gone

my aunt is gone. She passed away last night and i don't know what to do. don't worry about me, this too will pass. i just wish the world could stop for a minute so i could process all of this. And i wish i could shatter into a million pieces so i could feel. But the world goes on like nothing happened. people still have the nerve to live and smile and laugh like jackasses and go to school and work and on dates and get excited and live. and live. why won't the world hang on a minute and realize she isn't a part of it anymore? i dunno why i expected a cataclysmic natural disaster to take place. it would make things a lot more real right now. but i am floating around in detatched limbo waiting for something to give. something's got to give right?

In a word......blah.

Happiness has been that ever-elusive figment of my imagination that i have tried more than desperately to chase down, wrestle into submission and conquer for......always.

Just a thought.

I got hit on by yet ANOTHER old guy today. I dunno what it is man. Why i attract the almost deceased. I mean he looked about forty something. I realize forty is not old, but in regards to love, sex and all things good in that vien, forty is no longer appealing to the twenty-something yr old.

On a lighter note, yesterday's old guy was white. So apparently i have to look good for white guys now too. I always thought i was invisible, deaf and dumb to them. Shocking really. I suppose i will stop looking so frightful when they are around. Who knows? Attraction might manifest itself mutually.

Today was high stress because i had a deadline due. I have another tomorrow and i hate my beat. I hate my reporting job. I really want to quit and become a business major. I already live in heightened states of anxiety anyways and now it is worse. Physically i am always feeling as jittery as one who is terrified. My heartbeat is way too fast all the time, i shiver a lot and i never have peace.

Perhaps it is just the laziness factor. I have no motivation to do anything but i do everything anyway and end up feeling sick. I feel sick. Not pessimism. I really do think something is horribly wrong. I feel as though i might have a heart attack one fine day. Scary thought actually. Hypochondriac.

I watched on of my favourite episodes of Friends this afternoon while having my dinner. The one where Monica gets a horrible review in the paper and Joey and her join a beginner's cooking class. And Ross and Rachel go baby shopping and Ross picks up the saleslady. And Phoebe tells Chandler he is horrible at first impressions. It was funny. I am dying for close relationships like that. Perhaps i should take into consideration that those friendships were idealistically constructed by writers and life is not as funny. But despite all that, your friends are meant to be your lifelines, the ones who make everything ok.

Week three and i still have no friends. Granted i have no time and i haven't come across anyone i connect with or that really gets me.

It is destructive to try and have other humans validate you and it is the mark of the classic insecure person. But knowing this doesn't take away that basic human desire does it?

Thinking

Thinking
It's never really good when i do, but alas, i have been provoked. I just watched the movie "THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS" and i loved it and once again a movie set in motion the wheels of thought in my head and spawned forth yet another one of my confusing introspections. Ya Ya.

It disturbs me a little that fiction is the one outlet i have in my life that frees me to feel connected to reality. But in all honesty it isn't really reality i am connecting with, i connect with fiction. How i wish there were some deep, dark ghost in my past that is the stem of all my inner malfunctions. There is nothing wrong with me. Yet i find life so difficult to cope with. So difficult, in fact, that i run away from anything real and try and hide in a world my mind creates. I try so hard to create the illusion of complication to keep me busy enough to ignore the monstrous boredom and frivolity that is my life.

I fancy myself having a scripted life because as we all know, scripted is so much better and smoother and wittier and funnier and more ironic and interesting and engaging than impromptu. What's ironic is that impromptu gets to a point where it begins repeating itself and almost becomes mundane and predictable, whereas with a script, one is free to create new situations, with new lines and new dilemmas and one can avoid repetition because one knows what has come before and avoids using it again.

I hate reality TV. It is all so boring and silly to me really. I am not a fan of boring non-fiction, in fact the only non-fiction i like to read include biographies, autobiographies and general stories about peoples lives....interesting stories....that almost seem fictional. Where am i going with all this? i dunno. I suppose that the reason i drown myself in fiction and thought and such related things is because i am searching for reality. Real reality. Somewhere buried in all this fiction, there has got to be something real for me. The real me. The happier me. The me i can't seem to tap into.I feel numb. Not physically, I'm not sure numb how. I feel like i need to find perfect love or perfect pain or something hard and tangible in order to feel. i feel like i don't feel. I feel numb. It is the most restless, disturbing feeling in the world.

Not to feel.

To have no impact whatsoever on the world. To feel as if your very existence is meaningless and does not shake anyone else's world even just a little. To feel forgotten even before you have left this world. But what are you looking for?

Love. I am looking for love. They say love is that thing that happens to you when you open up your soul to someone else and they complete you. They replace loneliness with companionship. They replace anger with happiness. They replace emptiness with fulfillment. They make you feel. They awaken the inner being in you and converse with your very spirit. You no longer have to do things to get applause or attention because you hold every minute of their attention, whether they realize it or not. And yet at the same time, you must also know that they hold your destruction in the very palm of their hands. Just as they can make you feel complete, they can break you into a million pieces and proceed to walk all over the broken bits of you until they grind you into dust and oblivion. That's the scary part of trusting someone with your heart. It is a very fragile thing and if you entrust the wrong person with it.....

Despite this knowledge, the desire remains so strong. I want a best friend. If i have to be honest with myself, i have never really had one. Ever. Friendship for me has always been fleeting and i suppose that is why i feel so alone, i have no one i can say anchors me. My idealistic image of love is of a best friend. Someone i can lay down with and melt into and hide in. Who won't ask any questions or accuse. Who won't......who just....won't.It's late and i have no idea what any of this means

Everything that is wrong with this week....

That is a terrible way to start off, but i promise i tried, i tried really hard to find a way to start on a positive note. But you know me!

Ok, so i had the day from hell's dumpster today. I hate school. I have decided. I do not like school at all. Not even a little bit. And what is funny is that my profession is going to be like being in school forever what with all the researching and writing and dealines and stuff. Dammit!! I totally missed the seminar on how much being a Journalist sucks.

I had a hard new piece due today. Ok, so i had a week, but it is hard finding news, i mean hard news and writing hard news. I hate hard news. Flipping hell, i hate hard news. Anyway i spent yesterday harrassing the Arlington PD trying to get get a story. At one point in the day i was waiting for the light to change so i could cross the intersection, because yes i still walk everywhere. There was this older man next to me, God only knows why this man was walking in this ridiculous heat, i am one story but normal people do not walk here. No one does actually. Their pedestrian population is one. Yes, the stupid African girl who would rather walk two miles then get a lift from anyone. You cannot possibly understand that mentality till you have walked (ha!) in my shoes! And considering all the walking i do them be some pretty funky shoes yo! Anyway i digress. So this man was next to me and this truck was coming down, fast. Texans do not know how to bloody drive yo! Anyway i honestly was so hard up for a story i contemplated pushing Grandfather Christmas off the curb so i would have something to report. How psycho is that mess?

So yesterday was fruitless and i tried campus police today (the pretend cops! kidding, actually here they are like real cops yo. shocking) and i found a story! After walking in 256 degrees to the far end of Japan with a broken knee. Ya. So i get there, go through the logs and find the story i want to write about and try to get an interview with the investigating officer. Apparenty you have to go through the Chief of Police for further info. Ok, no problem, i asked to see him. The lady at the desk gave me a number and told me i had to call in an appointment. It was 10:30 and my dealine was 1 p.m. The man was in his office, about three feet away. But i had to go and call him. WHat the hell is that? OK, so i figured, i'll go outside and call him on my cell. My cell is a rotten bastard. Decided she was going to do that thing she does, give me the silent treatment. Thank you very bloody much!! So i had to go use my dorm phone. Which was back in my dorm. Eight thousand leagues away. I hadn't eaten all day and these days i notice these things earlier on.

As i strapped back to my room, i swear i could not get that song that goes "And i would walk 500 miles...." out of my head. It felt like i was dying. The sun decided to be my spotlight and followed me with surgical precision. Bloody tosser. I get to my room, call Chief Hayes who says, sure come in right now. Right now. So i went back. I practically ran back and almost collapsed and fell into a pond. I did. Why the hell do they put flipping ponds everywhere dammit?

Had my interview and was happy i had my story and a pretty good one i might add. So i went to the library and walked around on first, second, third, fourth and fifth floor looking for a computer because it is easier to submit stuff to webct from campus PC's. Ya, so the entire campus was in the library at noon. I mean i couldn't even get onto the elevator because it was packed and there was a mob waiting to jostle their way onto one and most of these bastards were going up one floor. Lazy tossers!

I rushed back to my room (and my dorm is the furthest away from all human life. why does that alwasy happen to me?) and typed up my story at 12:30, submitted it at 12:45 and rushed to class. I still hadn't eaten anything except a Minute Maid Lemonade and half a vile peanut butter cookie. Never get those from a vending machine, they are a study in all things gross. So i get to class and we had a press conference with a department head and a story due next week. Ok, class is over, i had to go to payroll and see of they processed all my paperwork to clear me for payment for my job at the paper. Ha! Payment. They are bastards for calling it that, it might as well be volunteer work, i get paid a dollar an inch. No comment.

Payroll finally had my stuff, i went to the Student Publications office to fill out my encyclopedia of paperwork. She goes, ok i am going to need your passport. She hadn't told me to bring anything. My passport was in my room. Yep, you guessed it, i went back to my room and on the way i swear to you i saw imprints of my feet in the sidewalk! I aint even playin yo!

Went back, delirious with hunger and from heat and this weather makes me look disgusting. I am shining for all of Africa and i hate my hair right now even though my roomate is doing it for free, it looks like a horse gave birth on my head. But i had to get everything out of the way. Got paper work done after half an hour and went for a mini orientation from the advisor and met the assistant editor because the news editor i was working with was in a meeting. Ok, so she went over the beat list and i picked housing. Because i am a jackass. But it was better than Alumni affairs or something. International student affairs was already taken. By a buggery American tosser! Ugh! So i thought, ok, i can go. No, she led me to my desk and told me to research housing. Ya, so there is nothing to research when you are dog tired and irratable. So i ponced around on the Mac (i have to get used to a mac) for an hour and when i thought i would black out from sheer boredom and hunger, i left. I made a mad dash for the Connection Cafe and got a to-go plate.

I swear the guys serving the food must have thought i was a Katrina victim and hadn't eaten in days cuz i got so much food and kept telling them to add more rice and more broccoli and more meat and pasta and spinach and meatballs, fish, corn and ground beef. Yes, i had all that. Yo, i was honestly like third world hungry and needed to eat in bulk.

Went to my room, ate like a madwoman and fast too. So by the time it settled........... i swear i literally drugged myself with too much food, I couldn't even roll over and i thought i had broken my stomach. Thank goodness i opted to eat in my room yo. I was knocked out. It was 5 something and i slept till like eight. Got up for a dorm meeting that i didn't really have to attend but did out of curiosity and because my beat is housing so....ya duh.

And now i am in the library at 11 p.m. ( and i gotta walk back home. fun times). Oh!! I forgot to mention. Ok, so last Friday i wore this African print head wrap yeah? I love it but i am sure everyone else thought i looked like a right loser. So i was walking back to my room and out of no where this wierd guy like emerges from the abyss and was obviously African. Ok, i can handle Southern Africans, and perhaps the odd Kenyan here and there but anyone else, it takes a lot. I am an African snob because i come from the most educated African peoples. It's true, even despite the shameless bragging. ANyway so he introduced himself. I so forgot his name even before he finished saying it. He asked where i was from and i (in my ever-morphing accent) said Zimbabwe. He is from Liberia and English is not his bosom buddy. I could barely understand him but pretended i did in the name is African comraderie. So he asked for my number. Uck. I can't say no, i feel so bad. And i want him like i want a hole in my ass. Well....another one anyway. The point is i don't want him. At all. But i gave him my room number, i didn't want to bump into him one day and have to explain why some Asian named Mui answered the phone.

So he had asked if i lived there, we were standing right infront of my dorm when he magically appeared from behind me somewhere. So i said yes, thinking he might live there too, it's coed. After we finished talking and he said he'd call, he turned and walked off, Away from the dorm. Like i mentioned before, nothing is close to my dorm, you do not go there unless you live there or know someone there. He did not. What the hell was he doing there, behind me no less? Did he follow me? WHo does that? Then the fool calls me Sunday. I had been getting happy since he said he'd call Saturday to "hang out" (yeah right) and he hadn't so i figured he'd gotten my telepathic message for him to realize he was gay or something and had fogotten all about not answering my dorm phone and just screening.

My roomate was doing my hair and her friend was there. What kind is that? My hair was sticking up in forty five different directions and she invites this guy over. Ugh! And when Nigerians get together!! Oh my gosh! Let me not hate. Ok, so the phone rings and i am prepared to ignore but my roommate's friend hands me the phone (thank you bloody much. wanker.) I pick up and am accosted by this voice. I almost dropped the phone. I was irratable already and did not try and disguise that but the presistant bastard said ok, you're busy i'll call you tomorrow.

He called me today, thank goodness i was in a meeting and just got his message and i was happy cuz i could avoid him. Ya, not so much. So i listen to the message and got my stuff and headed here to do some....ahem...work. So i get here and go to 2nd floor and walk around looking for a computer and guess who i stumble (literally mind you) upon. Thats is correct!! Nia, or however you spell the man's name. If i believed in karma i would be cussing it out right about now. flipping hell. So i looked distracted but this boy is not to be deterred. I dunno, i think this boy is going to force me to be mean. I don't want to but i might just have to lie and tell hi i am a lesbian or something.

speaking of which, there is this girl in my world lit class. She is tall, light skinned (black) and has a british accent. Absolutely gorgeous and has this sophisticated sense of style. I feel sooo ugly around her but i ran into her today and she was just strolling all cool, calm and gorgeous and i was taking these feverish, small strides, trying to rush somewhere or another and she goes "whatsup" and i said hey in some horridly awkward way, looking a total retard. Anyway i think she is sooo gorgeous. Seriously, if i were a guy i would want to be with her. As a girl, i want to be her, but nature thought otherwise. Does that make me a lesbian? No don't be silly, it makes me a girl. all girls think that at one point, i promise you. It's just many lie about it. But i am so envious of her ambiance, she is soooo gorgeous. Man that girl is gorgeous.

Ok, so this is really really long yeah? And that is only what happened today. This weekend was a different but maybe i will go into it some other time. No i wont. But i spent it hanging out with my cousins who i learned are all alcoholics. Pippa came down, i was really glad she could, i like hanging out with Pippa. And Daniel was here. It was cool, i apparently am a bad drinker. I had two bottles of Smirnoff the entire night. Everybody else had that in about a half hour. And they all bloody smoke. So Jonathan got smashed and eventually Pippa did too cuz she was saying some funky things in her sleep and Daniel and i were laughing our bums off, it was funny.

Ya, so i think it is time to stop. I still hate school and am wondering if i really can handle being a journalist. At the moment i do not think i have what it takes to cut it and that terrifies me. I am so scared at failing at this, everybody is expecting me to do so well. I think i might be doing really badly in my classes. I hate school. Period.

smelling the solitary rose in the dumpster

That is what everything feels like right now. I feel as though i am trying to focus on the sweet aroma of the single rose trapped under mountains of garbage in the dumpster. My aunt's back in the hospital. She thinks she's dying, i mean for real this time. I dunno what to do. My head hurts. My heart aches.

I have been trying so desperately to change the way people look at me. I am regarded as cold, blue blooded and whatever else CLOSE friends have described me as. Migs said my perspective on life was a bit cold. T downright called me the wicked witch of the west. I do not want to be that person. I want to be.....

Anyway, i am trying hard to look at life differently and project happiness, even though the last thing i want to do is smile. But i have to. It is part of my quest to improve who i am and have people gravitate towards me.

So i am straining for the scent of that rose. It is so hard but so necessary. I suppose once you begin focusing on the beauty and goodness around you, you no longer see misery. Life is only beautiful if you let it be so. So i am trying now.