SheFallsSoftly

I don’t like to write anymore. I know that this is strange and completely out of canon for me, but writing just makes me unhappy. How much misery have I recorded in the last hundred or so posts on this website? How much of my soul have a bared to a cavernous spectatorship that will not comfort me?
When I write poetry I have to allow a mania to overtake me. I become obsessed with words, repeating little snippets of lines over and over again, pacing and humming and crying all over a few little words. I do not want to do that anymore. When I write in my journal, my feelings of anger and disgust are only amplified. I write only to be reminded that I am alone in this. That there is no one for me to speak to.
Really, though, that isn’t the case. Really everyone understands, and if I’d just set down my 5-dollar words for a minute I’d see that. Really my emotions are basic and human and universal. Really my loneliness is a wall of pseudo-intellectualism I’ve built around myself.
So I don’t really do it anymore. I don’t need the anxiety.
But I came here to say this anyway.
Everything I thought I knew about my world has changed.
All of the most stable couples have broken up. I have been watching my friend surge and rumble with the changes of growth that are, after all, inevitable. I have watched this tear apart the group that was built painstakingly.
All of the kids that I thought of as the “sketchiest” have changed their ways. The death of a friend and teammate has become a catalyst for a more-legal style of living.
Everyone is learning that they are not immortal. That life is not permanent. Things change.
I’m watching it happen and it’s changing me too. My belief in eternity is just one more part of an innocence that I won’t get back.
And so instead I listen to music that reminds me of the-time-back-when, the-time-before. I have a playlist for a time that I’ve come to understand and I live in a confusing place where nothing is certain. Nothing at all is certain.
Here, here I used to say “except that I love him.” I would imagine that my love is the only stable thing in the world, but I know better now. Things will inevitably change. Perhaps we’ll grow apart. Perhaps we’ll grow together. But our love will not remain the same love one way or another.

Well. I never said my love life made any sense. The run down is as such; I’m still in love with Billy. Big surprise, right? In spite of how difficult it is/was for me to let go of Ryan, I feel like I have work with Billy still to finish.

I know that there isn’t much I can do to convince anyone that this is a good idea, but if it’s a mistake it’s my mistake to make, and if it’s right then I’ll try to be pleasant and not rub it in your face. Really, I’m happier now than I’ve been in ages. I’m making good decisions that really make me feel overwhelmingly confident in my sense of self.

Love is a many splendoured thing.

I experience the absence
Like the rotation of the moon
for the tides,
as muscles work together,
one contracts and one expands,
I find that to be pulled at all
I must be pulled both ways.

I experience the absence
As a burning pit
Below my lungs–
A lurching disgust.
My flesh rejects the past.

Gone and yet here.
Loved and yet hated.
I experience the absence
Through cold panes of glass
On quiet sleepless nights.

I experience the absence
As the sobs after a nightmare
Not tolerated to remember,
Not able to forget.

Things are really good. My life has sort of cobbled itself together into something genuinely pleasant and good to be a part of. My grades have been good so far, I’m working out every day and eating better, my friends are amazing, my boyfriend is great, and the world is a wonderful place.

I could write pages about him, but I guess I’ll save you the cliche and just tell you that I adore him. I couldn’t imagine being happier.

I’ve been writing a lot for my writing workshops in school, and I’m really enjoying it. Mostly I write about my mother, about growing up with her. I love my mommy so much. She’s so happy with her new girlfriend, and I really like her. I’m so excited for her.

I had to have a bunch of stuff on my car fixed and it was really stupid expensive. I need to get better about this junk so it doesn’t end up being so expensive any time something goes wrong. I’m so ridiculously irresponsible about some stuff. Cars in particular.

I decided to drop dance. I can’t justify the time expenditure when I need to be studying like mad, and it’s so much more expensive than taking yoga and pilates at school. I really love it, but I could always take company classes instead.

LSAT studying is going pretty well. I’ve been steadily plateauing out, so I’ve started tutoring others to help myself out. Ryan has improved immensely well, and on average I think I’m a pretty good tutor. That is, of course, Tanner’s fault. He’s wonderful.

I guess I never have much to say when I’m happy… I think I prefer it this way. No matter how much fun semi-daily blog posts were… using that time to enjoy my life is so much better.

So, in much the form, there’s a new relationship in my life. It’s been sudden (to put it lightly) but it has that odd sort of click that I haven’t felt in ages… It’s really lovely. It’s mutual. I don’t know what to do with this sort of reciprocal energy… I feel as if I should always be giving more than him, but that’s not the way it works. It’s so good. This comes with an odd sort of confidence on my part.. I’m more ready to confront past issues feeling so secure in my present. I don’t think to myself "It’s not like it was," because it’s so much better than that.

The swing was a catastrophe and I don’t really want to talk about it. Ugh. I’m just so sick of debating, but I can’t give up the community. I think maybe I’ll sit out this year and judge next year. Sounds like a much better situation for me… Regardless, spending a week in or near Dallas was really lovely save for the car drama.

I saw Juno and Sweeney Todd. They were both fucking incredible movies. Seriously. So ridiculously good. See them now.

It’s an odd sort of morning… Pensive and quiet. The world is changing.

Well, 2007 is damn close to over. I can’t believe how much my world changes so quickly… My luck changes like the weather in Oklahoma. One day I’m wearing long johns, the next a halter top.

It’s been a good week or so for dating for me. Despite Christmas drama, I went on a really good date while I was in Albuquerque… Good enough that it might be worth pursuing further. Even better, there’s another prospect on the horizon. And both of them like guitar hero! I’m a lucky girl recently. We’ll see how that goes… Hopefully something good can come of it.

I’m home in Vegas for New Year’s… I’m going to a rave to celebrate the event, and will be all kinds of messed up and dancing. Lindsay (my true love) is coming to visit me while I’m here and we’re going to have amazing adventures.

It’s the time of year to think of resolutions, I think… I gave a list last time of various mistakes I hoped to not repeat, but I guess I have to do a bit better than that.

I resolve to:

1. Always be treated the way I deserve to be treated.
   
2. Change the way I think about sex.
3. Find a healthy way to lose a few pounds.
4. Keep my friends and family close to my heart.

Adventuresome, yes?

Anyway. Things are good. I’m happy. Yay!

1. Honors perspectives courses
2. Working on debate
3. Sucking at guitar hero
4. Worrying about money
5. Caring what other people think
6. Settling into medication
7. Trying to deal with problems without professional help
8. Sending text messages in latin
9. Keeping a boy/girlfriend
10. Working at La Luna
11. Having to miss dance
12. Drama
13. Hating my body
14. Wanting to change for others
15. Stupid fights among friends
16. Having to learn to sleep alone
17. Sexual addiction
18. Being unartistic
19. Being afraid of the LSAT
20. Boys being cruel to my friends
21. Being afraid of substances
22. Being afraid to let go
23. Regretting
24. Looking back
25. Being unselfish when I should have been selfish
26. Being forgiven when I should have been merciless
27. Being restrained when I should have been wild
28. Being cruel
29. Being dishonest
30. Compromising too often
31. 12 months of the Bush administration
32. Fall semester
33. Giving up too early
34. Holding on to people who want to go
35. Forgetting to write Sara
36. Forgetting to tell Lindsay how beautiful she is
37. Forgetting to tell Scott how much I appreciate him
38. Forgetting to tell Seth how great he is
39. Forgettin to tell mikale how amazing of a friend she is
40. A time before The Blow
41. Missing Leila’s shows
42. Missing concerts that I wanted to see
43. Not travelling
44. Needing someone else to complete me
45. Apologizing for being different
46. Trying too hard
47. Not reading enough
48. Not dancing enough
49. Not writing enough
50. Not creating enough

Deep down I really love pigeons. They’re scruffy and scrappy and opportunistic… If anybody is out for itself it’s a pigeon. They’re also strangely gentle in soft coos, slowly fluffed feathers pruned.. My mother would never let me touch the feathers  left behind, would wipe off shit from benches before I sat. Pigeons were dirty, I was taught… But I’d sit outside and feed them popcorn and stale bread for hours, just watching them teeter around aimless, impatient… When I threw them crumbs, every bird would flock for it and one little sick broken bird would always be left out. There’s one in every bunch, broken leg, damaged wing… Something defective. I’d attempt to toss food to just it, but inevitably some other birds would steal it.

I don’t want to take that little bit of something that’s been offered to you.

I guess what I’m saying is survival is a trick that not everyone has figured out yet. Like a pigeon stealing food from its friends… I’m doing the best that I can.

I don’t want to damage that one last hope that you have left… but this is what I need to live. I have a feeling you’ll survive without me.

November must be American because it seems to feel it has the right to encroach upon December’s rightful place.

All of this is going to come back someday and bite me on the ass, I think…. What can you expect from anyone but to do what it takes? It’s not that I’m cut throat… I’m just… ingenuitive.

Wings clear and veined

Slick like fat skimmed off soup
Too small to fly
Attached to dirt-colored skin
Fat hands
No words
But I loved him.
I imagined clipping wings
Like pulling off a dead spider’s legs
They wouldn’t take you anywhere…
But just in case.

I feel as if I have no history. I have no collective past to call back to. My grandfather used to tell me all about boyish ways in golden days. The days of youth are not so clean and free as the generation before. I remember my supernintendo fondly, not holding hands in the dime store.

I told my friends this, they told me all about the feminists, about “I am woman, hear me roar.” How can I be proud of a heritage which I disgrace, all pumps and frills and lipgloss? Equality is an ongoing history that I have no part of.

Others have age, race, religion, ethnicity. I am Casey. I am a part of the Northern European Imbred Poor. I was raised atheist. None of the traditions mean anything anymore.

I celebrate my heritage in empty corporate holidays, I wear my identity in designer clothes. I am American and I emulate perfect identity-less beauty, I have second helpings at every meal. I waste. Constantly.

I am American and I will turn back the hands of time with chemicals and scalpels when I feel too old. I will suck out all of my fat and throw it away to lose weight. I do not know hunger. I medicate through pain. I have a winter and summer wardrobe.

I imagine that once my ancestors wore a tartan… My mother tells me I’m not very irish. I wear my red hair, pale skin, freckles like a question mark. I know who I am, but have no idea who I was.

And half jack.