today

Dear Diary,
Today I looked in the mirror. I kept thinking about the time I went to Bible camp and we had to listen to three sermons a day and there was a robotic bat and the head counselor punched a kid in the face for blowing bubbles at his glasses. I remember that they surreptitiously filmed everyone and back then I was wearing a really ugly purple and white t-shirt, and I looked fattish and my eyebrows were weird and my face looked fat.
It's definitely been a while, and I'd like to say I had lots of plastic surgery and implants and veneers and cosmetic alterations and stuff like extensions and highlights done to my hair, but that's not exactly true.
I looked in the mirror, and I looked exactly the same as I always have.
It's funny to say that you never really change.

11/5/91

nostalgia is such an ugly word for something so beautiful.
There's never anything quite like missing someone, rather like being glad when you see them except now you know what will happen when they go away.
It's like a removal from fear.
Over eaters eat because they cannot bear to be hungry but it's not even that, it's that they are afraid that they will be hungry.
Anorexics thrive on the feeling of hunger.
I don't know where I fall on that scale. Probably somewhere in between, like everybody else in the world. But that's not really true. I'm afraid I'm going to be hungry.
I'm terribly, desperately afraid.
My teacher said I was worried about survival, and I thought, 'isn't everybody?'
I know what I want.
I love the feeling of not having things.
It's like gluttony. all these flaws just keep mounting up. Greed. Sloth. But in the end, they're just such small problems.
You just have to keep saying to yourself over and over again, I'm like everybody else, and perhaps, they are like me.

You Just Can't be Fixed

I thought she was beautiful. I always do. Her hands are clumsy, and her words are halting, but she brushes her hair out of her eyes quickly, and I think I'm in love. I'd never trust you. I wouldn't. I couldn't. You drive through the night without me. You drive on through, and I won't wave and you won't stop, running through lanes at midnight, switching seats and stealing kisses.

The wind blew fiercely that day. It stung my eyes.

Gender is nothing. It means nothing to me, and it means everything to me. It's a part of my identity, unsolvable and mysterious, so clearly defined.

Just like age, it erodes. It vanishes, or it crystallizes. It doesn't matter to me, because I could never tell who you were. But I remember the way you looked at me. Our fingertips pricked with blood, exchanging DNA. I wish I didn't feel guilty about us.
You're only someone I ever touched. (knives were scattered under our feet like snowflakes, beautiful disarray. We'd met a week ago. You said, 'I've been watching you' and I was charmed)

Things flicker. It was so cold someone lent me his jacket and it was all over patches and I talked to people and I'm so young, I felt so young; some people never grow out of it at all. They think we're the same.
They don't really recall what it is to be young.
These days, it feels like I'll never grow out of it.

At church:
I miss winter there. The space between the snowflakes. The touch of frost. The smell of pine and old churches and varnish on wood, smoothed by hundreds of praying hands. There were stained glass windows like saints and jewels embedded at their feet. It felt like home, but I was always a bastard daughter of the Church.
People loved me there.
I don't know who they were anymore.
It was the best part of being alone, the longing to be ready. I always love anticipation for easily lost moments.
Sometimes I think the buildup is all that people want. It's pure adrenaline, hopelessness braced for hope, victory.
Sometimes I think I'm deeply religious. I was born this way.

You grow out of it. It's easy, like flying, and just as anatomically impossible

They raised me. There wasn't anyone else around to do it for me. You see, everyone tells you what's wrong, and what's right.






I'll cut the truth out of you, piece by piece. You have soft bones, and I was never one to hesitate with a carving knife.

I don't think I can do you damage. I don't think- that this can damage myself. There's never enough time to think these things properly through.

If this is a letter, it is an incomplete one.
I can't ever find my own truth. There are things about myself that I don't want to accept and parts of me I want to forget.
These things slip away from me.
I love you. I do. But you cut me up and it's not right, just not right. I don't forget, and I can't forgive you for your failings. You wouldn't listen. You'll never listen.
I'm never right for you, because that means your choice was wrong.

I want you to make me right. I want someone who believes in me.
You'll never do that. I can't bear it.

You fucked me up and you can't fix me, and nobody can, and I don't want to fix myself. I want to heal and gather the broken pieces, around me and perfect like healing. I think I'm not so fine, but I'm not imperfect either.
Sure, I have pent up anger.
I'm so angry with you. You're always so angry with me. You always told me it was my fault. You told me that all of it was my fault. I was born with it, I couldn't escape it. It wouldn't have happened without me, it wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me. I did it to myself, to all of us.
Just shut up and take it.
You didn't walk away from him. He left you.
That's not a good enough reason. That's not enough. I hate that you did this to me. I hate that you don't care enough about me to help me, and I dislike-
that you can't even help yourself.
They just keep doing this to me and you just keep letting them. You just keep repeating old patterns. The only difference is you won't let them get close enough to start again.

You don't know what it feels like. (Sometimes I wonder if you do.)You don't know what it is when you say, 'You only said no once.'
I only said no once, that one time.
You don't understand why I'm so angry, that one time.
Should I just keep saying no? Is there such a big difference between once and a million, between just one time and onward?
Why do I have to keep saying it to be heard? Why do you keep defending them? I wonder why you won't defend me.
It's probably because I'm not enough for anybody, even myself.
You're never on my side. You're never there for me when I need you. I've only got myself, and it's a lovely familiarity.
It's not enough to say, stop, no.
Get out.
Stop.
No.

I never said no in the beginning. Maybe I did.
It was such a long time ago.

Sincerely, Twisted

We talked about hate crimes today. Or rather, we practically sat in a circle and held hands.
Not to be a downer, but who made this mandatory?

I understand. It's important to watch, it's important to view, but that doesn't make it any more right to impose people unwillingly on this, especially for the purpose that it is-
Community. People need to heal. They need to get better.

It's nothing personal though, and that's exactly the problem. They're all Pictures and Facebook and a gathering at Java City, and I don't know. I don't even have a Facebook.
It's trivial, and small. It's a Bad Thing that happened.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me.
(butbecause Bad Things happen all the time)
How horrifying.
I'm callous. Cold hearted, soft footed, fleet and adept and twisted, deep down and inside and just plain gone. I want to find the truth for myself. I need to find the truth in myself, and I'm not sure where to look. In ward and out, it's all the same.
I do so think that this is an overreaction. But not in the way that it seems.
I don't believe that this can or will stop anyone from committing hate crimes- They hate. (I don't really understand but it's true.) If anything, I'd be inflamed.
It's already been shown they're a stickler for attention.
When I'm rude to people, really rude, it bothers me. When I don't like someone, it feels like the taste of it will never go away. If it takes so much more just to commit even a small act of viciousness and violence, and in what happens there is something both deliberate and untraceable, something that can never be reclaimed, something inevitably final in each and every step of its delivery that would take so much more than I could imagine. (Or maybe just quick bravado.)
If someone is already down that path, I can't think of a way to stop them. They grow crooked, and something in their soul is unbearably strange.

It's not a big deal.

Really it isn't.

I've been the victim of hate crimes. It hurts, of course, or you grow a thick skin or you sit down and cry and eventually you get up, dry your tears, and get on with life. I've always done that. (minus the tears.) Wake up the next morning, wash your face. That's not what lingers.

Letters, notes, whispers, rumors, death threats.
It's happened. To me, to quite a lot of people who have never been touched by anything like that, we've never been touched so in our small lives. And in all that collection, nothing matters to me as much as the things that have, and that are so much more real and immediate and upsetting.

Sticks and stones-
And they don't matter. And people may have threatened me, but none of those people have ever laid a hand on me. (it's what they don't touch that hurts.)

May break my bones-
And that's what really matters. That's what hurts, deep down and outside and everywhere, that lingers and never goes away and I think I'm growing out of it, into it, and don't you see, that's what really counts and keeps you down and chokes you.
It hurts.
Physically.

Maybe that should inspire more empathy in me, but I feel like they don't understand. Something so small and inconsequential seems to hurt them so deeply.

(i think a girl cried. I hate crying. it makes you all hot and messed up and squished inside. It's messy, and it makes me feel too obvious. The best way to stop crying is to look in the mirror.)

People hurt you. They hurt you and they change, and they grow and maybe they reform and maybe they relapse. And it's so much more real this way, when they really touch you and they really always-

Now that's not it at all. Stop. Rewind.

Their pity scrapes my skin. The people who its touched are a victim. Christ, even the people who they confide in are victims. (oh jesus christ i can't imagine)

People say they are. Lots of people. Maybe they're probably right. Does it really matter if it's written on a washboard or whispered, spoken or drawn, when it boils down to that? Is it a crime only then, or just another reason to air your public grievances?

I don't think that this will make a difference.
I hope they heal.
I don't think that what they're doing is important to anyone else, relevant to anyone else.
I hope they get better.
That's not a bad thing. Support is a wonderful thing. The songs were great.
I hope it stops.
Healing is a personal matter, and easily shared. This, however, is not a worldwide basis.
I hope they realize that while
It makes a difference only in your community, and it should make a difference to yourself, and they do it to help themselves, and that so much, seems like it's enough.

It should be.

Ripples, sure. Floating outside.

Sometimes I miss you so awfully.

Not Exactly a Dream Come True

like to sew.

It isn't because I can make things I can't find anywhere for myself, or to fill a hole in my closet. It doesn't even particularly stem from a fashionable interest, although I went from believing that jeans were the devil to actually owning several pairs around sixth grade.
(I wasn't completely strange. My school was deeply religious, extremely small, and sheltered. I wore knee socks, a cardigan, a button up blouse, and a plaid skirt every day for three years without fail, having graduated from my plaid jumper from previous years.)
I learned about designers, from YSL to Richard Tyler, classic sportswear from Clair McCardell and the surprising details of Commes des Garcons. I read magazines, books on fashion, books on sewing, and books on fictional designers and the industry. I even watched an expose.

It was an education.

I still don't like wearing pants.

Anyways, I sew. I don't make purses, and I don't make pillowcases. I used to embroider, but it was time consuming and I never really had the patience necessary for it. I like prints, stiff fabric, and I've never been able to follow a pattern for the life of me. This is somewhat detrimental, but still I persist. I like looking at beautiful, intricate clothing, with special details and lovely fabric. There are beaded dresses, ones with sequin trims and braided belts and beribboned sashes, made from chiffon and silk and velvet, satins and brocades. None of that is what I make.

I make dresses. Pants aren't difficult, but they don't feel rewarding, either. Neither do blouses. Skirts are almost too simple, although sometimes I like to make them. They're usually summer dresses, with a print. A basic style.

There's nothing flashy or particularly eye catching about them. Not the sort of thing to turn your head on the street, I'd say, or make you do a double take. I could probably easily find them in a vintage store, or even an everyday one.

Most of the time, I wonder why I even bother. Talent is one thing, vision is another, and I'm not endowed with either of those in spades. (Although most of the time I wish those visionary fashion students knew how to sew properly. They can make a toile and a pattern and a sketch, and the dress doesn't fit at all. I realize it's good for mass-production, but shouldn't it be flattering for at least the maker, if not the wearer? I can't make a toile. But my dresses fit.)

I'm not a great seamstress, and I don't have a lot of patience for it. I'm messy and easily distracted, but something about putting something together, giving it a shape and a form out of pieces and thread running through the back, along the collar, flaring out into new lines is exciting to me. I can make something and feel the shape of it.

It's not something quite as satisfying in art, unless it's sculpture, which I'm not good at, particularly.

The most basic art, reproducing a scene or an object or a person onto a two dimensional board, is simply a matter of observation and a certain kind of sight for interpretation. I don't know if sewing is the same way, and if it is, I'm certainly not that clear-sighted.
I don't have a vision I want to bring to life. But I do have a certain measure of excitement, or pleasure in a completed piece.

My school was also a church. Every fall, the women of the church would make apple crisps in the basement, in the kitchen and sell them. They wore sturdy aprons and had calloused, efficient hands. When the apples were chopped, some of the juice would inevitably stain the soft wood of the counters.
There was a large tree in the courtyard, enormous and hulking. One of its largest branches had been chopped off, so it was very straight and very tall.
It was a very beautiful church.

Not really sure, (But you seem strange to me)

What is it about people that doesn't fascinate me? Something in their conversation, a certain sameness of speech, a trend of thought; something leaves me dissatisfied and unhappy.
You have to work for relationships. You have to work for friendship and understanding and clarity and all that, but really, at the end, why should I remain bored by you?
The truth is, I'm afraid that my past is inescapable, that people really are the same deep down and no matter where I go or what changes in my life, they will always be this way.
I'm so afraid of that. I'm so worried that the girl that I see in the hallway is exactly like the girl before her, or, essentially, the flaw lies within me. Maybe it's better that I don't know. Maybe it's the latter.
I think I prefer to believe that. It means that the possibility of change is still evident. It means that one day I might be able to let go of whatever keeps me anchored to the past, and see people as individual, unusual, and special. Unique.

I think that my problems are just like everyone else's, and that doesn't bother me at all.
I think I'm 100 % normal, absolutely positively. I can't let myself believe any different.


The facts are these:
She went away,
and I went away,
and she came back,
and I walked away.


I think it really was simple.

Some people aren't meant to coexist.

I want to sit in my house and not think of you.
I want to sit in my house alone with my lights and my books and my food and not think of you and where you are and how we were and what we could have been doing tomorrow, and certainly not of what you are doing tomorrow, and not of what I am doing tomorrow because it's the same exact thing that I always do-
Sit in my house, and try not to think of you.

Young Love: Just a Bad Idea?

Teenage girls are supposed to be deeply invested in relationships, crushes, flirting; it's one of those things that I think I should care more about but don't.
The last time I talked to a boy, he flirted and I blushed. I had a fever, and went to bed early. As he talked, my thought processes went something like this- when blanching tomatoes, immerse in boiled water, then cold. Peel off the skin, which should have become quite loose and easy to get rid of. It does not matter how messy it is, because Trish and Dad will be home late. Do the same with peaches, to use up leftover piecrust in freezer.
Also, I need to stop by the convenience store and pick up some butter.
Somehow, I dimly sensed my love life was a failure. Happily, the pie was excellent.

The thing about relationships boils down to a simple fact: most people are extremely boring. No matter how interesting they begin as, eventually most topics are exhausted and you are left asking each other how your day was.
"Oh," he says carelessly, "It was good. How was yours?"
"Mm. Good, honey," you respond.

Not exactly stimulating companionship. That's not to say there aren't millions of interesting, insightful people out there, but most likely they aren't teenage boys. Quite possibly they are a well of untapped depth but I doubt it.
I hold my friends to very different standards. Sadly, I'm more inclined to be forgiving of mistakes, ramblings and annoying little traits, the sort of thing that I couldn't possibly stand in a relationship.
I can picture it now:
The setting is my couch. I lean confidingly into my friend, who listens interestedly, eager for new tidbits of gossip.
Me: He –he forgot my Birthday! I thought-I thought we had something special. I thought we were different-
I'm his girlfriend! What does that mean for our relationship if he can't even remember that!
Friend: How awful! How could he possibly forget your birthday is…
Me: November 5th.
Friend nods, rubs my back comfortingly. While I sniffle, she jots down a note hurriedly on the back of her hand.

Sometimes, people simply are not compatible.
I remember talking to one of my guy friends, who had only occasional success with the ladies. Apparently, he and his new girlfriend of two months had special plans for Halloween. Both big fans of the Nightmare Before Christmas, he had purchased a small memento for her. I was happy to hear that everything was going well. He mentioned her 'hot friend' was planning to drop in the same night.
"We hooked up last week," he said. "But it wasn't like it was cheating, or anything. I mean, all we did is make out."

Sometimes, the two of you simply aren't on the same page.

Honestly, I don't think that I'm an expert on anything. I'm certainly not qualified to give people advice, but sometimes they're just too close to see anything.

My professor said something last week that strongly reminded me of this. She was talking about a Chuck Close painting, and she said, "When you're right up close to it you can see all the little details and how it's made and how beautiful the brush strokes are, but you can only see that it's a painting of a man or even what he looks like from far away."

For instance, two eighteen year olds who have been together for many years decide to get married. Onlookers are doubtful, but even the two families are confident in their closeness and the unique nature of their bond. These kids are different, they say. They really love each other. They want to make it work.

Arguably, both are equally handicapped. The families lack perspective, and the onlookers lack insight.

Then again, marriage is a complex business. I don't know anything about it.

The closest person I know who's ever had a brush with marriage, or at least the idea of it is my sister. When she was thirteen, my father got remarried. Naturally, this put everyone in the family in a good mood. The only thing they were remotely bothered by was that his bride wasn't Vietnamese as well- a forgivable lapse, they said. For this special occasion my great aunt came out to give her blessing. She saw my sister and was impressed. Eager to extend this good fortune, she and my grandmother began to discuss a potential alliance for my sister and a young, distantly related doctor. Somehow, they managed to procure a picture of my sister and sent it to the doctor, who was fairly pleased with it. Everyone seemed to be happy.

The Doctor had graduated medical school already, and was just beginning to establish himself. He was upstanding, well mannered, and a pure blooded Vietnamese. He was also in his late twenties.

(You have to understand; he didn't know my sister was only thirteen years old. Already, she could pass for sixteen or seventeen. Of course, right now she looks her age and she's lost some of her baby fat around her face. Back then she just looked like she had a round head.)

They had already settled quite a few matters when my aunt overheard and intervened. Naturally, my father said he wouldn't stand for it, and that was the end of that. Still, my grandmother and great aunt were deeply disappointed and that cast a sort of gloom over the whole ceremony, but by the end all was forgiven.

Except for my sister, of course. She thought the Doctor wasn't particularly attractive.

Anyways, relationships are complex. I just hope someday I'll meet someone who is interesting, kind, and unrelated in any way.