Not a home?

I have a home.

I’m currently back home. It is, by all accounts, home.

This word.

This word, it means so much.

Right now, I could never go back to college.

I could stay right here and drive every day to another mountain, another friend, another place with the sunroof back and the windows down and the bass turned all the way up. I could watch Californian sunsets forever. Driving west on Colorado Blvd., the smog of the San Gabriel Valley capturing golden rays in a jar meant for fireflies, fogging up the sides with breath made of pastel paints, intently smearing the thick mess and masterpiece over my windshield.

These rows of palm trees are made for me. These hiking trails are made for me. These night views of Los Angeles are made for me.

I was made by them.

And so I was made for them.

But I was also made for something much greater (We’ll get to that.)

I was afraid it would be strange to come back home: that it would only be “home,” a place I had grown up in, a place I had a perfunctory obligation to and a place where I would look for things that were not truly there – nor had ever truly been there. I was afraid of stilted conversations, forced small talk, and solemn reflections.

Now I’m equally afraid that I’ll lose something beautiful here and that I won’t find anything to equal it back “there.”

There. I mean. No quotation marks necessary. …I hope.

And yet (Wait)

These people know me. I am known. In a way that makes me wonder why I can’t cuss out people the same way back on the side of the Atlantic, can’t get excited over the same things, can’t watch the sunset with my head on someone’s shoulder or blast my music and have someone appreciate it.

And yet

There is hope

It’s a new year

2012.

A new life

And I was never made for Los Angeles. Or palm trees. Spanish architecture or Asian enclaves. The lack of real Christmas spirit. Winter style of shorts and Uggs. I will never be a Stanford girl (and I will always love Berkeley).

I will miss Disneyland. And Pinkberry, and AU, tea houses, Mount Wilson, Farnsworth Park, the Enchanted Forest, the Pacific Ocean, San Marino streets at night, the people, my Lexus, my life.

But there is something I have been dreaming about for the past four years – it exists, it is there, and I have found it. The amazing part. I, too, am there. Useless to question how, or why, for all the facts and surmises and suppositions are gone now and I am simply… there.

No quotation marks.

There.

And there will be new people. New understandings, new discoveries, new knowledge. Connections to make: the real kind, not the Wharton kind. (Though I suppose some mundane worldly connections to make, too.)

A future.

I have a future (?) .

And for the first time in 17 years, it is not here. It is…

entirely uncertain

.

For once again in 17 years, I have new beginnings to attend to -

I no longer want to call this place home.

It is too nice to return to, too right and too fitting. I want to come back and be like a rectangle to a square hole -

I would have fit, but I have grown.

A large part of me still fits inside. Only, that fit is theoretical. I’ll take that fit with me wherever I go. I’ll retain that history and in some way, in many ways I’ll still belong. And I didn’t break anything (I won’t break anything. Please let me hold on to these things)

but

I will have a new home.

(new year’s resolution)

I will make a new home for myself, and it will be as equally and permanently mine.

And it will be worth a thousand missed sunsets.

somehow

this time you think it’ll be different (even though it’s impossible, it will never happen, it’s just a fantasy)

and then you end up

waking up

this. is then. is now.

i know. you know. that this would never happen. hundreds, billions of reasons (forget self-loathing, forget social convention, forget the way it simply isn’t right) it would never work out.

you know this. i know this. i know the whole candy-hearted spiel, the nonchalant introduction and the unjudging first impression and then all of a sudden i find myself smiling just a little too often. cutting through buildings by walking lightly over the impossibly green glass, a giddy grin teasing around the edges of my mouth. thinking of him.

and then there’s a catalyst – a yearbook deadline, a speech competition, an inexplicably attractive pop star – and it teeters on the edge of obsession before i fall headfirst into a canyon, before wide-eyed mania swallows me whole — body and soul.

before, it was just innocent musing (or so i told myself). before, it was just a little guilty dreaming (or so i tell myself). but now… now, something is wrong. and it shouldn’t be this way. and why-oh-why are we doing this again? mind, body, heart and soul and everything is in accordance: common sense dictates, rational thinking dictates, even the center of my emotions rings out with the very final statement that this should not be happening.

oh, but oh, it is. and i am lost.

writing the same blog posts over and over. reacting to the same things. the same dreams. these impossible fantasies, these ridiculous imaginings.

but i have a built-in defense system. you come in, you tear down my walls, you raise a hell of a flurry of a storm but i will force you out. say no no no a million times (give in twice as many); some time in the faraway future, my memories of you will no longer throw themselves to the front of these battle lines. no more dreams. no more imaginings.

one day it will all be over.

our eyes will meet in a hallway, and i will wonder -

what was that all about?

a normal teenage girl wishing that someone would find her the perfect christmas present. looking forward to september and reneging on her entire world perspective of optimism. kindasorta a nerd. and a dweeb. and a geek. who really wants to own legit boots but cannot pull them off.

can’t live without tissue boxes, hot water, or my laptop. sweatpants are a new thing but they’re catching on quite quickly – and these nice indoor booties, too. two (six) pairs of glasses but passively wishes she had contacts. loves the printer in her room. hates awkward silences but appreciates it when best friends discuss their lesbian tendencies directed towards her.

believes in the “right” thing to do but has little respect for those waiting for every moment to feel that way. needs to use the bathroom. too lazy to move. spiller of secrets. needs a few big chances – a few big changes.

but hey, there’s always tomorrow!

My thermos is singing to me. She really is. Sitting on my desk, next to me in her plump silverness. Such beauteous sleek lines, plunging upward as downward necklines go. Lush. Throbbing. Full of wetly smacking and damp promises. So… pneumatic. And welcoming. If she were flesh she would be a large black woman with welcoming folds. Squeezing me into her ample bosoms and wellsprings of deep suffocating love. Envelop me. Drown me in it all. All this warmth. Can’t swim, no staying afloat

because I simply want to sink

down,

down

into land mines. And ocean. And blue whale penis (Corpus Christi) fry me some please? Calamari and string beans. With snow. Melting in my mouth, melting in my hands… throwing snowglobes on the ground. Miss me too.

I lahv you. Oh. I see you drivin’ roundtown {pink Post-It’s} plastered to your windshield and your hair blowing in the breeze. Sweep. Swoosh. Flutter. Glut glute glutter glitter SPAZ SPAZ WHAT???

incidentally i am into neither tentacle rape nor mental illnesses. neither of these get me off. INTERNET. I AM A NORMAL PERSON. AND ALL OF THIS SOMETIMES HAPPENS ACCIDENTALLY _T_T_T_

beautiful poetry.

Love hurt anger desire lust neednowwant

Tears raining down on drenched earth

Trappings of woe                 Declamations of devotion

Speeches made from balconies

Swinging from rooftops, belting out all this poetry all of these noble words

My heart is bursting at the seams with all this feeling and I simply must let you know

With rhyme

And verse

And rhythm

and spotty Capitalization

why I could pen an entire novel

verses and

verses

of curliques and pointless musings and beautiful rhapsodies

Ode to a Sky-Lark

Eulogy of a Tree Frog

Requiem for a Trash Heap

such beautiful harmony.

An entire World of Possibility

opening up before me

Whapow! Bazinga!

what utter joy

what speeds on to yonder horizon

Haikus and sestinas and villanelles

> (generic nature line here)

So much

so much in the world Open            for one who cares to see

for One with the Ability

hand to pen and pen to paper

create a masterpiece

Zen

beauty

awe.Rapture-splendor

fill the world with amazingness

. (but                                              nothing for the one devoid of emotion)

Our lives fade to grey with each passing day.

The curtain is falling, our time is near.

We focus our eyes on the final frontier

Blind to the moments we could take away,

Caught up in dreams of the following year.

Too soon our smiles become a veneer

Hiding the apathy long underway;

The curtain is falling, our time is near.

Our eyes on the prize, we appear cavalier

These days flicker by, but our hearts only stay

Caught up in dreams of the following year.

Friendships and memories will all disappear

Our last year is here and there’s nothing to say

The curtain is falling, our time is near.

Each fleeting moment, a lost souvenir

We realize tomorrow what we missed today

Caught up in dreams of the following year

The curtain is falling, our time is near.

Well. Ideally, something will happen. But I don’t know, I’ve learned a bit about myself and I honestly don’t know what I want anymore. No, I lied, I know what I want. I know exactly what I want. I also know what I should want, and are these just pipe dreams or will I be able to maybe get a glimpse of bliss sometime soon?

I want to go back to Veteran Day’s weekend. Back to alumni interviews and chatting over coffee and daydreaming about liberal arts colleges. Back to looking nice and feeling pretty and being excited for the future.

What I want: to be happy. And maybe to figure out who I am by surrounding myself with some new people… people who talk about the things I like to talk about. People who don’t associate everything with grades or competition or confusion. People who don’t find my thought process hard to follow. Because, I swear, everything makes sense up here. You just don’t see it. One thing leads to another, pseudo to pedo, wiggling snake eye blossoms to tendrils of hope. It all connects in my head.

And when I say I care and you say you don’t… I try to stifle my protests. Try to hold back the suppositions and general outrage. You’re right, not everybody sees things like I do. Not everybody gives a damn about the bystander effect. Not everybody can “buy into” an Honor Code. And not everybody stops in the middle of the street to help up complete strangers.

I’m a selfish person. I know it and I don’t need to pretend I’m not. So then it makes me wonder – how can you possibly be more selfish than I am? Quite interesting, indeed. And since when did we become such different people? Since when did you get lost between my jumps in logic, and since when did I start to hate you? Questions, questions. Everywhere.

And you’re missing.

So I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to walk into the same classrooms everyday and speak to the same people and struggle under the same static responsibilities.

Like I said, I hate coming back to school after new experiences. To quote myself from almost exactly a year ago, “It’s as if my life has stretched to encompass something novel and wonderful, but its loss leaves me wondering whether I have anything left.”

There is nothing much happening… there is nothing much wrong.

I don’t understand.

What is this sunburst pattern in the corner of my eye? What flicker of which thing keeps flitting in and out of my peripheral vision?

I hope you don’t have some mental shrine to my middle school self…

No, I admit. Just hundreds and thousands of complexes: an inability to find the right one person; a dissatisfaction in everything from my friends to my family to the amount of fun I can or cannot have; a subconscious associating of every grand negative thing, every next break in a friendship; this ridiculous all-consuming screaming need for something better.

Please don’t worry. It has nothing to do with you.

I can do that, I think to myself. That’s beautiful. That’s moving. I can do that.

(But I can’t)

And I know I can’t. Two levels of can – actual ability, and mental ability – I can do that. Only… I can’t.

My capitalization is off. Something is off. Something is off and I don’t know what it is. I type in all caps using the shift key. I don’t cheat and use Caps Lock because – well, because… because it’s cheating. Because pressing the shift key is cathartic even if my pinky hurts after a while. Because because because can you please come over and hold me?

No, what are you talking about? I was only kidding. Just stay where you are.

(Thank you for getting up)

Nothing is wrong.

There is absolutely nothing wrong. There can’t be. I’m not depressed ormaybeiam But there’s no reason for me to be. I don’t have a boyfriend in Ohio. I don’t hate everyone around me. I don’t have an Alaska Young Syndrome. And my parents don’t hate me.

I’m… fine.

There’s nothing wrong with me because there is no reason for anything to be wrong with me. Why are you being unhappy? Suck it up. You lost because you deserved to lose. ThankyouMrIrie (I don’t understand Monica’s fascination with you) for those kind words of welcome because that is exactly how I feel.

There is nothing I am losing… there is nothing much happening.

But – but I need to break down anyway, I need a boyfriend I need a best friend I need a parent to come and sit down next to me but it can’t be my Dad. It can’t be anyone I know.

Because nobody is right for me.

I am right for nobody.

Stop being ridiculous (don’t ever put yourself down like that) thankyouTodd for those kind words of hypocrisy but I will anyway.

Can you please come over? Sit down next to me on my air mattress and just hold me. Could you please not say anything? Just let me cry, cry into your shoulder. And… use the right voice. (Your sexy lover voice. Totally.)

But.

Please. Please, if you’re out there. Find me. I’m looking I swear I am but I can’t wait forever because I’m starting to fall apart inside I really am and I need you to come I need you to tell me that it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay for me to fall apart

because nobody has ever told me that before

and I’d just like some confirmation

I’d just like a hug

one that lasts for hours and maybe

maybe you could tell me that there’s nothing wrong with me

right?