Homeward Bound

I've been having trouble writing. In fact, I've been having trouble thinking. There are a million thoughts whirring through my mind at any given time, and it's making my head spin. I have two weeks. Two weeks until I am there. Two weeks until I am home. Then again, my mind starts to drift. What is home? Where is home? When I was in love, I spent my theories of home on it. Love was home. That person, who makes you feel comfortable, who makes you feel safe, who makes you feel like you can be and ought to be the very best version of yourself, that person is home. No matter where you are with them, it's home. Then all that turned out to be farce, and I was homeless again. So I was left without a home, for my heart at least, and to decide what home was.

Is home a place? Is home a concept? What is home? These are questions I have been considering a lot as of late. I'm moving out, I'm moving on, I'm growing up. The place I have considered home for the past 14 years will no longer be my home. It will be a place that I visit and keep my things. It will be where my family is. Can I have more than one home? I don't even know if home is a place at all. In my opinion, it's more of a concept. It's simply a situation in which you feel comfortable being and expressing yourself. Somewhere that you are happy, for the most part at least.

I have to be my own home. Maybe that's what home is. Maybe you just have to decide that you are home. You have to decide that you are comfortable with yourself, and that wherever you are, you are happy and you make the best of it. My home is on the road. My home is at Evergreen. My home is wherever my feet take me. Home is wherever my mind wanders. Home is wherever my heart takes me.

Tabula Rasa

How do you mend something that you can no longer find all the pieces to? I lay here now, listening to Jonathon Coulton and weighing my options. People seemingly can't disappear entirely from your life, no matter how much you will it to be so. Though they are part of your past, they manifest themselves in your present. Your hatred is a manifestation of the impact they had on your mind. That they even cross your mind, may it be wistfully or with loathing, they are in your present. Part of me wants to erase every smile, every heart flutter, every tear, every night spent staring at the ceiling willing the pain away. Sometimes I want to be Clementine, I want to have every memory wiped clean. Tabula rasa. I want to be a blank slate. But I know it would never work.

Regression

Here I am once again, awake. Dreadfully awake. At yet another ungodly hour of the, well, morning. Sleep is something that hasn't come easy of late. My mind starts processing and it's over, I'm awake. Fully cognitive without a chance of intermission. So I ramble. I ramble incoherently about my state of being. Pondering my uncanny ability to look like a somewhat portly turtle when I move my neck just right- which I tend to in videos and pictures. Then laughing at how absurdly hyper critical I am being. Listening to dogs barking in the distance outside. Hearing the wind slithering gently across the leaves, creating a natural white noise. The summer air is crisp and quiet at night. My cat is laying on my back with his paws stretched gracefully over my shoulder blades and his face pressed into my hair and neck. Sighing cat sighs. Summer music.

In consideration of my surroundings I should be content. I try to steady my breathing. Inhale, 1, 2, 3. Exhale, 1, 2, 3. The air whistles in broken rhythm. The pressure of laying on my ribs on this stone hard mattress is evident. My mind wanders, and I do my best to maintain focus. I consider the future. I consider Evergreen. I anticipate the future; going home. After some amount of time and a fair amount of hostile and melancholy words being strung together, I am at peace with my past. For the most part. I fell in love, I fell out of love, I fell out of love with love. I became miserable. I became confused. I became angry. I reached a peaceful resolution. I spent a considerable amount of time considering the possibility of considering love. I considered love. I fell in love with love. I rambled. Without coffee it is more than likely I would be in a coma.

I have 17 days before I start living at Evergreen. In that time, I fully intend to spend at least one whole week regressing entirely. I am going to colour in colouring books with crayons. I am going to watch VHS tapes of The Fox and the Hound, Homeward Bound, The Aristocats, Milo and Otis, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Lion King, My Dog Skip, and Aladdin. I am going to make my bed into a sheet tent fort. I am going to eat PB&J sandwiches. I am going to wake up early on Saturday morning to watch cartoons, possibly online because they don't show the good stuff on Nickelodeon anymore. I am going to make mudpies and sit in them. I'm going to draw cats, lots of cats. I am going to play outside all day long, until it gets dark, building forts, riding bikes up and down the driveway, drawing on the driveway with chalk, climbing trees, and possibly swimming in a blue plastic pool intended for ducks- after washing it with a fair amount of bleach. I am going to beg my mom to buy Mr. Bubble bubblebath (despite risk of UTI) and sit in a bathtub overflowing with bubbles, while playing with plastic animals and pretending my torso is an island and my belly button is a pond. I am going to make a slip n' slide out of a tarp on the biggest hill in my yard and I am going to slide down it until every extremity is bruised.

I also fully intend to read my favourite books from my childhood. Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Secret Garden, Misty of Chincoteague, Black Beauty, Bridge to Terebithia, The Hobbit, Ernest Hemingway's Short Stories, and various others. This will require staying up under the covers with them propped around my head with pillows as I read with a flashlight. Seeing as I am so suddenly growing up and going to enter the "real world", I feel I should remember simpler times. A time when I didn't have to worry about financial aid and coffee. When the most essential and vital part of my existence was deciding which tree to climb first. When sleeping in my parents bed trumped going to parties, and playing with legos was a far more serious activity than standardised tests. When I had cat wallpaper, and posters that had pictures of puppies that said things like "Puppy love" and "Snuggle puppy", and unicorn sheets, and I was darned proud as I sat admiring them in my pastel pink room. I am going to regress for the sake of progress.

Letter to Burn

_____,

There are so many things I should have said to you then, so many things I wish I had asked. I don't understand you; what were your motivations with me? What compelled you to do what you did? You manipulated me, and unlike previous situations, I don't even understand to what point and purpose. What did you have to gain from me? I was an island of a soul for a reason, and you came along and built a raft. You made me trust you. Your lines were so well rehearsed. We sat back and marveled at how real it was. You told me there was simply no other way of doing things. Others have heard that line, as I found out recently. You were so charming, but it was all an act. You were so sincere, but it was a farce. You were so sweet, but it was saccharine sweetness. As I once read, "Sweet words are never sincere. Sincere words are never sweet." You lend truth to that statement.

You fell out of love with me, you say, though I doubt you were ever in love with me in light of the way you treated me. You were attentive and romantic in the beginning, it was all about me. All the while you had another girl hanging on your every word. She wasn't across the state. Convenience was your motivation. You said you didn't want to hurt me, you wanted it all to work out, when we got where we could "try and make it work". You lied to me. That day you came to see me at Wind, you lied to me. You looked into my eyes and you lied without any remorse whatsoever. You lay in the grass with my head on your chest and your steadily beating heart did not betray your motivations. You went home and saw her. I was irrelevant. I meant so little to you, you could shamelessly go to her. She meant so little to you that you could do the same to her.

Maybe it was your upbringing. Your parents vacillated between doting and leaving you. Then again, I have no idea how much of what you told me was true. You seemingly used your parents and their apparent troubles to cover for your own dishonesty. They weren't quarreling over Spring Break, you were quarreling with her. After that you immediately sought another convenient source of affirmation. It strikes me that you enjoy this game. You enjoy carelessly sweeping girls off their feet only to toss them away when they become an inconvenience. Your romantic Nihilism is unwittingly cruel.

Maybe you aren't capable of genuinely loving someone. Maybe it's horribly frustrating for you to always fall out of love unexpectedly. I don't believe that though. It seems to me that you constantly need a source of positive affirmation, someone to tell you the sun rises for you, to give you everything they have. You enjoy that feeling of power. Maybe you even enjoy the chaos that naturally follows. I hate that you are going to Evergreen. You probably haven't even told her, she thinks you're not going anymore. She thinks she'll be living with you. Or at least, that was the story last I spoke to her. How can you lie to her? I'm sure you looked her in the eyes and promised you would change, said you were sorry. I doubt you have. I doubt you will.

How many girls are you going to do this to? I won't be waiting for you at Evergreen. I never want to speak to you again. I want you to disappear. I want every ounce of pain and pleasure that you have induced to melt away. I don't want to see another girl feel the way I do right now at your hands. I can't stand to see another in this situation. I've never hated anyone in my life, but I hate you. Honesty is something I value and revere over everything in this world. You were patently dishonest. You were positively cruel. What you did was unforgivable. What you are doing is unforgivable. I can only hope that karma will repay you for the damages you have done.

Truthfully,
Chloe

Reciprocation

I don't know what love is. I've tried so many times to define it, thinking I had it, but the tables always turned back around on me. My mind is berating me currently. I don't know what I want, all I know is that sleeping alone is miserable. I hardly sleep because of it. Love is a basic human need. Even when I was sleeping alone just a few short weeks ago, I could smile softly as I drifted off, thinking there was someone- though far away- that was probably doing the same. Looking back, I question whether or not it was even real. Was it even love? I don't know anymore. At the time it felt so real, but, love blurs reality. I don't trust my own heart at the moment. It tends to betray my best interest, and I end up with a general feeling of melancholy. I am afraid. I don't trust my own judgement anymore, and I've been forced to once again redefine everything I thought I knew. The cleverly engineered structure of my ideals and ideas has been dismantled by catastrophic force again, and I am left to pick up the pieces and reforge a solid foundation. This is the sort of thing that keeps me from sleep these days. Everything is so good, the future is so bright, and yet this feeling comes creeping as soon as I am left alone with my mind.

I worry that he will do it again, to some other unsuspecting girl. He'll sweep her off her feet and then miraculously fall out of love with her when she is head over heels; and rather than confessing this to her, he'll simply seek greener pastures. Was any of it real? He never even apologised for the nightmarish ending, as he probably doesn't have the slightest notion of the effect it has had. I'm tough, to a point, but on an emotional level, especially when it comes to love, when I am wounded, I tend to stay down- though not by all appearances- for quite some time. Therein lies the danger in throwing yourself whole hearted into something on the off chance that it could be something worthwhile. I never love halfway, it's all or nothing, full disclosure, honest, true, passionate, genuine love. It wears me out. After giving all that I have for so long, and so many times, I'm down for the count. In time all wounds will heal, but currently, I have no capacity to reciprocate anything to anyone. I'm too terrified of the possibility of yet another heartbreak to throw myself back in again. Yet, I feel like I should, I feel like it's worth it, despite the risk. As John Robbins said, "We need both to receive and to give love. Love is food for our souls, and without it we suffer greatly, just as we suffer physically if we starve." I don't want to starve.

Boxes and Crates

I feel homeless. Today I packed my room up, almost entirely, into boxes. It's amazing how quickly I was able to pack 14 years worth of possessions up, and how little it really amounted to. Just a few boxes, scattered across my now open floor. I couldn't bring myself to take down all of my posters, not yet. I have 19 days, as time barrels down on me. Soon I will be at Evergreen, and I cannot wait. This weird transitional phase is nearly unbearable. I feel like I'm caught in a waiting room, and unfortunately, I recycled all the old magazines, and all the books are packed into a double milk crate. The funny thing is, I know that home is only a concept, but I have lived in this house since I was four years old, so it became home. It became that place that I longed for when I was away too long, and that I was comfortable in. It may sound silly, but the first time I set foot on campus at TESC, I felt like I was home. I didn't have to be anything but myself, and it has since been somewhere that I have constantly had a subconscious longing to be near.

That is not to say that I didn't deviate from the plan for a short while. There was a point in time where I had commited to attending UW and going into medicine. Partly to be impressive and have stability, and partly to fit in with my then present situation. In hindsight, it was all foolishness. I was worn down and ragged from years of career counsellors telling me that I had to choose a conventional career, something that would offer me stability and safety. The quizzes would indicate that I ought to go into Arts and Communications- which was a loosely used term to express that I ought to become a sell out artist, do something safe that would earn enough money to put bread on the table. After a series of hellish heartbreaks, I came to the conclusion that I had absolutely no interest in stability and financial safety. Happiness was what I sought. I wanted to be happy, in whatever destitute or prosperous pass-time I choose to pursue. I decided that living happily in my car, being creative, eating rice, and not being able to afford shoes was much more desirable than living comfortably in the suburbs, working 9 to 5 in a maze of cubicles. Human beings are not meant to live in little boxes like that. It's unnatural, and it's unhealthy. I want to see the world, experience, express, create. Going to Evergreen will allow me to marry my two passions- worded and visual expression- into something I can make a living of. Into something that will probably cause me to be eternally lower middle class and content. Something that will go hand in hand with my wander-lust, and even go as far as to promote it.

People Watching

People watching is by far one of the most entertaining activities this world has to offer- yeah, that probably makes me sound like a creeper. I'm not doing it for kicks, people are generally intriguing to me. The way that the people around me in the world act and react to the situations they are in is fascinating. Certain actions seem learned or conditioned, while others seem innate and programmed. For instance, lounging poolside today, I noted the dating and competition rituals of various other pool visitors. There was a set of three girls, who strutted in, clearly feigning confidence. They sheepishly wandered around, sticking close together as if they were glue invisibly at their stiffly carried shoulders. Acting as if they were disinterested in the pool in its entirety, and laughing amongst themselves while keenly watching the world around them to see if they were being noticed. They continued this for some time as I lounged, until they spotted two girls of roughly the same age carelessly and confidently playing in the pool. Upon seeing this competition, they moved overtly to the pool trying to out-show the other girls. When their competition went unaware of their antics, they left the pool entirely.

This whole parade seemed nonsensical to me. Had I been in this situation- which I wouldn't have been, they were acting ridiculous- I would have gone and talked to the other girls, asked to join their game. Women seem to be conditioned to compete with each other, and I simply don't want to play that game. What's the point? I can be myself happily without cutting down others in the process, it seems counter-productive. Yet the game continues, as it has for years. This girl has this, I don't have this, I want this; whether this is a boyfriend, a pretty dress, great legs, or a fantastic pair of stilettos, rather than being happy with what they have, women seem always to want something different. At least in America, women don't seem to go out of their way to compliment each other. Every other woman is competition, a threat, even friends are a threat. It doesn't make sense to me. People are people, people will do what they do, people have what they have. I don't particularly care. I have what I have and if a man isn't attracted to it over what another has, then it's not going to work out anyway. Rather than focusing on the things that they have, a lot of women are worried about what everyone else has, and what everyone else is thinking about what they have. They cut each other down to eliminate the threat. Men hit each other, women give each other eating disorders. It's a vicious game. They worry constantly about what both men and women think of them. The irony of worrying about what people think about you all the time is that they are probably thinking about what everyone else thinks about them, not about you. So why compete? Why play that game? Why worry?