You have my permission to bolt for the hills. Being my friend should not be this hard. I know  I vent to you a lot, but despite your difficulties in this arena, you are a great listener. You are the sweetest guy I know, You are smart and wise beyond your years. I like you,  A LOT, I have from the moment I first saw you in K's class over a year ago. But, as hard as it would be for me to let you go, you deserve better than being my nursemaid and rescuer.
I love you!

I have once again been SUPER lax about updating my journal. I'll try to do an update for each month I went MIA:

Late September: Turned 24. Went home for my birthday. Saw Isla again, cute as ever! Had my first beer, not my favorite drink.

October: Went to a DC United game with Drew. They lost. Drew started coming to me for lunches on Fridays. We rarely run out of things to talk about. Went on a couple interviews with no luck. Was berated by my dad. Discovered I LOVE hockey, three nights a week are taken up by Caps games now!

November-Had more interviews with no luck., but despite that, my mood has been amazing. I asked Drew to dinner,he beat me at air hockey, then
we watched the Caps lose. Had another beer, a good one this time. Drew said I would be worth paying $10. Went Home for Thanksgiving and realized quite suddenly that NH is not home anymore. Ellen finally decided to move on with her life, making me our boss' senior intern.

December- Went to a live Caps game. Best. Night. Ever. They won in OT. Gave great presents, went to several parties. Drew HUGGED me! Erin had the baby. She looks monkey-esque. Went home for Christmas. Was back for New Year's Eve. Went to Krista's awesome condo. nearly froze to death on the way back..

I have fallen into  a depression yet again, I am entirely done with this whole cycle. I clearly need to do something to help myself but this time I'm fairly sure it is situational. See, last Tuesday was Drew's last day for nearly a month. When he came to ask me to lunch, I started to get sad, knowing that that was the last time like that for a while. Especiallly after he noticed that he always asks me to lunch and told me I could come ask him too, That night I came home and sent him an e-mail that was just a very diplomatic attempt to say I'd miss him while he was home. Then I sat in the dark and listened to a really sad song and cried for a while til he commented on my FB status, then all troubles were forgotten. Trigger number two this time was the fact that I now have less than three months to figure out a way to stay here or I'll be forced to return to New Hampshire. I'm not sure I could survive that. When I Isolate myself here it's by choice, there I would have very few options to break myself out. I know I'm lucky to have the option to go home  again, it just already feels like I have failed. I know that feeling will only increase as the time gets shorter.

I want to marry Drew Robarge. Seriously. He's super-cute, smart and funny. He understands me but calls me out when neccesary. Just the thought of him makes me smile. My task however is to turn our friendship into more. No clue how.
In other news I have a job interview tomorrow, doing the same kinds of things I do now. Yikes!

I'm feeling incredibly lonely, wishing I mattered more, that I could safely fall apart and someone would catch me

I suck at posting everyday, the problem is not a lack of things to post about. It's the malestrom brewing in my mind and heart right now is such a black twisted mass of "what the hell" that I can't untangle the strings and articulate the true meaning of my "dark and twisty"-ness. I just don't know

I am going to try to take this up as a daily (or almost daily) ritual again. I need to get all the things in my head out, or I will very quickly disintergrate into a ball of anxiety and fear, staring at my future and so paralyzed by my insecurities that I'm unable to take any steps to prepare myself for the fall I know is ahead of me if I let my negativity continue to run rampant in my head.

The Metro crash on Monday started me thinking in a very scary but interesting cycle. Every day since, I have been nervous to board my train, and oddly jealous of the people who died, They probably died instantly or were knocked unconscious and so didn't suffer much. I would want to die like that, unsuspecting, my  name always linked  with a great tragedy. Relax, I'm not suicidal, just very very tired of feeling so out of control, like I'm hanging on to my sanity by a thread.

Part of my problem of late has been having all this external pressures placed on me, adding to the pressure-cooker atmosphere of my own
inner world. I feel like I'm a puppet, only doing what my family wants of me, with no earthly clue what  I want. Right now I want to be able to read a weekend day away without feeling intense guilt for not using my time, I just need room to breathe, I feel like I'm suffocating under the weight of all the expectations, most heavy among those, my own.

Is there a travel agent who specializes in separate vacations for the mind and body? I need that kind of vacation so badly right now

I've kinda fallen off the LJ wagon. I blame facebook,
Let's see since the last post:
butterflyangels came to visit for a week, It was great to not be alone. We did all kinds of touristy things One of the best nights IMO was when we went to California Pizza Kitchen, then hung out at Borders, then spent the night tearing apart  this terribly written book on April, 1865. This night ended with an e-mail to Warder that he hasn't replied to, and that I'm sure he thinks was written by a drunk person.

I've applied for several jobs, had a couple of interviews. No such luck...yet

I have Medicaid finally...took like 20 calls and required me to shed tears....but i have it.

We had a birthday party for my pal Sofia from work it was lots of fun
.
I went home last week for the first time since Christmas. It was great to see everybody. I saw both sets of grandparents, my sister and brother-in-law, mom, dad, step-mom, a bunch of aunts and an uncle on my mom's side, and oh yeah, I got to finally meet and hold Isla! She is so awesomely cuddly and adorable ( Isla and I )

On a not as awesome note, I'm on my third day of feeling intensely nauseous, luckliy it hasn't gone beyoind that. I scarfed almost an entire sleeve of saltines hoping it'd go away,no such luck. Blah

I am sucking at life right. My enthusiasm for EVERYTHING (except apparently being miserable) has gone out the window. I've become a really crappy everything (I dump all my crap on my friend's doorstep and she hasn't walked away,) I've become this emotionally needy person who needs her mom to sympathize with her instead of being grateful that my mom has first hand knowledge of ways that I could maybe feel better, so when she gives me any advice based on that experience, I choose to shut her out and get angry like a petulant child. I tell my sisters I miss and love them just so they say it back. (I really do miss and love them, I just feel really guilty knowing that the reason I'm telling them is so selfish) 
I DESPERATELY want to feel good. Sometimes though, I wonder if I'm keeping myself unhappy.

OK,  I was gonna post another song, but I swear I could have written these:

"I Don't Ever Give Up"
Patty Griffin
I'm no kid in a kid's game
I did what I did, I've got no one to blame
But I don't give up, no, I don't ever give up
It's all I've got, it's my claim to fame

I'm no fighter but I'm fighting
This whole world seems uninviting
But I don't give up, no, I don't ever give up
I fall down sometimes, sometimes I come back flying

Liars are lying, airplanes are flying
Love isn't here, love isn't here
But it's somewhere
Time to forget me, but something won't let me
Love isn't here, love isn't here
But it's somewhere

And I cleaned and I washed up
This dream I don't ever give up
I don't ever give up, I don't ever give up
No, I don't ever give up, no, I don't ever give up
No, I don't ever give up, I don't ever give up
____________
"Free"

I am no longer young, I'm an old man's daughter
We got caught with the sun going down
We spent most of our days adrift on the water
That's how I know my way around
And it's hard to be free
When freedom is just me
And the waves on the terrible sea

I could land with the rest of all the broken down birds
That's where I found my way home
With the rest of the faces on the face of the earth
Facing off with the great unknown
And all the tears that we cry
Is something gone wrong
Is somebody lost
The places long gone

Keep on moving, baby, keep on moving
The wave's coming over your knees
And it's hard to be free
See some things that I see
Be some things that I be
And come all the way, all the way, all the way home again

That is all

ASAP, so I can say to "the system" "f**k you goodbye". I am so tired of constantly having to defend myself against accuastions of not being a good little girl and accepting the help that's being offered. Instead I have chosen to remain stubbornly and feriecly independent, sometimes at a cost of my phyiscal and emotional health, and for this I am denied the ability to live free of the worry of saying or doing the wrong things that would make them question me too closely and discover that, horror of horrors I am not the helpless child trapped in a body that refuses to take direction, or a compliant loveable cripple who strives every day to warm their hearts with triumphant tales of obstacles surmounted. I am just ME!

Today is a day that makes me hopeful. The 44th President has just been sworn in. The speech he grave struck a chord of hope in  my heart, as that eloquent man on the platform delivered a stirring speech that echoed with the lessons of history, But despite the historic natural of this event, I am excited not just about my  future and that of my country, I am hopeful for the bright future that lies  before a baby girl, lying in the comfort of her loving parent's arms, not even 24 hours old.  I am sure that her parents will do all they can to provide that beautiful girl all that is needed for her to fulfill the potential that she embodies at this moment, before she has had a chance to experience the complexities of the wider world. The trouble is, the best efforts of her parents maI am  not be enough.
This is not an indictment of my sister and her husband. That is just a fact of life in this country. But I am very hopeful that the world thier daughter now inhabits is just a little more ready and able to help her live her dreams. I will do all I can to help her figure out what those dreams are. I love you Baby I

My sister's been in active labor since early this morning, I bet by early tomorrow i'll finally get to know what the litttle one's name is!

I can't do this anymore, I can't stay here, cut off from almost  everything and everybody that  means anything to me, but I can't go home either. I can't deal with the pressure of needing to find a job, when I feel like such crap, I just can't, everything seems too big, too important. Hell, its after 1 in the afternoon, and I am still in my PJ's I don't plan on getting out of them today either

In the space between sleep and wakefulness that I inhabit every morning, the place where the sun makes my eyelids look so red, one ight think they were bleeding, I let myself think, hope and sometimes even pray, that today will be a pain-free day. This fierce wishing rarely pays off. If my neck and back aren't screaming before I even pull myself to sitting, I need only wait. Soon enough, the demon pain maker that has made itself so comfortable in my brain will awaken, and spend the remainder of the day taking immense pleasure in causing me such pain.

If the monster is feeling particularly benevolent, the burning ache will be isolated to only one limb, with only minimal feedback from my neck and back. He must be taking pity on me today, as only my right leg is being tortured. This is not to say that the monster's kind days are  good ones for me, It seems that he decides to spare me all-over agony, only to up his game in the place that has become his playground for the day. See, I experience these "good" days as an 8-9 on a scale of 1 (almost non-existent) to 10 (horrific) pain, but only in one place. On truly bad days everywhere is affected with the pain staying at about a 7 throughout the day. On a good day, I can rub the place that hurts and pretend it's doing something to lull the demon to sleep. On a bad day, he is too hyper for me to pin him down and put him out of his misery.

So, despite the fact that I long to chew my leg off so the demon goes away for a minute, I count today a good one

For the last few days, I've been feeling really really strange. I feel like I'm watching myself through someone else's eyes. like my brain is on slow motion, constantly playing catch up with my body, which is the opposite of how i usually feel, like my body is behind. I'm hoping it's just the stress of traveling and waiting to talk to my neurologist on Friday, the only other reason for this weirdness scares the hell out of me.

As my last act in the virtual world for a little more than a week, I want to say

Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year!!!!

Lately, I  feel like all I do is whine. I hate it, Even when I acknowledge to myself  how bad it hurts, and that I should take something, I feel like I should buck up and put up  with it, be as brave as I used to be as a kid. I can't anymore, I'm almost hoping they find something, , as long is it involves no more pain

 ( Cutting to save my friends page )Me, Sofia (w eyes closed) and Ellen