I’ve been here about a month and a half now. It’s been truly, fully strange.

I can’t help this incredible feeling that nothing here is real- this life has become mine so suddenly that I feel as though I am living fiction. I simultaneously cannot shake this very strange sense of deja vu. Every person I meet here, I have this strange, persistent feeling that I have known them a long time. I feel so comfortable here, like I’ve always lived here. It’s been pleasant.

I’ve also been terribly foolish. Beyond all my predictions and calculations and preparations, I have become completely and utterly bewitched by domesticity. I’m thriving off of my independence here, and all my focus has been on this simple life. I feel as though I’ve lost all the incredible drive and ambition that got me here in the first place. It’s dangerous, and I worry about it. I won’t survive if I do not find it again. I’ll become stuck here the same as before. Some part of my brain knows that if I do not succeed here in these years I will always be a ghost. I’ll get stuck on the wrong track again, I’ll doom my storyline, my fate. I hate this part of me.

I’ve always become infatuated in a more traditional sense. I can’t believe myself for being like this. Of all the years of people telling me my perspective would change when I met the right person, this result is certainly drenched with the most bitter irony. If i were an outside person looking in, I would condescend to myself. For one, it further hurries my ambition. My head feels muddled and sluggish and intrinsically distracted. My thoughts, where they roam, always come back to this inconvenience. On top of that, it makes me the very person I swore I’d never become. There’s another person out there who’s affected by this great big mess. But I can’t bring myself to erase this mood I’m in. I can’t figure out how to distance myself from my emotions, how to bottle it up anymore. I’ve just become so tired of it. I even found myself, for the first time since I was a very little girl, giving a wish to another person. I always have given myself a rule that my wishes, on flowers or eyelashes, or time as it was tonight, aren’t for surface things. I don’t wish for love with the person of the week and I don’t wish for money or anything frivolous. It’s always for fulfillment, for enlightenment, self-actualization. But I gave that wish away. It was childish, and shortsighted and selfish, but it was, in its own way, so refreshing.

It’s been a few days now since I’ve moved in. I love my new room, and my roommate is very similar to me. We get along very well. I’ve been thinking of oddities, such as the oddity of the two of us. We’ve begun to live as a pair. We share food, and rides and chores. It’s easier on the both of us that way. I think we also enjoy the company. I wonder if it will change as time goes on?

I only just became concerned for her and her boyfriend about an hour ago. I realize she’s in a long distance relationship, and living a very exciting new life. I don’t think it bodes well for the two of them. I fear the turmoil that might come should they separate.

I haven’t seen my friends down here yet but I will soon. I look forward to our adventures together. I am becoming rather impatient to see the ocean.

I’ve been here all this week and have yet to go. I’ve promised myself that I won’t live as my brother did in his university days, completely ignoring the beach when he lived right on it.

My orientation is tomorrow, and then class! I’m excited, because I think I have a lot of skill for my experience, but I fully expect to become a very small fish in a very large pond. I’ve had such a lengthy period of time to myself wherein I’ve allowed myself to believe I can become a master in a short time. I don’t doubt this is possible, that I could establish myself as at the forefront of my peers, but suddenly the task seems more daunting than noble. Whatever the case, I remind myself of my earliest, most humble goals. I wanted to be able to draw what I liked, to live somewhere nice, and to like what I do. I’ve at least achieved this. It is my anchor.

Thus far I’ve been rather cheerful, and put together. There’s been little panic, although with such a long streak of wellness I’m sure to crash soon. I worry about the homesickness, about the scariness of being on my own.

I am confronting a new type of loneliness, which I did not anticipate. I am surrounded by people but I do feel a bit isolated. I get along with my roommates but not all of me. I can tell already there are some aspects of myself which do not have a place here. It is the quirkiest parts me, that taught me to love myself. It makes me particularly wistful, and I miss my close friends.

I’m going to have to have them visit soon. My mother may come this Friday and I’m quite excited about that as well. I miss her very much.

Today was my birthday. We had a party and it was superstition themed and we played board games and watched movies. It’s been lovely. I said my goodbye to everyone. It was sad but I made my mind up so long ago about leaving that it didn’t shake me even a little. I’ve my few, closest friends here still, and they’ll come with me tomorrow to see me off. They’ll help carry all my things -I have so many things now- and then they’ll say goodbye and I’ll sleep somewhere that isn’t my room.

My sister left a present for me on my bed. I’m terribly grateful that I didn’t open it until everyone had gone to bed because it shook me to my core. I cried, and I cry now trying think of how to record what it’s meant to me. I had considered all these things- thought them through deeply and carefully, what leaving will mean to me. I knew I would be sad to see new friends go, and more sad to see old ones part with me. I knew the weight of leaving my home, in the only city I’ve ever lived, both a blessing and a curse. I’ve devoted hours and hours of thought to what it means to leave the earth I’ve been raised on for years. I feel my roots in every corner of this place (for better or worse). Every person I’ve ever been or tried to be, I can see them walking the sidewalk, I can feel every thought I ever had here. It’s maddening, like a cluttered room that you’re locked in, but I’m terrified to leave in case I need something here.

In all my time I never thought of what leaving my siblings would mean to me. I knew in my head they would be sad. They would miss me for a time, and the. I would come home to visit. And leave again and slowly, they would adjust to my vacuum. I thought of what it might mean, practically, to them. That’s my foolishness. This is not the same pretext as the friends I have made this past winter. I did not meet my brother or sister understanding that one day, I would leave them. I’ve spent every day alongside them, (for better or worse) and as I grew to become as big and whole as I could manage, I’ve done everything I can to take a part in raising them. Some part of my life has always been devoted to a sacred and noble duty of looking out for them. We are rooted here together.

My sister, in her card, spoke of missing me, and that she didn’t realize growing up would mean such distance. We’re like minded after all. She spoke also of the sister she used to share a bunk bed with, for years. This struck me the most. For as I wallow ever more in nostalgia, it did not strike me to remember the days we shared in the same room, always together. It struck me to see her remember them, to see that we hold that time the same in our hearts. To see that nostalgia reciprocated, without prompting. It’ll touch me for the rest of my life.

I pray for my sister, and myself. That we do not grow distant in the years to come. I have a dream, of a far off future, where my family is together again. We are all grown, with children of our own, sure. We’re in Oregon, near my eldest brother, and near each other. My parents have a small, lovely home near the ocean for my mother. My siblings each have a home and hearth. And we come together, and we raise our children as we were raised. With the same terribly strong, gentle love my parents gave. That in the far future, my legacy, and that of my siblings beside me, is a family that feels as rooted as I do now.

Sometime, farther down the road, we’ll return here, at least once, all of us, to see the place that gave us so much- to see our home, where we all were together. The place where we were saved. And we’ll feel the same bitter love I do now, as I prepare to leave in another step toward this future.

I’ll be okay

I’m sleeping worse and worse lately. I don’t know what to do about it but I supposed there’s nothing to be done. I’ll have to wait until my days are full again.

I drove along the road I used to take to school tonight. It was dark but I still knew the road so well. It was comforting to have a confidence along it that I never had when I took it to class.

The show tonight was wonderful. I had a good time and I’ve needed a bit of the punk rock spirit lately. I also needed my friends. I’ll miss them terribly when I’m gone but I’ll be okay.

I think I’ve become terribly level-headed and sensible. All my life I wanted to be mature, but I’m so measured now that I think I’ve become distant as a consequence. I don’t feel emotion as I used to. Beyond irrational panic, (which has far more to do with illness than personality) I don’t find the lows and highs anymore. It’s stable, but truthfully unfun. Perhaps I’ve just been stagnant too long. I’ll sort it out somehow.

I’ve been think about my mother. I’m the same age now that she was when she was pregnant with me. I think about her life, think about stopping mine to marry a man and raise his three kids. It seems unbelievable, but only partly because I cannot understand what it means to be in love. The marriage of it makes no sense to me, but I could picture myself taking on the kids. I’ve become so accustomed to children, and I have so much love for them, that I could understand raising them just because you want them to have a home, and a family, and somewhere safe. My mother is a giving person to have done that for my brother and sister.

It’s rained all this week, and maybe more. I don’t see the days as well since everything has slowed down. I don’t leave the house often enough, I need to get out soon.
I’ve had such a strange time these past few weeks, like every moment I am trying to feel the great momentum and escape of moorpark. But I think I’ve felt every goodbye I’ll find here. I saw the Hartford house, thought of the whole generation of my siblings, all nestled beneath that roof. I’ve seen all my old schools, my old haunts. Talked to people from long ago and I’ve truly worked every step of the way earn my right to leave.

I’m glad it’s been raining so much. I can’t find the girlish wonder I used to have, but I’m glad to know moorpark will be green when I leave. That it’ll be beautiful. I’ve thought about it, about why I feel better having made friends this semester, having become more confident, having found a job I like, a routine that works, why I feel I would prefer all this right before I have to leave it. Wouldn’t it have been easier to leave if I was alone? Sad or wronged, wouldn’t it have felt more noble?

But I think I’ve only been able to enjoy these things under the pretext that I am going to leave them, eventually. That I’ll leave them behind for something else. I think that if my future were somehow ripped from me, that I might be lost. I might once again feel a prisoner, trapped, doomed to die in my own nest.

I want moorpark to be beautiful when I leave it. I want to feel all the love I’ve ever felt here. All the things that stitched me together, I want that to be the wave that finally pushes me out. But I think that this will not be a great climatic event. Rather, like many things I have overestimated (which may be the very killer of my childlike wonder) It’s entirely possible I will make not a sound as I leave this place. For all the pain I have had here and the life I’ve led and the person I’ve become, for all my twenty years rooted in this one little place, I think that when I leave it might be with the slightest whisper. I will softly slip out the door, and into my new life. No rewritten life, no new chapter, just me, except I sleep somewhere different. I don’t know how to feel if that’s the case. It’ll be strange for me from now on. I’ll be able, finally, to exist in a vacuum.
I wonder who I’ll be then.

People ask of me, (I, of myself)
What do you wish for, crave in this life?
I am so terribly burdened with gluttony, (greed green as young spring grass, hopeful)
Oh! The things I wish for-
Wonders and wilds, and adventure and candy and love and furniture and contact and stuff!! The stuff of life, the meat of the human experience,
A hundred lovers ill fit to my disposition!
A thousand days spent idling in places magic or else untouched;
Gentle unison and sharp individuality,
Lavish wastes and noble sacrifices, a myriad pool of contradictions so powerful that a storm is raised in me
where winds howl and rain falls hot and panicked,
All at once a body can take in no more, could bear the weight of not one more second of existing, the great and terrible affliction-
These times I want so simply, a cessation of all things; of fear and hunger, packed places, small chatter, empty rooms, little corners, enormous chasms, laughter, tears.
A ceasing of my endless urge to create, to imprint, to matter.

cancelle:

touching another person is like
drinking hot chocolate in the rain
it warms you for the moment regardless
but i bet it’s so much sweeter
if you’re in love with the taste on your lips

cancelle:

Boys love girls but
Boys love the sight of girls and
Girls love boys but love
The thought of them;
And girls love girls and
Boys love boys and
All the people in-between love each other too,
And you loved a girl but the thought of her;
And I loved you but the sight of you;
And we never met anywhere in-between
And now I hope to love you, but the stuff of you
And you hope to love her, but in reciprocation of her
And we won’t meet anywhere in-between
So maybe you should love girls but the bulk of them (not me)
And I should love girls or boys but the truth of them, (not you)
And we should love apart but hope to meet again
And maybe find the in-between?