"I had almost found my face, I was almost me, but my pride couldn't swallow what it ate, boy I hope you're happy"

Break has been going by obscenely fast; it's rather frightening. I keep telling myself to just relax & enjoy it, after all, I still have three weeks until I head back to Oxford. But then I think well, I've already been home for two, and have done barely anything. Slept an absurd amount. Had my annual Christmas cookie bakathon with the Holland Hill girls. Watched most of the first season of Felicity on DVD and various Christmas specials. Went up to Sarah Lawrence last weekend, which was bittersweet & strangely unsatisfactory. Went over to Cari's. Had lunch with Chelsea. Visited old high school teachers. Got snowed in, for the first time in a long time. I didn't even remember how to drive in the snow, it's been so long. Maybe I've done more than I think I have. What I have not done, however, is work. Went to the library & checked out a pile of books last week, and I just haven't been able to read more than a few pages. My motivation is still shot after last term. The last thing I want to do right now is read. Anything at all. After Christmas, I keep saying. I don't really have a choice.

Roo was talking today about how she'll be spending her senior year in LA, and then moving out there. Holy shit, I thought. It's all going by so fast. I don't feel ready, even if I am. Apartments and jobs and grad school and relocating and all the rest. Where did the years go?

home for christmas.

Home, finally. Got into JFK earlier than expected last night, after traveling for over 15 hours, though it took me another three hours to get to Fairfield, and I pretty much dragged my stuff into my room & crashed. The flight was calm overall, though I had a major panic attack right before we took off, and started crying & hyperventilating. The guy across the aisle from me flagged down a stewardess, who came over, talked me down, got me a pillow from first class, and a free bottle of wine--which was lovely, though I didn't take more than a few sips, fearing that mixing alcohol & Xanax couldn't be good, though, once again, the Xanax did nothing. I absolutely need to figure out some way to not be so terrified. I have another two flights back & forth from Oxford, and then all the traveling Amy & I will be doing over spring break. I can't go through life being this scared.


I keep delaying unpacking. It's always such a pain in the ass. Though I will start that momentarily. And once that is done, perhaps bake cookies & watch something in front of my Christmas tree. Being home is strange. Everything, of course, is so familiar but I feel like I'm seeing it--and myself--with entirely new eyes.

To shamelessly quote Gossip Girl:

"When I was young, Bukowski put a shot glass on my head and blew it off with a pistol. Find your Bukowski."

Hah.


I think I just thought this would be easier than it actually is. The fantasy & the reality haven't quite conflated, that's all. Give it time, right? Maybe. Maybe it is still early.

Besides, even with the fantasy there are problems. I want to be so in love with this place & these people that leaving in June will break my heart. I want long-standing friendships and trans-atlantic packages, inside jokes & cute boy love-affairs. I want what I idealized, and maybe some of that I will get and maybe some of it I won't, and maybe some of it I already have.

These last few weeks have turned me into an insomniac. Re-visiting a normal sleeping schedule. Add that to the list of things to do over break.

Maybe, as Amy would say, I'm just being fussy.

But there's only so much time, you know?

Maybe my problem is that I'm always looking for something.

And that's enough introspection for now.

"they say time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself"

Switched my flight from the 12th of December to the 8th; as much as I love Oxford, I'm ready to go home for a while. I'm at that point in the year where you start to burn out, the exhaustion alternately making everything seem a lot worse--or, and this is always the preferred result--you can't seem to care about much at all. I'm dragging myself through these last few assignments. It is definitely time for a break.

The notebook came today, which was a wonderful post-Thanksgiving surprise, though it wasn't a surprise so much, since I knew it was coming, but still. I had this idea this past summer to start a scrapbook/journal to keep the Gilbert Girls (the Sarah Lawrence loves of my life, plus a few equally treasured honorary members) consistently in touch over the coming school year, since Amy & I would be in Oxford, Marty was up at Smith, Eunice & Joanna still at Sarah Lawrence. Over these almost six months we've filled it with postcards & photographs & bits of writing, bookmarks & magazine clippings & favorite quotes. It's become a record of our lives, together when apart. The last time I wrote in it was August 26th. My brother had just left for school, leaving me to wile away almost a month at home. I was worrying about my mother, how she would do on her own, me in Oxford, Justin in Beijing. My internship was almost over & it was my last day at Children's Place, a fact I was celebrating. Things with Alan & Kira had just imploded, Joanna Ferrell's 21st birthday party had been a week or so before, and I was ready to take Oxford as it came. And now it's six months later. I'm living--and thriving--in a new country, more or less on my own. I've met wonderful new people & gotten closer to the old. I'm learning how to think differently & how to write differently. On the surface, perhaps not much has changed. But I can't help but think, at the end of this experience, I will only be the better for it.

"I am learning to be happy."--Eunice.

Aren't we all.

"I can't remember the last thing you said as you were leaving, now the days go by so fast."

Thanksgiving was rather eventful, with Amy getting sick & Emma's wallet getting stolen & Katie maybe leaving, but all's well that end's well, right? We had our flat, and the flat next door, as well as Alex's friend Holly, Fayyaz & Manaka, more than enough food & wine, and a generally good evening. I missed being at home with my mother & brother, more so after I got off the phone with them, but I'm glad I was able to spend the day with a large group of my nearest & dearest.

Now, I just have to finish reading critical theory on D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, write essay on said novel & do all of my fiction assignments, and then I am done for this term, thank god. I don't think I could manage another week. I am ready for Christmas & home. I just need to dig up some motivation. All I really want to do is sleep. And watch The Royal Tennebaums / Best In Show. Soon enough, I suppose.

"If everything I meant to you you can lick & seal & fold in two then I've been so blind"

It is almost 3 in the morning & I am entirely awake. Why, I do not know.

It is never me. You'll go for anyone else, and I know, because you'll tell me about it later. But I can't figure out why you won't go for me. Or how you can possibly be so oblivious. It shouldn't matter, in any event. It really shouldn't matter. There's no more time left even if it did.

File under things not to care about when you're on the other side of the Atlantic.


Jeff wins major brownie points for killing the daddy long legs crawling up my wall as I hid my face in my robe and squeaked.

That is all.

The entanglement of the present with the past.

I think the inherent problem is that I'm writing a story I no longer want to be writing. It's not the story I'm still interested in telling, but rather, the one I was interested in telling at seventeen. True, the themes are ones which I probably will always be preoccupied with--familial relationships; rebellion vs. convention; what it means to be an artist/how you achieve that. Responsibility, sexuality, various emotional traumas. But the plot is veering off in two different directions, I don't feel particuarly connected to any of the main characters, and Aria, the protagonist, has become some odd version of who I used to be, and who I thought I wanted to be.

And yet my fiction tutor insists it is dangerous to just drop a piece. Advice which I foresee myself ignoring. If I am not in love with my story I've already given it a death sentence.

So tomorrow will be spent perusing photographs for inspiration, and just generally writing, since I did not get around to it today, what with sleeping later than I thought I would, thanks to a rather heartbreaking middle of the night conversation with my mother, then spending three hours searching through various city centre shops for an appropriate Queer Bop costume, then finishing Mrs. Dalloway & plowing through some critical theory. Of course, after the whole search, the only thing I ended up buying in town for my costume was a tiara. I have decided to be some version of a doll, making use of a pink silk /black lace slip I own from Victoria's Secret, nylons, and heels. Hair will be in pigtails, with doll-appropriate make up. I am envisioning something along the lines of Victorian plaything meets Lolita fantasy. Though perhaps the two are not that different.

I feel like it may have been a mistake to try a longer piece right off the bat. I want to play around with different characters instead. In any case, I desperately need to redeem myself this week.