a poor excuse for an apology.

You are the strong one- I am weak, please forgive me
To cheat on a lover is to hold their head underwater
I have drowned you in my actions and these tears you see
And you are swimming with no air, breathing in my sorrow

writer's block to the 10th power.

For the first time in my soon-ending teen life, I find myself avoiding the computer. I know that if I were to allow myself to waste away the usual hours with my beloved MacBook, eventually I would have to make up for all that unproductive time with some quality prose. Writing has always been my escape, my therapy, and for that reason I have been avoiding it. But every time I put fingers to keypad, I know what I must do: I have to write about what I did.

This is not as easy as it sounds. For telling the whole world what I did by word-of-mouth is something else entirely then coming to terms with my own feelings about it. People do it all the time, I tell myself. You're not a bad PERSON, you just did a bad THING. I push the angel off my shoulder and hear what the devil has to say: He would never do anything to hurt you, devil-me hisses in my ear. He loves you unconditionally and would do anything for you. And this is how you show your love?

Should I really listen to that devil? Isn't that who convinced me to do what I did, with the help of a few shots of rum and a couple of beers? Why can't I come to terms with this? This must be the way everyone else feels when they do this, right?

It seems I was wrong: a month isn't enough time. I guess my computer will go unused a little longer.

this is blogging?

It occurred to me a moment ago that this is a blog. Yes, I was always aware that I was writing on blogger/blogspot, and that url contained the word "blog", but what I'm doing doesn't really feel like blogging to me. In my opinion, blogging isn't talking about yourself on random occasions, like I do. It's something one does frequently, usually daily or multiple times a day, or at least a few times a week. And I always thought that blogging was supposed to be about a specific subject, or at least a central issue. I guess I myself am a specific subject, but that just seems narcissistic to me (yes, I had to spellcheck "narcissistic"). But I don't think the definition of blogging is quite as specific as I've made it out to be.

Personally, writing isn't like a job for me, it's just a part of life. Not to romanticize it or anything, but it really is as essential as breathing. Obviously, I don't do it quite as much, but if I don't write frequently, my head feels like it will explode. Actually, what happens is I have a sort of J.D.-from-Scrubs-like moment, and begin to think in a narrative-style. That's when I know I have to go write something down, or I'll just keep narrating everything. And it's really hard to hear what other's are saying when there's this monologue in my head overshadowing what's around me. I guess that's why I chose a field of study that involves writing. Why not do what I love/have to do, and get paid for it? And now-a-days, people actually get paid to blog. Imagine if I got paid to do this? I would write a whole hell of a lot more, that's for sure.

Speaking of money, I really can't keep writing anymore, as I have a lot to do before a job interview this afternoon. Too bad it's not related to journalism at all...

"there's no place like home."

"Home is where the heart is." I know it's cliche, (and I hate cliches,) but there is no phrase I believe in more. I assume that, for most 19-year-olds, "home" is the house they grew up in, the house where one or both of their parents live. Or most of the 19-year-olds I know.

But for me, home has only ever been one place: State College, PA. 13 years, two houses, six schools, three significant deaths, one first love, one depression diagnosis, and countless dance recitals, football games, and friendships make my first, and only, hometown. Looking at it today, the college town surrounded by farm country is flawless, and shines like my own personal Oz; get there, and everything will be all right.

It wasn't always this way though. As an insomniac from ages 10-15, State College was as black-and-white as Dorothy's Kansas. And just like the naive farm girl, I didn't know what I had until it was gone. After moving to Allentown, PA, a few weeks before my sophomore year of high school, I saw that starting over completely is not as easy as it may seem. But slowly, acquaintances turned into friends, a second love began, and my depression even started to wane. Maybe this could be home now.

At least, that's what I tried to convince myself. But here I am, back in Allentown for the summer after my first year of college, and I have to say I hate it already. I've tried to reconnect with the friends that got me through high school, but none seem too eager. My mom says to just keep trying, but who wants to be that annoying friend who always wants to know what everyone's doing so they can join in? Not me. I'm starting to believe that maybe what I had with these people wasn't friendship at all, but in fact, situational.

Can you really ever have more than one home? My very closest friends still live in State College, and I find myself more eager by the day to drive that 180 mile yellow brick road. We all just want to find acceptance, find those people that make us happy to be ourselves. That's what I think home is, and for now, I only have one.

oh, perfection.

If anyone knows where the perfectionist gene comes from, can you tell me, so I can kill it? Seriously, I am willing to pay one of you genius micro-biology whatever to locate the strand, and strip it from my genetic coding.

Looking back on my 19 years, it's easy to see how I missed the signs. They were subtle; not learning to tie my shoes until I was 7, and someone taught me the "bunny-eats" method, because it never "looked right" when I did "loop-swoop-and-pull"; storming out of math class in first grade when my teacher told me I did a problem wrong; re-cutting my construction paper shapes in art class so many times that they were too small, because the edges were never straight enough for me. I thought this was normal; doesn't every one cry when their Cleopatra Halloween costume doesn't have gold sandals with laces up to the knee? No?

I think the reason it took my so long to identify this quality, though, was the contradicting nature of my condition. When I wasn't able to get something exactly the way I wanted, instead of pushing forward to get it there, I just gave up. Ultimately, everything either had to be perfect, or I just stopped caring about it. This is what has given many people the impression that I go with the flow. And somewhere along the way, I began to believe them.

And yes, the evil perfectionist gene still lives inside me. It tends to appear in the way only a real monster can: when I'm working on a tedious and uninteresting assignment, which is usually a paper for a subject that I'm not taking by choice.

Which brings me back to this very moment, (which is exactly 1:30AM, if you were wondering,) in which I am not writing a five-page paper on my family's history in America that is due in 10 hours and 10 minutes. Why? Because I can't for the life of me find a subject significant enough to fill up the three and a half pages I have to go. And, as a perfectionist, I won't just fill up the space with useless information that isn't perfectly relevant to what I've written so far.

So you see my curse? This is why I will never be able to write a book. This is why I will spend 20 minutes doing my eyeliner, only to wipe it off before I leave. This is why I will continue to clip my nails until the bleed, because there's still one more jagged edge to get rid of. Please, smart scientist people, can you help me? I'd really prefer not to live the rest of my life never finishing anything, because I'm afraid it's not "perfect".

lyrics of some sort.

I think it's safe to say that I don't know myself these days
Maybe I'm learning through some unconventional ways
And that night was all but pleasure, it was fear and it was pain
So I let myself go-I cry for us, as you ask me to explain

You've always been too good for me
From the day you stole my heart
If I keep playing games like this
It'll likely rip us right apart
So I've changed-I hope you see it
Every day's a brand new start
We'll paint this picture of forever
What a perfect work of art

When you ask me to describe to you this nightmare that I had
I wonder if I spit it out it won't be quite so bad
Could you see it was an accident I wanted to deny
If you can forgive me somehow we will get by

I wrote this for my boyfriend a few weeks ago on a whim. It's not very good in my opinion, but I haven't written anything in such a long time that I was pleased enough.

spring semester.

So it's been awhile now. Thank you to the person who commented...though I didn't read it until now, you were pretty accurate. A few days after that post he and I decided to take a break, and got back together a month later. It's been much better this time...I've pulled back and he, in turn, has reached out more. Things are going very well, and next month we'll celebrate our two-year anniversary.

Right now, my real focus is my future. I have one job for the summer, and am looking for another. I'm also trying to get an internship for the fall. Plus I'm taking 17 credits next semester. I had been planning on going to Israel with my cousin and brother over the summer, but my brother recently had knee surgery and won't be healed in time for the trip. I couldn't bear the idea of going without him, so I bailed on my cousin. I still feel guilty, and haven't spoken to her since I told her I wasn't going. I also don't think I could spare the vacation time from work. Making money is a priority this summer so that I'm able to support myself through my sophomore year. Right now I feel as though I rely on my parents too much. While my family is not "poor" by any stretch of the imagination, supporting four children is not an easy task, especially when one or two are in college.

I'm also worried about my brother. He came home over Christmas break only intending to stay a week or two, and ended up living there up until this point. My parents and other relatives confronted him about his issues with alcohol and drugs, and he has been in an outpatient rehab program since January. The strange thing is that they don't even know the half of it. I'm the only one in my family who knows everything my brother has been into. It's also very conflicting for me. On one hand, I want my brother to be safe and healthy, no question. On the other hand, this was supposed to be the time in our lives that we began to drink together. I want my brother to get better more than anything in the world, but I just hope his dependent personality was at fault, and it's not a question of alcoholism. I don't know how he will go about working on that, though. Right now he smokes like a chimney (a habit he picked up in an attempt to quit the harder drugs), but I really hope that doesn't become a permanent thing. My mother's side of the family has a history of cancer, and I hate to see him increasing his chances of contracting the disease.

Other than that, everything in my life is going fairly well. I'm working hard in school, which will hopefully pay off in the end. I have a set of friends that I'm living with next year, and all the other essentials: health, family, love, etc. I think that I'll begin posting some of my poems/lyrics on this as soon as I find them. Actually...I'll look now.