Three years

For the uninformed reader, my first kiss was three years ago today. And the whole experience ended up getting really ugly. Yes, I'm nearly 24. I was a late bloomer. lol.

(One year)

And it's so strange, because what happened three years ago is what completely killed off the fairytale, happy ending, true love part of me. I was the girl with zero experience with romance and Disney movie expectations. And that part--that believes that Prince Charming is out there, that not all guys are douchebags, that there's such thing as Mr. Right, and that he'll find me someday--it was instantly gone.

Yet I think I've come full circle?

To waiting for Prince Charming.

I've tried seeking things out on my own and it clearly hasn't worked out well for me.

I really hate to surrender my agency, but this might just be one of those things that's out of my control. Wherever you are, whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life*

And I can't believe I'm letting myself be so...passive. I don't want to be a princess in a tower waiting for a prince, no way.

And I can't believe I'm letting my expectations rise. How can this lead to anything but getting hurt?

*"Just Haven't Met You Yet" by Michael Buble--that's the kind of song I, the Marie I thought I am, HATES. Too cheesy, too unrealistic, too head-in-the-clouds. Yet me right now loves it and maybe shares the attitude to a slightly-less-cheesy degree.

and how thrilling that moment will be, when the prince of my dreams comes to me

Reading the ol' xanga

From June 27, 2008

'so i was telling a guy whom i know from MSA about my weekend and i used profanity at some point and between the details and my language he was like, "marie!!!! where's the girl i knew five years ago??" and I laughed out loud. she is looooong gone. ugh. i mean, i like me now a LOT better than me then...a lot lot...i'm a lot more interesting, i'm a better person in that i'm not super-judgmental, i actually have friends...but i never saw myself...here, i guess.'

February

I do love Valentine's Day and all things pink, but everything else about February I absolutely loathe.

The weather is shit.
It's plenty cold.
It seems like winter will NEVER END.

But mostly, I guess, it's what happened two years ago...

two years ago.

I don't even remember the date.

I remember EVERY important date. Take last summer: May 31, June 26, July 2, July 20, August 21.
Or 2008: July 23, August 9, August 19.

But I'd have to look up the February date to remember it. I guess it wasn't important to me.

I mean, I know it wasn't important. Not like that. Not like it's supposed to be.

He didn't even believe me...

When it's all said and done, though, he didn't hurt me. He didn't break my heart. Men who had done much less to me had done much more damage.

You know, he was my only Valentine. How fucked up is that?

stop, please, just let me go
Alejandro, just let me go

I Got Your Crazy

you put on quite a show, really had me going

new playlist time!
this one is called:

I Got Your Crazy
or, The Other Woman Scorned
(or, Angry Girl Playlist 2.0)

and it goes out to Ben, Mr. Honeywell, and anyone else who's ever made "the other woman" out of an honest woman only to screw her over.

---

Why Did I Ever Like You - Pink
(I'd still have all my hate for you intact even if I lost everything)

Fighter - Christina Aguilera
(made my skin a little bit thicker, makes me that much smarter)

Womanizer - Britney Spears
(you've got me going, you're oh so charming, but i can't do it)

Kiss N Tell - Ke$ha
(I can find someone way hotter, with a bigger......)

Don't Cha - Pussycat Dolls
(don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?)

Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne
(and hell yeah I'm the motherfucking princess)

Love You Much Better - The Hush Sound
(one day soon I'm gonna grab you by the collar and kiss you all I want)

Again Again - Lady Gaga
(you've got a lot, a lot of nerve coming here)

Smile - Lily Allen
(see you messed up my mental health, I was quite unwell)

7 Things - Miley Cyrus
(you like me, you love her*)

Never Again - Kelly Clarkson
(I would never wish bad things, but I don't wish you well.)

Take a Bow - Rihanna
(don't tell me you're sorry 'cause you're not)

---

*not the actual lyric, I realize, but it's how I learned it and how I hear it.

Vague but emo

(or vaguely emo?)

Words cannot describe what a total mindfuck I am going through.

To follow up on a theme in my recent posts, I've finally gotten last summer out of my head. Like, completely. I know I loved him, but I don't remember liking him. Not like I...

I did something remarkably stupid last night. I read through my journal from a few summers ago.

And for me it's pure deja vu. It's the exact same story. I'm reacting the exact same way.

How could I let that happen?

always turning back to you 'til you never let me down
loving your illusion, staring at a crooked ground
...you always let me down

Try to remember...

Usually I have an over-active repression reflex. It's not anything I do consciously; I have a bad memory in the first place, and some things it's just easier not to think about.
-I have to work pretty hard to remember an awkward but not at all traumatizing date from last month.
-Nothing out of the ordinary happened in September, that's for sure (what Josh? I know no Josh).
-And this talk of the Irish Guy? That's a dream I only remember because I jotted down a summary right after I woke up.

So why does every detail of last summer play constantly in my head?

It would be so much easier if I just forgot.

second person is an awkward way to write

I've been thinking a lot about first kisses.

Soft and timid. Slow to occur because you're not sure if you're being too forward. A kiss goodnight as you go your separate ways a few hours after meeting.

Hard and certain. I-want-you-now, this-is-right, oh-my-god-we're-at-a-park-and-there-are-a-bazillion-people-around-and-I-don't-even-care. A kiss you don't forget about. A kiss you don't want to end.

Nervous but excited, leaned up against your friend's car. A kiss you didn't see coming. A kiss you wouldn't mind continuing but your friend's right there and waiting for you, for goodness' sake.

Meaningless as the clock strikes midnight. He'd been flirting but is on his phone when the year rings in, so you take charge for once.

(Others before that? Drunk and delirious. No specific memories.)

Hesitant with your new best friend. You're conjoined at the phone but there's more pressure in person. Does he not know you're crazy about him? You slowly convince him of your feelings as soft kisses build momentum.

So forced on your bedroom floor. A cruel experiment, leaving two lonely geeks alone together. You've never done this before and you're thrilled, somehow unaware that you're playing with matches. You're burning away all your fairytale dreams one nervous giggle at a time.

don't you bring me down today

I'm beginning to sense a trend

So I haven't "dated" extensively, really. But I've...hmm. There are more guys in my past than I usually realize.

Now here's my trend:

All of them except for two have been gigantic jerks. Like, off-the-charts levels of douchebaggery. R, Mr. Honeywell, Josh-whatever, etc etc. And I mean, they seem nice at first; they just end up doing something mind-blowingly mean.

The two that were nice were the only two I was ever serious with. (So that's good at least. That I don't try to be serious with the assholes and wind up a battered woman or cheated on or what have you.)

But why, when I'm not necessarily looking for serious, do I just find the bad ones? And not "bad" as in "bad boy hot," "bad" as in "majorly sleazy." Couldn't I be not-serious with nice guys?

Maybe nice guys don't do not-serious. Maybe I'm actually being sleazy myself by doing not-serious??

Or maybe not-serious just brings out the worst in people. by which I mean, maybe if the nice guys had been fun-without-definitions they would've been jerks to me, too. (Actually, I know for a fact that's not true in the recent case. Because it almost started out like that, and he treated me like a princess nonetheless.)

say there's something better
but tonight you know you'll never find it

My douchemonster trend terrifies me. It makes me want to run right back to my Nice-Guy ex. I don't WANT to let people treat me like that, and that would be an easy way to make sure of it. But that's clearly faulty motivation and isn't fair to either party.

I guess I don't know how to be selective?? And yet I DO on some level. What with the only ever getting serious with nice guys.

I don't know. In conclusion...maybe I should swear off men for a while? lol/sigh...

Puzzling

So, does this summer's crop of girly pop feature more metaphorical references to puzzle pieces than usual, or is it just that I am more sensitive to these references now that I can't escape autism in any aspect of my life? (Puzzle pieces are a symbol for autism awareness.)

Miranda Cosgrove:
when I'm kissing you my senses come alive, almost like the puzzle piece I've been trying to find falls right into place, you're all that it takes...

and Katy Perry:
I finally found you, my missing puzzle piece; I'm complete

And how does it fit into this that for the last three months, my mom and brother have been working on a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and on multiple occasions while waiting for a late date I sat down to work on the puzzle, and never once found a piece that connected?

Never...

I guess I should have seen it coming.

I can't stop smiling

New phone with lots of nifty features. Had a pretty good day at school today (one of the newbies is finally trained to work 5 of the kids, thank God). Came home and did some really good journaling. Yummy salad and home-grown green beans for dinner. Evening time with Pistashleyo. Being giddy during choir with Erica. Making a slight spectacle of myself during choir by laughing so much. Rocking out to Beach Boys with Erica on the way to Andy's, which the director bought for everyone. Good talk with my mom, good chat with my man, good/ridiculous convo with my roomie. Found the Metromix pic after a lady in choir told me she saw my picture on the internet (to be fair, she saw us oot and aboot that night). I ate ice cream three times today. We have awesome plans for this weekend, and awesome BIRTHDAY plans for the next weekend, along with awesome crazy-party-in-Lawrence plans. I have a whole 8 days until my class starts.

I guess what I'm trying to say is things are pretty good...

blahblahblah

I don't know what I'm getting myself into. I don't know what I want to get myself into. I really wish I was going back to school this week, because then I would get my BRAIN back--I'm good for one week of break, but two is just too much time to myself. Especially when I have something massive to spend all my time over-analyzing... yeah, yeah, #firstworldproblems #omg2weekspaidvacationhowawful #whinewhinewhine #maniamsogladinever*wentunemployedicompletelylosemysenseswhenimbored

(*and in summer 2008 when I was unemployed I was a mess!)

Internet dreamz

I had a dream last night that a friend (I honestly don't remember who) and an ex were trying to get me to do a threesome with them. :-S The main part I remember is him asking, "come on, Marie, why not?" and me responding with, "um, well, you BROKE my HEART" which is kind of strange because I don't really use that phrase--and you'd think my first reason would have been that we had never gone that far. But then he kissed me and it felt like our first weekend together when everything was perfect. I woke up then but if I hadn't I would have done anything he asked.

(I've spent the last year and a half mostly-subconsciously trying to recreate the way I felt that weekend. I've never even come close. So it was nice, I guess, to dream about it.)

In other news, I just facepalmed really hard at a photo of the Irish guy that popped up on my newsfeed. If I didn't have four friends to vouch for the noises they heard, I'd be pretty certain that never actually happened, heh. #alcohol #woo #mantherewerealotofpeopleinouraptthatnight #ohmygodthatwasonlyayearago

Updatez

I had my first IEP meeting last week. It went really, really well.
What can I say, I love what I do! I love my kids, I love my coworkers, I love it all.

In other news, Jonesie hardcore-bit me because I tried to reclaim my chocolates from him. Jerk.

In other other news...*shrug.* My life is splendidly normal. I don't think I really got to live February last year; every moment I wasn't with him (because those were the effed-up moments) were spent catching up on homework.

Tomorrow I'm going pink for church. I'm so excited. Morning service, college lunch*/valentine's party (HOLLA), home for a couple hours, orch practice, I'll probably stick around for the service, and then chili and dessert cookoff, and i'm JUDGING DESSERTS, SO EXCITED OMG. hehehe

*I'm still in the college class because the next Sunday School class up is for "young marrieds"...

dammit

Remind me to try, sometime, engaging in a normal relationship with a male. "Normal" defined-as-but-not-limited-to:
-not a one-night stand
-a guy I actually like
-not an icon guy
-not a guy fresh out of a serious relationship

bob lawblaw

I'm pretty sure time is cyclical. The coincidences aren't coincidences; they're just history repeating itself. It's not even that I make the same mistakes, not even that things end up the same way, it's just...

If you catch me off guard, sometimes I don't know what season it is, let alone month or year.

I swear the nineties weren't that long ago. I mean, "1999" sounds fairly recent to me. But it's not. At all. I was twelve. God. Throughout my teenagerdom I regarded twelve, for some arbitrary reason, as the time I started thinking like an adult. That my consciousness was really "me." Maybe because I don't remember much before then? Maybe because I had no friends before then? Maybe because that's when sex ed was? haha.

Obviously my thinking and my experience is altogether different after a decade.

Time just seems so relative. Things that happened 36 hours ago barely remain in my consciousness, while I'm all, "holy shit, my student was born in 2003 and is six years old, no way, 2003 was way too recent for that." A guy from a year and a half ago is on my mind way more than any of the guys since then. Harry Potter still seems novel, while Star Wars feels like ancient history.

lol.

I know this doesn't make sense.

And then I wonder how something as permanent as marriage could even be in the cards for me at all? Because I have pretty successfully severed feelings and commitment from just plain lust. I don't know how to turn that back on. and right now I don't WANT to. Yet while out in public recently, I saw a cute little family and was hit with a wave of "oh my god I want a husband and kids NOW," hahaha.

Meanwhile it all repeats, repeats, repeats.

The same comments, the same compliments, the same awkwardness, it's all the same...

For a novelty, though, at this very moment my pet rat is stuck in my trash can!

Shock

My stomach's twisting up, I'm hyperventilating, I'm on the verge of a panic attack for something that does not affect my life in the slightest.

But, God. I tend to remove myself from the past completely. It's been long enough since I've been involved with a guy that I've slipped back into my nothing-ever-really-happened frame of mind. I barely remember anything. Anyone. Because none of it is worth holding onto...

It's not that I regret it all. I'm fine with who I am. I don't feel burdened with a need to confess unspeakable sins. I'm so relieved to finally be me instead of the repressed, naive shell of a person I used to be. I'm at peace with my identity...I just lose the details over time.

But, God, I'm shaken up.

and to think that could've been me.

Plus...to think...ugh. Despite everything, he was always really nice to me...

august ftw

What day is it? last forty minutes of the sixth. three days. I thought I was going to be fine, fine, fine, but then last night as I lay awake shivering I couldn't stop the flashbacks. I wish...I don't wish for that, that never would have worked, but I wish for the hope and optimism and puppy love and trust that I had then? Because all that was lovely.

and what it all comes down to
is that everything's gonna be fine, fine, fine

My baby girl turns nine tomorrow. She's one of my best friends...yet I've talked to her maybe three times since last summer. She knew EVERYTHING G-rated about my life, and a decent amount of the PG-rated, haha. Nine. Third grade. I remember her as the shy three-year-old; the defiant four-year-old; the lazy five-year-old; the curious six-year-old; the sassy seven-year-old...God, she's growing up. I realized that I love kids because of her; I'd never babysat prior to her, and thought I didn't like kids. I learned how to deal with kids on her (ie, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries!). I had the joy of helping someone develop a love for reading. I experienced the bewilderment of her grieving for some obscure relative she'd never known. I basically got to practice being a mother, heh. Beyond that, we had battles of wills, we cuddled and napped together, we argued over who loved Zac Efron more, we had lazy days of watching cartoons and eating junk food, we went on all sorts of adventures throughout the city, we teased each other about boys.




Happy birthday, Squirt. You growing up may make me cheesily reflective, but more importantly, it gives you that much more opportunity to kick a lot of ass. Love you forever.

update

and if the timing is right to sneak off into the night
i'll let myself be taken just for the thrill
and if i'm given the chance to be a doll in his hands
i will be sure we shake the mountains while we dance

See my old posts regarding hedonism and such. Still valid.

Not so valid: my old identification with the following lyrics:
you sit there in your heartache
waiting on some beautiful boy to save you from your old ways

I don't want a beautiful boy to save me. Boys don't, CAN'T do that, and it's foolish to expect it. Prince Charming syndrome...I may have grown up on Disney movies, but they're completely unrealistic. Plus, being saved from my old ways--the price of that, as I learned last summer, would be making myself vulnerable. I've witnessed enough hurting, I don't want to go anywhere near that. The best I can hope for, for the time being at least, is to have some fun...while keeping my heart tucked safely away.

i have no doubt that i could love you forever
the only trouble is, i really don't have the time
i have one night only, one night only, that's all i have to spare
one night only, let's not pretend to care

(lyrics: the hush sound, "boys are too refined;" the killers, "when you were young;" dreamgirls, "one night only")

P.S. It's snowing. I do NOT approve. What ever happened to spring??

i don't get marriage.

what's so special about a relationship that happens to involve sex that two people get to commit to love each other for the rest of their lives? why is it okay for friendships to slowly fade across distance but it's the end of the world when it's romance? what i mean to say is, i care more strongly about my girlfriends than i can EVER really imagine caring about some dumbass guy. why isn't there a way to commit to love each other forever, to perform the necessary maintenance on the relationship, to be heartbroken when we're apart...? i mean, yeah, it's a lot more logistically difficult when you think of more than just two people, obviously five people have to go their separate ways i guess, but...idk. i'd rather be married to caitlin lindsey ashley latesa, in the sense of commitment and love and putting effort into the relationships and cohabitation, and just use guys for physical needs without getting emotionally attached.

waste of texts

setting: at icon. he's there, i'm hardcore avoiding him. womanizer plays.

me: "Hey, it's the song about you!" 12.42a
him: "Wat...u dont even wanna talk to me" 12.51a
me: "No not really. As my girl britney says, you're nothin but a womanizer. And as my girl ashley says, you're an asshole. Have a good evening." 12.53a
him: "Im not but k" 12.54a
me: "Okay, nice guys lie about using a condom, sure." 12.54a
him: "It sliped off..." (that is a damned lie) 12.57a
*time passes*...and my friends chew him out. :)
him: "I cant believe u told ur frens that bs" 1.18a
me: "well, I can't believe you did it" 1.18a
him: "U kno im a great guy...watever" 1.19a
me: "Of all the possible ways you could have tried to get back on my good side, you really thought that one would work?" 1.21a
*icon closes. as for me and my posse, we relocate to t-bell*
him: "Wat r u doing" 1.28a
me: "Are you serious?" 1.29a
him: *calls me*
Rafe: *answers,* "one, two, three, shut the fuck up."
him: "Who was that dick" 1.33a
me: "My friend rafe. Took my phone." 1.50a
him: "Wat r u doing" 1.51a
me: "Why?" 1.52a
him: "I love u...i miss ur pretty face n smile" 1.54a
me: "What???" 1.57a
Lindsey, Ashley, Latesa, Chris, all to him: "Fuck you!" 1.58a
him: "Can i come over" 2.04a
me: "No. What do you not understand?" 2.05a