no matter what infraction they commit that doesn't change.

Because I am detrimental to my life when I text while drinking, I instead text people for Blair while I'm drinking. Like tonight I told a guy she's been seeing (with her permission), "Hey Christopher, I don't think we should see each other anymore."

I remember when I turned 17 my mother made me eat dinner at home with my boyfriend of the time. I didn't like the dinner that she made or my boyfriend. It wasn't a very good birthday.

I was going to go to Dunn's and work on submitting things, but I already feel sad and tired and going there always makes me feel more sad and more tired. I suppose I could go somewhere new for a change. Tea Garden, Coffee News, but those are just more of the same. I am going to stay home. Knit lace.

They closed the main cross street by my house to cut down all the trees. They were diseased ash trees, I'm guessing. Everything looks bare and too bright.

Sometimes when I read something I start to think in the manner of what I read. This is why reading bad writing is so bad, because my mind starts to work that way. I just read this review of Richard Yates written in the way that Tao Lin writes and now I have settled into a sort of disjointed sadness. I don't even like Tao Lin very much.

My back hurts. Someone told me once when your muscles are sore it is because they are filled with acid and I imagine my entire back filled with acid. I've been thinking a lot about this guy I read about who had a pine tree growing in his chest. He didn't know about it until it punctured his lung and he couldn't breathe anymore. I keep trying to write poems about people with plants growing inside them. The great childhood debate about swallowing seeds. Something cheesy about how all men have pine trees growing inside their chests.

TWINS GAME TWINS GAME TWIN GAME BOX SEATS BOX SEAT BOX SEATS YESSSSS

I'm okay with it as long as everything is going okay and by that I mean as I like it. When it's not like that I get a little sad. Not dying of depression sad, but sitting here biting my nails sort of sad. I think about the beginning a lot.

My day got much better. I am not dying in any manner, kids finished their books, and I got a letter from Paige. I want to buy cute stationary. Where does a person purchase such a thing?

Apparently when I don't have to be anywhere until 1:30 I spend about two hours getting ready to go.

Woke up feeling the opposite of yesterday. Stressed out about finishing classes, surprise doctor's appointment. Later I will either be super happy or super depressed.

Here's a nice part of the Sarah Manguso poem, Est, Est, Est

You've got to hide your love away,
not because showing it is useless,

but because it isn't.
Don't let me get what I want.

I love you as dead people love-in every way imaginable.
Don't let me bring that cat inside.

If you leave your wife with her beautiful name,
don't tell me.

I woke up feeling really happy. It might be the prospect of breakfast, but then again most of my happiness comes from consumption. I'm so glad Elizabeth is in town. There are just some people in the world that a person can go without seeing or talking to for a long while and then when they come back it is good again. Last night we went and looked for meteors. We stared at the sky, shivering because it had just rained and both of us get cold easily. We saw some blinking. We decided those must be meteors! One of the blinking lights looked distinctly like an airplane, but we decided it was a meteor any ways. Then, this light shot across the sky and we realized that everything we had seen in the sky before were probably airplanes on the way back to the MSP airport. We are not very good at meteor identification.

Work is almost done, I have five classes left to teach for the summer and then I have no work until I leave for Austria. I want to visit Chicago and Knox. Knox might not happen, but we will see. I want to have lots of fun, I want life to feel so good when I leave so that when I go, I feel wholly satisfied with everything that I am living.

Recovery comes in the form of knitting lace and watching bad Lifetime movies. Going to try and see a meteor shower with Elizabeth.

I can't hear anything. This is terrible. I vaguely remember dancing on a podium last night in front of lots of people. Oh no. I had lots of fun though.

I am wearing an XL Sneaky Pete's t-shirt and still have all my make up on. I don't have a headache so I must still be drunk as I didn't drink any water. Apparently pregaming while riding public transportation is a bad idea.

lToo drunk to be awake. Ihope Blairyi s oakay.

Talking to attractive people is quite nervewracking and quite enjoyable.

Oh also my mother got delivered a morgage foreclosure notice and I got a parking ticket. I think I'm blocking out everything bad.

Look, someone loves me

And by control everything, I mean control the things I need to control.

I want to take control of everything!

Books purchased today:
Sarah Manguso Siste Viator
Sarah Fox Because Why

I am very excited for this.

Then, when I feel sad, I remember why this is a problem.


I didn't go to yoga in the Sculpture Garden because it was sprinkling and horrible humid, pre-thunderstorm humid so I ate chips and guacamole and drank beer for dinner with my dad and then spent several hours knitting to get my mind off things. Somehow behind the end of the evening I obtained more things to have on my mind. I went for a walk in the rain and then got terribly self-conscious about going for a walk in the rain, even though I'm wasn't sad or anxious, just contemplative, but I went home any ways.

I get too excited about everything and then too let down about everything. It's a horribly flawed system.

"We are going to have the most awesome t-shirts this year and use up all our ideas, and then our t-shirts for the next several years will just say "It's being handled internally" on them."

Why did I graduate?

I think I like being near people because I feel more inside my body. Most of the time I am a floating head.

Life is getting better. It's nice.

I went to a gay bar tonight. There was a lot of penis. No one hit on me. It was really fun.

When I'm nervous or excited I drink really really fast. This applies to any beverage, not just alcohol.

I couldn't figure out why it was so taxing to bike to the bookstore and then bike to Dunn's, but then I checked the weather and it feels like 103 degrees.

I think my mother has started smoking weed again.

I am trying to buy a plane ticket to Munich, Germany and my dad is making me wait so he can eat a sandwich. What is this?

Nightmares are now children painting outside of the lines.

Back on Michael Dickman:

Every morning

My head pointed up, my eyes
full of leaves

But only yesterday

I wanted to be made out of nothing but your voice, and be more
beautiful

and I was made—



"Be More Beautiful"

I read in an interview with Matthew Dickman once where he said that you could tell him and Michael apart because Michael has a girlfriend and Matthew wears glasses and it's so obvious that Michael has a girlfriend. Michael has always had a girlfriend.

I am kind of in love with the bike racks shaped like bicycles that recently appeared in St. Paul.

I have done nothing on my list except eat lunch and knit. This is terrible.

Things to do today:
Lunch
Laundry
Knitting
Writing
Submitting
Making dinner?
Working out?
Going out?

I came home to a bunch of people in my living room.

-Is that your sister?
-Yeah.
-She looks different than you.
-Yeah.

You think, today is a day for small niceties. You try to remember what you were writing in your head while drunk, but you forget. This is typical.

I took a lovely shower and feel much better. I wish everyone weren't so busy this weekend.

I took a lovely shower and feel much better. I wish everyone weren't so busy this weekend.

I do like myself. I like myself more than people realize or than I will admit most of the time. I like myself when I ride my cute bicycle to coffee shops and sit -drinking fucking decaf because I can't drink caffiene. I think I am an attractive -human being. I know I can attract other attractive human beings in the right scenario. I just get overwhelmed by a lot of things. It's really all about desire. I eat ice cream and then feel bad later. I want to go to Austria, but am absolutely terrified. I want to make the statement I want to make in clear terms, but cannot make it come out properly. It bothers me that I want anything at all from other people. I like to talk about how it bothers me.

Today I wanted to eat ice cream, even though I knew I would regret it later, but I went and ate ice cream and consumed all those fucking calories, but I did it because I wanted to.

Ugh I am not getting out anything I want to say at all. But this is because really a lot of what I have to say isn't very nice. My cat is typing on the keyboard with his head.

Fuck it, whatever happens happens. Think whatever the fuck you want to.

Woke up with the worst cramps ever mixed in with a terrible hangover in the middle of the night. I feel okay now. Vastly looking forward to ice cream from the Grand Old Creamery with my lovely coworkers and then crashing on my dad's couch when I get home.

Michelle and I wrote this prose poem together this spring. I'm sorry if she is upset that it's up here, but I keep thinking of this part she wrote "I would like both: that quiet, secret part of you, if it was all of that quiet, secret part of you; but I also need the all, the indefinite, the definitive, the closed-circuit, a current through us and only us, to sough in this room, everything gentle and in slow motion." This describes everything.

In the beginning I thought, here is a person I have sometimes seen before. It’s funny that way, how a person can exist, but not really be there. So I say no to the idea of you, because the idea of you has run through me, yes, gone through me and completed me and gutted me, at least several times before. It was illogical and the first time you tried to kiss me I pulled away and you asked me if it was wrong and I didn’t know, because your body, though beside me, though comfortable in ways that I am not comfortable inside myself is foreign and threatening. I thought of mouse traps, cheese. How easy it is to slide ones head inside the clasp. I know it could come down on me at any moment that you decide it’s time. Despite my attempts to be definitive, I know you are in complete control. I know this when I notice that your gaze has drifted a slight left or right, so that you are not exactly looking me in the eyes anymore; we have begun disintegrating. These calculated insecurities, the way you ask me why you are not enough. I start to think about your skin after you already outthought mine. We are at different steps in this process. Tire of me already. I cannot give you all of me, I cannot be wildly impressive at every turn, and I cannot give you anything if you are always only half here, half-hearted; everything, to you, is momentary. It is enough of me, sitting there. You picked out parts of my body I forgot were there, which is most of it. Later you say I want more of you than you want of me and I say yes, the fact that you have skin is not enough for me. You were never good at making lists, except figuring out where to place me. I’ve outlined the ways in which we do not exist in the same room: the sound, the push, the people always around you. I would like both: that quiet, secret part of you, if it was all of that quiet, secret part of you; but I also need the all, the indefinite, the definitive, the closed-circuit, a current through us and only us, to sough in this room, everything gentle and in slow motion. All I can think is that image of you leaving, real or imagined. The way that hugging turns into clinging and I hate this notion: that I have clung, that you can tell people that I am clingy, am clinging. When something comes in too close, the vision of it leaving is too large for it to be seen.

I sit around waiting for people to care about me the way I think I want them to and they don't. I realize over and over again that they never will and every single night it's a new revelation and I make plans to do things about, but I don't. And then it all ends and the cycle repeats and I have to remind myself that I am still here, that I still exist as a human being, though they haven't validated me. I get drunk thinking it will make me say all these things that I need to say and then I don't say them and maybe that's the problem. Nothing will make me say these things because I am scared to lose what I have, though what I have makes me so terribly unhappy. Sometimes I just say fuck it and go to sleep, fuck it and go to the gym and then it returns. It makes me upset that this happened. I didn't mean to let this happen.

I make the assumption that people who really want to see me will contact me. Then it occurs to me that the reason a person isn't around, is because they don't want to be. Last night I dreamt that I texted a friend a couple of times to hang out and then starting panicking because it was too much. This is the lovely point I am at with people right now.

Men make really funny faces while lifting weights and stretching in front of the mirror. They make funnier faces when they realize that someone is watching them watching themselves. I've started closing my eyes while stretching.

My gym is across from a grocery store. What the fuck. I did yoga in Minneapolis and then strove straight to the gym and went on the elliptical for an hour. Then I went to the grocery store. I bought lettuce and grape tomatoes and a roll. They are encouraging a cycle of eating and working out. This is terrible.

Yoga in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Here's what I think after eating dark chocolate zin liquor ice cream:

I am going to workout for hours and never ever eat again.

I hate the way skin looks after being under a bandaid, pale and damp. I cut the tip of my middle finger open using the light table yesterday and I can't find any bandaids in my house.

All my books of poetry are packed away in boxes and I need them desperately. I need books of poetry I haven't even read yet desperately.

At this moment I am calm and satisfied though this moment is not different from any other moment. It's like the realization that these things are inconsequential. Somedays I like the thought that at the end of September I will be gone and this will be gone along with it. Other days it makes me panic. Makes me wish I weren't going and could go somewhere else. But a lot of the things that are happening are happening because I am leaving. I have the appeal of someone who is going. I let things slide. It's like I am never coming back and if the notion of leaving is unimaginable, the notion of returning is even greater so.

Maybe when I come back, I will move to a different city.

I wanted to take many pictures last evening, but somehow only remembered I had a camera while sitting in line at the drive through.



Post-going out hungover breakfast:
Organic eggs, organic hashbrowns, honey wheat toast, bacon, pulp free orange juice, ibuprofin, and episodes of 30 Rock.

I just typed a facebook status and a blog address without fuxkng up. This means I am basically sober.

Blair and Danny and Ayanthi came to my house to drunk text and eat Mcdonalsds and I informed them that I already drunk texted several people and do not eat Macdoanalds. We watched Snooki get punched on the fJsey Shore.

I wish I were this happy all the time. I finallyt had a fantastic evening where Ig ot to see so many people thatI love and then go out and get drunk an ddance.

I love everybody exvept McDonalds. I'mhjungry. I have the drunchies. JKsey Shorrreee