dream brother.

today is jeff buckley's birthday.

happy fucking birthday, jeff. 

yesterday i told waterbear, with no doubt in my mind, that today would be the fucking best day ever. and you know what? today was the fucking best day ever. i'll walk you through it. (chronologically.)

woke up super early and was just immediately in an awesome mood. realized it was raining, which is perfect for jeff's birthday. jammed to a bunch of my old 90s songs. (destiny's child, anyone?) left at just the right moment so i didn't have to stand at the bus stop too long. caught my train as soon as i got to the station. bought the paper at a deli, where i got a free coffee for asking the owner how he was doing. or for just being adorable. (haha, as if.) got to my internship site amazingly early and ran into the hot radiology tech guy who always says hi to me. (spoiler: he said hi to me. we even had a conversation.) made faces at a psychiatrist and social worker during the morning meeting. they made faces back. wrote a song with a rambling psych client. had the psychiatrist from earlier sing and dance for me during lunch break. (he played the tremeloes, little tony, and fucking adriano celentano. then he sang ta ra ta ta and danced. it was amazing.) i cheered up a depressed client and bonded with him. did all my work on the unit. had a moment with the social worker from earlier-- not unlike one i had with puck months ago, with the high five turning into a weird hand-holdy thing-- where he asked me why i hadn't been to a party that one of the psychiatrists had over the weekend (answer: i wasn't invited), asked me where i lived (which i again, answered), and then asked me if i wanted to come to his studio (answer: hell fucking yeah.) then i told my supervisor about a song i wrote (featuring an aforementioned dead bird). he was totally amazed. (although that could be because of the amount of energy i have today.) then i came home, singing grace by jeff buckley at the top of my lungs. and it sounded awesome. and on my bed, waiting for me, was a twenty ounce can of red bull.

today was the fucking best day ever.

nothing went wrong. (the rarity of this sentence coming from me makes today that much better.)

it's all because it was jeff's birthday. i'm gonna try to stretch this magic out to the rest of the week.

and my fucking horoscope today said eliminate negativity and stay positive and my quote for today was from jeff (obviously) and it goes be the best. no negativity. no weakness. no acquiescence to fear or disaster. no errors of ignorance. no evasion to reality. it was like the exact same thing basically. i knew from the moment i saw it that everything was going to be amazing.

cherry on top? the day's not over yet.

add the fact that i get to see puck tomorrow and you know i'm going to have fun this week. it might not be because of jeff's birthday. it might just be mania but either way it's going to be tons of fun.

honestly.

i'm exploding in smiles/ my equilibrium's spinning

puck makes everything better.

saturday, i didn't quite feel up to leaving the house, even if it was for him. so he said, i have a two hour break tuesday and thursday. let's see each other then. tuesday came and he had a paper to type. thursday, thursday. i'll be free on thursday. you say that like i don't have things to do on thursday, sir. if you don't have time then, we can pick another day. so i danced on pins and needles at internship on wednesday, a confused mixture of anxiety and despair. thursday came. the time clicked by, painfully slow. three o'clock came and left. where are you? i thought you had things to do. why? does "you say that like i don't have things to do on thursday" ring any bells? stop splitting hairs and come here.

and then there he was.

i was having a conversation with an old friend (about subway's gag-inducing stench) while i waited for him. when i looked up, there he was. my friend gauged the situation and politely made his exit. can i get my hug now? come get it. no, you come here. he smiled, rolled his eyes, gave me a hug. the first thing i noticed that i guess i really couldn't help is that he's leaner. he's gotten smaller. not too much but just enough to kind of boost his attractiveness a lot. i remember asking myself a few months ago, can this guy get any hotter? apparently the answer was yes. i died a little on the inside. before, when he was the hottest guy i knew, he was beyond reach. even in my wildest dreams, there was no way i could see... well, us. and now he's still the hottest guy i know but he's inexplicably become hotter.

this grad student decided at that moment, to eat her lunch under the staircase where we were sitting. every once in a while, she would shift her legs. bare, long, leggy. flip her hair. whatever. the point is she was really pretty. i lost my voice. we sat in awkward silence for a while. (sorry, ashley. i tried.) he tried to amuse me by telling me stories about his day. and then i had to go to class. i had a huge internal struggle. resisted the urge to sing should i stay or should i go. i joked, drily, can i have another hug? since i probably won't see you for another six months. why would you say that? he asked, before giving me a hug. the weird thing is that all of this made me feel horrible about myself. until later, when i asked, nervously, six months is... when? i would imagine tuesday or thursday is about six months. 

my tail wagged.

the thing about puck is that he seems to realize that i'm quite unstable. or maybe just that i have no self-esteem. but he's still pretty considerate about it. and still doesn't mind hanging out with me. i wish i wasn't such a chicken, though. 

either way, he put me in such a good mood that i went out on friday and got amazingly drunk with a guy who likes me whose friend also likes me. (because this is how i deal with good and bad moments in life. i intentionally make mistakes. do things i probably shouldn't because they're fun.) he left for a while and i was alone with a giant bottle of gin. i drank myself silly. called people to let them know how much i loved them. all was right with the world. the guy returned to find me, completely wasted and singing along to a mos def cd. he tried to get some, so to speak. i protested, babbled about how much i loved puck, and told him only puck would be able to do anything of the sort with me. eventually, i realized this guy was not concerned with my love life or the fact that i was not into doing anything with him. called another friend, who also likes me, and left. where i again began babbling about puck until i passed out. saturday, went to church, where i spent the entire day playing the piano and dreaming about puck. which brings us to today, where i am doing my homework so that when tuesday comes, i enough have free time for him.

life is better just knowing he's in existence, i suppose. it's not like he really did anything besides hug me. (although, to be honest, holding him is kind of a big deal.) he's like summer vacation, christmastime, and valentine's day all wrapped up in the fluffiest snow. i tell strangers about him. i tell people about him while i'm making out with them. i find excuses to bring him up in conversation. he's a six ounce bag of skittles with a bottle of vodka. all of that being said, i realize that if i do what i did six months ago (which was essentially nothing), then i'll stay here forever. 

i need to do something. i'll figure it out. i've got no choice, really. but at this moment in time, i don't mind where i am.

honestly.

my mind is a carnival; the carny is my brain.

i'm really starting to realize what a bizarre childhood i had. the longer i spend talking to the people on the psych unit, the more i realize that it was totally abnormal. the fact that i thought it was normal, at three years old, to go to work with my dad everyday and basically just inhale chemicals until it was time to go home. (this is one of the reasons i was happy to start high school. i got to smell formaldehyde in bio lab.) or the austerity i handled life with. people were amused because i was saying things like, i can't smile right now, life is serious business. and i meant it. but i've been having flashbacks of this video i used to watch religiously, along with sesame street and barney. i decided to look it up, slowly piecing the fragmented shards of my memory together. i finally fucking remember it.

it was a mr. know it owl video. he's actually a brilliant but completely under-appreciated bird with this firefly named phineas. i loved it when i was a kid. i thought it was the best experience i could have within a half-hour. the weird thing is that i don't actually remember what he was teaching. i can only remember a scene from the video where these children are playing and they find a dead bird. they stand around for a bit, get a rock and write something on it, and then they bury it. there's a weird sort of emotional undercurrent at this point in the video but they get over it. suddenly they're playing again. and then i think it's back to mr. know it owl. i'm not really sure how this fit into this video or why it was there or why someone thought oh hey, this would be a good thing to insert right about now, some kids burying a dead bird. it was actually a really touching scene but it totally messed me up.

i think about a month or two after i first watched it, i was in the backseat while my dad was driving down the street. pigeons are always hanging out in the road. it was nothing new. i had always seen them. they sat there. cars came. they flew away. the cars passed. they came back. but for some reason, while coming home from school one day, i was suddenly gripped with the fear that maybe one of the birds couldn't fly away. then what? would i have to get out of the car and bury it? would i need to find a stone and chalk to write here lies a bird that is dead like the children did in the video? would my father even stop so i could bury it or would its corpse lie in the street indefinitely? so i yelled stop at the top of my lungs, my dad steps on the brakes because he thinks something terrible is going on, and then i tell him he can't run over the bird. 

he was so pissed. i can't even explain. (we could have gotten into an accident, the way he stopped the car. so it's understandable.)

i don't know why i was watching this. the scene is actually from the book the dead bird by margaret wise brown. maybe it's the reason i had an odd preoccupation with cemeteries, death, and corpses while i was growing up. or maybe all the cemeteries, death, and corpses i encountered were the reason i understood the video so well. or maybe i was simply touched by the children's care for the dead bird. i don't know. 

this is just a snippet of the kind of thing that goes through my head. i could sit and process this for hours before coming to a conclusion that i accept. and that in itself is definitely not normal. it's not just my childhood that was bizarre, it's my entire life thus far. but i can only say childhood because i'm not old enough to reference anything more than that. don't even get me started on beat the clock with guy smiley and cookie monster.

all of this being said, i need to find this VHS and watch it. weird or not, it's a great scene.

honestly.

i find myself searching for old selves.

as is quickly becoming a yearly routine, i took another peek inside my diary from when i was around six to eight years old. you know, sometimes you read a book and one part stands out but the next time you read it, something else pops out at you. that happened to me. i have so much respect for my younger self and so little respect for myself that i wonder if we're even the same person anymore. i also have much more compassion for her than i do for myself right now. i've said this before but all the things that-- i? she? we?-- wrote while leaping through the door of assumption turned out to be true. maybe the saddest thing is that if i sit and think long enough i can see the first traces of... well, everything.

november thirteenth, nineteen ninety nine
mom said i'm her baby. i do not belive (sp) her. i used to behave.

used to as in... wasn't at the time? what was i doing that made me say that? and worse, what the hell was my mother doing that made me say that? i was only six, for fuck's sake.

august eighth, two thousand 

i am having a hard time.

that's actually the entirety of that entry. almost as if i couldn't even express why or what it was that was troubling me. there's nothing written before this for about five months. i think i know why i said this, so i don't think it was sadness so much as frustration that made me write this. who knows.

i don't know why i idealize my younger self so much. maybe it's because my parents used to drop lines like, you never behaved/acted/spoke like this when you were a child, in a way that clearly said those were the days. or maybe it's because she had more self-confidence than i do. i-- or, to be mentally accurate, she-- wrote things like, today i'm going to win the science fair and then did it. i didn't think anything was impossible. and the cool thing is that i did everything i could to prove that was true. i didn't think there were things i couldn't do. when you're young, adults say you can do anything you put your mind to. then as you get older, they begin to tell you to be realistic as if believing in yourself was the most absurd thing they ever heard. then they plant ideas in your head of what you should do, as if you weren't capable of dreaming on your own. or maybe that's just me.

the past is a grotesque animal.

i've got something that's kind of but not really a date with puck tomorrow. not sure how i managed to swing that one. i should channel a bit of that self-confidence that i had as a child. i remember him saying once, after i joked about him being in love with himself, that you won't be able to love anyone if you don't love yourself first. i don't believe that, really. probably because of the immense amount of self-loathing i deal with on a regular basis. but then, this level of self-loathing only comes with an equal amount of self-obsession. so maybe in some twisted way, i love myself. or at least, i love myself enough to hate the current version of myself. i don't know.

i can't figure this out right now. 

honestly.

when you feel so mad that you wanna roar.

(before i start this long and emotionally charged post, let me just say that puck is still a blip on the proverbial radar. and the only bright spot of this crappy day. that being said, you may proceed.)

yesterday morning, my supervisor, the other intern and i were all sitting around. i thought we were all having a conversation. i was wrong. it's either that or my supervisor was being an ass. every time i said something, he would interrupt or just look and me and continue as if i hadn't said a word. that happened like, five times. so you know what i did? i stopped talking and i focused on the crossword. then they started talking about who was doing what, which groups the other intern and i should do together. then he asked her if she wanted to work with an individual. she happened to choose the same person i wanted to work with. the difference is that i put this in a log that i wrote last week. i wrote something like i think this person is really interesting and i'd love to work with her individually. and he wrote some comment on it like, let's see if we can set that up. so obviously, when she said that, i assumed he'd say, well actually, she's been chosen already. but no. he bitched out. he looked at me and said you two can fight over her.

um, do your fucking job, sir. that's not even funny.

so i said she could do it. one, because i didn't give one fifth of a half eaten shit. and two, because the fact that he had asked only her which person she'd like to work with individually meant that he didn't really give a fuck about my choice anyway. and then i kept doing the crossword. and he was saying some shit that i don't give a fuck about and he looks at me again and says, don't detach or some shit like that.

don't detach? maybe when you stop being a dick i'll start listening to you again.

and then later, i get a text from my newlywed companion (from over the summer) saying that the stupid girl-- you know, the one i apparently offended while i was drunk (also from over the summer)-- wanted her to ask me if i could take care of her cat (or find someone else to) because she's leaving the country in a few days. my heart goes out to this cat. it's old and it's stupid. not unlike its owner. first of all, i live with my mother-- or to be painfully technical about it, in my mother's house-- as do most of my friends, so there was no way i was going to say it was cool with me. second, that bitch has my number. just ask me directly. if i don't like you, it's not like my response is going to be any different if you ask someone else to ask me. you're still the person on the other end. third, both of them haven't spoken to me since the wedding. (not unlike the way it had been before the wedding.) so forgive me for not giving a fuck but her cat can go to hell for all i care.

standing in the closet during lunch break, i read this text like three times before laughing outrageously. i guess i just enjoy life more when it's either completely good or completely bad. or in this case, completely stupid. naturally, i was polite about the whole thing and explained the situation. don't say thanks for trying or even okay or anything, guys. because that would make me think that you had some sort of decency, which we all know is bullshit.

at least i'm still somewhat amused. if i ever get to the point where i'm totally upset, i'm probably going to yell at my supervisor. excuse me sir. please stop spraying your cock flavored spit all over my face. and kindly go fuck yourself. he's so lucky he's my supervisor. fucking politics. i hate it.

this is why i'm an anarchist.

honestly.

"what do you really hate about your life the most?" "myself, i think. probably."

my supervisor had to do this midterm evaluation of me. he also had to observe me with some of the patients. i felt like a complete fuck up the entire time. just like i've felt for the entirety of this internship. even though i love being there and i really want to work in psych when i'm certified and licensed, i feel like an idiot right now.

anyway, i asked him to let me see both of the evaluations. i have copies of the same papers, but the way i graded myself was completely different from the way he graded me. places where i gave myself 2's or 3's, he gave me 4's and 5's. you'd think that would make me happy, right? wrong. i was just disappointed and a bit upset with him. i'm the first undergrad intern he's ever taken, which apparently for him was a huge deal. but because of that, i feel like he's holding me to some lowered expectations of what an undergrad is capable of, instead of gauging me at my own level and taking from there. it's only been two months, i know. but still. he said that numbers are basically shit and the evaluation has no real value. everything we need to discuss, he brings up. this is true. but still.

i know i'm holding myself to higher standards and judging myself on stricter terms than he (or anyone else) ever will. that much is clear. but that makes me feel like maybe he should raise his expectations a bit. he always says things like, you're doing a lot better than i expected. and i see you're working on the things we talked about, that's great. and i feel fairly patronized. i know that's not what he intends but for fuck's sake. this has been a recurring theme in supervision. not that i feel patronized, but that i've got a high set of standards i hold myself to and measuring up to his standards really doesn't mean anything to me. let's just be completely honest here-- i probably won't ever do things as perfectly as i outline them in my head. basically, he said yesterday, patting me on the back, it's a self-esteem thing. you've really got to start having a bit of confidence in yourself. easier said than done, sir.

for the past two months, he's been telling me to get therapy (psychoanalytic not cognitive behavioral). it'll help, he says. you'll grow exponentially, he says. if it doesn't work then we'll try something else, he says. at first i used my regular list of excuses. he saw through all of those. then i said i would do it but first i had to find time in my schedule. now i've got the number of the therapist but i haven't called her. i probably won't until friday, and maybe not even then. there's too many factors involved. too many possible outcomes. too many risks.

i like to think i know myself fairly well and i already despise who i am. confronting my personal issues in therapy... just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. my supervisor said it's like getting a massage. it helps you out and loosens you up. i should have told him i'm not into massages either.

honestly.

in which i am temporarily crushed by the jaws of fate.

in the last two months (or, i should say, the first two months of the school year), a lot of shit has happened. from attempting to defend people against sketchy school administrations to losing contact with friends who are being sent to inpatient facilities, it's been weird and unpleasant. the universe is holding me by the scruff of my neck, the mother cat with the rebellious kitten, and shaking me back and forth violently. learn your place, it's probably saying. as all good kittens know, it's better to go limp and allow yourself to be fucked around with. unless you want to end up with a broken neck.

oddly enough, the place i used to get a break from everything was my internship site. the hospital's psych unit is full of strange people who have a better understanding of life than the people i'm around at school. naturally. one of the patients told me, while drawing a pumpkin on construction paper, you're a really weird person. so i smiled and said thank you. he said, you know that's a compliment, right? and i said, well, naturally. what else could it be? of course, there are still assholes at the hospital (i.e., most of the staff). call me an idealistic little brat but i think laughing at patients is only okay if they do something funny.

at any rate, the whole internship experience is being overshadowed by this issue called the other intern. apparently, she wants us to be conjoined twins. she does all this stuff like coming to find me when she hasn't seen me for a few minutes, wanting to eat together all the time, talking, singing, breathing all the fucking time-- it's a lot of extra noise inside my skull that i don't need. plus, i'm pretty sure my supervisor likes her more. he's gotten into the habit of stomping on my hopes and dreams, using the title of supervisor to make it seem as if it's all for my own good. i still love him though, because he loves fiona almost as much as i do. the other intern always says we're obsessed and turns her nose up.

i'm pretty sure i'm behind on homework in every fucking class. so that's nice. in spite of the fact that i only sleep for maybe four hours every night, i find myself incapable of doing it. reading research articles that are unrelated to any classes? i can do that. writing songs about how the staff at my school is full of shit? easy peasy. learning how to play entire albums on the piano? no problem. the difference between all of these and my homework, i guess, is that i don't want to do it. but now i have to or i'm screwed.

in the time it took me to type all of this, i could've done some of it. i probably should...

still, even after typing all of this out, i can't put my finger on what it is that's draining me so much. not that it would make a difference even if i did know, most of these problems would still be there. and i didn't even mention my budding alcoholism. maybe it's my hypocritical nature that's draining me. i tell the people at the psych unit that it's a horrible idea to use alcohol to cope with the problems of life one day, and bring vodka/apple juice to my classes the next day. so yeah, maybe it's me.

i am my biggest problem, after all.

honestly.