So, I was actually productive and packed up most of stuff tonight, so I’ll be ripe (?) and ready to go early Thursday morning to move into my lovely new apartment, which I’ll be sharing with Abbey, Corina and a girl named Bethany that I’ve never met before in my life. I can’t wait to get back to ethernet and weekday drinking holidays, but I could do without the whole school thing, you know?
I think I want to change my major again. Probably just because I’m getting freaked out about auditions.
So, long ago, before Erik was converted from his no-sex-before- marriage ways, he brought up the issue about how he was scared to contract an STD if he had sex. This, of course, riled me up because it made me feel like some type of diseased prostitute, but since I really kinda liked the guy, I got checked out for him. Everything came out okay, and months later, well, his ways were converted. So, today, he was telling me about a conversation he had with a co-worker about his first time or whatever, and again he mentioned that he made sure to tell her I was free of STDs. Hmm. Enter diseased prostitute feeling again.
But then I realized why it bothered me. Since I was a wee Irish girl, the notion I had of myself was a very innocent one, and I realized that I felt like I should be in Erik’s place, the wide-eyed concerned virgin facing the experienced been-around-the-block (well, at least to the house next door) person, and not the other way around. It’s kinda hard to accept myself as the not-quite-pure type of chick.
Alas, ohwell, just randomness.
I haven’t spoken with Abbey for more than two minutes in days ’cause our schedules are so opposite. So, today I got her all these back-to-school goodies and I realized I felt like the guilty mother who tries to buy off her child instead of spending time with her.
Woo-hoo, I haven’t gone grocery shopping for weeks and my cupboard is literally bare, and today I went to the grocery store and only bought coffee. I can already see it for next year. The refrigerator will be bare, and I’ll still buy alcohol, coffee and books before I’ll buy food.
Ahh, priorities.
Bubba: Ok, so now that I have spilled my guts about my relationships, what about you?
zosia: Ummm . . . three year relationship, horrible break-up right before college began, made my life hell for a semester, then I moved here and all is well. End of story.
Hmm, I never thought I would be able to summarize that whole mess, but there you go. How things change . . . and all that shit.
So, I have returned from the first camping trip of my life, unless you count camping out for the Big Wu Family Reunion Concert in May, which I really don’t. Eriks a big camping-type person, and so we met in Brainerd once again to toast the stars with Chablis and ravioli around a warm fire with his adorable puppy Keesha. I learned that I have zero talent in peeing in the woods; that doing the wild thing always results in bruises for me; that crickets and a crackling campfire are the world’s best natural sedative; that burning old papers and pictures and stuff from car wasn’t as purging as it should’ve been; that I always seem to become best friends with the boys that I genuinely love and that may not always be a good thing; and that I’m no closer to figuring out what I want to do in my life then I was before.
But I do know how to make a proper camp fire now, though, thanks to the Boy Scout expertise of Erik.
I move into my brand new exciting apartment on Thursday.
For now, it’s back to sleep and then back to work.
I suddenly have an overwhelming sense of unease. I think it’s that song — the Hallelujah Jeff Buckely song that has absolutely haunted me since I first heard it in Erik’s car last night. But on a less imaginative note, it’s probably the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow, which I know I whine about, but is, in fact, not my favourite pastime.
Maybe my subconscious is reacting to the whole year anniversary type thing? Months ago, I thought I would fall apart on August 17, which I had always considered the day of the disastrous break-up with my last boyfriend, but I didn’t even think about it until the day after. I had an oddly symbolic dream about it, but that was the extent of my reaction.
So, my blahness is definitely not from that.
Maybe I’m nervous about school starting up and fall play auditions and everything changing all over again, though I’ll be happy as punch to have everyone back up here.
Maybe I’m falling in love and not liking the fact.
Maybe I had too many Fruit Yogurt Parfaits from McDonald’s.
Or maybe it’s that song. My God, that song is beautiful.
To bed.
Was bored Saturday afternoon and decided that Erik and I should meet in Brainerd, which is halfway between Fargo and Duluth. We met, we drank on some back country roads and listened to a little Ben Harper and Jeff Buckley and contemplated the stars like all young kids should do with the night is clear and the lovin is free and flowing.
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“He offered her the world — she said she had her own.”
“And you’ve got to take a little dirt to keep what you love . . . if you could only see how blue [his] eyes are . . .”
My hypochondria is at an all-time high for some reason, thus leading me to conduct internet research on brain tumours for an hour.
So. The lake this weekend. I always think I’m going to do this long, fun-filled update, and then I lose interest. It was a great weekend — me, Erik, Matt and Luke and lots of sun.
Jumping in the lake: it was close to 11 PM, and Matt and Luke had left to go home to the Cities earlier that afternoon. Erik’s Dad was gone, and we were standing in his kitchen, and Erik, very gently, was attempting to get me to go snorkeling.
Note: I have been deathly afraid of water my entire life, for some unknown reason. The closest I have ever come to touching it is standing in the baby end of a pool. Many have tried, and many have failed, to seduce me into the water.
But I was considering it. I decided against snorkeling, and decided my best bet was just to jump in the water. I also decided a small amount of liquor would be my best courage aid. I downed a few bottle shots of whiskey, and a rum and coke, and felt calm enough to try. I put on a life jacket, and we went out to the dock.
I panicked a bit, and we sat on the dock, in the cold, under the dark gray sky. Erik got in the water, and didn’t say a word, as I just sat on the dock, my heart doing a jig in my chest. Finally, after 20 minutes of sitting, Erik pointed to an opening in the clouds in the sky, where a few stars are shining through. “Look,” he said, “the heavens opened up for you.”
Oh, it sounds corny, but picture it: a slightly tipsy girl sitting on the edge of a dock on a cool night, the boy she adores in the water in front of her.
So, I figured I had conquered much bigger things in my life and I jumped. I went under water for the first time in about 15 years, and it scared the hell out of me.
But I did it.
On a minor note, Luke and I admitted our mutual crushes . . . could be interesting.
The Russian Sub disaster is gnawing at me. I’m completely fascinated and horrified.
The world may be getting scandalous once again.
I have returned from the land of lake cabins, and will have a fuller piece here tomorrow. At the lake, however, I jumped in the water (note that I have a morbid fear of going underwater and don’t believe I’ve ever jumped in in my life), got a flat tire and a lot o’ loving.
Work is torture.
And now to bed.
I can’t find a pen to write this in my written journal, and I need to record this detail because it’s plaguing my brain.
In the dream, it was his hair that was so vivid. It was a medium brown, subtly spiky without the use of gel, with golden strands throughout it, making it shiny and brilliantly soft. I can’t remember at what point in his life his hair was like that, and I don’t know the significance of it. But in the dream, I was mesmorized by his hair colour, as I stared at him from a bus window, Erik sitting one seat away from me. He was on the steps of a church.
I haven’t dreamt about him in months.
I want to be my friend Stacey. She lives on the beach with the boy she absolutely loves, works a shit job, but doesn’t care and is a care- free self-described feline love child. I want that.
I’m having an indecisive week here.
I think I’ve just had a boring summer. I live in a beautiful, but conservative laketown. I live in a house with a girl who’s supposed to be my best friend, but I barely see her, and instead of been a feline lovechild, I am a financial aid slave. And the boy I semi-adore (though in a moment of idealistic weakness down there, I claimed to love him), while has liberalized in a few areas (i.e. relenting on his “no sex before marriage” rule), still doesn’t believe people should live together before marriage, and isn’t the free spirit I need.
When did I become boring? That’s it, I need to create some excitement.
I think the most exciting thing I’ve done this summer is run a lot of yellow lights.
That’s probably not true, but goshdarn it, it seems like it.
“Goshdarnit.” What have I become?
Going home to VA and having my mother visit really screwed me up a little. Not in the way I thought it would — I was expecting to be torn at the seams by old people and sense memories and my “old life.” Instead, it just made me realize how positively un-grown-up I feel and how, in the most obscure of those deep-down places, I miss being a kid at home, where my bed was warm (and an actual bed — not an air mattress that deflates every night in my sleep), food was free and my parents were close by to catch me — whether I wanted it or not — when I stumbled over things, as I often did. It’s easy for me to think I’m independent and on the fast-track to adulthood when I’m here, with no reminders of the house with the purple door on the corner, and my three dogs in the back. But when I’m slapped in the face with it . . . it stings a bit.
I should’ve gone home for the summer. I would’ve hated it, and been probably absolutely miserable, but the year after your freshman year in college is truly the last year you can pull off being a kid in your home.
In a couple of days, I’ll probably be blanching at the idea of even fathoming being in my old place . . . but for now, it’s just a little bit lonely here.
It is never really comforting to know that the washcloth you just used to wash your face was full of dead ants.
So is it love when every other second you’re thinking of the tulips he brought you months ago, by complete surprise, when you had only mentioned once that tulips were your favourite flower, or how absolutely cute he was when he kept waking you up on the airplane to tell you about his favourite part in the new book he was reading, or how calloused and rough his hands are, which sounds like it should be a bad thing, but is actually a wonderful thing because it means he’s a hard worker and not afraid of getting a little dirty?
I’ve fought against it for months because I wasn’t looking to love another person. In fact, after the Break-Up with the Other Guy, I never even thought I would love another person in my life, nor did I want to. So, when this new guy came along and swept me clean off my bitter feet, I ignored what I felt for months because love didn’t happen this way, especially when you had just ended the love of your life. But it does, and it was an accident, and gosh darn it, I’ve grown to love my blue-eyed kid from Fargo in a way I never thought I would again.
On a completely different note, it only takes being around your Mom to have the desire to throw a tantrum. I haven’t cried since I’ve moved to Minnesota (well, not soberly at least. I’ve had a few Stage Four drunken teary-eyed bouts), but I was in a car with my Mom, and I was lost, and I burst into tears, and I was 14 years old all over again (except I wouldn’t have had a license, so make that 16), and damn it, it felt good.
I’m reading three new books: Sam the Cat and Other Stories, by Matthew Klam (almost finished — pretty good, though all his stories seem to be the same), Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk (Erik and I saw the movie in VA, and decided we needed the book to figure it out. I just happened to get it first. Ahh, the boy was never in reading until he met me, and it just tickles me that he’s into it now), and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories. Soyeah. No more school, so I’ll have more time to read. But full-time work now, yech.
My Mom is here for two more days, and then it’s back to work. Next weekend is a little excursion to Erik’s lake cabin, and soon, school will be beginning.
And now, onto my books.
If I could make a potion that combined the effects of coffee, jazz and good reading material, that’s all I would drink for the rest of my life. I am seriously never happier or more hopeful when I have a caramel machiatto, a little AM 1230 (my favourite station) and a little Garrison Keillor or Stephen King. It makes me high. In those moments, I know I’ll be a writer and an actress and a public relations manager (my strange new occupation desire); I’ll want to marry Erik and be happy with him; I’ll be beautiful and sleek and interesting, and laugh my whole life. Ahhh, yes. The world iz mine.
I’m about to go pick up my Mom at the airport. Hopefully, we’ll have a fun-filled exciting time in Minneapolis. Next weekend is a little soiree at Erik’s lake cabin. And in between all that is WORK, how fun.
In his own way, my friend Russ is the classiest guy I know. He brought me a bottle of Italian wine for a welcome-home gift.
Enough of the rambling.
So, my Mom is coming tonight, and then we’re going to Minneapolis for the weekend to putter around. I’m about to go clean out my car, which I am dreading more than life.
Virginia was a good time. I wasn’t sure how it would go — that place can drive me a little insane, and except for a few bits of craziness the first day, it went well. I saw who I needed to see, I did what I needed to do (for the most part) and came out alive. Now I don’t need to go back for at least a year.
I was orginially going to write some huge long heartfelt update about the trip, but then I lost my momentum.
Though I’ve only see half of the movie now, I do know that The Talented Mr. Ripley is absolutely amazing. I need to rent it and see the rest.
My parents and brother loved Erik, which I knew would happen. He’s still looking for commitment. I’m still looking for wild flings. We’ll see how that balances out.