feeling sentimental

i come home in the evenings to a house full of light.
of everything that's changed in the past few months, this is what i notice most. the laughter, the hugs, the "where were you? we missed you at dinner!" - that's what's making the difference. yes, my job kind of sucks; and yes, i kind of hate not being a full-time student right now; but i live with people who like me, and maybe even love me, and that makes everything worthwhile.

fairytales

it's the way you love me
it's a feelin' like this
it's centrifugal motion
it's that perpetual bliss
This Kiss - Faith Hill

love doesn't actually work like this. a relationship can't be all smiles and bliss. someone who actually loves you will go through so much with you: illness; money trouble; fears; and yes, fights too.
love is heartbreaking and it will make you cry. it will hurt you deep inside so badly that it makes you sick sometimes. love is not easy, no walk in the park. it's allowing one person to bring you by turns utter bliss and deep-reaching pain, because you do the same to them whether you know it or not.
there is no way for any relationship to be simple. human beings are by their very nature complicated creatures. love is being willing to work with this complexity and all the curveballs it may throw in someone other than yourself.
that is how you know you've found love.

people worry too much

i love my friends and i get that they love me back, but it still freaks me the hell out when i get people worrying about me. especially on a day like today when i'm running on 3 hours of sleep since yesterday morning and i'm feeling sorry for myself and i kind of just want to wallow in it. as of about an hour ago i'm actually pretty good. i have a new room that is going to be wonderfully sunny and it is yellow. life is just weird sometimes.

is this how dan savage feels?

sometimes i wish people would stop asking me for relationship advice. i'm on my third boyfriend and finally in a stable relationship. that doesn't mean i have any idea about how anything works. i got lucky. that's about it.
and just because i'm a girl doesn't mean i can understand your ex. i don't know why she stalks you, i don't know why she defriended you on facebook, I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. stop asking me. and stop asking me about cold heartless exes, because i am one and i frankly can't see your perspective.
i don't give advice voluntarily. this might be because it doesn't normally work.

walk on

The sun rises again.
No matter the storms we face.

If raindrops should fall on your shoulders,
let us all tide you over

If the clouds seem to darken where you stand,
please let your loved ones take your hand

And if there is one thing I’d like you to know,
keep this in mind wherever you may go:

If thunder strikes to make the sunny days
seem much less benign
Then the moments passed will make future rays
a much brighter, stronger shine.

(reblogged from a dear friend of mine, Black Polos And Sweaters)

there is no more to say. wherever you go it will rain on you at times; maybe sunshowers, maybe a mudslide or two. but inevitably, the sun comes back sometime. all you have to do is keep walking, with whoever will hold you up if need be, and you'll make it.

i don't want to grow up.

the phone never rings
because you never call
and everyone's asking why i've been such a mess

it kind of hit me this week that people grow up and go places. a bunch of really awesome people made it up to boston for my birthday this past weekend and set the bar pretty high for my next few birthdays. but now they're all gone, and i don't get to see most of them until term starts again, and it's making me more depressed than end of term did. there's too much permanence to this moving away business. a year from now my best friend will have been gone for absolute ages and he may not feel like my best friend anymore. a year from now i may take an internship in a place where i know nobody, or i may have found another lab to have a love-hate relationship with. i don't know. all i really want is to be with my friends and enjoy life, but the older i get the less carefree i can be and the more our paths diverge: and the more distant we may get. if i could have frozen last semester, to go back and visit it at my leisure, i would spend all my time in those last few weeks of insanity before my best friends had to go behave like real people.

birthday weekend

you know how you who your friends are? the people who fly up from florida and/or drive 500 miles one way to spend less than two days in boston for your birthday. and who think that a copy of the american bartenders' handbook is a good birthday present.
this weekend has been seriously epically amazing. dinner with 30 friends being seriously rambunctious at vinny t's; wandering out to a bar in the pouring rain; blowing things up in the microwave because wikipedia said it was a good idea; a zillion other things that i can't remember...
birthdays are awesome. i have the best friends ever.

are guilt trips the best way to travel?

i don't know if i feel any better for having said what i did tonight. my friends back in new york miss me, but are never around when i visit. and the sad thing is, they're the only people i come back to see. they're the only people from high school that i'm at all inclined to make time for, because they're the only ones who ever really loved me.
the memories aren't all bad, but enough of them are. enough that i feel ridiculously alienated when i visit. so many people are so fake to me. they hug me, they tell me they miss me, they say we should hang out; and yet when i look at them all i see looking back at me is the girl who cried herself to sleep every night for months, the daughter my parents almost lost, the girl who was ever so lonely for ever so long. and i can't quite ever forgive them.
there are a select five people whom i am so blessed to have known, not least because each of them did their part to keep me on this earth a while longer without ever knowing it. i miss my besties so much, and i'm so sorry you feel that i've abandoned you. i don't know when i'll be able to say all this to you in person, but if you find me here know that this is for you.

open letters =)

you make me mute with surprise and delight
you and your adorable singing and awkward choreographed-on-the spot dancing
frustratingly i have no words for you
beyond that i am gloriously happy with you

i write open letters because i can't express myself sufficiently any other way. absurdly happy? check. want the world to know it? check. on the other hand, take your butt out of my face? yes please.

absence : love :: wind : fire

absence intensifies real love in the same way that the wind will cause a forest fire to grow.
and skype still qualifies as an absence.
i miss my boyfriend and i am trying to go the week of spring break without going insane on days that we don't get to talk. this is difficult. but the learning, it happens.
loving someone is allowing them to cause you the pain of missing them.

halo

everywhere i'm looking now
i'm surrounded by your embrace
baby i can see your halo
you know you're my saving grace
halo~ beyonce

this is what it feels like to be loved in spite of your failings. to know that yeah, i may be crazy messed up, but there's at least one person out there who wouldn't want me any other way. it makes life feel better somehow.

i'm back!

viral infection? sure. cleared up by wednesday? not so much.

had a nasty bout of flu last week; today was literally only my second day really out of the building in a week (in my book, spending six hours at medical on wednesday doesn't count as out of bed. not with an IV in the back of your hand anyway.) and i am pooped.

not too tired to blog my latest epiphany, though! my boyfriend's been seriously amazing the past week: picking up meds for me, dropping by to check on me before & after classes, and really i seem to be more of a handful when i'm sick and can't get out of bed than when i'm bouncing around all lively and obnoxious. kid doesn't complain. ever. and i feel weird that he does so much for me (i don't know if i mean actually physically doing stuff, though he does) cuz it just boggles that i can't put my feelings about that into words. i dunno...this is rambling a lot i guess...but like i call him when i need something or if i get freaked about something cuz he's just always solidly there and normal. like when my nose bleeds (like now: yeah parenthetical statements!) i can call him cuz he knows some stuff just weirds me out and bugs me and he's okay with my weirdness and he is a reminder to Chill Out sometimes.

seriously though, my nose is bleeding. and my mac is white. it's time to go.

vienna teng and love, in unequal amounts

sail your sea

meet your storm

all i want

is to be your harbor

~harbor- vienna teng

is this what it means to be in love?

to be always there for someone not because you want to feel needed, just to be there as though it can somehow confer stability when they need it?

to walk life's roads together because you can, because you want to?

you're beautiful...

there is always something undeniably unnerving about hearing the words "you're beautiful" from someone. i feel so compelled to ask "really?" even if i know that they'd never lie to me; and it makes me sad that i have to ask that. maybe someday i'll grow out of it, but for now i guess it's just a leftover from the past number of years. i was never particularly pretty- at least, not as far as i was ever aware- and it eventually became an issue for me, to the point where any guy who seemed to take any notice of me at all was a godsend. and i made stupid mistakes and embarrassed myself and got hurt quite a bit over the years all because of those little words...

but eventually i learned that you don't have to be thought of as beautiful to be loved, and you don't have to love everyone who says it to you.

and it's all right if hearing it makes you cry.