Adele is good for the soul.

You know those thoughts you have and those feelings you get that until you hear the right song you can't fully understand? I've been having a lot of those lately...and Adele has been the translator.

I've finally given up on trying to promise I will get back to drawing comics for this blog...it's like when they switched directors for Harry Potter. I was a little pissed and didn't really like the new, dark, "real"...sort of... style because it took away the hollywood 'magic'. But I guess that, looking back on the books and seeing the change of seriousness from the second to the third books, it was appropriate. Same with this blog. Plenty of shit happened this year that called for a serious turn that can't exactly be put into the form of hilariously poorly drawn web comics. Maybe I'll find a point or some kind of subject to rant about but right now it's nice to have an open ended avenue where I can talk about everything ranging from the smell of cat shit to soap all the way to my own personal things. It's nice for now.

So I will keep listening to the voice of Adele...keep picking up and putting the pieces of this puzzle together until, one by one, the pieces fit and I can move on with my life. Maybe I'm bound to be doing that my entire life, I don't really care because either way...I know I'll be ok.

When the lights go down in the city...

You make bad decisions that lead to drunken sobbing to your best friend at a bus stop at 5:30 in the morning. Then you have a seriously deep and meaningful conversation with her about how much you hate yourself and wish you could take back everything you did but you can't because it's on you now like a stain. A gross, disgusting stain that only time will wash off but you're so desperate to lose it you continue to make a giant fool of yourself by whimpering and crying for her to stay. But she goes anyways. Leaving you to deal with what you've done and who you've become on your own, because that's the only way you'll ever learn to face it.

Have you ever felt so ashamed you can't even cry anymore? So disgusted with yourself that your stomach turns when you think about it? Yet again I find the most inappropriate time to utterly breakdown, and at the same time I can't talk about it with the person that I should because she is in a completely different time zone.

And fuck. The landlady's daughter was here the whole night and probably heard all of my pathetic ramblings and problems. Could today get any better? Really?

But I've made my drunken, sloppy, irresponsible bed and I have to sleep in it. Who the fuck am I?

Why do I always blog when I should be doing responsible things?

It is 8:22 am here in Vienna and I should get in the shower and get ready for class at 9:30...but I needed to get this off my chest:

I don't know what I want.



That means so many things, yet is undefinable when I try to explain. So I will leave it at that and when I figure out how, why, and what I mean..I might get back to you.

Shower time!

This shit's PERSONAL.

So I should be doing my homework. I should be blogging about how wonderful Vienna is.

But instead I'm going to talk about shit back home.

Why?
Because it seems like the only people back there that truly, honestly want me to have a great time here are my girlfriend, a handful of friends, and my brother. There are so many things I wish I could scream at the people who continue to put me down and I'm glad that I am so far away that way I won't say something I'll regret later..

Long story short: I'm not going to go home for a long time. This is the last straw. The second my plane lands in PDX and I get into my girlfriend's car I'm driving straight on past home. I'm gonna go to my real home where people don't try to change me or tell me I need a husband. People who don't scream at me like a pissed off 4 year old that didn't get their chocolate bar when I tell them something they don't wanna hear. People who don't pretend everything is ok when it clearly isn't. There is where I find a true home, not this wrecked up fucked up mess you expect me to cling to like it was ever something precious. I'm so tired of keeping my mouth shut, tired of getting kicked in the teeth and then hugged and then kicked and then hugged. As if a hug and a kiss will make everything bad go away and ending the day with an 'I love you' makes me want to be around you again. No. I'm not coming back. At least not until I know you really are working on your problems and come to terms with the fact that you can only control yourself, you have none over me any more.

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED.

And I've been a terrible person for not blogging them. I guess the clearest way I can describe everything will be a list, then a stream of consciousness :) here goes:

- NEW GF
- I'm in fucking Vienna
- I've won a scholarship
- I'm completely out to my entire friend/family peeps
- Traveling shenanigans



I'm in fucking VIENNA!
Yep. That's right beaches. I'm in Austria soaking up to fluorescent lights and fast food smells only an international airport could produce. I've been awake for a solid 36 hours and I've had enough caffeine to power a circus of rabid squirrels on crack. I'm so jittery yet exhausted and I'm honestly finding it hard to not fall asleep between sentences. There were some CRAZY airport shenanigans that I will definitely have to draw some pictures for when I finally get all settled in with my host-family! Until then, I'm trapped in the concourse at the Vienna International Airport until around 8:30 tomorrow morning where I will be busing myself over to the orientation site. I've never felt so over my head in my life but I know this is good. The only way to learn, the only way to grow and to develop true convictions is to be made uncomfortable and to face opposition.

Actually, I think I'm just gonna cut things a little short right there..the room is spinning and I know it shouldn't be doing that..All in all, I've finally started to understand what a true, mature, healthy, and reciprocative relationship looks and feels like. It's so fan-fucking-tastic!!!! I can't wait to get back home and jump right into her arms...because I know she'll be there :3 I know and trust that she is for real and that she really, truly, honestly cares. It's some kinda tingly wonderful I've never experienced with anyone.

Alrighty! Tschüß und aufwiedersehen!

I will definitely make sure to fill y'all in on some more of what's happened this past mont, cause it's been fucking packed! But for now I have to go....before my face slams the keyboard and I start typing like ;lskhfnaks.kansdfm,.nv;ololfmas.f/...
lkansdfmaf;klnoia

wapiofjan.kfjnkasnf
las.

Random late night thought-like things.

As a result of 7 hours on a bus, 3 botched relationship attempts in the last year and a half, various other life things, and lack of sleep I've decided that the easiest way to be happy is to rely on yourself and yourself only. The moment you put that trust in someone else, well, you have no control over your own happiness anymore. True happiness comes from within and it's only something you can provide for yourself. 

If it ever happens to me again, you better be damn well good enough to place trust in and willing to give of yourself as much as I. 

Without trust there can be no successful love, without reciprocity there can be no trust. 

Sadly, no funny drawings just yet.

Sorry, y'all! I honestly have just not had much time to draw at all lately (I'm also sitting in a stairwell with a really sore butt because I'm procrastinating going home and actually doing something). I just wanted to update from the last post because that one isn't so happy, and even though those circumstances haven't necessarily changed, they've gotten severely better since!

Updates:

- I feel again, which is good.

- I don't drink as much, which is even better. (And I'm cutting beer from my diet so I won't spend so much at the pub when I go out, but now I have an insatiable taste for Jameson's...which is usually $6 per shot :/ )

- I'm actually focussing on school, which is ten billion times even better.

- I'm making plans and getting things taken care of for next year/after graduation, which is stressing me way the fuck out...but is good. Really. I'm having nightmares, for reals, about my schedule for next year and about money..

- I have an interview for a scholarship through the Pride Foundation...NBD or anything: http://www.pridefoundation.org/

- I have a possible job lined up for next year.

- I was accepted into my program for Vienna this summer.

- I'm starting a feminist musicology 'book club' type thing with some amazing people. Look out Judith Butler!!

- The weather still sucks, but my heart has finally healed.


So, in a nutshell: Life is looking up. I still hit some potholes that trip me up now and again (like accidentally forgetting my lesson time, then forgetting the time for music history discussion class...in the same day) but I can honestly say I'm happy again. I can smile again without feeling that twinge of sadness behind it, the kind that losing people special to you gives. My family, no matter how divided or spread, will always be there for me if not for each other.

Right now I'm growing and creating myself, trying to figure out my own existence and taking ownership of what/ who I am. Autonomy scares the shit out of me, but I know I can do it and I'm ready to make the jump (cut the strings, so to speak). Life as I know it will never be the same again and I'm excited to see where the doors I open take me, without the safety net of parents, money, or the things I had known and grown familiar with to stabilize myself. It's crazy scary, crazy stressful, and intensely decisive (I'm definitely not the best person when it comes to making great decisions) but it's something I need to do. I need to for myself.

Right now I'm planning. I'm setting goals and reaching them. I'm pushing myself to not settle for mediocre or average when I know I can be great or do something amazing that inspires. I'm not letting other people get in the way of that as well. The people that truly care, that are really my friends, that love me will always be here :) The people that put me down, make me feel inadequate and second guess myself: hey, I already have amazing, wonderful people in my life and I honestly don't have time to waste on your negativity.

Ok. My ass hurts really fucking bad and my lappy is about to die on me.

Tschüss y'alls!

Sometimes.

Hopefully in the next few posts I'll get back to the usual programming of funny, witty story telling with poorly drawn supplementary pictures, but right now I think some venting is very much needed. So if you're looking for a laugh, catch back up in a week or two, if you're looking for a 'hmm' and maybe an 'ohh', keep reading. If you're going to read this with a tone of anger or remorse or anything other than pure curiosity, please don't read any of this because it will get misconstrued and misunderstood.

Recently some things in my life have made me realize the instability of human relations. I've always been a very trusting, open person with a propensity to make myself vulnerable. I honestly don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but the more I think about it I wish I could be closed off. I wish I could shut people out and move throughout the world unaffected by the people I'm surrounded by. Lately there's been this feeling weighing me down, so much that I don't know if it's just a momentary feeling or a permanent break in my personality. I feel broken and bitter. It isn't just because of the recent events of this past week, but a steady oncoming of bitterness towards those who care about me and to twist things even further: the one person who doesn't really care is the one person I want to reach out to the most right now. 

A recent conversation with a very close friend of mine left me with the realization that I've changed, even in just the past few weeks. This fog I've been feeling, this sadness I can't figure out the exact reason for it. Sure life has been wiping the floor with my emotions lately, but it has never left such a bad taste in my mouth. I've never had the inability to cry or to reach out to those I care about before, and that scares the shit out of me. Regardless of how devastated I've gotten in the past, I've always been able to connect with others and to reach out but right now I feel this wall of rationality making me completely emotionally unavailable, even to myself.

I honestly don't know if and when I will snap out of this, but until that happens I can feel the tension and strain it puts in the air. I don't like being touched, talked to, reached out to for comfort, or sharing how I'm feeling to someone in person. The second it's more than this one-sided, electronic rant I get anxious and completely shut down and to be honest, I don't know if the only reason I'm able to write this right now is just because I'm still really drunk from last night. I've also been drinking a lot these past few days, which has led to moments of weakness where I have to fight myself in order to not text or reach out to a certain person. Which, as a result, shuts me down completely from everything and everyone else. 

She honestly isn't the reason I'm acting this way and has very little to do with why I'm fucked up right now, but goddamn it sucks to not be able to talk to someone I consider to be a really important person, even still. I let her in and now this quitting her cold turkey thing made me realize how much of myself I made vulnerable and how much of a, albeit momentary, best friend she was to me. The support I wanted wasn't to be found there, though, and now that I really need it yet feel this incapability to emotionally attach myself to others, I don't know where to turn. 

So here I am at 5 in the morning, half drunk and feeling the hangover begin the hammering against the back of my eyelids. I'm scared, yet somehow emotionally detached when in situations where I should feel afraid. I'm tired, but can't sleep when I know I should. I'm surrounded by people who care about me, but feel alone. I want so many things I can't have from people that can't give them to me. 

If you've made it to here without skimming: congratulations and thank you for reading through that entire scary block of text! I honestly can't do it most of the time unless what the person has to say is completely riveting, so I will take your having read all of my ramblings as a compliment! I guess the only thing about life I know for sure is constant and consistent, is that it isn't. Stability is fleeting when it's reliant on the relationships you have with other people. 

G'night/G'morning world. I will see you when I wake up..sober..and hopefully without a massive hangover.

Time.

I know you'd give more if you had the time.
But the timing ain't lining with the rhyming of the scheme of our lives.
Beginning and ending in a coffee shop,
I knew this love would not
last.
You're still stuck in the past.
Now it's raining on me as I write this poem,
just like the other night when I walked home
and you drove away in the opposite direction.
I knew then I wasn't holding your affections.
You were already shutting me out.
I sensed your eyes and words filled with doubt
about
us and, what the hell were we thinking?
Too many times you'd say 'I want you here'
and then push me away in fear
until time ran out for us to mend
'cause your schedule has no room to bend
for me or anyone.
You filled your life with distraction and responsibilities
to get away from the pain in your past,
but now it's too full to start anything new and make it last.
I don't regret anything and I never wasn't myself,
I just wish for time for you to lose yourself.
'cause You've been holding on so tight.
I was hoping so hard for just one night
I could show you what that feels like,
but there's no time.
We ran out the clock and,
just like that, our time is up.
Now I'm stuck
standing in this cafe trying to put back the pieces
you chipped from the great wall around my heart.
We had such a great start
in the race to the center of each other,
but somewhere we tripped up or rather, you did.
You drifted.
Not by anyones fault but time and how little you have of it to share
and divide up between the people in your life.
There I was standing in the line,
begging for scraps of your already scrapped up time.
But I was the new one,
the extra-curricular, recreational, elective thing
that held no precedence over other ties, a fling.
I could've been more, I had more to give.
I had more I wanted to do,
to give more of my heart to you.
But you can't so I won't
and I'm sad that you don't and didn't
let us finish,
'cause this is incomplete.
My heart still beats to this drumming,
pounding resounding in my skull,
telling me I can feel it in my bones,
that you and me,
we could be happy,
if only there was
time.

Grow'd up.

This coming Sunday is my birthday! 21 Years of life and I have many experiences ranging from awkward, embarrassing to proud and wonderful and everything in between :) I should be excited right? Well..

FUCK

YEAH.

But then, when I think about all the other things that come with being older I want to curl up into myself like a caterpillar being assaulted by swarming hoards of ants. 

You think 'huh, cool anal-ogy' when really, how many times does the caterpillar ACTUALLY survive that situation? All you see is this happy, friendly little guy chomping away at a leaf, minding his own business and then BAM those little black fuckers swarm up from behind and attack.

Now imagine. That caterpillar is me. 

And the ants are all of the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

Now I would like to run, but the responsibilities will only find me again while I'm happily chomping on another blade of grass. So the only options I have are:

1. Learn how to fly. If you know how to fly then you're fucking set for LIFE. Fuck everything else. Why do you think birds are such assholes?

2. Live in a bomb shelter. Completely closed off from society where I can go crazy, never bathe, and watch as much porn as humanly possible without giving a fuck.

3. Invisibility.

No. I'm not going to draw a picture for this.

Until any of those options are actually achievable I guess I will just stay and take it, grow old, and keep going at it day by day. My bones may creak, my jokes may turn PG13, and my eye-sight may fail, and my bowels may go, and my skin might sag, and my memory may get worse, and my breasts may dangle by my knees, and....wait.

MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK.

Poetry night. Ya know, deep stuff.

My headphones in, 
ignore the cars and the squelching of tires against wet concrete. 
The lights of apartments and late night establishments project their neon 
hues onto the wet pavement and run together 
like watercolors in a bathtub. 
The red of the stoplight glows under my feet 
and engulfs me in its blurred reflection. 
The shadow behind me belongs in this world 
revealed only by rain soaked sidewalks on cold, dark, nights like this. 
It follows me 
relentlessly waiting for me to stop. 
To sink into the greens, yellows, reds, and golds. 
Not yet. I must keep walking. 
I need the warmth and the tangible things that living life requires. 
To stop would keep me in this rain, 
cold and going nowhere. 
The beauty of these glowing streets is in the spontaneity of its appearance 
and how fleeting and momentary it remains. 
As is the enjoyment of love and life. 
The only thing we know about any thing 
is that every thing 
must 
come 
to an end. 
Even nights like this 
when the sidewalk bleeds green,
the puddles swim red, 
and the streets glow in purple. 
So now I'll let the sound of Fleet Foxes 
and the pounding of my tired feet
lead me home with the promise 
of a warm bed 
and things to be done tomorrow.

Hmmm.

The part of this term I'm currently experiencing could be called the calm before the storm. A time where I have even the tiniest possible moment of down time (which I'm using for blogging). Because of how much free time I will NOT be having I probably won't be blogging as often as I used to and only when something insanely funny/interesting happens that I have time to blog about.

Right now I'm in-between classes and I decided it would be nice to enjoy sitting in one of the quiet areas in the student union on campus. Despite the quiet signs, for the past hour there's been a man on the phone and another snoring up a storm on the couch behind me. Not the cute, small, every once in a while snores..but the loud, obnoxious bear passing a kidney stone kind. This reminds me of things I greatly dislike that people do in public:

1. Making out.
      - Full on, don't care if anyone is watching, in public, for more than 30 seconds. RUDE.
2. Talking loudly on cell phones.
      - in elevators, repeating phrases as if the other person was deaf, talking about personal things.
3. Talking loudly in quiet places.
      - same as #2, interrupting people, talking over people, being RUDE.
4. Sleeping in public places. (NOT napping but actually sleeping)
      - SNORING, taking up valuable sitting places, drooling.
5. Skateboarding.
      - On sidewalks, during student rush hours when people are trying to walk, sneaking around bikers. RUDE.
6. Picking zits.
      - Especially when they bleed or the person tries to hide it by rubbing their fingers on their pants >:(
7. Sitting and/or putting their things in walkways/stairways.
      - RUDE.
8. Screaming.
      - WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SCREAMING ABOUT. NOBODY IS BLEEDING OR DEAD!!!!!!!!!! SHUT THE FUCK UPPPPPPPPPP.
9. Not bathing. Obviously not bathing..
      - You're stinking up the entire room. Please go at least cake yourself in mud to encase your horrible dirty skin/feet/armpit stench. You smell like a dirty vagina filled with fritos.
10. Chewing loudly.
      - THE ENITRE WORLD DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE IMMENSELY  ENJOYING THAT BURRITO.



Ok..well now it is time to go! Feel free to throw a brick at any or all of the people you spot in public that are doing these things. Thank you for making the world a better, less RUDE place.

END.