Sometimes life just sucks-

Rooney injured his metatarsal bone in his right foot during Manchester United's game against Chelsea.

Estimated recovery time: 6 weeks.
Time until first match w/ Paraguay: Exactly the same. June 10.

Of all the stupid, ridiculous things to go wrong. Why this? To make, I believe, everyone's mood worse...

Owen confessed to his trainers that he was not "100% happy with his foot" after playing for the first time since being injured for Newcastle.

Of course, Owen hasn't reinjured himself since the broken foot. He's only not back up to 100%. Which could always mean that he could possibly get up to 100% in a matter of 6 weeks. Right?

On another note, my dad is pissed at me. I am pissed at him. I feel as if I'm treated like I'm 10, which I probably am according to every single one of my friends. My mother is a horrible person, once more, and I find myself wishing she would just disappear to some foreign island off the coast of Fiji. Why Fiji? Because I don't know where it is. It'll be a comfort to think it's the farthest place in the world from me. But then again, what if Fiji is off the coast of Hawaii? That's much closer than I would like, and excruciating enough a thought that all of a sudden some far off place like Vladivostok sounds like a better option. Maybe she'll take up whiskey. Hopefully, that'll do her some good. I mean, seriously, how much worse can she get? I believe a drunkard would at least be amusing to watch. And who knows, she could be a happy drunk? The sort that gets all jolly and laughs hysterically for no good reason beyond the fact that she has alcohol in her system and alcohol is a drug and drugs make people happy. We're a perfect family.

It seems like everyone but me is using drugs and getting happy. Maybe not permanently happy, but definitely better for short temporary periods of time. I think I should go and procure some. I'm always expected to be this lovely, light person. I'm so tired of being presenting that to other people when I don't really feel much else but numbness sometimes.

My mother is not sane. This should be something that will make her easier to dismiss or forgive.


It isn't.


Could this weekend be any worse? Oh yeah. Irish Studies paper.

I'm going to go stick my head under my pillow until it all just goes away.

Won't you take me home/ 'Cause lately I've been losing my own

I need to leave.

A respite, somewhere to rest my head. Not clear it. I don't want clarity, just some time to pause. Breathe.

I feel as if somehow, at some point I sacrificed a part of myself for compromise. The point I struggled to prove wasn't worth the petty arguments, or the discomfort, the silence, the tension. And so I let it go, brushed it off, at best, ignored it. I can't help but wonder now how much I may have given up of myself for the sake of peace.

London, Cairo, London, anywhere I can retreat on my own terms. I want mornings of silence with my thoughts but for the quiet melody left playing from the night before. Afternoons of ink smudges and crisp paper between my fingers. Conversations that steadily wind down into the early hours of the morning, scattered with lulls and pauses and effortless prose and rambles and meeting points. I want insight and outpouring and ceaseless wandering of words transforming into ideas and then returning as images, memories, still life captures. To feel the flow of creation at your fingertips or lips, the poetry of seamless thought, a notion worth more than a second's notice. Or perhaps, only that.

I thought I'd get a sign for something. I may have gotten a second one. But I can't trust my instincts anymore. Maybe that's growing up. More tact, less rash. More analysis, less action. Days of self-doubt, weeks without a trace of it.

I can taste the bitterness on my tongue. I need to get away before it engulfs me.

And so the conversation slips-

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it … you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”
-T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady

I do not know what it means when those whom you most trust to listen, to advise, to withhold judgement - when you cannot turn to them for their counsel. Perhaps, there is one that I still find myself drawn to reaching out to from this place I've found myself. Perhaps, I'll do it tomorrow. If I can work up to it. She has always been one I can trust to never pass judgement on me, and I am more grateful for that than I have ever known. Often one needs several to tell one of their wrongs, to bemoan the injustices done upon them, to tell one of their mistakes, and missteps. Too often it is overlooked that one needs merely someone to listen, someone to sympathize, someone to offer their friendship without the slightest trace of judgement.

I am a fool to think my thoughts must always be spoken. A fool. A fool. A fool.

I believe I may have, no, I believe I have committed an act of selfish righteousness that I had no place to intrude upon. It's sickening. Abject humiliation, aside (difficult enough to swallow), I dread that I may have discarded any remaining remnant of hope for the resurrection of friendship.

It shouldn't matter, it should not matter, it does matter.

I have no impulse control. I am swayed too easily by the encouragement of other's, or the discouragement. I have a self-importance that is grating, even to my own conscience. I believe there is enough good will within myself that I can aid those who do not even seek my hand for help. I am imposing, yes, imposing in a manner that should make people ill.

I have buried the hatchet in a friendship. I have done it through my own idiocy, and I regret the loss, though not the intention.

Vanity, thy name is woman

I wish I had someone to tell me what I should do.

I did something courageous Sunday evening. I called out someone for their behavior. I literally called this person and told him how little I thought of him anymore, and that it amazed me how cruel he could be with his apathy.

I had felt so helpless sitting in that coffeeshop with Portia, sitting there until fifteen minutes past when she had said that there was no reason to sit any longer, fifteen minutes was plenty of time to wait for someone who couldn't even commit the basic courtesy of calling.

And so I walked her to her car, and she yelled out that she loved me after getting out of me that I would not go back into the coffeeshop.

I did. I went back in, found a spot outside near the street, turned on my iPod and lost myself in a book. A good book, a great book - but every few seconds it became harder for me to fathom what the words staring up at me from the page actually meant. I don't think I had any doubt that it was a deliberate dismissal then, after all, were one to have a number, what else could stop them from so easily placing a call, even a curt one of explanation?

He never called, for that matter.

And so I called Aleisha, someone that knew him just as well as I did (if not better). And she couldn't believe he'd never come. After all, coffee had been his suggestion, I had merely decided when and where. To add, he'd also verified the night before.

And so she puzzled over it, and after realizing just how difficult it was to hear your thoughts echoed back at you aloud, I decided I'd go, and that for tonight, instead of going to the film on genocide in Albania as I had planned around 7, we would go out somewhere.

It was 6 when I left the coffeeshop.

I couldn't go home yet. I was too restless. Why did I even care? Good question. I don't think I've ever been so deliberately discarded before. At least, not ever when I've done nothing to deserve it. I've been lucky in that aspect I guess, no one's ever done something like this to me. I usually discard those with the capacity for such cruelty before they hurt me.

I think I'd have to admit that it was also a special case with this one. I particularly thought favorably of him. Why? God, who knows. It wasn't as if he'd never flaked out before. More than once, in fact. I think, even now, I still feel such goodness in him. Like a kid almost, someone who you know because of their particular stance can see sometimes behind the fronts of the movie sets and see that they were held up by timber, that they weren't real but just facades of the front of the houses in the town. It was more than that, it's difficult for me to put into words. He's kind of an original, even if he does quote to the frightening extent that Portia does. You know when you meet someone and one of your first thoughts of them is that you could have been friends with them when you were a kid? It's kind of like that.

On a much more superficial level, I just enjoy talking to him. He's got my style of verbal wit, and besides a few friends, I don't find that in abundance enough to not seek it out when I find it.

So I went to the park. Took off my shoes and walked around it on the sidewalk. It was nice in a peaceful sense, time to organize my thoughts. Robbie Williams I owe immensely. I will one day meet him and tell him how many weeks of my life were dedicated to his playlist on my iPod. I danced a little bit, but I couldn't keep the lightness going for too long. I was walking past the Menil when the lady at the desk beckoned for me to come in. I paused, and I did. They had 30 minutes before closing, and so I wandered around for a bit. Not much was very comforting, their Blackface collection is particularly disturbing this time around. Some of the mainstay abstract pieces were nice to see again. I realize just how much I enjoy that type of art.

I left when they closed and drove to Aleisha's. I still didn't want to go home to an empty house and my thoughts. I decided I wanted to pick out what she would wear, which is seriously more frustrating than dressing my little sister. My 9 year old sister is less picky than she is, and that is saying something.

I decided to call him then. It was part impulse, part genuine need to do something to stop feeling so helpless. I hated feeling as if I had been wronged, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it but accept it and move on. I was driven to a large part by a desire to call him on his behavior. I thought he deserved to not be allowed to get away without even a complaint.

And so I did. Surprisingly he picked up. I think I was expecting voicemail, a coward's way out. I think in that moment it was less anger felt towards him, than just disappointment. Maybe some shreds of pity even. I told him that if he disliked me to such an extent, there was no reason for him to agree. I don't remember what his response was, probably a denial, but it took quite a bit of effort to say on my part. I haven't admitted for a long time to myself that perhaps his behavior is just a passive-aggressive means of clarifying his dislike of me. I said that it amazed me how cruel he could be with his apathy, and then got off the phone. I think he may have apologized at some point, but it didn't carry the weight.

It felt like a burden had been lifted from me, my God. As if I'd finally stood up for myself against a guy I had done nothing to deserve this from (I even gave him one of my most favorite books for his birthday last year). We went out, sat on the patio of this restaurant, went and had ice cream by the fountains in Town Center. It was a wonderful night, especially because I felt as if I'd walked away from something that didn't deserve my attention, or my good favor.

I still feel relieved today. But I'm beating myself over it. I know I needed to call him on his behavior, I doubt so many other people have in the recent past, but I don't know what to do with this feeling of being cut off when I feel that maybe he needs help, maybe what he needs is understanding, maybe what he's going through is something I can't fathom. Savior complex, Tricia would say. Maybe. But I know the pain of excercizing demons, especially on your own. I had to, and still probably am, doing it with my mother. I'll probably never be completely okay with that, but at least I'm not as self-destructive as I was before.

I need a sign. Just, some way to know whether my instincts could be so far off. I think I may have already been given it, but maybe I'll know for certain in a few days.

Those That Lack Class

You would think it wouldn't be such a rare quality, but the more I learn about life, the more I see for myself that sometimes it's just too much to ask for someone to display the most minimal degree of class.

"For all his veneer of aristocracy,
and his wealth,
and his priveleged life--
he has no class whatsoever."

Lines that may not go down in history, but that resound in my conscience as the truest that have been spoken in the past months.

There are such people in the world that walk about as if their pause to speak with you is a favor of a kind its own, thier efforts to put forth the basic manners of expected propriety - is something that should be heralded. It shocks me to see just how one who seems to carry himself with such superior purpose, with such exception - is little more than a coward when it comes to the greater measures of humanity.

It is not a measure of your intellect whether you can plaguirize the world's greatest thinkers and quote the most profound passages - you are nothing when you have no thoughts of your own to put forth, when you behave in such a manner that even Nietzsche would deem you unworthy of his proposal for the "overman."

Basic propriety, a degree of humanity, an original thought - you cannot offer even one of these.

And no, I don't believe it's too much to ask for.

I'd stop the world and - (if I could)

I may be going to London for the summer. I don't even know what to think when I say that aloud to myself. London is... I've wanted to live there since I was about 5 or 6. It was the most glorious place in the world to me. Every trip we took there, every week we speant roaming around on vacation -- it felt like it was the place that I would end up. Culmination. To think that I may be going there now on my own, even if only for a month and a half, is beyond comprehension for me.

I hate distance. Not physical distance, but emotional. The sort that when you're sitting with someone day after day after day, when they're across the table from you or beside you on a bench - you still feel so searingly apart from them. You feel some sort of contempt towards them, inexplicably even. As if the very little things about them you'd never found irritating or worth even mentioning now seem to irk you to the point of ruining your mood. I fear I might be going insane, maybe it's all in my head. It may be, but I can feel how I'm reacting to such thoughts and that distance on my part, that contempt - that's all real. I can't figure out why. Maybe I need to get away, too much stress, to much to deal with.

There was the most glorious, infinite moment in the park yesterday afternoon. I was listening to the end credits to the new Pride & Prejudice film, the delicate piano with the soaring orchestra - gorgeous piece. And I was laying back underneath this massive tree, its branches stretched over me as if it was an arm shielding away the elements. And when I opened my eyes just as the soaring orchestra came in to kick the song into its culminating peak - that moment of such utter perfection, the breeze blew through the trees and grass and all around me, the leaves practically sang in the wind as they swept down over me. The breeze kept up until the very last note of the song, and then just as it ceased, so it did.

There is goodness and there is beauty and there is faith in this world, and it is no lessened because it exists beside pain, lust, and apathy. I need to keep that in mind.