Denouement

I woke up this morning and I can just feel that everything has changed.

I'm sitting here in my room, in the building I've lived in for the past 5 years, in this community I've surrounded myself with, in this neighborhood I know like the back of my hand, and I'm listening to the familiar sound of the traffic outside and the lawnmowers on the plaza - and I know that I'm no longer a part of it really, I'm on my way out.

Next year these halls will be filled again and I won't be walking them. It's weird to look at everything that way. I was walking down them last night, it was getting later, they were almost empty, and it all just hit me.

When I think back to how I felt when I first arrived here, and how familiar this whole college life has become, it really moves me.

These five years have just been so...I don't know...huge, I guess, in a lot of ways. Leaving home for the first time, keeping an apartment, cooking, staying up all night with your friends, grocery shopping, stumbling down 9th Ave on the weekends and dreading class come monday, strolling over to the park for the afternoon. Everything was so close, so easy, so if-you-feel-like-it.

My life won't be much like that anymore. Now the work begins. Which means things can really happen for once. But you know, it's different. No longer in that cozy college bubble. No advisors to run to, professors to bargain with.

I just want to be able to relax and enjoy these last couple of weeks. Sit out on the plaza in the sunshine. Soak up what's left of my college years. My college years. GOD that is so weird, weird, weird that they're over. I just can't believe I'm 23 and graduating from college. When did this happen? I still feel like I'm in 7th grade most of the time.

Alright. Enough talk. Action.

I'm gonna make pancakes. You see? Taking the initiative!

Caution: Rant

I've had a very short fuse today. Then my mother arrived. Now I'm ready to pounce on the next person that dares to make any extraneous noise.

I am sooooooo stressed out. I'm also exhausted from running around all day, rehearsing, and being mary sunshine perfect daughter for my mom for 5 hours. I didn't work out, I didn't eat healthily, I didn't make time for myself, I didn't get my haircut, I didn't take in my dry cleaning, and I didn't work on my thesis. I didn't even drink enough water. I still don't have Eva's comments on my resume and I haven't counted out my headshots or printed out my scenes. For the amount of things I didn't get done today, it's remarkable that I'm so exhausted.

And then the 1 train has been shut down from 72nd to 42nd, meaning I had to get out and walk (not so big of a deal) AND my mother is going to have to get out and walk (bigger deal since she still wears a brace on her knee).

Why does she have to come at the very worst possible time? Why God, why? I miss comforts, I miss sleep, I miss snuggling, I miss having nothing to do for three hours together. I can't wait for this hellish week to be over and it hasn't even really begun. And I should be excited! Showcase! Real-life! Future!

I'm utterly useless right now, I have no energy except negative energy. I'm grouchy and frustrated. And I feel filthy although probably without any reason. Although I have no business doing so, I am going straight to bed.

Or...I guess I should do laundry. I don't know. Maybe I should take a shower? When am I going to work out tomorrow? When am I going to do all the things that need to get done! I just want to cry. I hate how difficult this stress is for me to handle. And how wound up I'm feeling.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Hmmmmm

Seriously, who am I?

I'm starting to get a little nervous. Things are going a little TOO well. On thursday some of my ADD pals were talking about how their lives tend to function on a maddening sort of sliding scale - if their love-life is going great than their career is shit, or if they land a promotion at work, things in their personal lives are falling apart. Nothing is ever balanced. We can't multi-task like that.

Things in my personal life are so great, save for a few worries about a couple of friends who I know are going through rough periods right now, that I'm starting to expect the bottom to drop out any minute. You know, just a vague sense of dread. Nothing new of course, that's how I am, that's my neurosis, perhaps it's not rational - but that's usually how my life functions. It's a learned response, I wasn't naturally this high strung.

Luckily I can relax with the knowledge that I have unimaginable amounts of work to do on my thesis before I can even think about life after college. That should take care of the whole career going to shit part.

I just wish a great personal life wasn't so damn distracting! At least when my personal life is crap I can then throw myself into my work. I get things done. It's great. I mean miserable, but great in a way.

You know what I mean.

Fuck. I make no sense. I'm too dreamy, all I can do is look at furniture online and fantasize about all the sex I'll be having in my queen sized bed and the evenings of cold $1 cervezas with my friends in the heights.

Wow.

Get Me Out of Here

Why someone would want a career in academia is now officially beyond my grasp.

I've been reading article after scholarly article on JSTOR for my thesis (I have that huge presentation on tuesday) and I just want to bludgeon my eyes out with a pencil. These people CANNOT write anything worth reading. They are full of information of course but you have to read it so bloody closely that you end up exhausting yourself after 5 pages. Who cares how much information you've crammed in there if no one can make it through the piece ALIVE?!

I'm now at that stage of sheer and utter exhaustion where your whole body feels incredibly heavy and yet like it's floating at the same time. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Sort of like someone put you in slow-motion against your will and you're resisting.

I am just so stressed out. SO stressed out. And I'm starting to understand that I won't get to feel any differently until, well, basically until June. But by then I'll be stressing out all over again about leaving New York for a month.

I just need a BREAK. Seriously. I need some R&R.

Well I'll tell you this much. My birthday is on Saturday and I am not going to do a damn thing I don't feel like doing ALL DAY LONG. I'm gonna get really drunk the night before and party with my friends, and I'm going to sleep in until noon. Then I'm going to eat a lot of delicious indian food for lunch, laze around the park if the weather permits, and then just maybe I'll go out with a nice guy and enjoy myself.

And after that, I won't have any more fun until the end of May. Work work work. There's a play to be translated and a 40 page research paper to be written. And another research project to be finished, although I've already written the bulk of it one night in a fit of stress-induced mania.

Man, I knew this was going to happen. I knew my spring was going to be hell. I'm stoked for the summer. When I'm out of school FINALLY and all this academic pressure is off, I will be a completely new person.

Right? It could happen.

Merry-Go-Round

They say in my support group that every day that you get something productive done is a good day.

Well, then they should all try looking for an apartment in New York City with a budget of $600-850. Hell hell hell. AND I'm a female in my twenties, so unless I enjoy feeling threatened and harassed every day - which I tolerate particularly poorly - there are entire chunks (the most affordable chunks of course) of Manhattan that are completely off-limits.
You look and you look and you look and you start to make deals with yourself like, "well what do you really do in a bedroom besides sleep anyway?"

I finally went to see an apartment today that I liked. I could see myself living there. However the bedroom is like 11x12. Its just...ugh. Daunting and tiring and inherently discouraging. I just want a room where I can keep my books and piano and all of my clothes. And a full bed. I feel like it shouldn't be so hard but it is a complete head-ache and now I feel totally drained and huffy and anxious. I don't like leaving things up in the air. I'm a stress-ball as it is right now, I don't need the extra worries.

I'll keep y'all posted, but this is going to be a real struggle and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna end up compromising my needs big-time. I'm so tired of doing that. That's the real power of wealth, my friends. If I had more money I could get more of what I wanted. Wouldn't that feel nice?

In A Style Entirely New!

I could not for the life of me sleep tonight. I lay in bed for hours and stared into the dark and finally, I decided to watch a movie. The choice was clear: Mansfield Park




God, that movie just makes my heart ACHE. Just ache and ache and sigh and sigh.

Johnny Lee Miller...shut up. Harold Pinter? Shut UP! All topped off with good dry english wit, themes of equality and social justice, tortured affections and the most impossible beautiful love story ever?

Sign me up baby. If I'm going to be up until 6am, I might as well be doing something destructive to my expectations of reality in romantic attachments...

chicken little

today I felt like the sky was falling.

first it thundered.
the lightening came and scorched tiny spots around my feet.
then it poured and poured for three hours, straight from my eyes.

then in chunks and swirls the whole atmosphere came down upon me and I sat there on my bed gasping for air while all the oxygen was sucked away. all of the forces of the universe repelled from me like opposing magnet poles and i was left marooned in soundless breathless limbo.

i fled, as fast as i could, i fled to the only place that feels free.

and when i came back the sky was hovering above me, watching my every move, without a word, as if nothing had ever happened. as if it would never happen again.

i'm not so sure. i'm not so sure of anything anymore.