[	Current Mood	|	creative	]
[	Current Music	|	The Format - Dog Problems	]

Today was one of the best days I've had in such a long time. I say this, but I realize that good days like this are easily eclipsed by the bad days. They tend to get dissolved by the bitter salt of bad moods, depression, anxiety & loneliness.
There is no real reason for today being better than other days but for example: 
I was in Publix earlier today and I was just being friendly with the cashier and he asked me, "You seem like you're in a good mood today."
and I said, "Yeah, today is a good day." he went on to ask, "Why is today such a good day?" to which I replied, "It isn't a bad day. So it can't be taken for granted." After I said it, I instantly wished that more people felt and expressed this thought. We take the good too much for granted and whine about the bad, constantly.

He just nodded. I smiled and said thank you when he handed me the receipt, I also wished him a good day.

Work wasn't all bad either, despite it being work. I got to hang out for most of the night with one of my favorite people in the entire world & I'm not completely sure what it is about him but there's no way I can be unhappy in his presence. He immediately brightens my day, makes me smile & keeps me laughing. One day I'll have to thank him for that.


Twenty third birthday is twelve days away.
There will be a list of possible gift options available if anyone feels like buying me anything.
Or making me anything. It doesn't matter. I'll love whatever I get.







 

[

Current Mood

|

crappy

]

Truth is, I don't want to get older without my mom to see me age. Save your "But she CAN see you!"'s
(Though I appreciate the good intention, sincerely.)
That makes it even worse, because for her to see me like this just proves that I'm not the girl she thought I was.

Or, at the very least. I'm not the girl I think she thought I was.

 

It's 3am and my eyes are blurry.
I can't see one thing except
the vision of your collar
and the skin that's underneath it
in my head.

and if i connected all your freckles
it would be a to-scale diagram
of those constellations we stared
at that night we declared we'd never grow up.

"please never grow up, penelope" you said to me
how five years can change everything
from what name you use to call me,
to the way it feels now when you touch me
our skin's no longer skin
it's just a membrane memory
covering what held us both together for so long.

we were naive to think that we could
ever put the dirt between our bodies
and grow dandelions like the ones
out back of your old house when we were kids.

and a road as black as this
leaves much to be imagined
but lines are faint tonight
and your youthful smile
that mirrored my own
is another of the onlys that i hold.

It could be because technically "today" is Mothers Day.
It could be this town and the lack of anything to do.
It could be that no one interests me enough for me to befriend them.
And when they do, I don't try for fear of scaring them off.

But, I tried to be a statue tonight.
And it didn't work out.
 

[	Tags	|	2009, beginning, death, ending, shower, wrinkles	]
[	Current Location	|	under a string of star-shaped lights	]
[	Current Mood	|	drained	]
[	Current Music	|	Death Cab for Cutie: The Open Door EP	]

Lean back against the porcelain, with the spout to your temple. Stretch your legs out and watch your feet turn red from the heat. Close your eyes and give up, if only for a moment -this is where you'll let yourself do it. Let the smiles fade, bring wrinkles if they may but keep the memories good or bad away. How to begin. Repeat your actions in your head, place them strategically with cleverness.  Scrub hard at that complexion of mystery or denial, for a better way to begin. With less emphasis on the end.  That face, the face that mirrors the one you see everyday. It happened in slow motion but lasted all of five seconds. Staring with disbelief, you looked to your left. You were met with the same look on a different face but straight ahead, you saw yourselves. In a bed that had no heartbeat.  Met a man with eager eyes and watched, back and forth. The bed, the man, the bed, the man. The words you knew he would say, he said but with eager eyes you watched. Then everything went gray.

The expensive shampoo and conditioner that was bought before she knew she would no longer need it, is almost gone. You rinse the last of it out of your hair and leave the bottle tops open. This would've annoyed her. Convincing yourself to stand, your feet want to give out but you've sat and watched for too long as the palms of your hands - covered in the skin that you once loved to dance in- have pruned. If you don't begin soon, the rest of you will absorb your surroundings and prune too.

Turn it off. Wring your hair, pull the curtain back and step out. You wait hours before moving and look up only to find that your hair does what it is meant to when given the time. Beginnings, like curls, come naturally and endings are almost always abrupt.
 

[	Current Mood	|	cold	]
[	Current Music	|	ADTR: If It Means A Lot To You	]

I gotta say it still turns my stomach when the reference to you loving her comes up.
It shouldn't matter. I shouldn't feel that way and most of the time I don't.
And maybe it's the left overs from last night that make me feel shaky at the thought,
but I'm uncomfortable with the answer that she could be the one.

That's it.

[

Current Mood

|

drained

]

I finally decided to get dressed today. Put on a pair of clean (but somehow wrinkled) jeans and dug through my closet for a shirt.
I picked a shirt I don't think I've worn since 2007. I brushed my teeth, got some water and came back to my room to check a couple various websites before starting to read Stardust by Neil Gaiman.

So I'm laying here, checking e-mail or something and I see this white string like thing hanging from the left side of my collar area. I pull on it thinking it's an elastic fiber because most of the shirts I own are made from that short of fabric and I get halfway done pulling it out of my shirt only to realize it's a strand of hair.

A white/grayish/blondish wavy coarse strand of hair.
...A strand of my mom's hair.

I've been staring at it since then.
And that was about twenty minutes ago.

That's right. I'm hitting up the west coast at the end of next month with one of my biffles.
I couldn't be more excited!

[	Tags	|	birthdays, cancer, mom	]
[	Current Mood	|	depressed	]
[	Current Music	|	The Beatles: Hard Day's Night	]

We're still getting the flowers, we're still buying a cake.
I won't put candles on it, and the flowers won't be able to sit in a vase.
But hey, I hope you're smiling at the gestures.
I love you.

[	Tags	|	anger, family, friendship, grievance, katie, mom, sara	]
[	Current Mood	|	exhausted	]
[	Current Music	|	Is Tupac Resurrection REALLY on my iTunes?!	]

"I'm glad to see you're being human now."

...Yeah, me too.


 

[	Tags	|	crush, family, future	]
[	Current Mood	|	crappy	]
[	Current Music	|	MxPx: Responsibility	]

This afternoon the papers were drawn to get a judge appointed to the case of appointing me the legal guardian of my younger brother. Also, my dad put my name on everything so that I can have access to whatever I need to have access to incase something happens to him.
Problem is, I believe he's setting himself up for something to happen. Last night he went to the hospital complaining of chest pains/tightness, he spent all night hooked up to the EKG and then for whatever reason this morning he decided just to check himself out without paying any mind to what a doctor might have to say about it. With that said there are three things rolling at a constant speed thorugh my mind:
1. Why did the lawyer's office smell like cat food?
2. I just buried my mother, I refuse to bury my father.
3. I want to sleep next to a boy.


In other news, I really like someone. Or so I think I do. It's a step in the right direction for getting over he-who-shalt-not-be-named, but I feel queasy about it. Yes, I said queasy. I am queasy and nauseous and anxious over everything. And liking he-who-has-yet-to-be-named is not making things much easier, as he is a harder book to read than anything in Latin. And it cannot just be because he's 26.

[	Current Location	|	down here on earth	]
[	Current Mood	|	crappy	]

Incase your wondering, I don't know if I'm okay. I want to be okay. I try to be okay, but I feel angry and I'm confused
I know these feelings don't help make anything better and they sure as hell won't bring my mom back, but they are there.

I just can't get the image out of my head

[	Tags	|	childhood, lackthereof, life, my mom	]
[	Current Mood	|	angry at the universe	]

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. 
I want to, oh dear god do I ever want to.
but I am ill-equpped to deal with this.
regardless of my strength, why can't
god share the wealth? give it to a couple kids
who can't stand on their own two feet.

not me, i don't need this strength.
i don't want to learn this strength.
i want to know this strength
twenty years from now

when i have a husband and children
and i don't wake up feeling as alone
as I did this morning despite having
the company of someone else.

i dont want to feel this cheated.
i look at photos and my friends
they all look so young, so youthful.
not bitter, not weathered, not used up
like me.

they aren't scared, they've got each other
and their brothers or sisters with their
mothers and their fathers.
and i love them for it.

but i want to be like them.
it seems i spend my entire life
trying to be like them.

where life isn't so hard,
it just goes down smooth
and sometimes they hiccup
they throw up or they swallow wrong

but it always hits the spot dead on.

 

[	Tags	|	cancer battle, ee cummings, mom, ralph waldo emerson	]
[	Current Mood	|	uncomfortably calm	]
[	Current Music	|	Thrice: The Artist In the Ambulance	]

My mom comes home today with hospice assistance. The guy from the health services equipment place, Kenny, just finished setting everything up in our living room. I will admit here that I am scared.  The next couple weeks of my life are going to be precious and cherished forever. Her birthday is less than a month away. She'll be 53.

I bought my mom a card that says, "What lies behind us and what lies before of us are small matters compared to what lies within us."
It's a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Then you open the card and it says, "I believe in you."  It's an encouragement card. Regardless of this situation, the last thing anyone needs is sympathy. The sympathy cards are too depressing.
With the card I wrote what I wrote in my previous entry to my mom, I also wrote in a poem by e.e. cummings called "i carry your heart with me".

I sincerely hope she loves it.


Along with that, for anyone of you having events in the coming weeks: if I don't attend, please don't be offended. It's not that I don't care about you or that I don't want to be there to have fun with you but obviously this situation trumps over all other aspects of my life.