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little brother. It seems to me as though people are making promises to God all of the time. As though God isn’t big enough to know that once he grants us what we are pleading, we will forget our promises in the midst of our victory. People may not even believe in a God. But in that moment of desperation, unique and unbearably real, this enlightenment seems to fall upon us; this knowledge that we are not the ones in control. I am not one for making promises to God. I know myself well enough to know that I will inevitably break the promise, leaving myself and God disappointed. Some people can live with that. I wouldn’t make a habit out of it. I remember only once making a promise to God. And it was for you, little brother. I don’t remember how old we were. I was around eleven and you might have been four. We were at the mall with mom and heather, inside of this Warner Brothers store. They had this tube for the kids to play in, with pictures and videos of Marvin the Martian and other characters. Maybe it was supposed to be a spaceship. I remember green lights and buzzing and beeping sounds. I remember being so angry when mom told me that I needed to watch you while her and heather walked around the store. You were following me like a puppy. Or maybe just like a little brother. No matter where I went, you were there. Somehow, I tried to lose you. Maybe I climbed to the other side of the green tube, or I just hid behind a rack. I didn’t understand your youngness then; your innocence. And then you were gone. Everything seemed so big all of the sudden. The store was gigantic and so were the clothing racks. I couldn’t see above or around anything, not in my terror. I lost my own brother. I lost you. I tried to look for you, but you were so small and it was such a big store. I found mom. I told her. To be honest, I don’t remember a lot of the details of what happened that day. But I do remember that after mom went searching for you, I found myself right outside of the Warner Brothers store. Frozen in panic. It was this moment. This moment where everything seems magnified and simplified at the same time. The mall noise seemed amplified, and yet, I could hear nothing but my own thoughts, desperate and scattered. This is when I made my promises to God. I don’t remember what they were now. But I know that I was desperate, and that I would have given anything. I would have given anything to have you back. I don’t know in how much time all of this occurred. Maybe it was no more than ten minutes. But it was the longest most painful ten minutes I can remember. Eventually, mom brought you back. She said that she found you near a store on the opposite side of where the warner brothers store was. I guess that’s all I remember about that day. A green tube, and being angry, and losing you.
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Dogs are scared of fireworks. i found that out last night. We were outside blowing things up, and they were inside, huddled in the bathroom, tails between their legs, seemingly scared for their lives. maybe, if i wasnt allergic to dogs, i would huddle in there with them. and i would tell them that im scared of the new year too. because its a new start and there are no more excuses. and maybe we could just stay in the bathroom for days, pretending the fireworks are bombs and we were in a war. because maybe that might be easier than going back out there, into the real world, and trying to pick up the peices of our lives again.
ive been mulling it over for a couple of days now. about how this has truely been the worst year of my life. but maybe thats not true. maybe ive just had the highest highs and the lowest lows and its hard to see the balance when youre at the bottom. its not like anything horrible has happened to me. i have health, family, friends, life. ive just become really sick of myself. im so sick of myself.
its as if, when the summer began, i started morphing into this different person. and i liked it for a while, because it was new and fun and nothing had really gotten complicated yet. but as summer continued, so did i continue to change. and it was so subtle, i dont think i even noticed it until i got back to st. augustine. and by that time it was almost too late to change. i was stuck in these patterns of living and i hated it. i was this ridiculous person who said and acted in ridiculous ways and i couldnt just snap out of it. i felt like the boy in that goosebumps story who trys on this halloween monster mask, and he cant take it off. he was just trying to play pretend for a night, and it wouldnt let him. instead this mask took him over. he was a monster now. and in the end, the mask came off, and in the end, he was himself again. and i will be myself again soon too. but how much time have i wasted, and how many people have i hurt? and for what?
im just disapointed in myself. in the way that ive acted this year. the way that ive treated people. the way that ive delt with situations. its not me, its not who ive ever been before, and its not who i ever want to be again. and so ive made newyears resolutions and im in the mindset of a fresh start. i want to take advantage of this new year.
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story seven the breakup She would never go anywhere unless she was invited twice. Not unless someone made it explicitly clear that they wanted her there. She never wanted to be a burden or for someone to invite her somewhere out of pity. She wanted to be wanted. In her mind, everyone she knew was always out having fun and she was always waiting to be invited. She was always waiting. Even with her closest friends. Even with her boyfriend. He had told her more than once that she was welcome to come over any time she wanted. That she was apart of him, and that there would never be a time where he wouldn’t want her with him. There would never be a time where he would be anything less than thrilled to see her. That if she wasn’t nineteen and too young to commit and he wasn’t twenty five and still living with his parents, he would buy a house that they could live in together. She would never be anything less than wanted. She never once stopped by his house without warning. She never crept into his bed at ten in the morning when his parents left for work. She didn’t take off her jeans and her layered shirts and lay on top of him or next to him, just so they could feel the heat of each others skin. She never did that. Not once in six months. Not one time, even though she knew it was what he longed to wake up to. He lived twenty minutes away from her. If ever she were in need, she thought, he wouldn’t be able to save her. He was so far away. Except for his fascination with superheroes, he had no powers. He could not fly to her rescue or use his super strength to rid her of her demons. He could not save her; not from the bad guys, and not from herself. He didn’t know how to be there for her. In a world of cars and computers and telephones, he still could not be there for her. He would have tried, of course, relentlessly and persistently, if he had even known that there was something wrong. But he could not see this. He did not know. He was so far away. She lived inside her head. She knew how their relationship would end before it started because she planned it that way. She took what she knew from her past and what he had given her when they met and she planned it. She didn’t know how long it would last or how deep things would get or how intense. She was not ready. She was not ready for any of this. He loved her more than she loved him. This was more obvious to her than it was to him. She did not love him in the same way he loved her. He didn’t know where his love came from. He didn’t dissect it, or overanalyze it. He felt it and he said it, and he knew it. He had only loved one other girl before her. It was easier than this. His first love: she was easier than this. She did not know if she craved affection or if she craved his affection. But she craved him. She craved his company. She craved his touch. She wanted to talk to him all of the time. She wanted to be wanted. She dissected and she analyzed her mixed emotions and she did not know how she felt. But she did know that she craved him. On Monday she woke up at 9:00 and layered her shirts and wore a skirt he had never seen. She would drive to his house and take off these things and crawl into bed with him. She drove five miles in the direction of his house and then turned around. She did not know how she felt. She did not know what she wanted. He loved her outlook on things and how it was similar and different to his own. He loved her drive. He loved her morals. One day, he would learn to hate these things. But this is not one day, this is now, and he loved them. He loved her newness. Her youngness. He liked thinking of their futures and the ways that they would intertwine if they got married. He did not love the way her eyes looked sometimes when she was far away. When she was inside herself. He did not like the distance she could so easily put between them. He did not love her ability to not care. But he loved the idea of being the one to break down her walls. She drove half way to his house two mornings in a row. On the third morning she pulled up to his house at 10:15. His car was the only one in the driveway. He was the only one home. She should lightly knock on the front door before opening it. She should walk quietly into his room as he opens his eyes to her and smiles. She should undress and curl into the covers he holds open for her. She should fold herself into his arms and stay there for hours. But she wouldn’t do this, not today. She stayed in her car until 10:45, and told herself again that she did not know what she wanted. She drove away. She drove home. He did not know half of the things that happened between them. Everything important happened in her head and the things that happened in real life were only repercussions of that. He didn’t understand her. He didn’t understand any of this. He became bitter toward her quarks but he would not admit it. Not even to himself. But she knew better. She had learned this lesson already, with other men. They could only take so much. He had to remind himself that he loved her. Sometimes, when she was difficult, he had to remind himself. He had to force himself to believe that it was true, even when he couldn’t remember why. He didn’t know how to be the person she wanted. He was selfish. He said he wanted her to be with him always, but he did not know what the reality of this would entail. He was too much in love with the idea of himself. With his routine. With his comics and his friends. She was selfish. He had given himself up for her, as much as he knew how, and she wanted more. She would not give of herself, but she wanted more from him. She always wanted more. It was unfair and unrealistic, and she would not be satisfied unless she had all of him. But he would not give her this. She was unfair and unrealistic. He would not wavier. She knew this is not how things were supposed to happen and she was looking for reasons to get out. She wanted this to end before he started to hate her. Before he was the one to leave. But she craved him. She was selfish. She could not leave. He waited for her. He was always waiting for her. She would not commit to him and would not settle for a half girlfriend; A quasi-lover. He wanted her heart but he settled for her complexities. He wanted her thoughts but he settled for the watered down version she knew he would rather hear. He wanted her body but he settled for her kisses. He was always settling with her. He never got exactly what he wanted. He always wanted more, and he thought that this is why he could see himself with her. Because sometimes she was soft. Sometimes she told him exactly what she was thinking. Sometimes she said she loved him and meant it. Sometimes she was vulnerable. And those times were worth all of the other times. Those were the reasons he remembered he loved her. He would never have all of her, and he would never be done breaking down her walls. But sometimes she wavered, and it was just for him and just because of him. It was an endless battle he was willing to fight. She would do it this time. Today she would not chicken out. Today she would go to his house and find her way into his arms and it would be warm and they would be happy. On the fourth morning she pulled up to his house at 10:35. His car was the only one in the driveway. He was the only one home. She didn’t chicken out and she didn’t knock on the door. She entered the house quietly and found her way to his room. He opened his eyes and smiled and pulled the covers open for her as she knew he would. But she did not move from the doorway of his room. She did not look at him. She was not smiling and when he noticed this, his became faded. “I’m going to say this and then I’m going to leave. I’m not going to give you reasons and you’re not going to ask me questions and were not going to talk about it. You’re not the one I want. This will never work. I love you. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. Goodbye.” He knew that he should have expected this. He had expected this. It wasn’t as painful as he thought it would be, the end. It was painful, but in a way it wasn’t. the uncertainty was over. The waiting. He laid in bed for the rest of the day. He did not get up one time. He did not answer his phone or check his computer. He did not read his comic books and he did not cry. He just laid there and looked at the faded glow in the dark stars on his ceiling while the sun went down. He could not remember one thing that he loved about her. He would only think of her complexities. He would only think of the things that infuriated him. This is how he would remember her. This is why he didn’t feel the pain. She left his house without knowing the weight of her own actions. She had meant to crawl into bed with him, she had meant to make him happy. She did not mean this, she did not plan this. But she could not retreat. She walked slowly to her car, waiting to see if fate would intervene somehow. If she had made a mistake, and the Gods would fix it. She walked slowly, so that he had time to come after her. But she would not know what to say, he would not know what to say. She did not plan this, but they both knew in their hearts that it was coming. That it would somehow end. She did not plan this, but this was their ending. She felt a sharp pain throughout her tightening chest. She felt relief.
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Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you. Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me. Joel: Okay. Clementine: [pauses] Okay. Clementine: Look man, I'm telling you right off the bat, I'm high-maintainance, so... I'm not gonna tip-toe around your marriage, or whatever it is you've got goin' there. If you wanna be with me, you're with me. Joel: Okay. Clementine: Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own piece of mind; don't assign me yours. Joel: I remember that speech really well. Clementine: I had you pegged, didn't I? Joel: You had the whole human race pegged. Clementine: Hmm. Probably. Joel: I still thought you were gonna save my life... even after that. Clementine: Ohhh... I know. Joel: It would be different, if we could just give it another go-round. Clementine: Remember me. Try your best; maybe we can.
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at one point, in into the wild, christopher meets this hippy couple and they sort of camp together and become friends and the hippy guy, rainey, is watching the hippy woman (i forget her name), shes walking the beach and hes watching her and he says to christopher "ive loved that woman for a lot of years, brah" but says theyre having trouble and tries to explain and chistopher says he thinks he understands and rainey says "you understand what?" and christopher says "some people feel like they don't deserve love. they walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past." and i think thats true and i liked it when he said it. and i loved the hippy couple because they loved each other and you could tell there was a lot of stuff going on and that things werent perfect, but they still loved each other. ive become so completely bored and disenchanted with all things pertaining to school. my mind is somewhere else all the time. i do not care about our national gdp compared to other countries. my interests do not include developing spreadsheets and excel documents and compiling income statements and balance sheets. i dont care about numbers, numbers, numbers. im not saying these are bads things, but they are not for me. i feel very out of place. my notebooks are not filled with notes, but doodles. i sometimes feel like im wasting my time. all i want to do is make art and develop relationships with people and travel the world and get married and have babies and watch movies and learn recipies and cook food and challenge myself and read books and know God more and share God more in the midst of it all. i think theres something wrong with me. to the point where im looking up symptoms and disorders online. for a while i thought it was possible i had bipolar disorder but now i realize thats entierly too drastic. and then i thought that i may just have a personality disorder, which i might. i mean its not text book or anything, but in girl interupted i think she references a real text book when she writes "an essential feature of this disorder is pervasive pattern of instability of self image, interpersonal relationships, and mood, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts." and personality disorders arent like one for all, they shape and vary. and i hate to think that im one of these people that thinks somethings wrong with them. i sort of feel disgusting about it, like a parent who thinks her child has add. i dont even believe in medicine for that because i think its so overused and maybe i dont even believe in personality disorders the same way i dont believe in add because these things are people things. theyre things that we all do, get distracted and confused. im just feeling this so desperatly. "manifested by uncertianty about several issues.....long term goals or career choice, types of friends or lovers to have, and which values to adopt. the person often experiences this instability of self image as chronic feelings of emptiness and boredum.....interpersonal relationships are usually unstable and intense, and may be characterized by alteration of the extremes of overidealization and devaluation. these people have difficulty tolerating being alone, and will make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment." i picked and chose the parts that i feel could describe me out of a much longer and more detailed diagnoses in which includes thoughts of suicide (which i dont have) and things that would ultimatly hinder any rational thinking and real life one would try to have (which i dont think is happening to me). i just feel very uneasy and anxious, so anxious, all the time. i know that this might be a "normal" thing to go through, but it doesnt feel that way. ive been depressed before but this isnt like that at all. i cant ever remember feeling like this for any extended period of time. and ive been like this all year. and i feel so fickle. im not really happy with anything. when im alone i feel lonely and unproductive and when i hang out with people i feel overwhelmed and slightly annoyed and unproductive. i want to do so many things and im not doing any of them. and i have so many feelings on so many things that i just dont know whats what anymore. when i was with frank i thought i felt this way because i was essentially confused about him, but now im thinking i was confused about him because i feel this way. regardless, as much as it wasnt about him, he enhanced it, whatever it is. and at least without him the only person im battling with is myself. and its not like i can talk to anyone about this. what can i say? theres nothing anyone can do, this isnt anything, not really. not that i know of. its just my thoughts being magnified and twisted inside my own head. and theres nothing anyone can do anyways. im not sad about anything specific, or anything that can be fixed. and since when do i love to cry. i dont know if you can count getting intensly emotional feelings that bring tears to your eyes, but then supressing that so you dont actually cry counts as crying, but thats what i do. i saw corrin today and we talked for a couple of minutes before she was like "you seem really out of it today" and i realized how right she was. i was not present in that moment at all. i was barely coherent in the conversation i was in. i really really more than anything just want someone to knock down my closet door while im wallowing in my problems and grab me and cuddle me really hard and not let me go and not make me explain anything and tell me that im being stupid and ridiculous and that i need to stop and live the life that im meant to live and that hell be there with me the whole time while i do it, and that hell never let me go. never, no never, not in a billion years. and i know that i have this already in Jesus and i know that thats all i can really ask for and that its amazing thing in itself, but i want something tangible right now. i feel too vulnerable right now. i feel very lost.
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today is the day. its october 20,2007, and ive discovered my new favorite movie. my life without me, i love you, youre great, but youve been replaced by into the wild. i think its appeal comes from the story being something everyone would love to do. its the same reason everyone loves empire records (in the same way, but drastically different story) because eveyone would love to work in that environment and hang out with those people. well, i want to do what this man in into the wild did, minus the dying part. laceys here for like five days which is pretty awesome. its sort of wierd though because im so used to spending all my time mostly by myself. yesterday, when the stuff with frank happened (again) we were talking about boys and love and i said i dont even know what love is. i said "im not like ohhh my gosh i love you i cant live without you, youre my everything" and lacey said she didnt think thats what love was anyways, that it was more companionship, and i said, then maybe it was love afterall. im incredibly bored right now. i cant sleep. im just going to start talking to talk, to do something. a couple nights ago i had a dream about adam sandler. i was living in a community appartment in st augustine with my sister and a friend and a crazy lady in the connecting room next to us. something happened that distracted me and made me late for class. statistics, which i had an exam in. we didnt have a car so i had to run to school, on my way there i was supprised at how well i was running and that i wasnt out of breath at all no matter how fast i was going. it was a long way to school though and i forgot that i had to pass the ghetto to get there. when i reached the ghetto, i found a young black kid getting arrested, and i approached the officers and told them i was afraid. they were very friendly and told me to get in the back of the car and they would take me the rest of the way to school. i sat in the back of the police car with the little black boy and the officers and we all joked and bonded and no one was mad or hostile at all. it didnt even seem like the kid had been arrested. maybe he was just being helped, like me. i got to school and something happened with entering the building that had to do with being lost in regis philmans apartment (which was amazing, he gave us a tour) and then leaving, forgetting something, having to go back, and then remembering to rush to class. by this time i had completely missed class. i passed the cafeteria where i spotted adam sandler. i was awestruck. i was all of the sudden attached to his hip. "hey, hi! im kelly, hi! i love you! youre great! can you sign my shirt! i love you! oh wow, youre so tall! oh my gosh youre great!" and he really was tall. i wonder if hes that tall in real life. eventually, i walked away and ran into my stats teacher and she gave me a dirty look and said i really blew it this time. i tried to explain, but she rolled her eyes as if shed heard it all before. this is about all i remember of the dream, and thats where it ended i think because someone called me or my alarm went off or something. i tried to get to sleep a couple hours ago, but the bugs are out in full force tonight. brendan called me and told me he was sad and asked me what was wrong with him. i asked him what he meant and he referenced girls. i told him that i think that when he likes a girl he gets nervous and thats when things go sour. i told him that i really liked him when we spent time together, but then he stopped talking to me and being himself and even though i knew he liked me, it was awkward and uncomfortable. he said its happened to a couple of girls after me and hes sad about it and i told him just to be himself all the time and he said "im just wierd, i guess, its not as easy as it seems" and i said "yes it is" but really i was thinking "yeah i know". i cant wait to go home in a couple of weeks, i keep thinking about it. i miss my mom so much. and my little brother. all i want to do is be in tampa and be with my family and feel the way you feel when youre completely at home. i was thinking about it, and if i had to be a different colored person, i would be blue. blue people are always great. the blue man in the five people you meet in heaven was wise and said "no life is a waste, the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking were alone" and the beatles reference blue people in one of their songs. and the blueman group is basically the best thing ive ever seen in my life. you cant go wrong with blue, i dont think. yellow people, theyre no good. watch sin city. and orange people, that gives you oompa loompas, and although musical, still creepy. what about green? no way, didnt you see spider man? the green goblins not the nicest guy in the world. i guess the hulk is alright, but you dont want to see him when hes angry. blue, definatly blue is the way to go.
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