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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

sometimes it can't be fixed

today my mom came upstairs crying. this is never a good sign, and with seemingly everyone in my family's health steadily decreasing, i brace myself and prepare for the worst. in the past few years we've known several people that have died, and consequently i've come to expect certain people to die. it's bound to happen sooner rather than later in a lot of circumstances.

today my mom announced that my cousin's husband jeff committed suicide. i won't go into details other than he was in the hospital when it happened. Jeff, was one of those guy's guys. he liked hunting, and fourwheeling, wrestling with his dogs, those sorts of things. he lost his leg years ago in a work related accident, this handicap didn't keep him from doing much. he still went swimming, hiking, whatever, he did it.

you could talk to him with immense ease. i had no idea that this was coming, i knew they were having marital problems, but suicidal, that's a bit much.

what's worse is who he's left behind. his five year old son may have been able to deal with divorce, but knowing that your father committed suicide, not having your dad, well that 's completely different. he's destined to go through years of therapy, while death is always upsetting, i can't help but be a bit frustrated with jeff's actions.

i think everyone has shitty days, days where se can't seem to think of anything right, days when we feel like we're in a slump, permanately. sometimes this lasts days, week, months, maybe even years, but things always look up. even for one day, at least there was that day, and while shitty sucks, a day like that is worth sticking around for another. what if there isn't another? don't be ridiculous, there's always another, peaks and valleys exist, we're here to experience the ride.

i myself have thought about suicide. mostly while i'm driving. i'll think about what would happen if i sped up and drove against traffic, route one would be so easy. and then i think about all the people i'd be leaving behind, all the people that could potentially be injured in that situation if not killed and all the people they'd leave behind. suicide is selfish, possibly the most selfish action of them all. i believe in mental illness, but i also believe in treatment, and therapy, and outlets.

my mom was worried about his soul; where he's going. in the mormon faith, this action would basically mean hell. i don't think he's going to hell. and i don't think that god makes people suffer for all eternity for what they did on earth. i do believe however that the afterlife can be whatever we want it to be, and that our personality remains the same. if you're feeling guilty about something you did in this life in the afterlife, then you'll feel that guilt, but not forever, and one can only hope that the next life is better than this one. hope is the essance of life, without it there's nothing. i suppose jeff lost all hope. hope keeps us going. i hope that those he left behind can keep it.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

top reasons why college sucks - spencer


spencer and i are an unlikely pair. we first met three, maybe four years ago because his brother was (still is) dating my friend linda. I, being the fourteen year old girl that i was, was more than smitten with spencer's good looks and his personality wasn't so bad either. this was of course at a mormon camp of sorts and i wasn't the only girl with my eye on him. a short, smiley, curley haired girl i'll call chipmunk, was also interested. she is chipmunk because if reincarnation is real, she'll surely come back as one. those three days were spent with he and i flirtatiously speaking to eachother in french and making googley eyes across the gym. we ended up exchanging email's and emailing eachother for about a few months after that. it was all very cute.

so from there we became a couple. we'd go to church dances for the most part, neither one of us could drive at the time, so that was about as good as it got. emails, long phone conversations every night, and on the weekends if we were lucky someone would be nice enough to drive us somewhere, usually a place that was largely inhabited by mormons. we had our first kiss on the dancefloor (during the song "a moment like this," spencer doesn't remember this, and we didn't like that being our song so we changed it to "yellow" which is still one of my all time favorites) where a chaperone quickley told us that we need to not dance so close together.

from there we broke up shortly before christmas, but because i was still friends with linda and his brother, i would still see him. this was very awkward, for a while, and neither of us were very good a communicating in a rational matter what we were upset about. we had an argument. shirley asked us both to be in her quiencinera (?) where we made up and our friendship was reborn (after he apologized for being a jerk and i continued to act like a bitch).

we have since disapproved/disliked most of the people the other has dated, and dated eachother more, and then decided that we're better off as good friends. which is true. he's my boy and i'm his girl. i am still more than slightly irritated by the mentioning of chipmunk.

he and i would not be friends if we were to have met for the first time yesterday; mostly because i come off as ditzy bitch the first time you meet me, and he's quiet and reserved or an asshole.

he took me to my first show at the blackcat (the new amsterdams), now my favorite place to be. he introduced me to the postal service, and so many other things.

(here's the sad part, brace yourself)

he leaves for smarties-ago-go land on saturday, (for those of you who haven't read the georgia nicholson series that would be UVA) and today was our last time together before he leaves. we went to ihop and hung out a my house for a bit. it was awkward, but we pretended it wasn't and we talked about how much we mean to eachother, etc. but when i came back in after walking him to his car, the tears started coming.

i know he's only a couple hours away, and we'll talk weekly, but my boy's all grown up now, and i'm still here; and next year i'll hopefully be at a school out of state and far away. this is the end of an era, one i'll reminisce about for the rest of my life. not high school, but that boy who meant (means) so much to me.




Friday, August 17, 2007

top reasons why college sucks - Christina



Saying goodbye isn't easy for me, so these next few posts'll be somewhat melancholy.






1. christina is leaving
2. spencer is leaving
3. i'm not going this year

Last night Christina and I visited one of our favorite places La Madeline's in Old Town (nt. whenever I refer to old town, you can assume alexandria, i get lost in manassas, and occoquan closes at five). I first went there with Spencer and company a couple years ago. Wow, that's strange sounding, "a couple years ago," I'm getting old.


Well Christina is a french fanatic and plans on becoming an expatriot, but she won't be joining Hemingway and Fitzgerald, no she'll be doing crazy smart people things aka economics, that I will never have a clue about. But because of her love for french things I took her to la Mad's and we try to get up there as often as possible.

Last night was different though. It's usually quiet, last night it was far from that; it wasn't quiet at all. Almost in the same moment we sat down some strange man started yelling at the manager, it was quite the scene. He was tall and scruffy, very homeless-veteren looking (the camo gave him away). I have no idea what was upseeting him, he didn't say, but his language was harsh to little ears, including those of the little kids sitting behind us with their parents, they went on eating as though nothing was happening. So strange. He left after about five minutes of this and hopped on his bike giving us dirty looks through the window as he rode away.

And if that wasn't enough, there's a new girl working there. A very loud and somewhat obnoxious girl. We were used to the quiet Ethiopians who would ask us if we knew french and then laugh at us as we tried to speak with them, I guess I should say that they laughed at me, Christina has always spoken better than me, she's almost fluent. But last night this girl who was talking to everybody as they ate would not shut up. This would have been nice if we were the lonely brokenhearted types she seemed to be talking to, mainly an older woman who had terrible teeth. I can't stand bad teeth, and would have had a very hard time talking to this woman, so I can admire the loud girl's friendly nature, even if her volume could be turned down a notch. Watching her and the older woman interact was sweet, but Christina was more than annoyed and we left shortly. The difference was too much to take when we were looking for a familiar place to say goodbye.

I didn't cry last night, but I wanted to, and by God, I made myself promise to wait 'til Saturday. The difference to me, because I overanalyze everything, seemed to be one of those fatefilled events that seem so obscure there's no other way to explain them, but clearly they're foreshadowing something to happen later. Often something that is just as much plan as fate. We've know this would happen since we were five. Even though people mistake her as my little sister, and we never seem to think of the age difference, but this was it. There aren't anymore summers together, anymore late nights at the Graff's house, no more lame church dances our parents make us go to-but it's okay 'cause at least we'd be able to complain together. In retrospect it's because of all those awful activities that we are so close. Youth group each week, seminary everymorning, sunday school, those were our times to catch up on the latest, bitch about whatever was bothering us. And she's not going to be there anymore, and I'm going to suffer through one last year without her here.

I know we'll stay in touch, and I know we'll see eachother again, but things like this never go back to how they once were. And those are the things I'm going to miss.

The Graff's house, our home away from home, where we could almost always count on the backdoor or garage being left open, where we were welcome at all hours, Elizabeth and I will still go, but even last night without Christina was different. We're a three piece puzzle and we're losing a piece. The "good influence" or so she's been told, and we're doomed to go astray without her, but thank God that was never her at all, she's the Mormon girl we can complain to without a lecture in return, or being told to go pray about it (Lord knows we pray all the time) or make an appointment with the bishop (her dad). She's our Chris-tin-AH! and tomorrow we're losing a piece.



Wednesday, August 15, 2007

This thing

So, after much thought and Mr. Brann growing tired of my e-mails filling up his inbox, I decided to start this thing. A blogspot. A weblog. A blog.

This will mostly chronicle the life of a teenage girl who's on her way to graduation and hopfully a college far far away from the depths of suburbia.

I suppose I should introduce myself; I am a dog person, cat piss smells awful. I like the colors green and yellow, and I love polkadots. I live in jeans and band-tee's, but I'm working on it. And I don't have the hang of this thing yet, so this will all probably be in my "about me" section soon.

One day I plan on being a recluse in New Zealand and writing under a badass pen-name.