Wednesday, July 28, 2010

i spent so many nights thinking

i was trying to remember if i ever wrote this in my blog or not, but i couldnt. i remember having a conversation about it with a friend last year, but i just dont know if i blogged it. so if i'm repeating myself, oh well, what can i say? i have repetitive thoughts.

so i do my best thinking when i'm asleep. that's when i do most of the planning for schoolwork. that's when i can untangle things going on in my life that just seemed knotted beyond help. that's practically the only time i can make decisions. my brain does its best work when the rest of me is asleep. sleep is like a block of several hours where i can let rational thoughts take over. if i'm overreacting or underreacting or reacting in the wrong way to something, i will realize this when i wake up because  my brain spent the past few hours going over everything and being smart when my emotions were busy sleeping.

so when i wake up and still feel sick to my stomach, when i'm still tightrope walking over a storm of emotions, this must mean that this is the rational way to act about whatever it was that was bothering me before i went to sleep, right? everything else has settled into its rightful place, so that's what this is doing too, right?

also, the fact that i barely slept last night and have a wedding tonight does not make me happy. if you know anything at all about arab weddings, then you'll know that i probably won't be home until around three if im lucky. in the morning, yes. i'm already dreaming of going back to sleep. *yawn*

*I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

Monday, July 26, 2010

caught in a trap, I can't walk out

it's dark, and i want to get out but i can't see and i don't know which way out is. the shadows came early this time, and suffocated the light so darkness could move in. and there's nowhere to plug a night light. and there's no curtain to open. and i don't want to look around because they're trapped in here with me. they're denser than the dark, like congealed shadows. they cut and bite and burn. they wrap their fingers around your neck and squeeze until your seeing stars, but the stars don't bring any light. there's no point wishing on these stars, either, because by the time you can think of a wish you're already drowning and wishes can't be used as life preservers. you can't float on a wish. a wish can't save your life even though your life is not the one in danger, not really. they want something deeper than that. they want the part of you buried deep under veins and livers and stomachs, under the part of you that tells your heart to beat and your lungs to breathe. they want that little part that makes you you and no one else. but i can't find that part anymore. i lost it or it was stolen or they took it away because i was using it wrong. if i could, i would give it to them. i don't want to be me anyway. i can't find it; i don't have it, but they don't believe, and they come with their claws and their teeth to look for it inside of me. they don't need to run because they know we're all trapped in here. they creep around silently and i'm left cowering in a corner and straining my ears. they're hungry. and i used to be able to fight them. i used to be strong enough, but i'm not anymore. i gave all my strength away and now i'm weak and the people who took it say they don't remember and won't give it back. and they're here. and they're hungry. and it's dark. and i can't get out.

***

so this is what happens when i decide i need to write but my mind is not fully awake or functioning because it is on its own vacation somewhere cool while i'm here. doesn't really make sense outside of my head, i know. and you probably won't get what's going on because i can't form the right words, i know that too. i'm only posting this because i feel like my blog is beginning to hate me for being neglectful and there are only so many ways that i can say this vacation is ridiculously uneventful.

*Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley 

Friday, July 23, 2010

look at this photograph. every time i do it makes me laugh.

i've been useless at everything this summer, and that includes blogging. so i'm going to ignore the fact that i only wrote nine posts this month (a few of which shouldn't really even count) and expand a formspring question's answer into a post. okay? okay. so anonymous asked me to write about something serious that seems funny when i look back on it. i'm just going to go with the first thing that popped into my head. if you were with me in high school, especially in my AP History class, then you can probably just skip this post and hope that i write something else in the next day or two.

we started out junior year with Dr. Donald Senese as our AP History teacher. he was a really awesome, totally over-qualified man. google him and see for yourself. (or just be a lazy bum and click here.) anyway, sometime during october i think, we were supposed to have a chapter test. we get to class and wait for him to show up, which he doesn't. a substitute comes in, acting really weird. i don't remember exactly, but i think she passed out the test before she told us anything. anyway, a little into the period, we are told that our teacher had a heart attack while driving the night before and had died before he got to the hospital. there's a moment of shock and then we all start crying. for the rest of the day, the five of us from the class would barely talk to anyone, we would get into arguments with other teachers who weren't as upset over his death as we felt they should be, we would slam lockers, shed tears, and a bunch of other things to show how deeply mournful we were over this man who we had known for a little over a month's death. we went to his wake a few days later and met his family. we then decided that we should do something for his wife and somehow came up with the idea of making her a build-a-bear of senese. don't ask me how or why. anyway, we never actually got around to making her the bear, but the idea stayed in our head.

after his death and before they could find a replacement for him, we had a temporary teacher, Mr. Kern. we loved him... he was an amazing teacher. he stayed with us for about a month before leaving us to Mr. Rodgers (who needs an entire series of posts to himself if i were to attempt to do justice to the hilarious memories i have of this man. suffice it to say that the week before the AP exam we were coloring buffaloes in class). anyway, after kern left us to continue his job as vice principal of the boys' school or something, we made him the mr. senese bear and gave it to him. one of my friends even wrote "help us!" on the box to properly convey how much we missed having him teach us. he left us a note thanking us for the bear and saying it sat on his mantle, but i think we scared him with our obsessiveness. i'm pretty sure he avoided all of us after that.

anyway, going through that whole ordeal seemed dramatic at the time, but whenever i think back on it i can't help but laugh at all of us.

(and i had a better title for this thing but i cant for the life of me remember the song and google isn't helping.)

*Photograph - Nickelback

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

i hope it stays dark forever. i hope the worst isn't over.

i'm the kind of girl that will poke a bruise to see if it still hurts. if i have a toothache, you can bet that my tongue will be pushing at it every two seconds, just to feel the dull throb again. so it shouldn't come as a big surprise that sometimes, i like to wallow in a bad mood. i like to sink deeper and deeper into my misery and just let it swallow me whole. i like to give myself into it completely, the hopelessness and despair. i'll watch certain shows and movies, read certain books and poems, listen to a certain playlist of songs. probably not the smartest thing to do, but it's what i do. recently, i have taken to rewatching season 4 of skins. i wasnt able to watch it as it was aired a few months ago because of cousins who didnt want to watch it and me not finding time for it. but in a way, i'm glad i didnt watch it then when i wanted to because it is such a perfect way to wallow right now.

on a completely different note, i think the desert is absolutely gorgeous and will argue to the death with people who say that beauty in nature can only be found in all things green. because really, the soft slopes of sand dunes and the jagged outline of rocky mountains, the yellowish-greens and browny-reds of desert shrubs, the ripples in the golden sand that go on forever... they have as much beauty in them as anything else. when we were driving back from madinah the other day, there was so much dust in the air (wind + not a lot of plants = common sandstorms and things of that nature) that things in the distance just seemed to fade into nothingness. the mountains were barely visible and they seemed like they could just disappear at a moment's notice, all magically or mystically or whatever. actually, they kinda reminded me of the mountain in The Lie. i dont have the book on me and i can't exactly remember the name of the mountain but it had magical properties or something and almost seemed transparent depending on how the light hit it. that's what these mountains seemed to be, transparent and magical.

*No Children - The Mountain Goats

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

i'm driving in my car

i remember reading Tex in sixth grade while a friend and I were in the middle of our SE Hinton phase. there was one part in the book when tex and mace are driving to town and tex asks his brother if he ever wonders about the story of everyone else on the road. every other driver is going somewhere and to them, it's a hundred times more important than where mace and tex are going. mace, who has way too many responsibilities for a kid his age, is suffering from an ulcer and basically says tex is stupid.

ever since i read that a million years ago, i can't help but think of everyone's stories when i'm on the road. sure, they're all made up, and most of the time are probably really really far from the truth, but i still do it. i divorce some people and widow others. i make some fall in love and others fall out of it. i make people desperate and excited and tired. i give them long distance relationships and guilty secrets and business trips. i make dreams come true and hopes shatter. i create traffic jams and strings of nights sleeping in clothes on motel beds. people become pilots and CEOs and liars. they go out for diapers and never come back. they stop for milk and find the love of their life. no matter how uninspired i'm feeling, the minute i get into a car, my mind is able to think up a million and one scenarios from a quick glance in a car.

random note: there are a bunch of emails sitting in my inbox waiting for replies. if you are the sender of one of these emails, know that i'm not ignoring you i just don't have the time/brainpower to answer right now. but i will try to eventually.

*Fire - Bruce Springsteen

Monday, July 12, 2010

they said i was strange

i realized the other day that while i name everything i own, a lot of my characters just go by 'she' and 'he.' when i was younger, all of my toys had names. they might not have always been the most creative names (i had a stuffed bear named Stuffy) but they all had names. now, while i may not sit around all day naming toys, i do name practically everything else: my computers, our closet, the birds that live outside my window... they all get names. but when i write short things, the characters are nameless. sometimes, even in longer things it takes a while for the characters to be named/tell me their names. i once wrote a good twenty pages with the character named FNAME LNAME so that i could 'replace all' when i needed to.

also, you may not realize this from my blog, but i dont usually talk about myself. i rarely open up to people, and a lot of those pouring-out-your-heart conversations i have are one-sided. what goes on in my head is likely to stay there. but most of my characters like to be written in first person. they want everyone to know everything that goes on in their heads - what they think is just as important as what they say and do and everyone should be told.

*Ugly - Sugababes

Saturday, July 10, 2010

this one goes out to you

this is a break from rambling posts about the busy nothings that i fill my days with.
this is a break from pointless posts describing the random thoughts that flit through my mind on a daily basis. 
this is a break from posts published purely so that i have to stop editing a piece of writing.
this is a break from posts detailing the going-ons of the world - be it real, tech, or literary. 
this is a break from me to talk about something really, truly important: you

this blog was started in a burst of procrastination. it soon became my very own pensieve, and the best way to empty my mind when it needed clearing. it is now probably the one thing i check every time i'm online - more than my facebook, more than most of my emails. and you know why? because of you people. sure, at the end of the day i write for myself, but you all make it so much better. your comments make my day (even weird ones from random anonymouses?anonymi?anonymice? provide entertainment) and i adore the glimpses into the lives of all the bloggers i read. in my blog, i don't have to censor myself or pretend to be someone i'm not to fit in with the image people have of me. and as a result, you guys probably know me better than most people. you have seen my ups and downs, moments i'm proud of and moments that make me cringe. you know it all. i have always harbored a desire to become a writer, but i would never let anyone read what i wrote. ever. until you. thanks to all of you, i am getting over my fear of sharing my writings. without you, i probably would have never had the nerve to write a novel, or let people read it. if it wasn't for every single one of you, my writer dreams would still be sitting on a shelf covered in dust. and while they may still be on the shelf right now, at least i've wiped off all the dust and have considered taking them down. 

so i wanted to take a moment to thank all of you. thank you to those of you who have put a smile on my face through a comment. thank you to those of you who follow. thank you to those of you who have ever read a single post. thank you, from the bottom of my heart. 

end sappiness.

*Everyone - Backstreet Boys

Thursday, July 8, 2010

and i hope that i don't fall in love with you... and i hope that you don't fall in love with me



Philophobia: fear of emotional attachment; fear of being in, or falling in love. 

I paint myself with stardust, but every time I turn around it seems like it has just turned into dust again. I choke on the dead air, dead skin, and dead dreams. I polish and shine until my bones ache and my muscles scream out in protest, but every time I look down I'm still tarnished, still scuffed. I hook myself up to IV's filled with sugared honey until I'm filled to burst with sweetness, but every time I look inside, I see acid flowing through my veins, burning through any good intentions I might have had. The scowl on my face is one step shy of a smile, but I can't find the energy to inch myself forward. My laugh has fallen over the edge to hysterical, and my dancing eyes are more crazed than excited.
I try my best to be the best me I can be, someone who feels worthy enough, deserving, of everything she has. I think it's funny how you can be sure of having something, and just as sure that you shouldn't have it at all. But I'm not laughing; I'm waiting for you to figure it out too. I try to do the right thing but I'm stepping on toes I swear I didn't see and hitting all the wrong notes in this song that no one wanted to hear.
And sometimes... sometimes I find myself wishing for you to see me as I do, to lose the rose-tinted glasses glued to your face and look beyond the fairy tales I've wrapped myself in. I want you to see the broken pieces and realize that any hope of putting them back together is long since gone. I want you to realize that the butterflies fluttering in your stomach are really just moths and they're making you nauseous. I want you to grind my heart under your heel and walk away without looking back. I want you to break me so I'm not always waiting for it to happen.
I'm tired of peeking around corners and peering through squinted eyes down dark alleyways before taking the first hesitant step. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder and not seeing the sunlight because I'm too busy searching for the clouds. I'm tired.
I'm pushing you past your limits and you're still saying that you understand, that it's okay. But it's not okay. I want you to destroy me so I can stop worrying about it and just get started with trying to put myself back together. I want to focus on standing myself back up again instead of waiting for you to knock me down.  

*I Hope I Don't Fall in Love with You - Tom Waits

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

i like to eat, eat, eat apples

i miss vitamin water zero. like really, really miss it. in the weeks leading up to my trip i became really obsessed with the stuff. i would drink several bottles a day and buy tons of it whenever i went out. the recycling coming out of my room was outrageous. they don't have it here. at least i didn't see any and my cousin said they don't have. i am craving the lemonade right now and there's still fifty-some days until i can drink it again. *sigh*

also, i think i should mention that apples here are just so much better than apples in america. oranges too.

to try and not make this a completely pointless post, can i just say that this is a summer of marriage in my family. it seems like it is all everyone is talking about. one cousin is getting married at the end of july. another just got engaged last week. everyone is telling me that it is time for me to get married now that i cant use "i wanna finish school first" as an excuse. and my cousin has a doctor she wants me to meet. it's getting kinda crazy.

*I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas - Raffi

Monday, July 5, 2010

it's not always easy

As I pull these words out, they dig their claws into my throat, leaving gashes deep and long that fill my lungs with blood. It chokes and gags but cannot stop them from leaving. They cling to my teeth, breaking them into jagged shards that cut my lips and rip my tongue. They wrap their hands around my heart with a knuckle-whitening grip, squeezing it so hard it hurts and almost pulling it out with them.

These words race each other to make their way out first. They push and shove to reach my bloody tongue. They turn and rush to my fingers when they find the way blocked. They jump and dive and swerve, unwilling to let anything get in their way. They are leaving me faster than I can think them up, creating themselves when they find me lacking.

These thoughts are poisoning my mind, dripping venom into my bloodstream to kill me from the inside. They're strangling my logic and clouding my judgment. They've turned the rainbow into shades of grey and put out the sun. They leave me gasping for air knowing that I'll never breathe again and choking on doubt and insecurity.

These thoughts are light as air and bright as stardust. They've sprouted wings to fly me somewhere over the rainbow where doubts fade like the morning mist. They paint silver linings on all the clouds and plant fields of wildflowers to fill the world with color. They are free as the wind and pass through like a summer breeze, a moment of clarity in the sweltering heat.

*Better Together - Jack Johnson

Sunday, July 4, 2010

swallow me whole

[one] i have these characters that live in my head. i know their names and what they dress like and look like and sound like. i  know what they would say in different situations, i know what they would do. but they don't have a defined story, they dont get to be put down in anything resembling a book. they will occasionally get a few stolen moments scrawled into the backs of notebooks and across folders, hidden in word files titled 'thing' and 'stuff,' but other than that, they wait around in my head. they talk to me occasionaly and each other even less, just waiting for their time to be immortalized in word, to be able to reach minds other than mine. and while i move along my own storyline, pushing them behind thoughts and responsibilities and pulling them in front of boredom and writer's block, they wait for a future they may never have.

[two] last night, i had the most disturbing conversation with my grandmother. ever. i stood in her room clutching my cousin's lunch bag and wishing the ground would open up and swallow me as my grandmother, completely oblivious to mine and my sister's obvious discomfort, went on and on with hand gestures and genuine interest or really good faked interest in what she was saying. halfway through the conversation she switched her views completely and as i struggled to keep up without forcing my brain to absorb any of what she was saying, apologizing to my ears, and hating my cousin for starting this and leaving, i pretended someone was calling me and escaped.

[three] this vacation so far has been filled with a bit too much sitting around houses and not seeing anyone to be normal. everyone is working. the cousins we usually spend our entire vacation with dont get home until almost eleven at night. their dad cant take us home any later than twelve, so we usually dont stay there which means we rarely see them. that in itself is way beyond weird. we spend a lot of time staring at each other's faces, tv screen, and computer screens. all of which we could be doing on the other side of the world. i am waiting for the actual vacationy feelings to start.

*Tick Tick Tomorrow - From First to Last

Friday, July 2, 2010

hello! hello! it's good to be back... did you miss me while i was away?

my blog has been suffering from neglect lately, and today it has decided to let me know that it has had enough. when we first got here (a week ago tomorrow) of course one of the first things i did was to check if there were any internet connections in my room because i am an addict. i have come to terms with that. five connections popped up and i sent out a silent thanks to my neighbors. that thanks was promptly taken back when i realized that they were all secured. all of them. maybe they read my blog and knew i was planning on stealing their connection?? i dunno, but i was not happy. my second day here, i got desperate and walked around my room with junior (my netbook who i brought with me instead of joe). i found that if i stood by my window tilted at a certain angle with my computer held out at arm's length at shoulder level, then i could just get an unsecured connection. of course, it was super weak and kept disconnecting, but it was internet. (you have my permission to pity, mock, and ridicule me.) by the third day, junior felt sorry for me enough to get the shaky connection on my bed. but with it disconnecting every second and a half, i just did not feel up to suffering through hours of loading blogger and then waiting for a post to be published. a couple of days ago, we got internet connection. suddenly, i was connected to the world again. awesome feeling. and yet, i didnt sign in to blogger to post anything new. that is not to say there was nothing to post. when we got a flat tire and my dad thought he could still take us all in the car and get us to our cousins' before fixing it which ended up in us pulled over on the side of the road and my dad and cousin lifting up the car with the jack thing with all of us still in it, i was dying to blog. but the second i could, i didnt.

today, i turned on junior and opened chrome. but instead of google popping up as usual, blogger did. and blogger is not my chrome homepage on junior. so i took that as a call from my blog to stop ignoring it. and here i am. pointless post, kinda, except that now you can all rest easy knowing that i've gotten here safely, because i know you were worried. you can also relax and know that i will not be going on a two month hiatus. expect new, insightful, and entertaining posts in the next few days. or, at least new ones.

oh, and the spare tire they struggled to get on the car (if you have seen how men dress here you will realize why it was a struggle) was flat too.

*Hello! Hello! - Gary Glitter