When you've been moving all day, on your feet for hours, the still silence leaves a film of unfamiliarity about you. It's that foreign feeling of stillness that lets all the anxiety rush to your head like a drug. You stand there without a single thought in your head until it finally dawns on you that the more you try to relax the more pain seeps into your skin. Your spine hardens and creaks in protest and the blood collects behind your eyes.
This is what growing old feels like.
When you're tired everything has an air of vacuity to it. Words that people speak at you are sucked into a black hole floating in front of your droopy eyes.
And on the days that you think you're doing okay and fooling everybody people still ask you if you're okay. They ask you if you're mad at them. If you're pregnant. If you've been crying. If you've been dumped.
And then you start thinking about silly irrational desires ... such as moving away from everyone with only an old photo album of your mothers where all the people in the pictures are beautiful and sad. Some energy drinks ... a trunk full of antique vases and an old typewriter ... and nothing more but a passport and a credit card or two for gas and coffee.
Then you blink and realize you're in a brightly lit room that smells like cheese and body odor and your mind struggles to climb back out of the hole you dug for it.
"Betty, don't go under on us, okay?"
"Aye aye captain skipper." I mumbled tossing wet underwear into a dryer and raking the lint traps with my fingernails, like we used to scrape the popcorn bags for salt and butter on rainy night sleepovers in elementary school.
"Maybe we should send her home ... you could call Rainbow and tell her Betty's too tired to be working..."
"Are you joking? She's the most entertainment I've had all week. Look she's smelling the lint she just pulled out of the trap..."
"I can hear you you know, I mumbled while inhaling the smell of cheap stale fabrics. "What if I collected a bunch of lint and just made a bed out of it ... they should really have beds at work you guys..." I folded my arms and thrust my forehead onto my knuckles trying to force out the sleep from between my eyes.
When the time comes to go to sleep at night and you can't, you know it's because of your head. It's the same as a stuffy nose, only the thoughts are the snot. Sleep requires the absence of intense worrying which my mind is not well equipped to do at times, I think. Sometimes something as simple as the library homepage that you use to navigate to articles and links that will help you with your English paper research triggers a gag reflex that leaves you wanting to go into the kitchen and make something to eat just to procrastinate a little longer.
Through all the stress and worry my mind has felt like a rubix cube that'd been sabotaged and incorrectly manufactured. In the morning I would prolong stirring and moving once awoken by the morning daylight, knowing that responsibility and hard work were waiting for me at the foot of my bed, willing me to shower and slip on my grown up shoes to set off to spend another day of my life feeling like all the links in my brain were part of some divine plan to make the world make sense for the first time and my brain never stops. My brain never actually stops thinking long enough for me to decide what I actually want to think about. It's like when you're playing tetris and some unknown force gets to choose what shape the next block will be and you just have to deal with it when it comes your way.
Sometimes I pretend I don't exist for a moment. That nobody in the world is thinking of me in that moment and therefore in that moment I do not exist. I am erased. I am in Antarctica.
And in that Antarctican moment everything is still. And the stillness isn't prickly and unwelcome like the calm that follows a storm.
Because sometimes an Antarctican moment is all you need to clear your head.
And there is solace in reminding yourself that someday everything will make sense.
Even if it's only for a couple seconds.
And in a million years I never thought that I would find my fix-it kit in a person.
Because for the first time that I'm aware of I have stumbled upon someone who scares me with bluntness. I like you. You're pretty. I like being with you. I don't want to lose you.
And for the first time, I accepted it.
I've spent my whole life rejecting anyone who attempted to care for me and something in me finally broke to where I want to let someone in.
I'm too weak to keep trying. It's harder to stay away than I think it's worth anymore. I want to feel something deeper than cynicism. I want him to read my words and smile.
Bringing a relationship into play coupled with intensely stressful management of school work and friends should have made things doubly more difficult. Instead it made more basic needs float to the surface; firstly the need to keep feeling. I never want to waste another day feeling like a numb discarded condom. Secondly, I want to see what this whole dating scene thing is about. I hesitate to use the word "love", a dirty word in my opinion, more lowly than "cunt" or "cock" any day. Maybe my basic cynical instincts will never fully disappear.
But when I feel his smile warm the inside of my stomach I remember that there's no one else in the world right now that would make it so hard to want to be in Antarctica.
And that's how I know that it's not quite time to give up.

a boy looking at you in a way that you know means he really and truly likes you. even though your teeth arent the straightest and even though you take a moment in the middle of a sentence to stifle and swallow a burp, and even though you make fun of him always saying "awesome" and "okie dokie".

i really like this guy. cause he acts like im worth it or something o.O
ITS REALLY COOL.
and he always smells like rain.

im really weird.

I feel way too alive sometimes.
I feel like a breathe deeper than other people.
Like it takes longer for other people to blink. They don't see what I do.
I grew up while I was away. And at the same time I'm stuck exactly in the same spot. It's maddening to feel like I've grown up only to look in the mirror and see that I haven't really changed at all.
I might start photoing again. Because I think that kind of stuff helps people, you know? It gives you a chance for change, growth, and transition.
I'll just eat some cereal and get through today.
That's all I really know how to do right now, anyway.
psssss:
I lava you guys.

oof: out of facilities.
alternate definition: noise people make when they're tired.
still very busy. 347 deviations and 87 messages I can't look at right now. someday.
I'm making a lot of money, but I lost my wallet on the way to work a few days ago, so that's set me back a bit.
I have really bad acne from stress and I'm afraid it's going to scar. It really sucks.
Friends from work are trying to set me up with various friends of theirs. I almost want to ask them if they'll wait until my skin is a little better. Is that sad or what?
anyway, just popping in to say life is insane. really ... that's the only word for it anymore.

Due to an uncharacteristic surge of reflective creativity, I have lately become drawn to the idea of frequently documenting my daily life. I think this is due in large part to the fact that reflecting upon your day and writing down the details makes everything seem far less routine in retrospect.

Life isn't complicated.

All life begins and ends in the same exact way, and I think it is the one thing that I think all of us will truly ever share in common.

Today I slept in late.
The problem was that I wasn't really sleeping, but I wanted to.
Because when you think about it, sleeping is the only chance we actually ever get to be free from ourselves. Because, to me, things like getting high and getting drunk only make us more aware of ourselves, really. Because when you wake up the next morning or reflect on it after the high wears off you're stripped raw and naked, throbbing with the harsh blinding reality of weakness.

And then you ask yourself: If this is weakness, what does it mean to be strong?

It was then that I realized that the first step towards strength was probably getting out of bed. Or, in my case, off the couch.

Today was a special day, because today I met a girl who I have been emailing about a room that she wanted to rent to a prospective room mate. Seeing as my back might be permanently damaged from sleeping on a lumpy couch coated in an undeniably thick layer of dog hair, I was definitely eager to get a room and a futon of some sort. But most of all, privacy.

You never really value the privacy you have until it's gone.
When you're squatting at someone's house trying to find a room mate in a weird city, going to a new college that sucks tuition out of every orifice of your body ... you pretty much run at the chance to take a pee without someone hearing you and comparing the sound to gunfire.

I was afraid that she might see me and make assumptions. Worst case scenario, she might not like me because I might not know what to say. Sometimes when I meet people who are not opened to the idea of endearing awkwardness, they tend to wonder why I am not supplying a lot of conversation topics. I have also learned that when I am looking at rooms for rent from people that I do not ask the right questions. I do not ask things like "What are your feelings on leaving the water running when you brush your teeth?" or "Would it up my chances to get the room if I told you I would supply the toilet paper?"
I mostly just smile and nod and follow people around, like I'm on tour at a museum. And sometimes I "ooh" and "ahh" and hope that they trust that English is my native tongue.
Basically, I just wanted a room mate that was conversational enough to start something, yet smart enough to know when to end it.

Having talked to this girl on the phone, my hopes were not sky high.

"Hello? This is-"
"Hi!"
"Eli...Hi ... Elizabeth. You left a voicemail?"
"Yeah I-"
"Yeah, a voicemail! Um ... so you uh, you're-"
"Yeah?"
"The area, you're ... going to er, yeah. Hang on."
"Oka ... okay."
"You're in the ... going to... you're going to um, Clark?"
"Yes."
"Oh, okay. Do you want to see the room?"

And you get the idea. Naturally, you can't get through life without having a few awkward conversations. Some of them will leave you wondering if you shouldn't have just been born without ears to spare yourself the inhumanity of awkward silences. Throughout the year I have realized that entire relationships can be built upon a foundation of awkwardness, sometimes without even knowing that it exists for a while.

At Cabrillo College, a pair of boys named Robby and Toby took a theater class with me. They shared positively nothing in common save for one important hobby: laughter. I could seriously dig people that liked a good laugh. And that might have been why they started walking me home every night after classes.

Boys have liked me before now. This I know. Although I never have had one that liked me as much as Robby.

Robby liked to listen to other people talk. He didn't volunteer very much information about his home life, though I knew it was nothing to boast about since he occupied the spare bedroom at Toby's house, a practical member-of-the-family. The real problem with Robby was that he didn't know himself. Part of me thinks that it was that very thing that disallowed him from having anything truly meaningful to share. And that sort of thing ebbs away over time.

Robby was just barely 16 back then, and I was 18 going on 19. Two or three years is really not a big deal. In fact, it's such a non-deal that it's hardly worth typing about. The real problem was due to the fact that those 2 or 3 years would be some of the most important years in Robby's life. He would find out who he was in that time just as you or I had.

Throughout that whole year of being best friends with boys I learned a lot about myself in the meantime. I learned that there is a certain risk to every relationship. Because no matter what you feel at the time, memories become associated later on with the things you learn later on.

Toby and I discussed the extent of Robby's infatuation with me, and I found it horribly entertaining. The boy knew very little about me. I had never gone into depth or given him any reason to hope that I wanted more than friendship. And yet he swore to Toby that I had looked at him tenderly and just barely stopped short of whispering sweet nothings into his ear.

Every moment after the realization that he had chosen me as his prime cut was unbearable. I only pulled off nonchalance because I'm a deadly good actor when confronted with a Dahmer-like obsession, but inside I was wondering if he was the cause of the villain behind 2 missing pairs of cotton bikini briefs and if so, was he wearing them?

It had gone too far.
Awkwardness was too ordinary to describe this.
This was a new level of discomfort.
This was like that time I had accidentally made fun of the special ed girl for her horrible yearbook photo.
Only worse... because I was the special ed girl.
And the person making fun of me was Robby, and he thought I was sexy.

And in times of great need, I thought of this strange past of mine and thought to myself "Well, no matter how strange this roommate chick is in person, chances are she won't steal your underwear, at least."

And with that, I set off to Clark College.

Now, Clark College is not unlike any other college.
Except that it has a multitude of Russian staff members. So understanding the thick creamy accents can be a little bit difficult. I often listen to people talk in these new and exciting ways and become tempted to reply to them with my imitation of their inflection myself, which is one of the reasons I find it difficult to surround myself with British people. Because I think everyone sounds just a little bit smarter when they throw in a little bit of rustic accent.

As I made my way back from paying for my classes, a chore that would leave my bank account feeling molested and betrayed, I called Elizabeth to tell her that I was ready to meet and see her room (and possibly walk back to Clark and enroll in a self esteem class depending on how intolerably strange I acted). We agreed to meet in front of the bookstore. She called me back saying that she couldn't find me when I noticed a girl on her cell phone.

Elizabeth had described herself as a 25 year old who acted a little less mature; 22 years old, really, I think she had said. This girl looked like a tall 20 year old. I recognized the type of person she was immediately, because high school was crawling with the kinds of girls who grow up to be this very girl, Elizabeth.

She was beautiful, but she didn't quite know it yet, even after 25 years of life. She was dressed in a loose fitting white shirt and ill fitting plaid pants and what looked like old running shoes. She looked like she'd just gotten off of work or something because her cheeks were lightly flushed, although I later realized that it was natural. She had the kind of rosy clouds in her cheeks that don't go away, but leave her constantly looking like the kind of person who would empty her coin pouch for a homeless person without making snide remarks like "Oh, he'll probably go buy heroine with it anyway..."

The thing that killed me though was her hair.

I know girls that would have given up sex for her hair.

She had tight ringlets that coiled around each other almost like art.

Though, like I said, she didn't know she was beautiful yet, because she had a definite air of insecurity about her, one that I recognized as being very closely similar to mine before I realized that people could be attracted to me too; namely Robby.

It was a true relief that she laughed when she realized I was the person she'd been talking to on the phone. We joked about how the phone delay had messed us up because I had seen her replying to something before I heard it on the phone. It had messed with my head a little bit.

My friend who had driven me to Clark insisted that I not take the bus home from visiting the potential room, so he gave us a ride to the apartments where she lived.

It was a bit intimidating at first because as we were waiting for him to pull up to the school to take us to the apartments Elizabeth's phone rang and she began arranging to meet with yet another person who wanted to see the room.
Great. I hadn't even considered that I would have competition. I had been so worried about liking the girl and the room that I hadn't even considered that there would be better candidates out there than me. And there probably were.

After finally making it to the apartments, which were extremely close to the college, but difficult to get to by car, we began to talk. At first it was just about walking to Clark and how she had never felt endangered. And by the time we were in the apartment it shifted to various aspects of each room. Though I had imagined that the conversation would move slowly and uncomfortably, it was actually relatively easy and free flowing. This girl was such an unfathomably fascinating introvert that it complimented my awkward disposition quite harmoniously. She showed me my possibly future room and I noticed a mustard colored stain in the carpet. It wasn't horribly noticeable, but we both agreed that it was probably coffee. Other possibilities did not need to exist. Things were going too well for that.

The thing I liked about Elizabeth, I've realized, is that she didn't ask the wrong questions. And the ones she did ask were almost helpful because it made me remember who I was and why I was there.

She also seemed genuinely interested. And she wasn't deterred by the fact that I cannot cook, since she herself is majoring in something related to culinary arts, I think. She was 1 part sincere and 9 parts simple, a recipe for a totally excellent room mate.

While showing me the bathroom she assured me that she was leaning towards me so far because I was nice. It looks like a tacky promise written down like this, but something in her voice made her sound stressed out like her brain had been lit on fire and I would be the firehouse to put it out. As I stood outside Chris's car getting ready to go back to my couch she discussed the deposit and utilities with me. And then she eyed me, almost greedily. This confused me for a moment, but then I realized what it meant.

She wanted to hug me.

Before I could make it plain that I was clear on what her intentions were, I offered her my hand. She took it limply and smiled dejectedly. She asked me if I was a hugger and I said "Sure".

It was my first hug in a while.

I was probably not a very good hug. It's a good thing I didn't have too much warning or I might have been worse due to the rising level in performace anxiety.

I have never been a good hugger.

Back in the car Chris asked me how it went. I told him that I really liked her, and that she was definitely more practical than a perpetually drunk frat girl. He frowned and reminded me that fraternities were for men.

Then he asked me something that really locked down my certainty about Elizabeth.
He asked me what she had asked about him.
At first I hadn't understood what he meant, and then I realized what it must have looked like.
Elizabeth could have thought that Chris had been some sort of boyfriend or lover thing. The idea was not that unusual, older than me as he is, she could have quite rightfully prejudged me as the type to make a habit of overnight guests of sorts.
Yet she had overlooked this untouched issue with graceful indifference.
She chose instead to sit with me at her old fashioned kitchen table to ask me questions that held some sort of merit to her.
I realize now that this is how it's supposed to be.
Elizabeth set a good example for me today.
And she sort of reminded me that being humane is more than treating people like sinners in the back of your mind.

When you live in your skin for so long, what you believe to be true about yourself speaks louder than the most meaningful song lyrics.

In short, I really....


really want that fucking room.