telling the future, with 85% certainty

it would appear that interesting things have been going on within my family while i've been away. in the past five months, two cousins have had babies; and my aunt remarried this morning, which nobody told me about until literally last week. another cousin is getting married in may, and i'm going to be one of her bridesmaids.
so i think i can guess what the dinner conversation is going to be this christmas: babies, weddings, and omg who's next?!
part of me is really hoping that doesn't happen, because relationship discussions with my family tend to get intense and kind of awkward. i'm very much single right now, and even though i'm too young to be thinking about my shelf life i'm still worried that i'll end up alone forever and so i don't like talking about my lack of a meaningful long-term relationship.
on the other hand, i don't intend to have children (my reasoning is a separate post in and of itself). and i do enjoy reasonable debate; so i may just cause trouble over the dinner table instead.

non-separate entities

i am one half of an increasingly insane relationship. again. but here's the thing: she's one of my sisters, not a significant other.
we're sharing a room this summer and planning to move into an apartment together early next year (more on that another time). and because right now i'm not working and she has an irregular schedule, we've been spending a lot of time together both in and out of the house. things have gotten to the point where when one of us says "we," everyone knows who we're referring to; and people sometimes address us both even if they're only talking to one of us.
and let me tell you, internet, it is FREAKY AS SHIT. i wonder sometimes what sort of effect my relationship with her will have on the rest of my social life, because we go out together so often that i think the staff of the area restaurants think we're dating. i know, hilarious.
but sometimes it really does worry me, because sometimes we kind of function as a unit. am i losing bits of my identity like this?

feeling pissy tonight...

what does it say about me that right now, i can't find it in me to deal with other people and their problems?
most of my close friends are trying to handle a lot of stuff right now. finals are stressing everyone out, there's personal stuff thrown in, and basically everyone is going insane. and i know i need to try and find a way that i can give some time to the people who're important to me, especially since i've dealt with some of what they're going through right now: but i can't seem to find a way. i have nothing left in me that i can give to anyone, and it makes me so annoyed sometimes that people expect so much from me when they themselves know how difficult college can be. i feel like i'm being guilted into being someone for others to lean on because if i don't, i'm clearly just a shitty friend.
but i have been there for others for such a long time that i've managed to neglect myself. it's okay for them to disappear off the face of the earth so they can get time to themselves, but god forbid i need to study at MIT, right?

baby sisters

my little sister turned 13 last week, and it terrifies me. i remember realizing a few years ago that she was turning 10 and being freaked out then, but it's worse now because she's only a year away from high school and i still clearly remember the morning she was born. it makes me feel old to come home and discover that she's grown another few inches, or to call and find out that she took the SATs last weekend and is now treasurer of her school's service club. one day next year she's going to start high school, and then eventually go to college, and then graduate, and i am just going to be getting older and older while she goes through the same stuff that i did. i try to call her every so often so that we don't disconnect, and every time i do she talks and talks and asks me for advice and it struck me a few weeks ago that she looks up to me. worst realization ever, especially considering that she's probably smarter than i am. she tells me about the musical she's planning to audition for and i realize that i still haven't watched the video from her last one, this past spring. and then she reminds me that she's taller than i am now, and i think of all the times i used to carry her around, because she was my baby sister and that's how things go, and it makes me a little sad that i can't do that anymore. but then she asks me what to do about the boy that has a crush on her and i remember that i'm still her big sister, because never in a million years would she ever talk to anyone else like she talks to me. i guess i just have to get used to her growing up.

best friends?

instead of doing my incomprehensible physics homework i tend to wander the internets; or in this case my facebook feed. i keep coming across the same note/quiz/thing done by different people, & this time i stopped to read one done by a good friend of mine. and for some reason it got me thinking, do people back home still think of me as a friend? i'm an insanely busy person with a stressful life, but who really understands that? i don't deliberately ignore people, but if someone's life consumes them and they fall off the face of the earth can you still consider them a friend?

the ongoing saga of awkward and exes

well, he doesn't hate me. i'm not too surprised, though only because he's not a bitter person at all. i feel better now; these may be baby steps, but we seem to be back on our way to friendship again.
lately i've felt oddly full of goodwill towards humanity in general, and though it isn't the new year i think from now on i'll try not to be as bitter and angry towards people. deciding that feels nice.

regrets

what do you do when you know you've hurt someone and you desperately want to be friends again?
i dated my first boyfriend for three months, in between junior and senior year of high school. we were good friends all through middle school, and i think that summer might have been the best of my life (not entirely because of him, but still). he's the epitome of the skinny, nerdy white boy, and we were that couple who sat in central park using the uncertainty principle to describe our relationship. and it made sense to us, though maybe not to anyone else. every weekend or two was spent in a different museum, eating gyros and pretzels in central park, pretending to be the adults that we'd eventually have to become; and though we may just have been two silly kids, we were gloriously happy.
maybe i shouldn't have broken up with him when school started again. now i can't remember why i actually did; all i can remember is what i told him instead of the truth, and at that point i wasn't the accomplished liar i am now. he saw through it, we didn't speak for a while, he took me out to see macbeth that spring with some inscrutable reason which i still can't figure out, and then we drifted apart again.
i saw him in april briefly, but we don't talk anymore. maybe i shouldn't bother trying. but i hope somehow he finds this post, because maybe if he reads it and understands then we can go back to being friends.

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.

O.o

how the hell did i become a relationship counselor for my friends? and since when did my advice apparently not suck?
quite honestly, i fail so hard at people sometimes that i'm surprised when people ask me things like i have my shit together. but i think it's even weirder when they say it's good advice. maybe i should start following some of it...

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.

things i don't want to say

i'm halfway determined not to go back to new york again; or at least, not to see people who aren't family. when i go back, i go for the weekend most of the time and i only have saturday evening to hang out with friends. i give people at least a week's worth of notice that i want to see them, and invariably i get screwed. plans don't get made, or they do and then someone bails, or family is conveniently taking up an entire weekend and i'm left feeling like nobody actually wants to see me. and then to top it off, people then have the balls to give me shit about how i never visit.
it makes me sad to have to say this, but i am done putting up with this nonsense. some of these people are the reasons i made it through high school relatively unscathed, but i have other people in my life now who actually give a damn about me. i know that everyone's time is precious; so is mine. i'm not going to waste my weekends on a bus just so i can stay home saturday night because plans got fucked again. from now on, if you want to see me that badly you can get yourself on a bus and come to boston. stop making me waste my time.

my ex. again.

i think everyone has an ex that they wish would leave them alone. mine decided to IM me again today. i broke up with him last september after dating for three months, and for some reason he still tries to talk to me.
i defriended him a few months after the breakup, because the temptation to facebook-stalk him was almost as annoying as he was. even after months of my ignoring his messages, he'd still IM me and ask me if we could talk, or if i had a problem with him, or various little things like that, so i did the most logical thing possible: sent him an email. a cold, PR-toned email signed with my professional signature. you'd think that would be some sort of signal, but it appears not. he's IMed me twice more since then, and while i know he just wants to be friends i would prefer not to be. we weren't friends before we dated: why should we be now, when i know that we have little in common intellectually or in any other regard? if it wasn't worth it to me to maintain a long-distance relationship, when i presumably felt something for him, why should it be worth my while now to begin a friendship that can't possibly function?
i understand that it's difficult to have someone drop out of your life entirely, particularly if you dated at some point, but by the same token it's difficult to have someone show up in your life periodically when you don't want to deal with them. and i do realize that this post sounds bitchy, but anything that causes me any stress or irritation gets removed from my life. it's the healthiest way for me to be.

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.

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.

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.

confusion

it is so hard to tell people you care about that they've hurt you. especially when their knowing it would make life better for both of you. do not understand.

the tower

i need not to need
i've always been the tower
but now i feel like i'm a flower
trying to bloom in snow
~the tower, vienna teng

is there a way at all to keep yourself from needing to need? when you've been the one needed by others for years you need someone to lean on yourself and the longer you go without that the more you need it. and then you find it and suddenly you're stuck and you can't be without anymore. where is the happy medium?

cruelty to animals?

i want someone to fall in love with me, to want me and fawn over me, to be absurdly jealous of all my other boys, to sit at my feet and dance on a string for me. and then i want to walk away and watch his pain before i go back to my boy.
it's my turn to hurt someone.

anonymity and respect

when you are a blogger, it is mostly a given that you post about almost everything that goes on in your life. nonetheless, if you are in a relationship it is unfair to assume that your significant other has given you permission to discuss your relationship on the internet. even if you name no names, there will be people who read your blog who also know who you're dating. the anonymity of the internet does not necessarily prevent damage to a relationship if what you're posting is too personal to discuss even with close friends. whether or not you care about exposing your own private thoughts online, it is a measure of respect for your SO to keep theirs completely private. if you don't have that respect for them, you should not be dating them.

craving drama?

do we all feel the need for drama and angst in our lives? i've had two (or three, i can't count) unpleasant angst-fest nights in the past six. and it's the stupidest thing, because except for that two-week span of death by flu, my personal life has been pretty enjoyable since december. and yet somehow i've become even more neurotic than i was before and my subconscious seems to be maufacturing stress about absolutely everything. especially my relationship with my boyfriend. it's like my brain is telling me that things are going too well with him and so there obviously has to be something, somewhere, for me to worry about. is this (albeit mild) paranoia normal at all?