#onewaytickettodeath

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I WANT TO BE KISSED BY SOMEONE WHO GIVES A DAMN. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

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Two of my friends who have been together for two years just broke up. I am not sure what to do now. He had said he needed time to think on Monday last week, so they didn’t talk for a week and then I got a text from her last night. I have felt that this was a long time coming, but now that it has happened I don’t know what it means for the friend group. I don’t know yet how it happened, so I’m not sure if there are a lot of bad feelings, or if this is a trial thing and then they’ll get back together. I guess only time will tell.

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Hoping.

How do you talk to someone who is depressed? Someone who is constantly hurting inside? I don’t know. I’ve experienced some of those same feelings before, but I still have no idea. 

First of all, I have a friend, actually, I’ve had several friends, who have all been in some kind of emotional turmoil: depression, anxiety, etc. I myself have been in these situations, and am currently in situations related to these kinds of emotional turmoil (for lack of a more specific descriptor that would accurately represent each situation. 

Secondly, I am not good at comforting people. I grew up in a family of introverts and fairly un-touchy people, not for any fault of their own. This put me in a situation that made me good at self-comfort in most situations and on the other hand terrible at asking for comfort and terrible at giving comfort to others in a productive way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m great at listening and discussing issues and hypotheticals and even just helping out with a good vent and yelling session. When it comes to serious emotional situations when I’m expected to give a response, or even worse, when I can’t respond and I have to think of some other way to help in some way... 

Basically, I’m crap at these things. Then I get this crap feeling piled onto all these horrible feelings that I already have about being a horrible person and about how all these people I call friends will turn out to hate me if I do one thing wrong (like I always seem to do)...

And then I stew in that feeling. I stew in it until I feel worthless and would rather shut myself away from the world and never speak to another person than risk hurting or disappointing anyone. 

Anyway, it’s quite a pair we make: him needing company and comfort that I can’t give. I guess it’s a life lesson we’ll have to learn about together. Everyone has their own things to deal with in life, hopefully we find those that make the struggles worthwhile and bring a little hope and happiness to our existence. 

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I bought a Lamy Logo and ink online yesterday and I am just so excited to get it. It's completely the fault of my friends who are obsessed with fountain pens.

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So here’s how my morning went down

It was all pretty great. I was just talking with my roommate and her almost boyfriend and I had a delicious breakfast and a cup of tea. I put away some of my laundry and did some other random cleaning to pass the time until I have to go to class at noon. I then realized that it was time to register for my classes for this spring. I was excited. It is going to be my last semester at school (or it should be if I have any say in the matter and if the fates are kind). I had some schedule conflicts that I had worked out with my adviser, and all was good. Until this one class decided to add a lab that conflicted with everything. To clarify, all of the classes that I will be taking are REQUIRED for me to graduate with my degree from my University. I was half an idiot for not taking some of these sooner, but my adviser was also not doing her job by not telling me that I did need to take these classes earlier or letting me know how important they were. I just wrote an email to the program office and my adviser about it and I really hope they get back to me today so that I still get priority registration.  I’m just pissed off that everything I need seems to be scheduled at the same time. I would think that within one department they could figure this shit out. I will just have to wait and see what happens now., which I hate doing. I like to keep the few things that I actually put effort into planning on schedule.

On the note of more positive updates, for the choir Korea trip, my parents decided to pay for me to go as my graduation present. I’m super excited. One of my best friends and another friend are both going as well, so that will be really cool. 

Also, I’m getting along really well with my roommate in my apartment. I was worried earlier in the summer after having the apartment to myself for so long. But it’s turned out pretty great. She’s actually not in the apartment a lot, because she’s busy with things for her sorority and classwork, which gives me quite a bit of the freedom that I’d been worried about loosing. 

I’ve also made a new close friend, which is awesome :). 

Tomorrow I’m going to radio track Sage Grouse as a make-up field trip for one that I slept through earlier in the semester. It should be a pretty cool experience. 

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I am concerned tonight.

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I tell my friends that I care and it makes me so embarrassed, because no one really cares it seems. No one expresses that they actually give a damn about what happens

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I feel overwhelmingly useless for my inability to confront people as well as talk about meaningful things. I feel like a piece of shit and that I’m a horrible friend.

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I just heard thunder, and I’m so excited :D

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I can't sleep.

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Hot as Hades

It’s starting to get to the part of the summer  that I don’t like. The part where is hot enough to melt your face and present the risk of extreme sunburn each time you step into the light. The worst part about heat is that there is only so many layers of clothing you can take off in public, and even being naked doesn’t dissipate the heat the way you would like it to. I don’t have air conditioning in my apartment, so I have to do my best to catch any breeze I can with the windows and doors thrown open and my one fan going full blast all the time. I also started making very large batches of iced tea, and I’ve been drinking a great deal of that. 

I went down to the river on Sunday with two of my friends and it was amazing. There is this little part where we go on the river and it’s a little offshoot where the water doesn’t move, so that’s perfect for swimming and just chilling in. We also brought picnic food and it was amazing. Just a good way to beat the heat since it was 104 degrees Fahrenheit, bleh. 

So, I also have an interesting question to pose. I am going to dinner tonight with one of my male friends. He has a girlfriend and I am single, but we’ve been friends for a few years. His girlfriend isn’t spending the summer here, but she is a good friend of mine. We are going to a fairly nice restaurant, but it’s somewhere we’d talked about going to before. My other friend, thinks it’s weird that we are going out on what would constitute as a date for most people. And I agree it’s pretty date like, except for the fact we aren’t romantically involved. I just don’t agree with my other friend that it’s a weird thing to do. I mean his girlfriend knows we go and eat together and we do other things together like watch movies and go to the grocery store and just generally hang out with just us fairly often. Also my other friend and other people who we would want to invite don’t really want to come with although we’ve invited a few people. Generally, I just don’t understand why my other friend finds it so weird, especially when I’ve been out to eat with this other friend a couple times when it’s just us, which from the outside would also look like a date to other people. Anyway, if you wanted to chime in on this that’s fine. I’m sure other people have experienced much more drama than this in their friend group. Other than that, I’m really excited to go out to the restaurant cause it’s supposed to be really good and good food is my specialty.

Change of subject.

I’ve been listening to my Pandora station this morning, it’s on my Opera/Musical Theater station, which is fabulous cause it’s like one big sing-along for me. I started the station with Dracula the Musical music, which is really intense and awesome. The man who sings Dracula’s part (I think it’s Jams Barbour) has such an amazing voice that sometimes I just have to stop whatever and listen. Also just the scoring is so rock opera and I love it. Other musicals that pop up that I like listening to are Jekyll and Hyde, Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, Repo: The Genetic Opera, Into the Woods, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Wicked, and Les Miserables among others. But it’s pretty cool. I like musical theater quite a lot. The Jekyll and Hyde one is especially interesting to listen to because it seems like it’s the same person singing both the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde parts due to the flow of the songs, but his voice changes so dramatically that you can immediately distinguish the two different characters being portrayed. Quite an excellent example of a talented actor and musician. 

That’s what’s happening with me today! 

Over and out.

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Melody (3)

The doorbell suddenly rang. Mel went to the door expecting something a little more routine than the darkly dressed woman she had seen across the street sitting on her doorstep looking faint. She attempted to say something which came out jumbled. Mel could just make out “Excuse me” and then she collapsed against the doorframe. Mel stooped down quickly to check the woman. A pulse was there and she had steady breathing; nothing seemed to be wrong with her except for the loss of consciousness. Against her better judgment Mel decided not to call the police or ambulance, the woman seemed to be alright, and there was always time to call later if she worsened. She proceeded to move the woman into the house, perhaps she would benefit from being in the cool air and a small rest? Mel looped an arm around the woman’s back and legs lifting her up and walking into the living room and setting her on the couch. She was surprised that she could lift her, but the woman was of a smaller build and Mel wasn’t one who could be called small herself. Mel’s uneaten sandwich and book were sitting on the coffee table where she had left them as she got up to get the door. She decided to grab a glass of water to go with the sandwich so if the woman woke hungry or thirsty there would be something to offer her close at hand.  

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Jacob (2)

Jacob awoke with a pounding in his head and a recollection of strange dreams, although the dreams where fairly tame compared to some he had. He didn’t think he had drunk that much last night. No worries, today was his day off anyway and he would have plenty of time to recover. It was surprisingly early and his wife was still sound asleep next to him. Carefully inching off the bed, so as not to disturb her, he went into the front room by way of the kitchen to grab a glass of water and start the coffee. Their house was really an apartment since on his salary they could not have afforded anything as extravagant as a private house. Marissa worked during the days when Gabriella went to school in a nearby café which allowed her to take the part time hours. Though Gabriella was a few months ahead most city children were required to begin schooling at the age of five. The magi took this opportunity to observe and test certain children who showed promise for gifts. To Jacob’s disquiet they had been sent a notice that Gabriella was under observation. They believed she had the potential to possess a creation gift, meaning she was talented in imagining and constructing from a picture in her mind. Jacob agreed she very well may be gifted, but he would rather keep his daughter as far from the magi as possible. Neither he nor Marissa had been found gifted as children or even in later tests, something which he found lucky as the majority of the population was usually found to possess a gift. Secretly he was glad neither of them was gifted, it kept them from notice and helped them to focus on life at hand. The few times he had told Marissa about his dreams and how he came up with his stories though she had given him a strange look, and once even suggested that maybe it was some kind of destiny gift, like some kind of premonition or vision of the future. He denied it could be any such thing, and even if he did have a gift he had never even heard of a story telling gift. Despite the unmistakable feeling of truth in his stories and dreams, he doubted what he saw, playing it off as an overactive imagination. He watched the sun rise out of the small living room window. He couldn’t actually see the sun, so deep within the city they were, but he could watch the lightening of the sky and hear the city systems begin to awake, ready for a day’s work.  

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Melody (2)

Melody went over to the front window. “Where could Talise have gone?” she wondered aloud. It was not too strange for her to wander when she was distracted by something but she usually gave some kind of warning, and since it was lunch time her hunger may have reminded her to come back to the house. Well, she was a grownup and knew how to take care of herself, though that didn’t stop Mel from worrying. She was just about to take her lunch to the couch to veg with her newest book when something caught her eye. At first she couldn’t tell what it had been. Nothing seemed out of place. Then she noticed a woman across the street. The woman seemed normal enough on the outside, perhaps dark clothes for such a nice day, but something about her direct stare toward the house wasn’t normal. The woman took a sip of a to-go coffee and stood, back straight and head cocked, as though she was either listening or deciding, or possibly both. Mel had sunk away from the window and into the shadow of the house to prevent from being seen, yet somehow she still felt exposed to the woman’s stare. As though she had made up her mind the woman turned away and Mel feeling more relaxed went to the couch to eat. That was strange, she thought, I hope Talise is back soon.

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Zephyr (1)

(OOC: To be read directly after Jacob's post) And yet it could be true. Zephyr shifted slightly to get a better angle on the fast fading light. He was writing, and quickly so as to take full advantage of the light and finish his message while he could. He would be taking his written message into the city that night. To be delivered to a house with one lighted window and a woman who was the closest thing to a friend he had since he had been taken from the house with his family freshly buried next to the outer doorway. She was a member of the magi and their official relationship was that she was his handler; luckily she treated him with a greater amount of respect than many of the other handlers he had heard of. As one of the gifted and an excellent warrior he was a valuable asset to the magi. The magi had a way of dealing with people that didn’t inspire faith in their ideas yet had ways of collecting followers despite that fact. One of the main ways being those trained as Zephyr was, both in gift and in weaponry. Functioning as their tool was mostly an unpleasant job, but he owed a debt which they held over his head. With each service he performed it decreased, however, it was only by a little and it could take many years before they considered it acceptably paid off, a thought that sickened him. He had never been given the name of his handler. No agent (a more human and dignified term than most called people like him) of theirs was and the magi were extremely careful not to allow any of the agents access to their personal information. This was most likely in case an agent when rogue, since they were so skilled in whichever area they had been trained that none, except possibly another agent, could stop them. The magi new most, if not all, of their agents resented them at least a little and so set up precautions to prevent any opportunities for escape. If you were deemed “at risk” they could and would go so far as to implant a tracking chip, usually in an area where only a master surgeon could implant or remove it without the risk of severe injury or death. In Zephyr’s case what held him back was the knowledge of his debt, knowing he would be tracked for the rest of his life if he did not fulfill his service, and the fact that he didn’t have anywhere else to go. There was nowhere for him to go even if he did manage to go rogue, no friends, no family, and the only way of life he had ever know was that under the magi. He would never have admitted it to anyone (who did he have to tell anyway) without the magi, though it was nearly unbearable, he had no place in the world. But enough for reminiscing, he had a job to do and a letter to deliver. Checking in on time with his handler could mean the difference between the little freedom he had now and a tracking chip. Needless to say, he would prefer the latter never happen. He sealed the letter with the heavy ring on his right hand. It was his personal symbol which each of the magi and their agents wore designed for every person separately by one of the destiny gifts and was said to show parts of the past, present, and future, depending on what you needed to know. In the full dark the insignia was obscured, but Zephyr didn’t need to see it to know what he needed to do now. He tucked his book away and secured his small pack and other belongings to ensure silence. Even for one of the gifted it was tricky business breaking into the city. Under the cover of darkness he rose upward off the ground, staying low he sped toward the wall then finding a spot with the least protection he rose smoothly up and over the wall and was gone in the streets and allies of the city by the time the change of guard came around the corner.  

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Jacob (1)

In the dusk outside of a great city a young man was to be seen bent over a small book writing. Dirty and torn clothes spoke of many days in the wilderness outside of the limits of any city where no one but those who were part of the nomadic clan or exiled dared to go. In contrast to his appearance his elegant hand and various high quality weapons spoke otherwise. This man must have come from some kind of rich background to have such fine implements of his trade and to know how to write, let alone being able to find and afford the paper for his book. Maybe a noble’s son, exiled yet bribed to stay away and only given weapons for his own protection? Maybe rescued from the slave trade and brought up by the nomads, who despite their seemingly humble origins had vast wealth from their monopolization of the trade routes? A change of guard roused the soldier on the walls of the city from his thoughts. He glanced back at the person who seemed to be sitting among the rocks maybe half a mile off. He chuckled at his own little day dream wondering what his life was coming to when stories kept popping into his head of their own accord. He decided not to point out the man, he assumed it was a man, to the next guard. Whoever they are they’re not causing any harm, thought the soldier. Let them find peace for tonight. It was a much better fate than having to wait in the interrogation rooms until morning where they would be put to the test of the General. There was always a tension running through the city. A fear of anything outside the walls. “Jacob! Hey, Jacob!” A buddy of his yelled from the bottom of the wall. “Shifts over. We’re all going over to Mitzy’s before we go home, remember?” “Yeah, I didn’t forget.” He called back. Jacob looked back over the wall at the figure among the rocks, almost indistinguishable in the unsteady half light. It couldn’t be true. Could it? Alright, he said to himself, no more of this. I’m off to clear my head. Jacob made his way over the stairwell in a few strides and his sure feet took him down the wall, into town to Mitzy’s Tavern, and then finally home to rest for the night in the house where his dreams first started and where he and his wife lived with their baby girl.