Category: Journal

I know that what I’m getting angry about took place two weeks ago, but I still want to clear this up. Because I don’t like it when I see that I’ve been called a whore. Again.

Here goes.

I am not a whore. Nor have I ever been. I don’t know what qualifies me as being a whore because the only thing that I can figure out makes me a whore by your* definitions is that I engage in sexual relations with people who I want to date. This, at best, makes you a whore too. At worst, it makes you worse than a whore because you have sex with people who you would not date. And if that’s not true, then you lie about having sex with people who you would not date.

Whore should not be a word that you use to make me feel bad. It is not deserved. And as of two weeks ago, I’m just tired of how I let that word work. Also, my deciding to sleep with Kyle was completely my decision and based on feelings I had for him. Just tell me why I should think I’m a whore. That’s all I care to know.

*you is collective.

I need to stop reading my horoscope if it’s only going to make me antsy. It doesn’t fit me right now. And I’m reading too far into it.

I need to stop getting ahead of my own game. It’s okay for things to move slowly. I’m just a wreck today for some reason.

I need Thursday to get here. And I need to be hella-ready for it when it rolls around. Which means probably not really sleeping until Wednesday night. I can handle that.

I need to listen to more of the math and physics club. For real. the best thing about Benjamin’s radio show.. other than listening to him drunkenly defend his eyeliner wearing.. is all the new music i hear. I still love “Cool for Cats” more than anything. And the rest of it is good too.

I want to mention that my family has gone crazy again. Over family pictures. I don’t really understand why my mom is so psychotic right now. Basically, my brother and I were supposed to go take pictures tonight.

I scheduled it tonight because I had all of my evening between 3-7:30 free and that is plenty of time to accomplish this goal. I came home after work, took a shower, and did my nails to relax a little and then worked on my paper some. I needed to not take my laptop to work because it took too long to load it so I was emailing the paper to myself when Mom and Dad decided that we were going to be late because it was 5:55 and we had not left for our appointment at 6:20. So dad comes back to yell at me for not leaving and I point out that I’m just emailing myself and we won’t even be late as long as we leave by 6. I leave, after mom flips out and says that we shouldn’t even go and she’ll just cancel it. I say we’re going and we leave, in separate cars because I work.

Mom and Dad call and Mom is really pissed that we took separate cars because she didn’t know I had to work. When I explain that she says “well we’ll just do this a different night.” Already at the mall (on time!), I tell her that we’re already there and we just do it. She tells me not to get the pictures done. Then, upset that I’m getting upset, my brother takes the phone and she tells him not to get the pictures taken and at that point he just outright refuses to take them, despite my saying that we should just do it because we’re already there… mom will send us to the mall later to get them taken… and because i want the pictures. So he leaves. While I’m in line to check into our appointment. I have this huge, embarassing fiasco with the woman at the checkout counter who hopefully just felt sorry for me… and Devon still refused to take the pictures. So he leaves the mall and I spend the rest of my night just shopping and the like.

I get a phone call from mom at about 7:05 explaining that Devon has taken the money that he and i withdrew from the ATM machine and purchased a skateboard which will be broken in half to teach him a lesson when he gets home. I point out that a more rational thing to do would be return the board so you don’t spend 80 dollars proving a point. She refuses to do this. Then she said “he needs to learn a lesson. For that matter you need to learn a lesson. I think you should drop out of college for a while.” DROP OUT OF COLLEGE. I point out that that’s an absolutely terrible idea. Then she accuses me of not being a decent human being.

I can’t even parent myself. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be expected to parent her. I talked to Dad and he’s only slightly more rational than mom. he just said that i should have let them know that I needed to work. I pointed out that I had no way of knowing that I would need to have my entire sechedule cleared to accomplish a task that takes a few minutes, and that I don’t typically tell them my schedule. I just set my schedule and if I have time to do what they want me to, then I do it. There is no rational reason why I would need to tell them that I had to work as long as I had time to get the pictures taken… which I did.

So the thing is… Even if I had mentioned that I didn’t have time… i would be guilt tripped because I make time for dinners and coffees with friends. For hobbies. For whatever. And even if those things are important to my well being and to curbing my depression, I apparently shouldn’t do them ever. So I can’t really say no to mom when it comes to these sorts of things. Plus… I REALLY DID HAVE THE TIME AND WANT THE PICTURES.

Now, my brother is refusing to come home. I still have a whole lot to get done this week. And I don’t know what I’m going to do.. or when I’m going to do it. Fuck.

Mom gave us our valentine’s day gifts tonight. For obvious reasons, they’re a bit belated. That is not the point.

The point is that my mom got my brother and I the same thing?some Russell Stover chocolates. Now, these chocolates come in a tin that is shaped like a heart and made to look like the cover of a manhole. I thought it was great. Because I like shiny things and this is very shiny. Then, my brother comes in and points out that the side brags that these gifts are “just for him.” Which sparks my interest. One, I’m a little nervous about what mom is trying to say… but more importantly than that… I’m a little weirded out that we can’t get boys just normal chocolates in red heart-shaped boxes. Plus, the box is still freaking heart shaped! What the hell! There’s no way the box somehow becomes MORE heterosexual. So the next thing i do is open the box. There, I find something even more fascinating. 13 chocolates. THIRTEEN. My mom paid 10 dollars for this box. For like 8 bucks she could’ve gotten me like infinity chocolates. Of course then… I wouldn’t have this uber-masculine box.

Oh Valentine’s Day. You are approximately the best holiday ever.

At some point in my life I’m going to have to learn to write rules that I make for myself down. Last night’s major violation: Jess, you are not to eat both cheese fries and chocolate milkshakes at Steak’n’Shake. Yr body refuses to digest them. So I’ve been sick all morning. Ugh.

Now that I feel better I get to straighten up my room and then head to KU where I will be crawling around the stacks for an extended period of time. Whee.

Kyle and Justin won Willamette yesterday. 🙂 Hot. There celebration seemed pretty intense… and I’m excited to go visit on Thursday. In part because I’m so excited to spend time with Jotto and Annaleigh. That can basically only be a great idea. And we have the car reserved, and i have everything cancelled. awesome. I’m not even missing anything. And then I’ll get to see him a week after that too! So exciting!

I’ve been watching I heart Huckabees pretty much non-stop all week. It’s probably like my third or fourth favorite movie now.

i woke up yesterday and didn’t want to die. while it cannot be said precisely how this happened, i think it most assuredly had to have been something awesome which took place in my sleep. Maybe it was the long conversation I had with Joe that night. Or maybe it was just the part where I slept until I woke up. No one can tell for sure.

this morning, i woke up, with my new, shorter haircut for the first time and delighted in the smushy reality of my having short and curly hair. i look like a crazy person. i can’t even explain what my bangs are doing… but i will try: they are smushed so that in parts they stand straight up away from my scalp but then they curl back down and form a geometrically enviable square over my forehead. fucking right. i rock. they gave me this brush thing cos i bought like 75 dollars worth of product at the salon yesterady. maybe i’ll try to use that. but then. how can it tame this?

kyle is at willamette this weekend for debate. for some reason, i get sad and miss him even more. this could be because he doesn’t get the chance to call/text as much as usual (if point loma was any indicator which it may not have been because we were not really dating then) but more than likely it’s because if ever he leaves carbondale my little brain thinks it should be to come and see me. oh golly 🙂

my mom and i had a long talk about him and everything last night that i think was really positive. the talk began: “do you feel dirty when you sleep with boys you know you don’t love?” nice start, mom. my answer was no. and i explained why. and then she was like “well, i’m glad you don’t feel dirty… but i could never have done that.” and we talked about modern morals and stuff of the sort. and how i’ve just never really thought that i’d save myself for marriage. even when i was going to purity conferences… i was like “meh, no one is going to wait for me…” and that’s basically true. even the boys i’ve met who CARE about that don’t wait. so hrm. this discussion was really last night’s topic area though, not todays… it was just really nice to talk to mom. really, i love when i can go to her for advice.. and hopefully i’ll feel like i can now cos for the last 3 months or so i’ve really felt like she’s emotionally unavailable. a lot of that is just her approach to our conversations though. she’s just so lectury and makes me feel likea child which i really don’t want. and then i get defensive right away and the conversations never go anywhere. so i’m hoping last nights talk reversed that.

i also heard from steve in france. it was weird because i was meeting tim for coffee and then steve called as i was stepping out of the car. how fun! so i talked to steve for about 15 minutes or so and then passed the phone to tim who spoke for a little while. seemed like a good time to me. tim and i had a good time bitching about the state of our lives and being excited about the good parts too. hopefully i’ll start seeing more of tim. he’s a good guy.

Ahh… what a long day/long week, no? I went to mass feeling basically terrible. I took a nap this afternoon and woke up to the news that Madeline never wants to speak to me again. Which is really what I was needing this week. As it is, I feel completely worthless. Like I just suck the life out of everything and that I’m bad at all of the things I care about being good at. I feel like an utter failure most of the time. I wake up crying. I hate it. I spend more time daydreaming about killing myself than is even healthy and I get this bullshit about how she doesn’t want to be speak to me ever again. (It still bothers me that she can read whatever and I can’t have any access to her life.) Seriously. I was talking to Kyle about it… and it’s just like… the past month or so she’s said that the reason she can’t be around me or talk to me is that she doesn’t like seeing what i put up with from other people. But, honestly, I didn’t put up with much bullshit for my first major relationships. It wasn’t until I spent two years loving her more than myself that I became accustomed to being treated in a way which was fickle. Really. A week ago she texted me to say that she was honored to call herself my friend. That being two days after she decided maybe we shouldn’t talk. And now she’s back to the first thing. Fuck. I just can’t handle it. I don’t know what to do. And it’s really not fair to me that she just came back when i was so upset because she was worried about me. And now i’m going through this really bad thing and she bails because of her things and I really just wish she’d let me be there for her. She makes me feel like I’m never present and never listen to her problems but I think she and I both know that she holds back. She says that all the time. I just want her to let me listen. I promise I would listen if she would just let me.

Mass, on the other hand, was good. I probably need to start going to mass everyday because I pretty much get a constant sense of peace from it. With it being ash wednesday, I ended up going with Joe who called this morning/afternoon for a ride there. I told him i was going at 5:30 but that later got changed to 6 and then showed up to pick him up around that time. We got to the church after they were out of missalettes. It was a good service. But it was also pretty difficult, I won’t lie. From the occasional glances during poignant parts of the message and us singing songs like “Hosea” which talks about waiting for someone to return to your dwelling. agh. I sorta cried a lot during that one. It’s going to be a difficult friendship, but I still sincerely hope that there is one. I was talking to ReAnne yesterday at lunch about how I’m not going to apologize again until I know what direction the apology is in. I mean, I’m sorry. Absolutely. Sincerely. Sorry. But that doesn’t mean a whole lot coming from me right now. I’m acting all willy-nilly and I know it. At least if I were behaving in a way which seemed consistent I could direct the apology meaningfully. It’s just difficult because we’ve meant so much to each other. And this whole being enemies thing just doesn’t feel right.

I’m feeling better and less depressed right now. I think I just realized that I probably do matter and that I shouldn’t dwell on feeling like I don’t matter. When I get home, if this migraine is gone, I’m going to paint a little and then go to bed early so I can get up to research. Bearman called to tell me that everyone in the history department really cares about me and that I should call him or Morse if I need anything. He made it clear to me what he was talking about. So there’s that. And I promised that I would call him. And I don’t break promises to him so no one needs to worry. And really, I’m feeling better. Except for the migraine.

This is not a poem.

I have never felt more expendable in my life.