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It was midnight and it had started to rain. I had opened my window wide and pulled the shade halfway down the opening, trying to cool down my stuffy west-facing 4th floor room and in anticipation of going to bed soon. I never went to bed as soon as I planned. My fan, a trusty black Honeywell that had been with me since I first slept in a dorm at sleep-away camp when I was 10, had done the bulk of the work of making the atmosphere bearable. I heard the rain first, and I didn't quite believe it. It had rained yesterday, only within the time that I had been watching Blade Runner in class -- a movie with quite a lot of rain. But today I overheard someone -- a guy speaking to a classmate as we waited in the building lobby, him passing through -- complain about how terrible the rain had been and how awful it had made his shift. It was kind of funny to me that I had missed it all. But here it was again, a rain I could witness loudly through the rather significant opening of my shade and window. The room had come with an air conditioning unit, and at first I had assumed some strange mistake, it having been packed in here in a supposedly empty room. But it seemed likely, after some discussion, that the room heated up so unbearably the school felt obligated to provide a unit so the resident didn't die of heat stroke. The RA on duty when I moved in didn't know anything about it, but I still figured it significantly likely. At a quarter past twelve, I heard the thunder. It disturbed me, having summer storms like this in April. Everything disturbed me now, in regards to climate change. On Monday it had been cold, 40s I believe. I had complained. Maybe it was last week that I woke up to my mom texting a picture of snow on the ground. But it was well past April 1st, the date of the late snowstorm that lived iconic in her memory from her own college years. On Tuesday it had shot up, past pleasant 60s into the 70s and even 80s. Such was life. "New England weather", everybody said. I had always liked living somewhere with a genuine four seasons. But I wasn't so sure about it anymore. Sometime earlier, but not long ago, I had been in the dining hall in the evening, and the wide full-wall windows had facilitated collective awe at lightning strikes in a similar storm. Most of us saw most of them through only the corner of our eyes. But if you got a look dead-on, it was brilliant. Really lightning. I liked it when everyone reacted to the same thing at the same time. That's the only thing I appreciate about sports really. It was 12:21, and the rain had suddenly picked up. I became worried about my open window. That day with the lightning, I had come back to my room and it was still going. I had heard shouts from somewhere as I leaned into my window, craning my neck, and after a bit the group came out of where I couldn't see them and walked to the middle of what I suppose could only be called the quad. A typical college quad, but with paved paths cris-crossing it. And we had all shouted at the strikes. I got the better views of the lightning there. The funny thing is, you can see it, but you can't really see where it is. At least I don't remember so. Most of those people, and I swear I could tell by their voices they were mostly Asian and therefore likely to be from my own dorm, home to the Asian/Asian American residential community, had umbrellas, were sharing them, but as I looked out, texting my mother to share my joy -- because of course I texted my mother about any interesting thing that happened to me, if I didn't post it to tumblr; she was the person who asked me how I was the most in the world -- I could see at least one boy had no umbrella and was soaking in the scene in a quite literal sense. I respected that, in a way. I think a lot of times in life, you have to accept that you'll just have to get through something unpleasant, maybe to get to what you want or maybe it's just mandated, and you just have to cast off your misgivings and accept the physical situation as it is. What they (tumblr users) say about girls clothes and dirty play: we can clean them later. Just have fun and get dirty. You just have to walk out into the rain some days. I'm not very good at that, so that's why I respected him. Mostly people would probably say he was foolish and should have brought an umbrella. But for what purpose?
I had got up, and it was true: the rain had reached not only the inside of my window, but my inner sil too. I lifed the shade, and the window was even more open than I had throught. And in the stairwell it smelled of petrichor. Last night I had fallen asleep on top of my sheets.
10:18AM. Just when you think you've finally worked out a good morning schedule, the guy cleaning the bathrooms reaches yours fifteen minutes early?! Before the time posted on the door.
Had a dream I dyed my hair lavender-purple soooo now I want to actually do that..
It's almost spring. It makes me a little afraid. I don't want to get left behind. I don't know what exactly I mean by that.
5:10PM, it's sunny outside, shining through the clouds and my window to land on my floor. My room is comfortable, outside it is mid50s. I've been sick, and I've been working today, and I don't know what to do.
I burned myself (just a little) on the toaster today. I thought it like that when I was driving my mom to the airport shuttle bus stop. But I didn't say it to her. I could feel it, my hands in gloves on the steering wheel. I thought about writing a poem about it. Then I remembered I don't write poems anymore. So it'd be a Neocities blog entry. I was thinking this driving back alone, realizing it's just like Paterson, which we watched just the other day. It was different when I was writing it then. I started every sentence after the first with 'and', and I don't remember what followed to make that make sense. But this is what the story looks like now, I guess.
Evening of getting back from visting grandparents
I feel really great these days. I'm the happiest I've ever been. I've felt that way since the semester ended. I was right in mid-November. It's better now. Everything is better :) I'm excited for my life -- my next semester, the things I want to do as a career, to see the world. I credit bupropion a lot, but the last semester & working with Alina is what made things actually get this good. I'm not sure how much heavy lifting the knowledge that I have ADHD did, but I think that was a big part of this turning point.
I started driving home on Saturday, and I felt happy. I felt so happy I smiled and thought it explicitly to myself, even though Ro had gotten kind of annoying. And I thought, my mom and I think therapists too, they said "you can't expect to always be happy," but I knew this was possible. I knew I could be happy for no reason, every day of my life. I guess they didn't understand how sad I was.
5:38 this is the first school shooting since I had that research kick last sememster, the first one I know people who go to the school, and I think the first one I've heard about as it's unfolding. Reports are saying many 20 people shot, don't know dead or alive, "mass casuality incident". As soon as I read her text I thought of Virgina Tech, as well as the UT tower shooting. He's knocking on doors trying to get to them, chained up the place. What if one of his friends dies. What if someone from my highschool dies. And will the violence come for me here next.
haven't been able to focus
I miss you sometimes. I spend these long and empty nights looking for you, in cracks and under corners, between the sheets and behind the stairs. Sometimes I still expect to see you everywhere I go. Sometimes I get lonely without you. I look up at the stars and I wish. I wish so feverently I feel I ought to be able to fly up to them and hug them. Sometimes they are begging me to come home. Alia, come home. Said the stars. Ground control to Major Tom. But here i am on Earth, forevermore. I don't wait for you. I don't wish for you. i keep watch for you. One day they'll all see. One day they'll miss you too.
Sometimes I wonder how far away it is. A mile? 200? Ten decades? A century? I lie beneath the sheets and count sheep until they're praying. In my prayers I say your name. In my dreams it's just the sheep. I'm not there anymore. Are you waiting for me? In heaven, where it rains? Or are we here on Earth still? Breifly gorgeous, painful poetry. All my notes are so integral; no one could ever catch everything otherwise if they weren't me.
One day I'll be a something. Just you see. I'll be a something and there'll be a place and it'll all be everything. Sometimes in my dreams we still play together, as kids. One time he said, "I don't miss you. I miss the thought of what we were." Everything that happened was crazy. We weren't people for so many years. I don't think anybody is anymore. There's nobody there there. Or whatever she said? I don't agree with Gertrude, or whatever he said. You'd need my bookmarks and history to get that one, what I was thinking there.
Sometimes I am afraid I am still that little girl falling, and your arms aren't there to reach out and catch me. At least there's something fathers are expected to do, I suppose. I am not sure if I ever was a little girl. I don't understand myself quite often. I lie awake asking, asking. I've written this so many times these phrases I turns over like dimes, the same, the same. Maybe it's just everything. Maybe it's just nothing. Maybe we're still on earth and breifly gorgeous. The next one wasn't relevant to me, so I didn't write it down. But I remember everything so clearly, the year the release the cover. I miss everything that was before. The 2010s died like a- like a... I do that all the time with myself too these days you know.
Maybe I could use this for my novel. The Great American Whatever. Do I just think in references all the time? I'm like jack manifold but for YA books and emo music. So sick so sick of being tired and oh so tired of being sick. Who could ever hate it? Who could ever hate you? It's the most awesomest thing that ever happened, it was so terrible. Fights and makeups and fights again. Maybe you shouldn't have tried to take a side. Whateverfor in the end after all. My novel isn't going anywhere. It hasn't been for a year, the year that it's been an idea at all. Whatever even happens in a book where everything happens and nothing matters? I spent half my life walking soulless in the desert and then I gave it up. Or whatever I used to write. I used to write. I used to write poetry, but then I gave it up.I was glad to be rid of it.
At college library loans last a semester. I just renewed it. I haven't finished it. I haven't been reading in months she says, I haven't been reading in eons. I couldn't keep to the responsibility I had given myself. And I couldn't stand to look through his pages and never hear about his son again. To me, it's the most influential quote anyone's ever said about DC. I can't do it from memory, I can promise you that, but it's like this: Washington DC is the most beautiful city in the world. It was so elegantly planned in that perfect grid. Even when I came back for the funeral of my oldest son, I couldn't help but notice how Washington D.C. is the most beautiful city ever. His son died of alcoholism but people though there might be foul play for a time. In a way there was, what's it called? Social determinates of health. I never finished reading that one. Maybe I'll give it a go over break. But anyways, he wouldn't have been such a terrible alcoholic if he wasn't being blackmailed to death by everyone for no reason. I had a dream about him the other week, where his brother wrote a book. And I was dying to get my hands on it, but I woke up and it didn't exist. The thing about Jeremy is that all is contemporaries are quickly dying. The funny thing is though, if they hadn't, what could I even have said? Dear Philip I was wondering about Jeremy's relationship with his father. Just personal curiosity. Yes, gossip basically. But gossip of historical importance! No i'm not a historian and I won't be writing anything of note about Jeremy. I jsut know the most about him of anyone in the world. I understand everything basically. Lately I've been getting a certain way through books, less than half, and then something stops me from ever picking them up again and I never finish and they langish in my Goodreads 'currenty reading' until I put them out of their misery and admit my defeat. Some times it doesn't make any sense. I don't know why I don't try harder. I don't know why I try.
Maybe it was loneliness that I gave up. After my half a year in the desert. I ate a sandwhich with my hands today and I can't get the smell out from under my fingernails. The odd bit is it's a familiar smell I used to associate with myself.
Maybe I'm just a kid wailing at the moon.
Maybe it never worked out. I can never quite tell. I'm in my robe and I never took my shower. I'm in my bed and I never slept a wink. I'm in my life and I never lived a day. I just waited to become you. But that was never going to happen. Sometimes I don't know what the point of this is. Sometimes I don't know how to bother.
I think I need to quit all of it. I don't want to miss out but what's even the point. Many other people have done it. I hope Ioanna never died. I still miss you. sometimes.
Well, things didn't quite work out. I felt pretty bad past few days. But I feel ok today and yesterday, so maybe it really was mostly overstimulation.
Sunday evening, at MI after weekend home, Family Day Saturday
Long time no see, eh? I think I used to blog here about stuff too personally detailed for my tumblr but I've both been blogging my personal stuff and have had less personal stuff. But the point:
I think today is the first day in my life I haven't been depressed.
Since before I started puberty, and I don't really mean it of course, but even though I've had pretty strong anxiety today I feel lighter. My possible ADHD not blocking me. I feel like I have a positive trajectory. I'm writing this down so maybe one day in the future I can look back and say today was the day it all started working. Today was the day there started being more good times, good days, than bad ones. I feel optimistic for the first time in a long time. Doing my work today was the easiest it has ever been.
If I feel differently in 1-2 weeks and then feel good again in 3-4... well, let's hope that's not the case.
Friday - no classes. supposed to be focusing on my internship.
None of it bothers me as much as AUREA, because it's not a public website, but wow the instruction course for my internship's programs is bad. It's poorly written at times and clearly a work in progress in others. I don't think working in the nonprofit section is what's right for me at this pace unless I have the authority to just go it and put things the way I think they should be lol. I want to be associated with. work that I'm proud of the quality of lol.
Tuesday, the first day of classes and my second full day at MI.
I dyed my hair on Friday. Splat Rebellious Colors Midnight Indigo. It doesn't look much different, but I really like it because it's pretty much what I wanted. I'm already thinking about doing a tone of purple next. Then I wondered why I'm so happy with this when it's such a small appearance change, and I think it's because it was very present and physical. Even though the result was negligible, it was something I put sustained effort into, paying attention to myself and my physical surrondings. And afterwards, even though it's slight, it does leave a visible change, and as it fades it's something to sort of track time by.
Despite what I said in the last entry, I am only now collecting those today, January 23rd, 2026