Today {Vol. III}

Did you know that I have a lot of best friends? I'm very lucky that way. I met most of them in college and although they're all my soul sisters, my friendship with Melissa clicked quickly and grew incredibly fast.

We met through our friend - and my roommate at the time - Katie. She invited Melissa along on a trip to see the latest Harry Potter movie with our group of friends from our freshman floor. Somehow we ended up sitting next to each other, and before the movie even started, this happened.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you've seen this photo before. Melissa's seen it ten billion times, because I tell this story any time I talk about her.

This is literally about a half hour after meeting each other. I mean, look at those faces. Clearly best friend material.

It was decided, amongst our group of four, that Melissa and I would be roommates in sophomore year. Our friendship exploded; that's really the only way to put it. Our dorm was lacking a little pizzazz, so three days in, we headed to the craft store and decorated with pipe cleaners and foam stickers. We made name tags for our closets. We had Disney-themed bedding. We decorated our toilet for Christmas.

This is a real, honest-to-goodness picture. We're... special. Also, can you have nostalgia for a bathroom?! Because that's happening right now.

Melissa has always, always, understood me the best, often without saying a word. Not only because we have similar personality traits - obsessiveness, a penchant for blogging, over-excitement, and criticizing the Home Shopping Network - but because she's an incredibly understanding person. Whenever I went through a difficulty, she took my "side," whatever it may be, even if I switched from one viewpoint to an opposite one within the same day.

This is how you tolerate industrial fans drying out your room after it floods: by taking model poses in front of it.

With Melissa, I have the silliest, funniest, happiest memories. We survived a dorm room flooding together ("we're dealing with it" ... that was our quote, wasn't it?), creepy bugs disappearing behind furniture, and getting stuck in stand-still, park-your-car-and-get-our traffic by making jokes every five seconds. But she's also the person who read my novel-length e-mails about any given situation in my life and responded with novel-length responses. That, to me, always showed how caring she was and how highly she regarded our friendship, because she was taking time out of her day to become invested in whatever was bothering me.

If you haven't already guessed, Melissa gets married today. I was incredibly lucky to watch her relationship with her soon-to-be husband, Matt, blossom from the very beginning. My favorite story is how we were craving pie one night after a poorly-planned, late-night viewing of The Food Network. Melissa was chatting with Matt - who was, at the time, still "just a friend" - via AIM and he suggested going out to a nearby diner, offering to drive us both over. Clearly, his intention was to win Melissa over, so I found in really thoughtful and charming that the invitation was extended to me as well. I don't know why, exactly, because Melissa said we both had cravings and he'd have to be a real dick to just offer to take Melissa out... but I did. He won me over in that moment, and if I ever had any doubt about what kind of guy he was, I'd think back to that and remember: a good one.

Yes, there is photographic evidence of The Trip for Pie. That guy's a KEEPER.

I cannot wait for this wedding. I cannot wait to see these two people, so in love and so perfect for each other, get married. It's going to be amazing.

Inside My Head.

If you ever got inside my head, you would probably think I was insane.

Let me explain.

One of the weirdest things I do is go to two extremes when I feel like life is too tough for me. The first is that I think, okay, I’m going to act so totally miserable that everyone around me is going to feel sorry for me and realize how awful my life is. I plan on ignoring all texts (even though I don’t get too many other than from Erik), e-mails, or any other form of communication. I vow to stay off of Facebook and Twitter, become sullen and boring, and go to bed early all the time.

I’ve actually done the early-to-bed thing – and made a point of texting Erik at 8:30pm saying I was going to bed – but that’s the extent of it.

The opposite is that I decide I’m going to be so incredibly chipper and completely fake that it'll be obvious my life is in shambles. I picture friends asking me how’s life, how’s your job, and my answer being such a buoyant “EVERYTHING’S FABULOUS” that they’ll just know I’m faking it and that I’m actually miserable.

As you can see, I place a ton of importance on how people react to me. It’s the worst because I know, deep down in my brain and heart, that I need to make myself happy and do what’s best for me.

The problem, I believe, stems mainly from my parents for a myriad of reasons. Mainly, they always try to push me into things they think are best (when they’re not) and whenever I’m not up to snuff, I get shit for it. In retaliation, therefore, when I’m really unhappy, I want them to see and recognize it. They never do and probably never will, especially because they have an attitude of life’s supposed to be miserable, suck it up.

This post is kind of all over the place, but I’ve recently been in this mindset a lot with my new job. I’ve hatched grand plans to come home, eat dinner, and go straight to bed every night, to ignore Erik’s texts all day because I really shouldn’t be on my phone, and to cancel all weekend plans because it’s my only ‘me’ time. Or, oppositely, I want to do ALL OF THE THINGS and act super fake-happy and burn myself out so everyone will see how wrong it is for me.

That last sentence is really messed up; I shouldn’t have to prove to anyone that this isn’t right for me. And yet, I feel that I have to. I feel like if I don’t do one of those things and just quit my job out of blue… even though I would know it was the right thing, my family (and most likely my boyfriend) would think it was laziness and that I’m a quitter. They've already expressed a sentiment of 'why can't you just tough it out?' or 'stick with it for a year then quit.' A year is too long for me to stay where I am.

It's really awful to feel like I have no authority in my life, or at least that my decisions are always going to be questioned and scrutinized. When my boyfriend and parents can't just trust me when I say I'm unhappy here, I want to quit, I need to quit, it makes me sad.

Looking for a Fight.

{♥}

I'm the type of person who analyzes everything and wants an answer to - or at least a reason for - everything that happens in my life.

Sometimes I'm actually good at it. If I think, write, or talk about something for long enough, I can figure out the root of my problems. Other times, though, I just get stuck.

One thing that's been bugging me lately has been why I can't graciously accept compliments or gratitude. I'm aware that much of the reason is because my family life is based on sarcasm and witty comments as opposed to displays of love, gratitude, and kindness (of which I am completely accepting; it's just the dynamic that works for us). Because I never received a ton of genuine praise or thanks, I can't adequately cope with them.

Maybe it's not so much that I can't understand my inability to accept them. It's more about why I feel the need to dismiss them.

These past two weekends, I did a bunch of stuff for my boyfriend's birthday - I threw him a party, which included baking cupcakes and taking care of all of our guests; I got him (two inexpensive) gifts even though we'd agreed I wouldn't; and I took him out to dinner. It seems like a lot, and probably is a lot, but because they were all things I wanted to do for him, it didn't feel like a big deal.

He thanked me many, many times for all of this. In one specific conversation over text, he said that I did so much for him and he hoped he could repay me when my birthday rolls around. My response? It really wasn't that much, this is normal for me. I even wanted to say not to worry about going to all the trouble for my birthday.

This happens with any major compliments as well. My inner mean girl is probably to blame for a lot of it, because according to her, the things I do aren't that great and neither am I as a person. But there are times when I obsess over the things I do for others and acknowledge that I deserve gratitude, to the point where I get upset that I don't receive more of it; yet when I actually get it, I refuse it.

Katie recently blogged about putting herself first and said this about how she habitually picks up the tab when out with friends:

Maybe part of me wants them to fight me back and insist that they contribute because I’m worth it.

When I read this, it made immediate sense in my head because this is my motivation for self-deprecating comments. I dismiss compliments and gratitude because I'm challenging someone to fight back and truly insist that I deserve the original praise. When they don't (and they usually don't), the nasty voice inside my head convinces me that the original praise was just that person being nice and issuing an obligatory compliment/thanks. Basically, I won't believe someone is truly grateful or issuing an honest compliment unless they argue with me when I brush it off.

Well then. I suppose I figured out the 'why' for this issue. Now comes the hard part of figuring out how I overcome this issue.

i'm in a glass case of emotion.

{♥}
Talking about my feelings doesn’t come easy for me. At least, it doesn’t come easy in person.

You’ll be interested to know that the first time I expressed my feelings to E was through a letter. I’d written ‘love letters’ for all of my close friends for Valentine’s Day and figured he should get one as well. Being able to collect my thoughts and string together perfectly-worded sentences brought me comfort, the kind of comfort I can’t find in trying to express myself on the spot.

(That being said, I wasn’t even able to stay in the room while he read it because the vulnerability made me super uncomfortable.)

In an ideal world, I would communicate my deepest feelings via written letters forever, taking the time to compose my feelings into eloquent paragraphs. But this is the real world, and in the real world, we use our voices. Writing letters is nice, but sitting and talking face-to-face with someone is much more intimate and desired.

It’s slightly ironic that I have such a hesitancy to share my feelings with E since I have so many. My heart is full to the brim and it spills out onto the pages of my journal and occasionally here on my blog. Yet the idea of saying any of those things causes my brain to lock up and my ability to form coherent sentences to scamper away.

One reason for this is that my family never talked about emotions. We don’t say ‘I love you’ to one another, ever. Seriously. I couldn’t tell you the last time I told someone in my immediate family that I loved them. It’s not that I don’t, it’s just that it was a habit I was never taught and therefore never picked up.

The other reason is simply that being vulnerable scares the shit out of me.

All of this is to say that recently, for various reasons, I’m realizing it’s important to verbally express how I feel. A relationship can’t survive if the two people involved are incapable of communicating. As uncomfortable as I might feel, there are certain things written in my heart that he needs to hear. I keep running on some delusion that he 'just knows' how I feel and that needs to stop because it's likely untrue.

So here's to facing my fears, because every day that goes by without me saying a word is doing an injustice to our relationship, and I love him too much to let my fear get the best of me.

(Ten points if you know what the title's from!)

mumble and gloria.

Today is a super awesome day. Why? Because it's Ashley's birthday, of course!

You should know that Ashley and I are personality twins, separated at birth, perhaps. In the five years we've been friends, I think the only discrepancies that we've discovered in our lives are our political views and 90's boy band loyalties. Otherwise, we share the same passion for dance, ability to remember choreography from years ago, obsession with watching old recital videos, apathy towards getting drunk, love of crafting and Sharpee markers, and tendency to indulge our inner 6-year-old. (Oh, and as for the title of this post, we're penguin pals since we played Gloria and Mumble from Happy Feet in the winter recital of '06.)

We also have the same thoughts and feelings about a lot of things, specifically those things that make me think I'm crazy and weird. Do you know how awesome it is to find out that someone else shares your special brand of crazy? Our opinions are so mirrored that, when one of us is trying to explain how we feel about something, the other person usually interrupts and says, yes, I totally understand, we're the same person, remember?

Last weekend we had an early celebration for her birthday, which was slightly insane but tons of fun. There were games of Kings, Never Have I Ever, and of course, Ash and I rehashed some old choreography. Which, I should mention, has become so commonplace that nobody blinked an eye (except maybe E, who'd never witnessed it before) and people actually joined in if they were passing through our makeshift "stage" in the kitchen. The party was so good that the date has already been set for next year's, which I will definitely be attending.

Happy birthday Ash! ♥

dear diary.

{♥}
I'm the queen of recording and analyzing my life, so it's no surprise that I have three separate places where I write out my thoughts. There's this blog, of course, where I analyze some of my feelings, talk about a specific topic or tell a story. I have a private blog online where I record my day-to-day activities, because that can get tedious to read for anyone but me. The third is my handwritten diary, which is obviously the most private of all, and is filled with undeveloped thoughts and ramblings. But that's where most of my "ah-ha" moments come from.

Last night I was still trying to figure out this melancholy feeling that's been following me around since last week. I was scribbling down ideas in my purple, floral-print, spiral-bound notebook that I call my diary, but none of them pinpointed the problem. Then, in the middle of one sentence, a thought crossed my mind, and suddenly it clicked.

My problem is that, in my relationship (and even occasionally in my friendships), I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. At any given time, I believe that I am too quirky, weird, bitchy, and/or messed up, to the point that I don't deserve friendship or love. Even though people express that they love and care about me, I keep waiting for the day that they realize how screwed up I am.

With my friendships, I've learned to cope with this and realize it's a silly (and irrational) fear. When I have a low moment, I can prove my fear wrong by recalling specific events and things that were said. But when it comes to my relationship, one that's only three months old, it's not that easy. Considering I truly believe that I'm not as intelligent, nice, personable, or enjoyable to be around as everyone seems to think I am, it's hard not to expect someone to walk out of my life.

There isn't much to be done about it - our relationship is still on the new-ish side and while I long for us to reach that point where I don't have this fear looming over my head every day, it's something that's only going to improve with time. For now, I just have to work on my confidence and ignore my instinct to distrust and discount anything nice E says to me.

I always knew I had an issue with this, but I never realized how much I obsess over this fear of abandonment until it all came pouring out onto the pages of my diary. It's proof that I should make a better habit of clearing out my thoughts by writing in it as often as possible, because I'm more likely to solve some internal struggles in the process.

Do you keep a handwritten journal or diary?

life choices, weekend edition.

Occasionally I like to define certain things I do as either Poor or Amazing Life Choices. This weekend was filled to the brim with them, which is to say, it was equal parts fabulously awesome and horrifyingly irresponsible.

Poor Life Choices:

• Eating too much candy Friday night
• Staying up after being woken up too early on Saturday morning
• Taking a death nap Saturday afternoon
• Taking too many meds for my stomach in prep for going out
• Not eating anything all day until I came home at 3am
  
• Getting only five hours of sleep Saturday night (despite DST!)
• Having a mozzarella-and-salami sandwich at 1am when I should've been in bed last night
• Staying up until 4am reading through e-mails/gchats between me and my ex

Amazing Life Choices:

• Creating a Disney-centric Pandora station
  
• Spending Friday night in my p'jams with my mom, watching (and mocking) Home Shopping Network
• Attending Hot Mess House (albeit for far too short of a stay) at Melissa's on Saturday night, despite feeling like, well, a hot mess (and not in the good way)
• Getting the chance to hang out with Melissa's hometown besties and thoroughly enjoying myself
  
• Giving in a little bit and having a convo with my cousin via text for the first time in months
• Making plans for the holidays
  
• Watching the Jets and Giants win their games on Sunday
• Planning a last-minute party for next weekend, even though compulsively checking the RSVPs to make sure enough people are coming will give me an ulcer by the end of the week
• Finally de-tagging and deleting the majority of e-mails/gchats between me and my ex

So, there's my weekend for you. I feel like bloated, sinus-headache-y death, but I had fun! And having fun is all that matters. Right? Right.

happy halloween!

Happy Halloween, lovely readers of mine!

I hope you're having a wonderful day. It's gorgeous weather here, if not a bit chilly, so we're already getting trick-or-treaters at 2pm (mostly the smallest, cutest ones so far).

Anyway, I've got a football game to finish watching (J-E-T-S!) and some tea to drink, so without further ado, here I am in full costume for today!


Full costume (please ignore my fairly messy room).


Close up!

Love, Katy [Cait]y Perry

music is my life.

In college, I often found myself feeling very out of place when my friends or acquaintances would start talking about music. They would discuss how they loved such-and-such a group, which was not main stream and of which I’d never heard. A conversation would continue, with more groups I had either never or rarely heard of, and I would just sit quietly in the corner, nodding in fake agreement.

I’ll just come out and say it: being a pop-music lover makes me feel immature. With all the criticism that today’s popular music is uninspired, over-produced, and sometimes just loud and obnoxious, I feel ashamed when I admit to actually liking all of it. I mean, I don’t let it bother me – I like what I like, and nobody’s opinion is going to make me stop listening to Britney Spears – but it still feels awkward sometimes.

What’s weird is, I actually have my fair share of non-main-stream music in my iTunes. The way I form my library of music is downloading a specific song I heard and liked, not giving any thought to other songs by that artist. The only time I look into the artist is if I hear two or more songs of theirs that I like. At that point, I check out more stuff and debate buying the entire album. Most times, however, I just buy or download the song I like and leave it at that.

I don’t know if it’s something I developed because I’m a dancer or because I tailor my playlist to match my mood. As a dancer, I’ll sometimes like ridiculously awful (not to mention completely out of character) rap songs because they have a good beat, or pick an indie song because the musicality is amazing. When I’m getting ready for a party, I like to blast Black Eyed Peas, much to the chagrin of my music-snob brother; when I need to relax, I listen to Colbie Caillat and Ingrid Michaelson.

Sometimes I just look at my iTunes and think it has a personality disorder. Because how is it that I can completely, one-hundred-percent enjoy both of the two songs below? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

jury duty, updated!

A few weeks ago, I got a piece of mail that sent me into a panic.

Jury duty. Tomorrow.

Under normal circumstances, I would have no problem serving my civic duty. It would probably be cool to actually get picked and sit on a jury. I know it's really not that exciting, but it would be an interesting experience.

However. I'm not dealing with "normal" circumstances. My anxiety is at an all-time high and my stomach is in no condition for me to be sitting around all day in a stressful situation. I know being called for jury duty and even serving is no reason to panic or freak out, but I'm not your typical every day girl, and the most random shit stresses me out.

I've been dreading it for weeks now, half-heartedly trying to go on a stomach-friendly diet the past few days, and crossing my fingers that I'll call the night before and won't even have to go in (which is the process in NJ, not sure if it's the same in other states). The fact that I have to report at 8am makes everything worse because that's my stomach's least favorite time of day to act normal. I'm up at the early (for me) hour of 7am today so that, hopefully, I fall asleep early and can wake up absurdly early so that I have time to feel better before heading out.

My mom has assured me it really won't be as bad as I'm imagining it, that once I get there I'm going to settle in and realize it's just a big time suck. My hope is that (if I call and I do have to go in) I won't even get picked from the masses so I can go home and not have to worry about explaining myself to anyone.

Because I don't even want to think about that.

Anyone want to share their non-exciting jury duty experiences to make me feel better?

UPDATE: So, turns out all that panicking was for nothing. I checked the website and my number is way past the cutoff, which means I don't even have to go in tomorrow! I am so relieved it's not even funny.

wherein i admit to liking chores.

This week has just been one of those weeks and I know it's only going to get worse. And I don't mean I "know" in the pessimistic sense, but because something is happening Monday that will not be pleasant and will make me very unhappy, something I can't exactly talk about yet.

(I should also mention that this something is partly why I haven't been blogging, because my mind's all jumbly and it involves someone who reads this, so I can't exactly spill my guts on the matter.)

So.

Until then, I'm keeping my chin up by daydreaming about opening an Etsy shop and doing chores. Well, they're not so much chores as ... home improvement projects. I spent the better part of yesterday avoiding a mental meltdown by stripping the finish off of my brother's dresser drawers, touching up the ceiling paint in three different rooms, and putting the majority of my brother's things back in his room. Because I wanted to. (Okay, and because my mother yelled at me for being lazy and I was so going to prove her wrong).

I've always enjoyed doing chores - cleaning, yard work, and all things home improvement. When I was little, I bubbled with excitement when I could put on my "work" clothes and help dad fix something up in the backyard or put some big piece of new furniture together. If we were painting one of the rooms in the house, it was like Christmas. I still get that way. When it came time to paint my brother's room, which needed to be completed in one day, I bounded out of bed in the morning with just four hours of sleep under my belt. Which, if you know me, is totally crazy.

With the remodeling that went on in my dad and brother's rooms, I've had plenty to do and it's been glorious. Plus, it's a decent distraction when you're trying not to think of other things. There's nothing like zoning out as Lady Gaga blasts from your iPod and focusing on the task at hand.

The added benefit of all of this is that I feel ridiculously accomplished. It felt great to say that I did the majority of the work sanding down wall patches and painting both rooms, and I can't wait to completely re-finish my brother's dresser. I don't have much to do these days, so waking up to a long to-do list - and completing the tasks - is somewhat invigorating.

So, even for a completely shitty day mentally, I was damn productive. And that feels really good.

tell me this isn't weird.

I am absolutely out of my mind.

Why?

I just pulled an all-nighter.

See, this is my "method" of getting on a regular sleeping schedule. I'm embarrassed to admit how late I've been sleeping (it's only been really bad the past two days), but it's fairly late. So, if I stay up all night, I am absolutely exhausted the following night. My head usually hits the pillow around seven, and that's even stretching it. This ensures that, even if I sleep for ridiculous amounts of time (I'm talkin' 12+ hours here), that leaves me at seven, eight, or nine in the morning. Perfect!

...

Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever heard of?! Yeah. We're weird, and I say "we" because my brother does this too. But it works! It's a kind of last resort, but it does work.

I do have trouble spots, however, like ... right about now. I think it's because my body's finally realizing, hey wait a minute, you didn't sleep! I get really punch-drunk too and annoy the crap out of my parents. It also gets really, really hard not to succumb to a mid-afternoon nap, because that turns into flat-out SLEEPING. Basically, the idea is to keep myself occupied throughout the day and not letting myself crash until at least seven. Maaaybe six, if I'm having a rough time of it.

So that's my crazy confession for the day. But now I want you to tell me...

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter? And why?

Maybe I'll be surprised and find out someone else does this. But I seriously doubt that. Oh, and for the record, I have pulled all-nighters for traditional things, like girl talk and writing papers due the next day.