If I could get some sleep tonight, then maybe I could make things right, and then I wouldn't be living with all your ghosts

If I could get some sleep tonight, then maybe I could make things right, and then I wouldn't be living with all your ghosts

I just watched "The Dark Knight Rises," and I've got this thing about superheroes, babe, that's hard to explain because I'm not sure I understand it myself.  Nolan's Batman trilogy has always terrified me--I remember crying for at least half of "The Dark Knight"--and that comes from, I think, how possible it all is, how these villains are people, just people until they get guns and followers and a voice, and then they've got power.  And isn't that so possible, and so, so terrifying?

I've been trying to read more, which is actually just rereading books and sleeping like shit.  I've been sleeping two or three hours at a time and waking up from terrible nightmares and I wish I could sleep in without feeling terribly guilty about it.  I'm wasting this time at home, I know I am.  I'm going to hate going back.

Everything must start again anew

Everything must start again anew

What if you imagine someone so complexly that the actual them is disappointing?

Would you write would you call back baby, I wrote you a song

Would you write would you call back baby, I wrote you a song

I feel strange tonight, and sad but not in that terrible sort of way.  Just sad, and kind of angry, the kind that I know means that I'm going to be furious tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure I'm setting myself up for a terrible week.  Why why why are these walls so thin and why why why do I insist on getting so upset over things that are so smile and why why why do I always feel like the world is out to get me?

I probably should just go to bed.  That's probably what I should do.  But I'm putting it off because I know they're going to keep me up and that I'm going to get so frustrated with it that I want to scream but all I'll be able to do is cry, because sometimes a lot lately that's all I can do.

I've never been so lost I've never felt so much at home

I've never been so lost I've never felt so much at home

I think, somewhere in this mess of a brain of mine, that you've got to believe in love to buy into Taylor Swift, and I guess that means that I'm much less a cynic than most people.  Or maybe you've just got to admit that you believe in love.  Why's it so hard to admit that we're not as cynical as people think we are?

I lost one of my green doggie socks in the wash tonight and it was the one that had the doggies that look like Georgie and Georgie's getting old and that scares me so, so, so much because he's been there as long as I can remember, and how do people deal with that?  With death, with loss, with gone, with ends, with crying and moving on and smiling and pretending and being a person?

I just want my goddamn socks back.

Such a revelrie

Such a revelrie

I'm feeling a feeling that I haven't felt in a while, not really since I started college at all actually, which is left-out-ness, which is the sense that I missed something and that none of the jokes are going to make sense any more.  Which obviously isn't true, and is clearly something that I make up in my head, and I'm trying to cry I want to cry but it's not happening.

I have this unbelievable fear that next semester when I'm not taking art history I'm going to miss it so much that I'm going to hurt, and I'm going to start hating all of my other classes because they're not art history like maybe I so desperately want them to be.  Why can't I make up my mind?  I'm running out of time.

I don't know how to feel right know.  Are you supposed to know how to feel?

This is the last time I'm asking you this

This is the last time I'm asking you this

I just got so inexplicably emotional over this song that I put my computer down and moved across the room and I wasted today am probably wasting every day and what the fuck am I doing here anyway?  We talked about that out loud today, or was it yesterday, out loud for the first time, the why and the stress and the bubble and what if we had a car?  Everything feels funny right now and I think it's raining and I want to make tea but at least there are missed connections.  That didn't make sense.  Nothing makes sense.  I'm tired or my brain isn't working or both.

Break was good.  I went shopping and I saw three movies.  Those are actually my favorite hobbies, besides television and books and sleeping and oreos.  Are oreos a hobby?  Oreos are my favorite hobby.  I blog like I'm high.  I blog like I'm insane.  One of those things is probably true.

God that was a terrible joke.  Why am I still doing this?

Cross your fingers, hold your toes

Cross your fingers, hold your toes

I'm not depressed, I'm just emotionally unstable.  Those are different things, right?  It's not raining even though it's supposed to be and I'm sitting here breathing calming tea and listening to Taylor Swift and feeling like dying my hair.  Like doing something drastic, but that's the most drastic I can get.

Through the woods we riiiiiiiiide

Through the woods we riiiiiiiiide

There is potentially some wrong with my brain, isn't that where they've traced depression to?  Something wrong with the chemical balance in my brain.  I don't know.  I don't know if I'm actually depressed.  I don't know anything right now, except that I'm sad and I cry too much and today I sat on the grass for 45 minutes and moved every few minutes as the sun moved.  I don't want to be in the shade anymore.  I don't want to be cold anymore.

Today I did something really risky and dumb and very un-Natasha-like, and I probably shouldn't have done it but it's too late now and for some reason I'm not worried about it, though I probably should be.  I should be working on one of my three papers right now.  I should be reading for Friday.  There are lots of things I should be doing.  That's what I hate most about this place.  There's always something not that I could be doing, but that I should be doing.  God, summer is so nice, why can't it be summer all the time?  Or always Friday.

We lost faith in the arms of love

We lost faith in the arms of love

I'm always the girl you ask about homework and the one who lends you a pen and then never gets it back.  Today is self-loathing and Ben Howard and glasses and sadness settling in my stomach.  Today is waking up tired and undercooked pancakes and feeling blind and broken.  It's hard to remember why I'm here and it's hard to remember what I want and it's goddamn harder than hell to feel like I'm worth anything.  The black typeface on my computer screen looks green from a certain angle and everything seems awful from this certain angle, but it's the angle that I'm living and it's the one I can't get away from.

I want to go home and sleep for a week.  I want to eat whatever I want and not give a damn.  I want to watch a million hours of television and write analytical essays on my favorite characters.  I want to stop feeling so much so often so heavy so many tears.  

What can I do with a girl if she refuses to be mine

What can I do with a girl if she refuses to be mine

I'm in the library right now and I've been in the library most of today and I have work in the library at 8, and I guess this year I'm going to spend more time in the library than I do anywhere else, and that's Reed College for you, I suppose.  Today has been a terrible awful day and the world has just kicked my ass repeatedly and it all kind of sucks, except my friends are awesome and my mom is awesome and I'm going home for a weekend in November to see Jack's Mannequin play their last ever show ever, and that's the only good thing that's happened today.  I picked an uncomfortable library chair (why did anyone ever think that wooden armrests on an armchair, or a sofa for that matter, were a good idea?) that's far away from a plug which means my computer is probably going to die but I've finished my homework for tomorrow and I don't want to do any for Friday yet because it's Wednesday and I feel like it was just Tuesday because oh yeah it was, but tomorrow's Thursday already, and this year is already kind of dragging, which isn't good because there's still a lot of it left to go.  Yesterday I turned in a story that I really liked to my creative writing prof, and I don't even know where this sentence is going so I'm going to end it now.

Everything is ugh today and I'm pretty sure a bee just flew past me and I'm inside what the heck and I'm tired I'm so tired but I have to work till 10 pm, which was the worst idea I've ever had besides the time I posted a missed connection and someone responded to it and the other events of today and UGH.

On cold days cold plays out like the band's name

On cold days cold plays out like the band's name

Things are going just swell right now.  I have best friends and they're funny and I love them and we are a boy band but not really, and my sister is my mini-but-taller-than-me, and I like my classes and I feel okay.  I wish boys would notice me, that's the easiest way of saying it, but there's this part of me that knows that I'm going to have to step outside of my box or whatever if I ever want to be not-alone forever.  That's what makes me sad and I know it shouldn't, but sometimes it's really fucking hard to not let it get to me.  I hate sounding like this.  I hate, hate, hate it.

But this is a positive post because Harry Styles is pretty and I finished my homework and yay!

Don't you give up on me

Don't you give up on me

I'm in the library and this is how it goes: I wake up when my body wants to and my room is filled with sunlight because the rain hasn't hit the city yet, and there are geese on the lawn and people walking their dogs and the bathroom smells good from the shower of one of my neighbors.  Breakfast isn't as good as it used to be and I haven't pinpointed why.  Class is strange but not altogether uncomfortable, and the boy to my left smells nice and I'm jealous of the haircut of the girl who sits to my right.  It's comforting to know that I can do this on my own if I had to, but I don't, because my friends are only a text away always (except in the library because the walls are too thick for cell phone signals) and there's music and the beauty of words, my own and others', and there's the way it feels to laugh by yourself in an empty room and wonder if the people on the other side of the walls and in the hallway can hear you.  There's place and space and how impossible it is to ever separate them, and there's text messages with my sister about British boys and high school physics teachers and the reminder every now and again that she's not a little girl anymore, and isn't that terrifying?

I'm really content with my schedule right now and my classes are good so far and I like my professors and I need to work harder to make sure my voice isn't overrun by louder voices but there's time for that.    I feel like I have time and not like everything's piling up all at once and that's a really nice feeling.  I know it won't last, but I'm going to try to enjoy it for the time being.

There are also these thoughts that've been floating around in my head about being a different person or a different sort of person this year, the kind of person who decides what she wants and goes after it, but I can't help but think that I'm much more content watching my fingers type in the reflection on my screen and waiting for life to happen to me.  That's such an awful attitude and I know it, but change is such a fickle being and what does that even mean?  It's not even late at night and my mind is already a jumbled mess.  I'm nervous about French class but I'm sure it will be fine.  It will be fine, it will be fine, it will be fine.  

Hold your horses now

Hold your horses now

I'm sitting in my new dorm room and feeling all nervous about this floor meeting that we're supposed to be having tonight at either 6:05 or 7:15 in either the south common room or the north common room, and I shouldn't feel like this, because I'm not a freshman and this isn't my first go here.  Ugh ugh ugh.  I haven't put anything up on my walls yet and I kind of like it like that, but usually I put up so much stuff that I feel like leaving the walls plain would almost be betraying past me.  Does that make any sense?  Of course not.

It's weird being back and I'm not ready to start class tomorrow and somehow I've started to feel like this isn't real life, like this is limbo between childhood and when actual real life actually really starts.  Every thing is so temporary here: my dorm room and my classes and it's all going to not be in my life a year from now, and that's such a strange feeling.  I'm listening to a song right now that I listened to in my room two days ago, and I'm not there any more, and isn't that weird?

So anyhow I'm terrified right now even though I know I shouldn't be and isn't it good that I'm not a freshman again?  That might've been the scaredest I've ever been.  Good God.

From your apartment into mine

From your apartment into mine

I'm going back to school in two weeks and I'm not ready, not ready, not ready.  The other day I was out with my mom and my sister and I was grumpy and I whined at her, and we were in public and I realized that I'm 19 years old and I can't act like that anymore, because I have 15,430 followers on an internet blog and I have a job where I pick up after children who whine all day, and growing up is absolutely fucking terrifying.  It's strange to think that two summers ago I wrote the words that became my college application essay, the one that Ann said that she liked and then she told me that I had to work on being an introvert in college, and I hadn't realized until that point that I was writing about introversion because I'd never thought about it before.  But now I think about it all the goddamn time and I've realized how much I think about everything all the goddamn time, but I'm really stupid actually.

It's late and I'm not going to proofread and I like my sentences like this anyhow, because this is how my brain is and screw off if you don't like it.  I wish I could be that way in real life.  I wish my real life was more life-y.  I don't want to leave home and my dogs and my bed and my free time and I don't want to leave the people at work because it's nice not talking about Plato for once and isn't that weird?  Maybe I've pointed my life in the wrong direction.  But maybe it's too late to change it.

Drive until you lose the road

Drive until you lose the road

I am having a strange week during which I am learning that I never want to live alone because the world is a scary place and I am a scary person when I have to keep all of my thoughts inside my head all the time, but this year taught me very clearly that I suck at living with people.  So basically I am a disaster.  But I've got this romantic and therefore unrealistic notion that my soulmate (which is a romantic and unrealistic idea as well and therefore I believe in it) will allow me to be alone and not alone at the same time, because my soulmate is/will be a part of myself and therefore will not be someone whom I feel like I constantly have to impress or attend to, which is how people often make me feel.  I haven't been here in a while because I've been writing a ton of words in other places and trying to make myself feel like I've accomplished something, when all that I've really done is pretty much nothing.

So these are my thoughts this week: nothing I think ever makes any sense; I want to have kids because oh god they are wonderful but what if I never get married because I am a disaster and nothing I think ever makes any sense?; I want to finish my fucking novel; I am terrified to return to school because it is going to be a shitton of work that I'm not ready to do; I cuss too much in my mind and use too many semicolons.  And a ton of other things I don't want to admit on the internet because I spill enough of my mind here already.  

I know the city only breaks you down and it gets ya lonely

I know the city only breaks you down and it gets ya lonely

I'm home and it's fine (I can't remember if I've posted since I've been home yet) but my mind is working overtime and it's all in a muddle, which is a phrase that doesn't really make any sense.  I'm happy, mostly, and I feel mostly accomplished and mostly intelligent and mostly like I'm not a total waste of space, but I don't want to spend my life alone, and I think I've read so many stories about love that not finding it has become one of my biggest fears, and I'm not sure I can sleep alone for my entire life.  I want to believe in fate and destiny and soul mates and the way that your hand maybe fits perfectly in someone else's but real life has divorce rates that scare the shit out of me, because somewhere in the depths of my mind that's been warped by fiction I believe that marriage is a lifelong promise, which totally clashes with my thoughts on how charges of adultery are so ridiculously old-fashioned that they shouldn't exist any more because of the public and the private and your own bedroom in your own house.

And now that I'm without my friends and I've been talking to people who used to be my friends about how much they don't particularly love their current friends, I've realize that I got damn lucky with my friends, because they are amazing genuine intelligent kind brilliant people and I miss them.  

I haven't been reading enough and I haven't been sleeping enough or writing enough because goddamnit why can I never finish anything?  When it comes down to it I am lazy and insecure as fuck and insecure about cussing even though I cuss in my head all the time so why can't I cuss out loud?  And by out loud I mean on the internet somewhere that no one ever visits.  I'm going to be alone forever because (repeat of anxieties I've probably already outlined here) I am introverted and too quiet and not particularly likable and sort of a shit friend.  And I can't spell worth a damn and my bedroom still looks like a child's and it's full of words that I wrote a million years ago, back when I was confident that I would be a famous published author, because I believed not only that I was good enough but that I had the strength to live that life of fame mixed with isolation, and what a strange life that seems to be?  So many people reading your inner thoughts which you type on your laptop when inspiration strikes and probably when it doesn't, but you never see those people probably, because you work where you live and how do you cope with the silence?      

I think I'm losing my head these days, but isn't this kind of madness supposed to fuel creative endeavors?  But I'm lazy and an asshole and I don't want to see any of my high school friends because when I'm in a bad mood I feel like spending time with Republicans is a waste and I'm an asshole.  I meant to read those goddamn books that I got from the library, I really did, and then my brain and the internet and 11,666 words of a story that probably isn't very good because I'm 18 fucking years old (19 next week) and how can I write anything worth reading if I haven't lived anything?  This is a monster of a post, but it's due time, I suppose, because I haven't done this in ages and when was the last time I really dumped everything out of my head?  Speaking of, it just popped into my head that it's going to be pathetic if I start defining my summers by which fan fiction couple I'm reading that year.  Jesus, I need to get a life.    

So tell me why we're talking when we dance so good

So tell me why we're talking when we dance so good

I like superhero movies because (I need to go to sleep because I have a headache but I want to write down this thought before I forget it) they deal with these big, huge, monumental problems, world-ending, life-or-death problems.  And the hero always wins.  Superhero movies allow you to forget about your little problems, the kind that have to do with the price of gas and test scores and text messages and whether or not you're completely wasting your life studying something that's not going to get you a job.  I'm at home and I'm slightly bored but mostly content to be completely isolated from basically everyone besides my family but kind of including them.  I've been watching too much tv and reading too much fanfiction but I've been writing a bit and I made a playlist and I read two chapters of a book and why do those things feel like huge accomplishments when they so obviously aren't?  I just want to listen to Wakey!Wakey! for hours and write fantastic things and not need to sleep.  

Here's a firm goodbye to yesterday and to the time I wasted

Here's a firm goodbye to yesterday and to the time I wasted

Last night I went to a concert and tomorrow begins my last week of classes, and remember last summer when I was lying awake at night thinking that there was no way I could do this?  But here I am and I'm doing this and still every night I'm lying awake thinking that there's no way I can do this for one more day.

This post is probably going to sound exactly like my last one because I have good days and bad days but the bad days are all the same and they all feel the same but I still cry all the same.  I think I've realized that I'm probably a shitty roommate and a not-so-great friend because I'm grumpy and I tell stupid jokes and I have weird ass taste in music and I say things like "weird ass."

Ugh.  I should go to sleep but it's 80 degrees out.  What the heck, Portland.

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness

There are two weeks of classes left and why do I always feel like I have a hum paper to write and a bio test to study for?  I am unhappy here, but I don't think it's here, as in this place, that I'm unhappy with.  It's this state of being, this sad, hateful, lonely state of being.  Sometimes I think that a boyfriend could make me happy even though I'm pretty sure that's not true because something in the back of my mind is telling me that I'd come to like him more than my friends and then he'd leave me and I wouldn't have any friends to go back to, because isn't that what always happens to girls with too many feelings?  And sometimes I think that I'm not sure I can do this, spend four years here in this place full of so much incomprehensible reading and these people who like to be naked in public and smoke too much pot and judge you for judging things like nakedness and smoking.

I wish someone would type me to sleep.  It's such a soothing noise.  I wonder if I'm alone in that.

You've done nothing at all to make me love you less

You've done nothing at all to make me love you less

This is the last week of March and it's going to be no good very bad terrible awful, because I have a bio test and I just turned a hum paper that I don't feel great about and I want to kill my roommate and I just really really want it to be summer already.  But I have to finish my internship apps and I think one of them was due today, oh shoot, and I have to maintain my friendships and keep up with my classes and stop crying so much.  Why am I crying so goddamn much lately?  I don't want to feel like this anymore.

But you didn't have to cut me off

But you didn't have to cut me off

It's after hum and before hum and I'm sitting with Rachel at that place that we always sit at this time Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays and she's got her headphones in, listening to the mix that G made her.  It's really sweet, really, but it's got some really weird stuff on it, and sometimes I have trouble aligning people's musical tastes with their personalities.  Briana's go really well together, and so do Rachel's, and Emma's but I'm not sure about me, or G, but that's because I don't really know him, or maybe Kevyn.  But actually I think her's sink up pretty well.  I'm sure none of that makes any sense.

It's almost Spring break and I'm really excited even though I know the week is going to be way too short, because E is going home and my mom is coming to see me and Nicole and Kev and I are going to the coast for a day.  My goals are the same, sleep a lot and read a lot, but I'll probably watch a lot and stay up late a lot instead.  That's the way things always turn out.

I'm suddenly grumpy.  Ugh.  I hate Mondays.

I guess we're all one phone call from our knees

I guess we're all one phone call from our knees

I'm in the library and I'm supposed to be working on my paper but I think it's done, or at least done to a point that I'm mostly comfortable with, so i'm typing this so I won't be on tumblr because I'm always afraid that people are judging me when they see me on tumblr in the library.  Last night I went to a Mat Kearney concert and it was glorious and he's immensely talented and just seems like a genuinely nice person and I wish there were more of those around, you know?  I've had this stress-induced stomach ache/nausea thing going on for the last week or so, and it's making eating weird and sleeping weird and sometimes I get so trapped in my own head that I'm not sure I'll ever get out.  That's one of the reasons that I like doing this, I guess.  One of the reasons that I like making art, even if it's shitty, and writing things and calling my mom on the phone even though she doesn't say too helpful things too often.

Tomorrow is Sunday and there's a bio exam on Tuesday that I'm going to fail, yay, and then after that things should go back to their lower level of stress-inducing for at least a few weeks.  I've got this weird obsession with defining myself, which I think maybe everyone has but they just don't realize it, and lately I've been thinking about it a lot, with introvertedness and being a Reedie and dying my hair and boys and everything.  Reed can be so stifling sometimes, but it's also really stimulating.  And it's really self-aware, even self-conscious.  That's so bizarre, I think.

My mom says something to me on the phone sometimes when I'm upset, which is, "I'm sorry that it's making you so upset," and it's really ridiculously unhelpful, because it just doesn't help, and because I'm sorry that I'm so easily upset too.  

In these bodies we will live in these bodies we will die

In these bodies we will live in these bodies we will die

I feel really lonely right now and I have papers to write and I don't know how to write them and why won't this damn cold go away?  I did something that I think is probably going to be really good for someone that I really love but I think it's going to end up hurting me, because I'm like the forever bridesmaid or some shit like that, and I want to cry but these walls are paper thin so my options are the bathroom or the stair well or the parking lot and why is life like that?  Like this?  I don't like when things change but I don't like when things get boring and my feet are cold but my socks are too far away.  I know that Emma is better at being a human being than me and that frustrates me and makes me angry at her and I got tears on my glasses.

Don't think twice, it's alright

Don't think twice, it's alright

I hope that I never get caught in a fire drill without any pants on.  I hope that the spoiler I read tonight about the new season of "Skins" isn't true.  I hope that I can be strong enough to stop doing things that I know will hurt Emma.  I hope that I can maintain my friendships and not destroy them like I usually do.  I hope that I have time to write soon, and time to work on my art journal and to watch "Downton Abbey" and I hope I sleep through the night soon.

On Sunday I saw John Green and Hank Green and it's the third time I've seen each of them "live" and every time I've overcome with this emotion that I can't explain.  It's nostalgia and happiness and this sense that without these people and this community and everything I've discovered through the internet, I'm not sure who I'd be now.  Sometimes I think that it's a little dramatic to say that they saved me or that they changed by life, but sometimes I'm not sure how else to put it.  It's really hard day to day to be comfortable with who I am, but alone in my own room at night, looking at who I am and what I've got, I'm fine.  Things are fine.

The sun made stripes of shades

The sun made stripes of shades

I tend to only blog when I'm upset or bored, but I want to blog right now because I'm happy.  I've had two good days in a row, which will hopefully be followed by two more good, although slower, days.  Sometimes I really hate it here, and sometimes I really love it, and I really want the times that I love it to make up for the times that I hate it.  This is a feeling that I have trouble holding onto, and I want to record it so that I can try to remember it later.

On the broken radiator

On the broken radiator

There is snow outside my window and I laughed a lot tonight and things are good, except I haven't really figured out how to tell my roommate's boyfriend to gtfo because I want to go to sleep, and I haven't figured out how to dress for this weather or how to talk to people or what it means when someone speaks to me directly by name even though I've barely spoken to them before.

And also I want a boyfriend but I'm not sure why, and I think it might be because my roommate has one and I feel like she's slipping away from me a tiny bit every day, and because I don't know how to act around him, and because I don't have to impress him but I want someone of my own to impress, and because I don't want someone who is nice to me all the time but someone who is kind to me and interested in me and wants to spend time with me and is okay with who I am.

So really I'm at that point again where things are settling and I really just want something to happen, I guess.

She always belonged to someone else

She always belonged to someone else

I'm going back to school in two days and I am not ready, not ready, not ready.  I'm really happy here at home with my giant watercolor notebook and my Netflix and my tumblr.  But I know that if I never leave the house then I'll never experience anything or go anywhere or anything and the happiness will expire and I'll never be able to get it back.  Or something.

I don't have anything else to write right now, but at 1 AM this morning I finished The Fault in Our Stars and all I wanted to do was blog about it and talk about it and then today happened and I only saw my sister for five minutes and so I haven't had a chance to ask her if she's finished it yet.  Tomorrow is my last day of break and I don't know what to read next.  Those two things go together in my mind.

Someway baby, it's part of me, apart from me

Someway baby, it's part of me, apart from me

I just watched "The Breakfast Club" and I'm feeling sort of iffy about the ending and it's nearing 11 so I know I should go to bed soon.  But I'm here blogging because I want to paint or write or something, or something, so really I'm just feeling antsy, because I know I only have a few more days at home and it's sort of scaring me that I don't want to go back to school.  There's nothing for me at home, really - I'm just wasting time.  But I'm enjoying wasting time, and I'm not bored even though I swore I'd be, and I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to being productive.  There are so many more movies I want to see, and I want to finish "Numb3rs" and read a million more books and go through my dresser drawers.

I miss my friends.  I do miss them.  But Reed is so much a bubble, and just thinking about it makes me feel a little bit claustrophobic.  So I guess I just don't think about it?  I'm sure everything will be fine once I'm there.  It has to be.  Five more months and then summer, and then repeat all over again.   I'll just have to find some ways to make next year significantly different from this year, so I don't get stuck in this monotonous thing like I did in high school.

Tomorrow I'm having lunch with Simone, which I'm trying to stop worrying about, and I have to buy fishing line and finish my mobiles and figure out what to do with the last one and why is it tripping me up so much?