Dear You,

You know ... several people are right about one thing. And though they all seem to say it in a different way, it comes down to one thing:

You need to make a decision.

You've been in limbo on several topics for several reasons for possibly several months now. It's tiring, isn't it? You know it needs to stop - it's only contributing to this ongoing depression. I know it's not always as easy as saying to yourself, "this is it," and taking that step toward truly progressing.

Progressing.

That sounds so ... nice. It sounds like more than just getting over or through or along with this or that. It sounds like completion. And, be honest with yourself, that is really what you've been looking for. You want to have confidence in your career path and your relationships and your self, and who doesn't? It's normal. Right now, though, the confidence lasts for maybe a week or two before it starts to feel wrong. You want so much ... you deserve so much for it to feel right. You really do.

Do you know that?

You have come quite a way already through counseling and making true attempts to start identifying with your self as opposed to others. You went from having a good day and then a bad day, good/bad, good/bad, etc ... To having a good week and then maybe a few bad days ... a good couple weeks and a handful of bad days ... a good month (and it was a good month) and a bad end of a week. Things are getting better all the time.

Please (please please please) have respect enough for yourself to see that things are improving and to have confidence in that. Remember what you wrote once, as I have seen it several times since:

It begins with the self.

You're better ... cello is better ... relationships are better (or at least healthier) ... life, ultimately ... will also get better.

Hang in there.

: D

All my love,

Me

Dear You,

There are times where I appreciate the things you say, and others ... where I just don't.

"... but you absolutely need to find a way for you to be happier. For now, cello is your major. For now, cello, is the only thing you need to make better. For now, you need to live for the cello."

Finding a way for me to be happier most often has very little, very much of the time, to do with my cello playing. Sure, performance gives me a natural high, but that has never amounted to much other than feeling good for and hour or two.

Feeling good is not being happy.

Yes, for now cello is my major. And I can devote time and energy into making the most of it. What I cannot devote is all of me, because cello is not the only thing I need to make better. The mere suggestion of such a thing is ridiculous. I need to be better first.

I need to get to the point where I can acknowledge my needs. Then, I need to get to the point where my needs can come before the bullshit. Not all the time, naturally, but when I feel I can't take any more of the bullshit. For a while now, I have denied myself the chance to be complete - and the longer I do so, the harder finding completion will be. I have allowed myself to become distracted by the things that will never truly matter when it comes to my self. Constantly worrying about how many hours I do this or that, for fear of what? Submitting myself to harmful relationships, in hopes of what? Allowing the criticism of others to get under my skin, from lack of what?

For fear that I won't "make it."

In hope that someday they'll change.

From lack of a solid opinion of who I am.

All of these things and more are what I have allowed to hold me back as a person, not a cellist. In my opinion, the latter cannot complete someone. Completed in the sense that they've lived.

For now I need to live for the cello?

No.

For now and forever I need to live for my self. The cello is only a part of who I am, and I don't give a damn how much it has defined you in your life.

It does little to define me in mine.

See you Thursday,

Me

Currently Reading Anansi Boys: A Novel By Neil Gaiman see related

Looking at my buddy list has,

like several other aspects of my life right now,

become depressing.

Everyone is out or doing something or going somewhere and hoping that later on someone else will call them ... even if there are hunkering down to watch the 2nd season of Entourage they aren't alone - Tom is with them.

Well, whoever Tom is.

I actually thought about calling one of the guys from work ... who probably doesn't even remember that I asked for his number over winter break last year. Funny thing is that I still have it, even after I went through and deleted all numbers that have been dismissed as unused or unnecessary. What would I have said if I called him?? Maybe, "Hey, Ryan ... um ... I kind of can't stand being in my house any more. What do you usually do on a Thursday night? Me? Oh, I don't ever do anything."

Pity, party of one.

Yeah.

What of it?

So many other people obsess about how much work they have to do and how they never go out and have fun ... but according to everyone's away message, they are, in the very least, out. I haven't spent a night out, well, since I was over Matt's really late watching Match Point. (Sorry, Matt, I don't count the last time you came home because we were both tired mofos and the evening didn't last long. But, fucking-a, we ate a lot)

I can't wait to be somewhere where maybe, just maybe, someone will write in their away message that hopefully I will call.

Or something.

It's been a while.

I keep thinking about how much I wish that people were still in town ... even people that I have/had a grudge against. Well ... I think one of them is, but I'm still pissed about the last time they didn't call and don't want to set myself up for another "oh, yeah, I'll totally call you" night of loneliness.

::sigh::

I'd go downstairs and watch the Colbert Report or a movie, but my dad is sleeping on the couch now ... and probably will until he moves out. I have a feeling that this deal with my parents will, at least for a little while, force me into a) finally straightening up my room and/or b) actually going to bed at a reasonable time.

Or just grumbling about it and packing for school.

By the way, how can I be expected to pack lightly enough to move everything down in my dad's Chevy Malibu???

Me.

I could fill the van if I really put my mind to it. And, yeah, some of the bigger things are down there already, but I keep thinking ... I will have my trunk, one box with lamps and electrical supplies and random cleaning stuffs, a box/trash bag full of clothes and shoes, a couple armloads of closet clothing, a tote bag full of underwears, a plastic crate of books, two shoulder bags (one with music supplies on with my laptop), a printer, a carrying-thing full of dishes and cookware ... and that's probably a car-full.

Then I think ... and it's really a last minute thought ...

Where the fuck do I put the cello?

Meh.

Confrontation needs to happen - not to mend anything that might be going on between mum and pop, but to carve out a deal where we can take the van. My mother may not mind, but I don't want my dad to have to go out of his way to make two trips to Athens. Maybe I could squeeze it all into the Malibu, but thinking about it ... I don't even want to try.

Enough bitching.

Quote time:

"Daisy looked up at him with the kind of expression that Jesus might have given someone who had just explained that he was probably allergic to bread and fishes, so could He possibly do him a quick chicken salad: there was pity in that expression, along with almost infinite compassion."

I finished my book.

I've been looking through a lot of my old notebooks ... mostly from freshman year. So many pages from those have gone unused and I really don't need to spend more money on school supplies. Anyway ... point is, I found ways to use the back of most of my notebooks as random journals throughout the year. One of them said something interesting:

"I just wish I didn't have to be so different. So thoughtful. So passionate. So ... open to what music has to offer. I just ... sometimes wish I weren't so affected. That I were ... normal.

But what of that high that comes with performance? I try to think of this simpler life and just ... see nothing but more boredom and repetition. I see nothing. I've never felt very attached to music - but somehow, I cannot imagine a life without it."

And then the line that I've written more places than just this one:

"It's not that I can't do anything else - I don't want to do anything else."

So much of that still holds true ... not ever feeling very attached to music, but drawn to it at the same time. It's like there is something that I have yet to understand, something I still want to do. I'm making the right decision in finishing my degree and know for certain, if only in the back of my mind, that is isn't going to be as torturous as I'm imagining it to be.

In other news:

I am reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

And I've book marked several pages on which I found good quotes.

"'I won't live forever,' sniffed her mother, in a way that implied that she had every intention of living forever, getting harder and thinner and more stonelike as she went, and eating less and less, until she would be able to live on nothing more than air and wax fruit and spite."

"Fat Charlie shrugged, in a way that, he hoped, indicated that he contained within him depths of crap as yet unplumbed."

"Fat Charlie was thirsty. Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt. Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead."

"Soon enough it would be time to exchange a life of milking hard-to-please celebrities for a life of sunshine, swimming pools, fine meals, good wines, and, if possible, enormous quantities of oral sex."

"'Mister Nancy,' she said, 'you are under arrest. You have the right -'

Fat Charlie turned back to the interior of the house. 'Bastard!' he shouted up the stairs. 'Bastard bastard bastarding bastardy bastard!'"

"Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen. More Nothing. The Return of Nothing. Son of Nothing. Nothing Rides Again. Nothing and Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman ..."

"'Christ on a bike,' said the policeman, and he ushered Fat Charlie back into the cellblock without saying another word."

So ... um ... yeah.

How do you transition from talking about humorous quotes from the book you are reading to your father moving out of the house and your parents starting down the road of separation?

Just like that, I would suppose.

This is all a little strange to me, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that part of me is startled by how eerily calm I am right now. I guess that I am not very surprised. I was up here and going through all those old notebooks like I said, and I heard them starting to argue.

I hope I never argue with my husband like that.

I've been so impartial all summer - and the only one of the two of them who I have seen instigate things and talk under their breath has been my mother. And I can't blame her, really, because she is like that. Part of me is like that. But, I don't know, she has taken it a little too far at times with the blame and the resentment. My father cooked dinner tonight because my mother was getting her hair cut. She came home as we were finishing up and he asked her if she would want any.

"I don't take things from people who hate me."

Goodness, I knew that wasn't the start of a good conversation. Me? I just wanted to get out of their as quickly as I could. I made the decision to not take sides and to keep myself out of it. I mean, part of me felt really guilty for just walking away, but as I have said before, I'm not their fucking marriage counselor. I could hear them fighting from upstairs ... it all sounded like nonsense to me.

My father left for a little while and then came back. He was just up here in my room talking to me about it, but trying not to. He said that he doesn't have anyone else to talk to ... and that I should pack as lightly as possible for school and if I can't, he'll make another trip down to Athens on the following Sunday. Also, that after he takes me to Athens, he is moving out because he cannot take it anymore. That maybe it is partially his fault - that he has been a bad husband, but just hopes that he hasn't been a bad father.

Okay, now it kind of breaks my heart.

I've gotten so much closer to my parents since I went to school ... and this summer, goodness, this summer I haven't had one fight with my mom. That's the first time that has ever happened, and it makes me glad. I just have and always will worry about what happens when I go away to school and they are left in this house alone ... together. I feel sorry for both of them - middle-aged and relatively friendless. I think part of it has to do with how their relationship has gone sour time and again over the last decade.

This is getting weird to think about.

I need to call my brother.

Work Doodles*!!!

And ... I don't now why this one was my favorite ...

Okay, I know it's kind of fucked up ... but it all started with a hand that my coworker said looked like a turkey. I made it into a turkey and then started to think about other body parts that I could make into animals. I only came up with two.

My manager suggested a fourth - an owl with breasts for eyes, but for some reason I found that a little inappropriate. Hmm ... not quite sure why ... just can't put my finger on it.

Oh, well.

A little over a week until I am out of here and somewhere that I can feel more comfortable and, well, talk more often. It will be good.

* Not the actual doodles that I did at work - enlargements I did when I came home ... for the purpose of posting them. What can I say? I don't have a nifty little camera thingy on my monitor like some people.

::random::