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.

a rant, of sorts.

I've created an unbearable situation.

I'm in love with someone who cannot love me the way I need him to. We've been together so long that I have no idea how to be without him. And yet, a part of me knows that I should be on my own, learning about myself. I just can't get myself to leave him. He says he loves me, but he has too many other things going on in his life to be there for me every time I need him. I understand this and try to accept it, but I'm hurt constantly. I just want him to show me that he loves me completely and entirely. I show him everyday...in everything that I do, I'm thinking of him. I try three times harder than I normally would to make up for his lack of attentiveness. Or something like that. Honestly, I have no idea what to do now. I hate ranting when there's a possibility that someone will see this and think I'm just some whiny little girl. (Is that really how you spell "whiny"?)

I guess I'm using this thing more than I thought.

Until next time.

an explanation, I suppose.

So I'm a journalism student. You probably got that from the title. I used to write a lot...poems, short stories, etc. But throughout high school the added class writing took away from personal writing time, so I sort of fell out of the habit. Now I'm in college, and I'm afraid my writing has gotten bland. I started this blog because I figured it would be a place to just write to vent, and work on my skills without an agenda. I have a feeling I won't really keep up with it on a regular basis, but at least I'll have a place to vent.

Well let's see...right now I'm at my parent's house. I'm done with classes for the semester, and I'm going back to take my 4 finals on Monday and Tuesday, and then I'm done until January 21st, I think. I'm moving into a new place with my best friend for the semester. I have a fairly difficult schedule, but I'm excited for it. I'm thinking of it as a new start; I have a tendency to mess things up the first time around. I go into things head-first, thinking only good thoughts, but then everything just falls apart, and I have to pick up the pieces and start over.

Thanks to myself, I'm now feeling miserable. I think it's because it gets dark so early in the winter - I like sunshine.

Good-bye for now.