2007-10-13 12:23 a.m.
Ranting
^That's been one of my favorite songs forever. I just thought I would post it here in light of what I wrote last time. Usually, when I'm depressed, I listen to it. I love it, but can't really explain why.
^The other really empathic song that I love.
The Goo Goo Dolls, "old" as they are, are one of my favorite bands. Their music is soothing and it gives a good rhythm for me to type to while helping me to unload what's on my mind a little bit.
So tonight was complicated.
I took a break from this journal for a day because of how intensely my revelations of the other night affected me. I spent most of Thursday working through some of it. I'm a bit better now. Sometimes I just need a valve. And I can vent here as much as I want.
Thursday morning's Education Abroad Program (EAP) meeting went well. I have to get started on my application ASAP - I want to have it turned in the first day that the office is accepting applications for my England program...which, granted, isn't until December, but I want so badly to go.
Since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to flee to England. I think this is the best way to get there.
I just have to be careful not to fall in love with any English boys while I'm there. =/ I guess I'll just count on them wanting as little to do with me as the American boys...that's a pretty effective barrier against attachment.
Class made me want to fall asleep Thursday, so instead I ended up thinking about what I'd written about and what responses I got to it. It was uncomfortably introspective for being in a public place, but nobody was paying attention.
I stayed up late reading my tarot cards for myself for the first time since I realized that they're accurate. I wanted to know if I'd be able to process everything enough to synthesize a new self-awareness, a new ability to deal with the universe. If I'd finally be able to escape.
The answers were maddeningly vague, but I realized that I didn't want a clear answer. Hope was held out to me, but I have to be careful not to spend too much time dreaming and not enough time planning and acting.
My roommate stayed in our room for about the sixth time all year. We've been here about three weeks, so that gives you an idea of how often she's around. But I'm getting there.
So today I went to Japanese and was pleasantly surprised to realize (and officially learn) that some of my guesses about how the language functions were correct. It was really gratifying, especially after my brief descent into the ever-so-emo Dark Pit of DOOM in my soul.
After that I went to my history class, which I fell asleep in while my professor was going over Chinese-Russian relations during the 50's...probably not good, but I'll make it up later. The lectures are all online.
Came back to my apartment to find things empty. Nobody was here. So I did the Linguistics homework I'd blown off and ate lunch, then went to Linguistics class. Fell asleep there, repeatedly. The girl next to me kept poking me awake, because falling asleep in class is bad. That, and I'm supposed to tutor her in the subject since I seem to be the only kid who's getting it.
In order to not be the curve-killer who everyone hates, I tell people that I got half the score I did. The all got in the thirties? My 93 became a 46. Easy. It's not that I'm ashamed to be smart, I just don't want to be used and drained like I was in high school. I want my friends to be my friends, not my tutoring minions.
Class still passed in a haze when I was awake...so much so that I couldn't even summon up the energy to think had I wanted to. I think the heat was up too high or something.
I came back to my room to find my roommate and her boyfriend snuggling in her bed. Ick. I swear I wanted to hurl. I also hate feeling like a bitch when the most conversation I have with them anymore is rules and restrictions. Things like "You can't stay here" and "Don't leave your junk all over the front room" aren't things I should have to tell them.
I'm not their mother(s)!
So, feeling a bit nauseous, I made myself some green tea which smelled mysteriously like popcorn for no reason I can identify but tasted fine, and sat in my living room with a stuffed animal and stared out my living room window as the rain dripped down onto the pine growing outside, misting the needles with water diamonds. The sky was a blah sort of steel grey, and I could hear the wind whistling outside.
I got lulled off into a dream world of being in Europe having an adventure with people who knew nothing about me except an invented past that I could use because I had worked out my issues from my real past. Until my roommate came out to ask why I wasn't in our room.
I bit back the urge to snark at her and answer with the truth: that I didn't want to see the two of them snuggling because it makes me want to hurl and kill them all at the same time. That watching them wrestle in their underwear (because that's all they were wearing while waiting for their outer clothes to dry) was not something I would ever choose to do - even if the alternative was to be eaten alive by rodents. I'll take the rats, thank you.
So I lied. I told them I was waiting until I had to leave for a study group.
Actually, I'd been planning on going to a meeting of the local campus Christian ministry where they were going to be cooking food for some homeless women. I like doing community service projects and, non-religious as I am, I like being in churches. Maybe it's something in the air, but it works for me.
But I can't tell the people around me this. Nobody really gets it. But that's okay. I don't care. I don't need to answer anything to them. I'm growing apart from last year's college friends, and it's getting painfully obvious to me, at least. They seem blissfully oblivious, actually.
So I went to the meeting and it was good. There were three other women in the cooking party and three guys. They all knew each other well, but I didn't feel like an interloper. We were all goofing off and having fun, and they invited me to go hang out in San Francisco with them tomorrow, so I'm meeting one of the girls at noon to drive up and meet the others.
The dinner was interesting. The women we were serving had so much tradegy in their lives behind them, but they were still hopeful. They still believed that things would be okay, and they were so happy to see us and talk to us about things. It was inspiring, almost, especially since survival has been a subject weighing heavily on my mind - especially recently.
One woman I was talking with over our burritos was telling me that the most important thing she had learned from another church (because obviously religion figured heavily into things at this gathering) was that once you give up, you're dead. "Never stop trying," she said, "because that's how you know you're alive."
She was referring to being strong in one's faith and persevering in life and school, particularly, but it resonated with me.
After all, I'm the one who doesn't believe in coincidence. I believe that if something resonates with you, you were meant to hear it and act on it, and I live accordingly. It's one way of learning not only how to avoid mistakes but how to succeed by watching others' examples.
I also talked a lot with two of the other women there about our church experiences prior to today. My experience consists entirely of a rather non-religious background and an only-vaguely religious youth group experience. Theirs were actually similar, and I guess I made a couple of new friends today. One of them was in a relationship with the third girl, and the other was engaged to one of the men there. It was quite sweet.
The conversations got me thinking. Not yet in words, more in vague impressions and feelings, so when I get to words I'll make sure to fill it in here.
After we were done we went back downstairs to get our stuff and the guy in charge blessed some bread and fruit juice for communion. I know there's some rule somewhere that those who aren't baptized shouldn't take communion, but in a group of seven, it would have been a tad strange not to.
I figure god will understand and if he/she/it/they doesn't/don't, they're clearly not god and I don't need to worry. :-P
Yay, blasphemy. We made lots of cannibal and vampire jokes as we ate the french bread and juice, and it was just so lighthearted and friendly. A good counterbalance to what's been going on in my mind and heart lately.
So tomorrow I'm going to San Francisco to hang out, and yet I can't really tell anyone because nobody would really get it. It's weird that I feel almost like I have to live a dual life, after all, it's not like my friends don't know that I'm not exactly the type to become a Christian. They know I just like hanging out with those types of people and doing the community service projects that they tend to organize.
They gave me a ride back to my apartment after all was said and done, and I went to one of my friends' birthday gatherings. Almost everyone was already there, even my roommate, to my surprise.
The girl looked depressed as hell, and everyone else was happy. It was such an odd juxtaposition. She's supposed to be the cheery one, I'm supposed to be the morose one.
I didn't get it.
I got there at 8. At 9:15, she left, saying that her boyfriend was waiting for her and had been since 9. We all tried to persuade her to stay.
She refused, and just looked miserable and kind of angry.
I pointed out that he wouldn't die if he didn't see her for a bit longer, and she gave me an odd look and criticized my word choice. He's the one who had a seizure last year before I decided to just wash my hands of his sorry ass.
She's the one who found him.
So yeah, it was an admittedly bad choice of words, but it's been a year since that happened. And seriously, he WON'T die without her around.
Their relationship bothers me. I admit it freely. I am horrifically biased against them being together and if they - god forbid - actually end up being meant for each other I will never visit her in her home and he will not be allowed on my street let alone inside of my dwelling.
But their relationship bothers me for many reasons. These range from the fact that he makes my room smell like armpit when he's over to the fact that their "games" too closely resemble sex games for me to feel comfortable. They also run the gamut from the fact that she's getting angry at TEN friends who love and care for her for disliking her boyfriend to the fact that she looked absolutely miserable all night long.
It just really gets to me.
It also doesn't help that I know his relationship history and it makes me uncomfortable. He got a girl pregnant in high school. She had an abortion and got ridiculously messed up emotionally over it - and she was screwy to begin with. My roommate is screwy to begin with.
Maybe it's easy for me to say that she should dump the bastard, not having any relationship history to speak of. But seriously, if ten of my friends hated a guy, didn't want me dating him - let alone that one of those friends is his ex - it would say to me very clearly that the problem is with the guy, not the friend advising me to get the hell away from him. If a relationship starts with people sneaking around and starts on the supposition that you were dumped by your previous boyfriends for not sleeping with them (so you then gave consent to the current jackass) and your entire emotional environment is screwed up and angry and depressing, the people involved have no business being together.
These things I believe:
-If you have to keep a relationship secret, it's not a relationship.
-If you can't handle your problems by yourself - or at least deal with them on the day to day by yourself with maybe a little help - then you have no business being in a relationship. Co-dependency is not an option.
-If you are in an emotionally vulnerable state, you should not be increasing that problem by cutting off your friends - who were there long before the guy and will be there long after - and you should not be in any relationship more involved than friendship until you can begin to get your shit together.
-If more than one of your friends dislikes someone you're dating and can provide reasons - logical ones - why, you owe it to them to consider what they're saying.
-If you were dumped by guys for not having sex, the answer is not to have sex! If a guy won't respect you that much, he's not worth your bloody time. And offering to basically be his breathing sex toy so that you don't have to be alone is nothing if not an enormous sign saying "YOU ARE NOT MATURE ENOUGH TO BE HAVING SEX. AND CERTAINLY NOT WITH THIS GUY!"
-If a guy is your best friend's ex and she hates his guts, you shouldn't date him. Chances are, there's a reason she hates his guts.
-If he was jerking you around because "he still loved" said ex six months after their 3 week relationship ended and he thought they might one day get back together, he's not worth your god damn time!
-If you can't stand that your friends don't like a guy, so you tell one of them that the more they oppose your relationship the more you're going to be together, that says that you are too immature to be dating someone. Note to my roommate: dating him just makes us hate him more. We don't like what he's doing to you, and we will NEVER accept him into our group. We'll allow ourselves to be eaten alive by rats first. We don't care how sad you think it is that we were his only "friends" and now we can't stand his ass and you don't want him to be left alone. PITY IS NOT A REASON TO BE INVOLVED WITH SOMEONE. NOR IS PASSIVE-AGGRESSION OR TRYING TO GET SOMEONE ACCEPTED INTO A GROUP THAT SATAN HIMSELF WOULD HAVE BETTER LUCK WITH. At least the Lord of Darkness has a cool title. ;)
...all these, and more, have happened in this situation.
The worst part is, she refuses to listen. Even assuming that we can see her long enough to say more than hello, HE'S always here! And not only is he always here, but if you ask him to leave, she leaves too, or gives you one of those reproachful glares that we all know means "I don't care how valid what you say is, I won't listen."
It's absolutely maddening!
And I just don't know what to do.
Maybe I should just let her crash. It's her life, right? And if she doesn't want or take my advice, I can't be respobsible for what happens to her, right?
Hell, I can't let myself be responsible for her anyway. She's on a one-way crash course. She refuses to see that.
The hardest part about this is that I can't make myself NOT care. Can't make myself NOT responsible.
I hate caring about people.
No I don't.
I just hate when people refuse to be helped. Not that I'm some sort of guru or anything, but we're talking COMMON SENSE here! It's not like this is one of the finer points of relating such as "what does see you later mean EXACTLY?" This is like, basics. Ground zero.
I swear to god, I will always listen to what my friends tell me about any guy I may meet. (And that right there is my other barrier against falling for an English boy while I'm abroad. So ha!)
Shit. It's 1:30. I have to be up soon so I can meet up with everyone tomorrow. I'll be back later with more raving.
HUGS to all my friends out there. :) Back | Older | Current | Next
